Symbiosis

by Rushlight (n_sanity75@hotmail.com)



Author's Webpage: http://internetdump.com/users/rushlight/

Archive: MA, WWOMB, anyone else please ask first

Rating: NC-17

Category: angst, action/adventure, drama

Summary: When answering a distress signal on a distant moon, Qui- Gon and Obi-Wan find that there is more going on than meets the eye.

Feedback: yes, please. Any and all comments welcome.

Disclaimer: The boyz aren't mine, much as I wish they were. They belong to George Lucas, who is a kind man for creating such a wonderful universe for us all to play in.



Year 23416 odt
Laavoe Treshae

My name is Ben, and I am a clone.

I have spent the past eight years of my life being raised in the flesh farms of Laavoe Treshae. My procreation was a secret to all but those who raised me. Replication of the cells of sentient lifeforms has long been outlawed in the galaxy. The regulations regarding these procedures are strict and without ambiguity; the punishment for disobedience to these laws is swift and final. There is no uncertainty, no lack of focus. The law is clear. I, and my kind, are an abomination.

I and the others like me are an experiment to see if Force-user ability can indeed be transferred from a parent cell into another previously non-sensitive organism, and if so, how that ability might be altered as suits our creators' whim. There have been cases in history where identical twins would be born to Force- sensitive parents, and one twin would have the ability while the other would not. While genetics plays a key role in how the ability is passed on, it is obviously not the only factor involved. The science of such a study is far beyond my comprehension, but I do understand the basic theory behind it.

One of the key factors that plays into the steady propagation of clones here at Laavoe Treshae is the verity of a scientific principle known as Zuckerov's Paradox. Simply put, the Paradox states that any artificially reproduced genetic cluster (meaning me) will begin to decompose after a certain number of mitotic cycles, instigating a cascade failure of the deoxyribonucleic bonds inside the nuclei of the cells that will eventually result in a complete loss of cellular cohesion. In layman's terms, death. Preceded by a serious bout of insanity as the higher mental processes of the organism break down. Ten years is pretty much the limit before our time is up.

You can imagine the happy dreams that this gave me when I was a child.

But I can spend the remaining span of my life going on about how unfair the universe is, and it won't change a thing. So instead I think I will concentrate on the day that brought about the first and final major change in my life. The day that I finally found out what it truly means to be a clone.



"Master, I'm picking up a distress signal from the mining settlement at Laavoe Treshae."

Qui-Gon Jinn looked up from the console where he was scrolling through the treaty on the franchise rights of the New Trade Republic. "Lay in a course to intercept."

Obi-Wan nodded, his fingers flying over the control panel in front of him. The course was already calculated and locked in; all it needed was Qui-Gon's order to execute. Obi-Wan had known that his Master would not turn away from a distress call, no matter how urgent their mission to mediate the embargoes imposed by the New Trade Republic. Qui-Gon Jinn was never one to weigh politics against a potential loss of lives.

A sudden heavy silence behind his shoulder made Obi-Wan look back into the grave face of his Master. Qui-Gon's eyes were fixed on the panel in front of him. "How long?"

"It's not going to put us much out of our way," Obi-Wan replied. "We'll be entering their solar system in about two hours."

"Any indication of what the problem is?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "It looks like an automated beacon. I'd guess it went off automatically when the trouble hit them."

Qui-Gon's expression seemed to darken. "Keep me informed if there's any change."

Obi-Wan kept a close eye on the com-panel over the next two hours, hoping for some sign of life from the settlement. There was none, and neither was there any reply to his own carefully worded communications. It was possible that this was a trap; certainly pirates had been known to use such a tactic to lure in unwary victims. But his vigilant sensor sweeps picked up no other vessels in the area, which in itself was rather strange. All he had to guide him was the steady, unbroken beeping of the distress beacon. Even set at its lowest possible volume, it was beginning to grate on his nerves.

"Patience, my Padawan," Qui-Gon chastised him. One hand fell on Obi-Wan's shoulder, thumb massaging lightly across the back of his neck. "All will be explained to us when we arrive."

"I certainly hope so, Master." Obi-Wan realized that he sounded cheeky, and he leaned back against Qui-Gon's hand in silent apology. "This is all so very strange," he said, trying to explain the raw feeling of trepidation that was gnawing away at him. "This is a mining colony. There should be supply traffic, air traffic, com traffic, something. But I can't detect anything at all. It's almost as if the colony doesn't even exist."

"Something had to have sent out that beacon," Qui-Gon said rationally. He closed his eyes and breathed out heavily, reaching for the shifting eddies of the Force around him. When he opened his eyes again, he was frowning. "I sense a disturbance in the Force here, Obi-Wan. More than that I cannot see. We will have to be wary."

A short time later, they entered the solar system of Uris I. Laavoe Treshae was a satellite of one of the larger worlds in orbit around the dwarf star. None of the planets in this system were suitable for humanoid life, and it was only massive construction of pressure domes that made the moon at all habitable. Obi-Wan's sensors picked up the settlement immediately, but to his surprise, there was no sign of mining equipment or digging sites anywhere that he could find.

"That doesn't look like a mining colony," Qui-Gon observed from behind him.

It became readily obvious what the catastrophe was that had set off the distress beacon. It looked as if an earthquake had struck the northern edge of the settlement, and Obi-Wan could still pick up lingering signs of distress from deep within the satellite's core. One of the pressure domes had caved in completely and was even now releasing a steady stream of blue- tinged oxygen into the atmosphere. Another dome had its outer walls breached, but it looked as if the inhabitants had managed to seal it off before the loss of integrity could destroy the settlement entirely.

Obi-Wan carefully concealed the wince that wanted to rise into his eyes as he surveyed the wreckage, bringing in their runabout for a sweeping pass over the leveled dome. He couldn't even imagine how many lives had been lost in this disaster, and the sudden image rose in his mind of what the victims must have experienced, indefatigable terror as both air and heat escaped into unfathomable darkness.

Giving a slight shake of his head to clear it, he said, "I see an airlock in the larger building where we can make a landing."

Qui-Gon touched him lightly on top of the head, a calming gesture. Obi-Wan realized with a pang of self-censure that his distress had not gone unnoticed. "Let's go see if there's anything we can do to help these people," Qui-Gon said.

Obi-Wan said nothing as he maneuvered their craft in for docking. Once he was satisfied that they were securely attached to the ring of the airlock, he powered down the engines and stood up from his chair. A touch of a button, and the entry ramp slid open.

Cautiously, the two Jedi moved out of their craft and into the corridors of the pressure dome. The lights on the ceiling flickered alarmingly, and Obi-Wan couldn't help the grimace that crossed his features as he considered the possibility of meeting the same fate as the unfortunate inhabitants of this settlement. As he walked, he couldn't shake the growing feeling of wrongness that assaulted him.

"The disturbance in the Force is stronger here," Qui-Gon murmured. It was thick in the air around him, like a bitter taste that he couldn't quite get out of the back of his throat. He focused on it with unerring precision, and his steps quickened as he sensed it gathering together somewhere in front of him.

Obi-Wan followed without a word, trusting in his Master's instincts. They were practically running now, without stopping to glance down the various side corridors that they passed. Qui- Gon seemed to know exactly where he was going, or at least where he was being led.

The walls around them were showing signs of stress here. Large, web-like cracks spread up vertically from the floor, but there didn't seem to be any serious damage. At least not until they passed the next junction, and Obi-Wan saw that this entire end of the corridor had caved in. Bits and pieces of the level above them had fallen through a gaping hole in the ceiling to spill across the floor in front of them, completely blocking off the passage with twisted metal and a veritable mountain of debris.

There was just the vaguest outline of a body curled under the rubble, and it was toward this that Qui-Gon moved. Obi-Wan followed, confused by his Master's fixation on this single figure, and pulled an emergency glow rod off his belt as the lighting around them began to fail. The focused blue light of the illuminary cast sharp, night-black shadows around them.

"Help me with this," Qui-Gon ordered, and Obi-Wan immediately moved to obey. Together, they managed to lift away the chunk of fallen metal that lay across the figure's back without adding any undue pressure to the wounded body underneath. Obi-Wan caught a hazy glimpse of sandy hair and strongly delineated muscles. It was a man.

"Qui-Gon," Obi-Wan said, unable to explain the strange tingle of awareness that clutched hold of his spine. But Qui-Gon had already knelt to examine the man's injuries. Apparently finding nothing seriously amiss, he turned the body over.

Obi-Wan staggered, feeling the corridor go hazy and distant around him. His hand clutched at the wall behind him, seeking anything to anchor him in the midst of the furiously glaring denial that surged through him.

He was staring into his own face.



Year 23416 odt
Laavoe Treshae

I woke up in the infirmary. I can only assume that the Master Jedi had carried me there, as his apprentice seemed to find the very sight of me offensive. The moment I laid eyes on him, I knew him for what he was. He was my predecessor, the one from whom my very existence sprang. The original Obi-Wan Kenobi. And as he doubtlessly saw it, the only real one.

Of course I didn't know his name then. He wouldn't meet my eyes as his Master sat down beside me, and gave me water to drink. I was abominably thirsty. The earthquake had struck in the middle of our sleep rotation, without warning. The scientists here are not geologists; they know nothing about unstable tectonic plates and the shifting pressures within the moon's core. It was probably an event that they had never even considered, trusting that because the moon had always been stable, then it always would be. We were all fools.

I found myself unwilling to look too hard upon this man who wore my face, so instead I turned my concentration upon the Master. He was a tall man, well-proportioned, with a beguiling grace about his movements that spoke worlds of the training he had undergone as a warrior. Even I, who knew nothing about such matters, recognized this in him. Maybe it was because I was looking at him so very closely.

I could feel the fierce heat of the apprentice's attention on me, even when his gaze was fixed elsewhere. It made me uncomfortable, even more so than the presence of the man itself. I think, after a few moments of this tense silence, that the Master took pity on the both of us.

"My name is Qui-Gon Jinn," he told me. "And this is my apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi."

I did not reply in kind. At this point, the only name I had was Number Four Hundred and Fifty-Two, E-series. I doubted that this was something that either one of them needed to hear.

The silence between us was filled with unasked questions. I filled it with one of my own. "How is it that you've come to be here?"

I saw the apprentice start at the sound of my voice, although the Master made no reaction. I know now that our voices are identical in pitch and timbre, but our accents are different. It must have been quite a shock for him to hear this.

"The Force has led us to you," Qui-Gon said with a tone of absolute certainty. I wondered if he realized how much like a religious zealot that he sounded. "We heard your distress signal and came to investigate."

"This is not a mining colony like the records indicate." It was the first time that the apprentice had spoken. His voice was cold, the syllables clipped short as if he found it distasteful to speak to me. His tone was accusatory.

I couldn't help smiling a little at that. "No," I agreed with him. "It isn't."

"You're a clone." As if it were a word not used in polite company. For all I know, it isn't.

I nodded, choosing not to react to the thinly veiled violence under the words. What was there for me to say?

Qui-Gon rose from the edge of my bed and moved to his apprentice, laying gentle hands on his shoulders and speaking to him in a voice so low that I couldn't hear. Something in the way these men touched made me think that maybe they were something more than teacher and student, but whatever words of reassurance that Qui-Gon spoke made no appreciable impact.

Shoulders held stiff in a posture of abject challenge, Obi-Wan turned his back on his Master. "I'm going to go search the corridors. There might be other ... survivors." The emphasis on the last word was barely detectable, but it was there. Qui-Gon made no move to stop him as he left the room.

When he turned back to me, Qui-Gon's face was carefully expressionless. "Obi-Wan is right," he told me. "I must go help him search for others who may need our help."

I made no word of protest to this, and he seemed both relieved and dismayed that I made no further attempt to speak to him. His expression softened, just slightly, as he held my gaze.

"We will return shortly," he said, and then he turned to leave.

I was not a bit surprised when he locked the door behind him.



Qui-Gon's mind was spinning as he followed Obi-Wan out into the halls of the complex. He had chosen to forego their usual pattern of splitting up to search the premises in light of their discovery. It was best, he decided, if they stayed together for the time being.

The first thing he did was use his comlink to patch into their ship's communications system. He sent a hasty message to Coruscant over a shielded frequency, succinctly outlining the nature of the disaster, making special emphasis on the precariousness of their situation and the moon's inherent instability. Not trusting the security of the channel, he made no mention of the disturbing discovery of the illegal research being done here. Any explanations could wait until they were safely back at Coruscant.

Now all he and Obi-Wan had to do was await the arrival of the relief crews. Resolutely, he turned his focus away from the surprising appearance of the clone. For that was what it had to be; there was no other explanation. There was a strange resonance in the Force around it that almost, but not quite, reminded him of Obi-Wan. Just as its voice was almost, but not quite, the same as the dulcet tones Qui-Gon had come to adore over the years. It was that strange conglomeration of "not- quite-sameness" that set his teeth on edge. And if it was making him this uncomfortable, what must it be doing to Obi-Wan?

Obi-Wan, for his part, was being stubbornly silent as they made their methodical search of the building. There was a line of tension between his shoulder blades that did not fade as time moved on, but Qui-Gon made no mention of it. He wanted to give his Padawan the space that he needed to come to terms with this.

"It's another laboratory," Qui-Gon commented as they passed into yet another yawning chamber. Long, low tables were situated in parallel rows around the room, fragile glassware shattered in rainbow shards across the floor. The lighting in this part of the building was intermittent, and Obi-Wan held tight to his slender glow rod, letting the bright blue glow illuminate the area around them. For all the intensity of its light, however, it merely cast the space outside its range into even deeper darkness.

Obi-Wan made no comment, and Qui-Gon checked a weary sigh. It was all too obvious what the scientists had been studying here.

Aside from the occasional body that they found buried beneath the rubble, they found no other sign of the complex's inhabitants. Despite Qui-Gon's own deep-rooted fear that they would come across more of his apprentice's clones, not one of the bodies they found wore Obi-Wan's face. He found that he was disproportionately relieved at this.

Finally, they had to assume that any survivors had made their way through the tunnels connecting the pressure domes into a part of the facility that had been less damaged. As much as Qui-Gon was pleased to think that the inhabitants would have found some way to escape the earthquake's fury, he knew that it meant he and Obi-Wan would have to get their answers from the doppelganger in the medical bay.

Obi-Wan was uncommunicative as they made their way back to the infirmary. Just outside the door, Qui-Gon stopped him.

"Obi-Wan."

A light hand on his shoulder made Obi-Wan pause, but he did not turn. There was a great deal of tension in his lean frame.

"Obi-Wan, look at me."

With obvious reluctance, Obi-Wan turned. "I know what you're going to say, Qui-Gon," he said, before Qui-Gon was even sure of this himself. His voice was cool. "You don't have to tell me. I promise I'll maintain my detachment when we question it."

Qui-Gon hesitated, not liking the featureless luster in his Padawan's eyes. "Obi-Wan," he said again, trying to gather his thoughts together. "I know that this is very difficult for you. I just don't want you to think that you're alone in dealing with this." He reached out to trail his fingers over the length of Obi-Wan's braid.

Some of the defensiveness left Obi-Wan's posture then, and he nodded slightly. Together, they turned to enter the room.

The clone was right where they had left it, sitting up in one of the medical beds set against the far wall. It was a small facility, for all the grand scope of this colony, and Qui-Gon guessed that there were other medical units for each of the other domes. It gave him some small hope that the wounded survivors might have found the medical help that they would need. He wasn't quite ready yet to go out in search of them; there were too many unanswered questions here.

Obi-Wan was prowling like an angry tiger at the edges of the room. Qui-Gon let him have his space and moved forward to address the clone.

"Do you have a name?" he asked, wanting to begin on a non- offensive note.

The clone shook its head in a negative response. This brought Qui-Gon's attention to the sandy hair that just barely brushed the color of the faded work tunic, not too long so as to be unkempt, but certainly longer than his apprentice's. The fine, red-tinted quality of it was identical, however. It was yet another of those details that was the same and yet not. It made it easy enough to remember that this was not, in fact, Obi-Wan he was addressing, until he looked into those fragmented eyes. Because those were the same as his Obi-Wan's.

Exactly the same.

Clearing his throat, Qui-Gon moved forward to sit in the chair at the side of the bed. The clone's eyes never left him. "There has been illegal research going on in this establishment," he said, wondering how much this ... person ... knew about its circumstances. It certainly seemed to know what his Padawan had been talking about when Obi-Wan called it a clone earlier. That at least answered one of his questions.

"Yes." Smooth, well-modulated voice. The accent was curiously reminiscent of the southern dialect on Szanthra IV.

Qui-Gon had to suppress a shudder. No matter his personal feelings about cloning, this individual had had no say in its conception. It would be the height of cruelty to take out his prejudices on ... him. Him, not it. "What is the purpose of this research?"

The clone looked at him for a moment, then dropped his gaze to the hand that was curled in his lap. Long, graceful fingers picked absently at the seam of the sheet that covered his legs. It was a nervous gesture that Qui-Gon had seen Obi-Wan perform many times throughout his childhood. The sight of it now made Qui-Gon distinctly uncomfortable.

"To test the viability of altering the heritability of Force- perception."

The explanation was made with clinical detachment, and it raised the hairs along the back of Qui-Gon's neck. He glanced briefly at Obi-Wan, who was standing with his back to them, to all outward appearances completely disinterested in what they had to say. But Qui-Gon could see the line of tension in his Padawan's back, even through the heavy layers of his tunics and robe.

"Do you know where they came up with the original sample?" There was no more delicate way to phrase it. Somewhere along the line, these scientists had come across a living cell from his Padawan. Not that it truly mattered; they had both left behind their share of blood on various missions, not to mention the odd hair or two left behind on the sheets of the beds where they stayed.

The clone shook his head. His wide eyes looked completely guileless. "I'm sorry. I don't really know anything about it."

"You're sorry." Obi-Wan's voice was laced with barely contained hostility. The look that he speared his doppelganger with was filled with unshielded revulsion.

Qui-Gon checked a sigh. This was not going well at all. "We need to have a name for you if we're going to interact," he said, hoping that the process of choosing an appropriate label for his nemesis would help Obi-Wan come around to seeing him as a living thing, with thoughts and feelings of his own. "Do you have any preferences?" This was asked directly of the clone.

"No." He seemed startled by Qui-Gon's suggestion. Qui-Gon felt a stirring of pity for the boy. That no one had even bothered to name him said interesting things about the kind of upbringing he must have had.

"Obi-Wan?" Qui-Gon tossed the conversational ball over into Obi- Wan's court, hoping he would catch it. Not surprisingly, he did not.

"No, Master." Was that the faintest emphasis on his title?

Qui-Gon thought a moment, ignoring his Padawan's frigidity. "How about Ben?" It had been the name of one of the Jedi Master's friends in the crŠche when he was a child. He could feel Obi-Wan stiffen behind him without even having to look.

The clone cocked his head thoughtfully, and for a moment he looked so much like Obi-Wan pondering a new puzzle that Qui-Gon had to look away. "I like it," the clone said at last, tentatively.

"'Ben' it is, then." Qui-Gon smiled, and got the ghost of an answering smile in return. He was beginning to see past his own initial prejudices to the shy, winsome boy that appeared to exist behind his Padawan's face.

Obi-Wan made a disgusted sound and stalked out of the room.

The smile on Ben's face faded. "I didn't choose to be here, you know," he said. There was a note of defensiveness in his tone.

"I know," Qui-Gon said, his eyes trailing sadly after Obi-Wan.

"I'll tell you anything you want to know. I don't know much, but I want to help you." A pause. "Both of you."

"Don't let him get to you," Qui-Gon cautioned, turning his attention back to the man on the bed. "This is very difficult for him."

A brief shimmer of pain flickered across Ben's eyes, there and then gone. "Do you really think that it's any less painful for me?"



Year 23416 odt
Laavoe Treshae

They named me Ben. It was a kindness that I was completely unprepared for. When I first woke up in that hospital bed, I had expected the scorn, the fear, the barely concealed repugnance as they were forced to interact with me. In this, my predecessor has been all that I could have dreamed. It is the other man, though, that gave me pause, and made me wonder if everything that I had been taught about those who live outside Laavoe Treshae is true. The one called Qui-Gon. I found him a fascinating individual.

We talked long into the night, and I told him everything I could about the rhythms and routines of Laavoe Treshae. It didn't feel like betrayal. What loyalty do I owe those who created me, who raised me from conception into the man I am today? None. In the small amount of time that I had known him, Qui-Gon Jinn commanded more of my loyalty and respect than each and every one of the scientists who had taken part in my upbringing. It felt as natural as breathing, to give in to him this way.

I knew that it was drawing on towards morning when he finally went out in search of his apprentice, even though there were no windows in this part of the dome. My body is well-attuned to the circadian rhythms of this moon, and it was telling me very strongly that I had missed a full night of sleep. To my relief, I seemed to be unharmed except for a number of new bruises and a particularly nasty scrape along my back on the left side, where the falling debris had hit me when I ran out into the corridor. Qui-Gon tended to my minor wounds with all of the attention he would have given a dying man, and I enjoyed the feeling of being coddled even though I knew he was only doing his duty as a Jedi.

He made sure that I was comfortable before he turned down the lights and left me alone to sleep. I thought about those touches I had noticed between the Master and his apprentice, and my mind was filled with speculations as I watched him go into the next room, closing the door behind him. I knew without having to check that the door was now locked, as was the one leading out into the hall.

I lay there in the darkness for a very long time, even though I was exhausted in both mind and body. My thoughts kept returning to the unexpected appearance of the man whose face I was wearing.

Qui-Gon had said that the Force had led them to me. I wondered what the probabilities were that this might be true. If it were, I was going to have some serious issues about the dispassionate, clinical way in which I had been taught to view the Force. It certainly seemed that it had a wicked enough sense of humor.

After that, my thoughts turned to the image of the two of them, lying together in the next room, offering each other comfort in the midst of the entirely unexpected discovery of my existence.

For the first time, I began to realize that I was jealous of Obi- Wan Kenobi.



"He's a man, Obi-Wan."

"It's a monster!" Obi-Wan's voice was low but strung with barely concealed rage. He paced back and forth across the narrow confines of the room with the animalistic swagger of a leh'rat on the prowl. "I don't understand how you can just ... just sit there and ... talk to it!"

Qui-Gon tried to keep his expression neutral. It was growing exceedingly difficult to do so. "He is a man," he repeated firmly, "who happens to share your genetic code. By our standards, he is an innocent. He was raised in this facility, Obi-Wan, with no contact with the outside world. You have nothing to fear from him."

"Did the Force tell you this, too?" Obi-Wan recognized the sneer in his tone and immediately stopped pacing. The look he turned on Qui-Gon was contrite. "I'm sorry, Master," he said, breathing a deep sigh and flexing his hands at his sides in an attempt to relieve some of the tension that was churning inside of him. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I just..."

"I know." Qui-Gon's soft voice clearly said that there was no need to explain. He moved forward and reached out to touch his Padawan lightly on the arm. When Obi-Wan made no move to resist him, Qui-Gon pulled him forward into a firm embrace. "I'm here with you," he murmured into the soft, spiky hair at the top of the younger man's head. "The existence of this man, or of a thousand others like him, changes nothing about you. Remember that, Obi-Wan, and be strong."

"I love you." This was the barest of whispers against his Master's chest, but Obi-Wan knew that Qui-Gon had heard him. Pulling away slightly, he met his Master's eyes and tipped his head back in blatant invitation.

Qui-Gon smiled and bent to kiss the proffered lips. Obi-Wan closed his eyes, savoring the feel of his lover's mouth against him, the taste of their breaths mingling in the stale air. It was several moments before Qui-Gon pulled away.

"We need to get some rest now, love," he said, running a finger lightly along the line of Obi-Wan's brow. "I don't dare allow us to sleep together. I want you to sleep first shift while I keep an eye on the corridors outside. I'll wake you in four hours."

A four-hour rotating schedule. It was the same routine they followed on their more hazardous missions. Obi-Wan relaxed slightly to see that his Master was treating this situation so seriously. "Are you expecting trouble, Master?" he asked. "I wouldn't think that anyone would be coming back here for quite some time."

"I always expect trouble," Qui-Gon said with a fond smile. "If the inhabitants of this colony saw our ship land, sooner or later they will be sending someone to investigate. And this is a secret that I believe they will be willing to do anything to keep hidden."

Obi-Wan felt something inside of him tighten. "Be careful."

"Of course. Now get some sleep." Qui-Gon kissed him one last time, a soft, lingering brush of lips. The barest flicker of his tongue danced like liquid flame into Obi-Wan's mouth. Obi-Wan melted against him, feeling achingly bereft when the kiss was withdrawn.

"Good night, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon whispered.

Obi-Wan nodded, keeping his eyes averted. "Good night."

Qui-Gon left then, and Obi-Wan moved to one of the diagnostic beds against the far wall. The bed was narrow and not particularly comfortable, but it was far better than some of the places he had been forced to sleep in the past. It rather surprised him that he felt as tired as he did.

With the memory of Qui-Gon's lips still warm against his own, he slept.

It felt like just a few moments later when Qui-Gon came in to wake him. Obi-Wan rose up off the bed immediately, wincing at the stiffness in his limbs.

"No change," Qui-Gon told him, answering the question before he could ask it. His face looked as inscrutable as ever, but Obi- Wan could see the ache of weariness in his eyes.

Obi-Wan nodded. "Get some rest, Master. I'll take over for now."

With a perfect trust that Obi-Wan found more comforting than all the praises in the universe, Qui-Gon moved to the bed that Obi- Wan had just vacated and lay down. Obi-Wan waited a moment to make sure he was comfortable before moving out of the room to begin his own surveillance.

He was half-tempted to go back to the main area of the medical bay and check in on the clone. Ben. Why did Qui-Gon have to go and give it a name, anyway? It had seemed perfectly happy without one.

But a brief probe of the Force showed him that the eerily familiar presence was still locked away inside its makeshift prison. More than that he could not tell, but he guessed that it was sleeping.

Him. Not it. Qui-Gon had been earnest in his request that Obi-Wan see this monstrosity as a fellow human being, despite the utter insanity of such a notion. Obi-Wan's mind firmly rebelled against his attempts to comply with his Master's wishes. It was a clone. A freak of nature. And not even of nature, because it had been grown in a glass tube, probably artificially accelerated and educated to speed its advance to maturity. The thought of it made Obi-Wan feel a twinge of nausea. Just the thought that his cells had been used to...

Determinedly, he shoved such contemplations aside. They were doing him no good at all. He would deal with the existence of ... Ben ... in his own way and in his own time. Right now he just preferred not to think about it.

It was almost an hour into his solitary vigil when he felt the first vibrations in the floor under his feet. Alarmed, he reached out with the Force and was met by a swirling maelstrom of conflicting eddies, trying to pull him in a dozen different directions. Hurriedly, he clamped down on his perception of it, automatically controlling the sudden surge in his heart rate.

He had just made the decision to return to Qui-Gon when he sensed a presence in the corridor ahead of him. Wary, he started towards it, not liking the way the lights flickered around him. They had been holding steady for most of the night, and the sudden failure in their circuitry now was not at all comforting.

There was absolutely nothing he could detect about the presence except that it was intensely focused. It wasn't until he actually turned the corner that he realized there were two of them.

The first to draw his attention was a large, hulking brute of a man with skin so dark that it appeared almost black. Obi-Wan's first fevered impression was that the man had to have Allarian blood in him from somewhere down the gene line, because no mere human could have that stature. There was a heavy blaster hanging low off of the dark man's belt. Belatedly, Obi-Wan's attention shifted to the gaunt, somewhat nervous-looking man standing in the giant's shadow.

There was no need to decipher the absolute astonishment in their eyes at the sight of him. Obi-Wan smiled grimly. "Hello," he greeted smoothly, as if there were nothing at all amiss. Let them wonder exactly how much he and Qui-Gon had discovered here. "My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi, of the Jedi Knights of Coruscant. My Master and I came in response to your distress signal. You seem to have had quite a fall-out here."

There was only the barest of pauses as the two men exchanged glances. "Yes," the shorter one said. His skin looked pasty in the flickering light of the corridor, or maybe it was just the contrast of standing next to his dark companion. "There was an earthquake." His tone was guarded.

"That's what we determined from the readings we took from orbit," Obi-Wan told him. He was uncomfortable under the heavy stare of the larger man, who seemed quite willing to let his companion bear the brunt of the conversation. "This appears to be a scientific facility." He left the obvious question unspoken, that the records had indicated this was supposed to be a mining colony.

"Yes," the thin man said again. He seemed to be recovering somewhat from the shock of seeing Obi-Wan. "I'm Dr. Merrill. This is my assistant, Abdura." Obi-Wan was well-aware of the lack of the honorific "Doctor" before the dark man's name. "The research we're doing here is top secret. There are those in the Senate who would not understand the importance of the work that we do, so our sponsors thought it best if we remain hidden. That way the wrong elements won't catch wind of our research and seek to intervene."

Obi-Wan was disturbed by the implication that it had been the Senate that had sanctioned the scientists' concealment here. "Exactly what kind of research do you do here, Dr. Merrill?"

Another glance between the two men, so quick that Obi-Wan might have convinced himself he had imagined it if he hadn't been looking for it. "We do generational work with nucleic transposons," Merrill said. "You'll forgive me if I don't elucidate. I did mention that our research is top secret." Thin ghost of a smile.

"Of course." Obi-Wan hadn't expected anything more in the way of an explanation. Deciding to push a little, he said, "You'll be happy to know that my Master contacted Coruscant, and relief crews are en route to help you recover from this unfortunate disaster. We should have you up and running again before you know it."

Yet another subdued glance. These two could have taken out a patent on nonverbal communication. "That is indeed fortunate," Merrill said, after only a heartbeat's pause. "I must thank your Master for his swift actions."

It was a subtle prod for Obi-Wan to bring them to where Qui-Gon was staying. Obi-Wan hesitated a moment, considering. He had a very bad feeling about this entire situation. Merrill's insinuations that their research had the Senate's approval was disturbing to say the least, and Obi-Wan found himself wondering just who exactly would be in charge of dispatching the relief effort to Laavoe Treshae. Would it be someone who had a stake in keeping the true nature of the research being done here a secret? Would it be someone who would not think it apropos to arrange for the disappearance of two Jedi who had stumbled onto matters that might be considered none of their concern?

Such paranoia was not going to help him here. They would deal with the relief crew when it arrived. "I'll bring you to him," Obi-Wan said, and Merrill nodded. Abdura was a still and silent shadow behind him.

Obi-Wan was able to send enough of a warning through the link that he and Qui-Gon shared that his Master was awake and waiting for them in the corridor outside the infirmary when they arrived. The sight of him brought Obi-Wan a feeling of intense relief, even as he mourned the sleep that Qui-Gon was missing because of this interruption. There was a strong feeling of discontent coiling in the pit of Obi-Wan's stomach, and it sprang from more than just the unexpected appearance of his clone.

Obi-Wan performed the introductions, and Qui-Gon greeted the newcomers with quiet dignity. He too made no mention of the clone they had found, but Obi-Wan couldn't lose the feeling that it didn't make any difference. Merrill's eyes were as cold and flat as a snake's, and there was no reading the thoughts that twisted and turned behind his steely gaze. Still Abdura made no attempt to converse with them, as if the Jedi were somehow beneath his notice. Obi-Wan began to recognize his attitude as that of security guards the galaxy over - cool detachment mixed with calm readiness, and a patently obvious ability to do harm. Obi-Wan did not want to think about the battle that would transpire if that quiet strength were ever unleashed on them.

"There's no need for you to stay here while you wait for your ships to arrive," Merrill told Qui-Gon, his voice low and almost managing to sound sincere. "This part of our facility is a death trap waiting to happen. There are many of us who require immediate medical attention, and there are few among us who can help them. With the power fluctuating the way that it is, our medical facilities are all but useless. We are scientists, Master Jinn, not medical doctors. We don't have the training required to treat all of the injuries that have occurred."

"Jedi are trained in the medical arts," Qui-Gon said reluctantly, and Obi-Wan's gaze turned to him in surprise. Surely Qui-Gon wasn't going to fall for this rather obvious lure? "I am not a surgeon, but if my skills can be of help, then I will accompany you."

"A word with you, Master." Obi-Wan couldn't keep the irritation out of his voice.

Qui-Gon nodded. "If you will excuse us a moment?" he said to Merrill and Abdura, and then turned to follow his Padawan a short distance down the hall. Once they had gone far enough for their voices not to be overheard, Obi-Wan turned on him.

"You can't be serious about us going with them," Obi-Wan said, struggling to keep his voice low. "What about Ben?"

"You will remain here with him," Qui-Gon answered, and the look in his eyes said that he knew entirely well how difficult it would be for Obi-Wan to hear this. "I will accompany Dr. Merrill to the part of the facility where his people are sequestered. If there are truly wounded, Obi-Wan, we must do what we can to help."

"I don't trust them!" Obi-Wan was furious. "He said they have the sanction of the Senate. What makes you think that it's only relief crews that are on their way to this moon? It is not a good idea for us to separate right now."

Qui-Gon paused thoughtfully. "If there is truly someone in power on Coruscant supporting this research, there is even more of a reason for us to stay. We must uncover the truth behind this matter, Obi-Wan. We have to find out who is involved."

To his dismay, Obi-Wan could not fault his Master's argument. "We should not split up," he reiterated, even though he knew it was useless. Qui-Gon was right. Ben was the only true link they had to what was happening here, and they could not pass up the opportunity to talk to more of the scientists. "At least let me be the one to go with Dr. Merrill."

"My healing skills are better than yours," Qui-Gon said patiently, without censure. It was something that had always been true between them; Qui-Gon's connection with the Living Force was stronger than Obi-Wan's, and thus his ability to draw on it was more pronounced than that of his Padawan. "My services may be called upon if there are truly injuries that the doctors cannot tend to." He laid a calming hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder. "Now is the time for you to be strong, my love." Some of the rigidity left Obi-Wan's frame at the sound of the endearment. "Be wary. Be focused. When the relief crews arrive, we will leave and bring Ben before the Council. His accusations alone should be enough to launch an investigation into this matter. The scientists here may be working at the behest of the Senate, but I assure you they do not have the sanction of the Jedi."

Obi-Wan relaxed even more at this tacit reminder that Ben's existence was not a crime against him alone, but against the whole of the Jedi order. Suddenly he wanted very much to kiss Qui-Gon, to hold and be held. The need for it was almost a physical ache within him. "Be careful," he said after a moment, once he had gotten his turbulent emotions under control. "Don't trust them."

"I assure you that I do not." Qui-Gon made an abortive movement to reach out and touch Obi-Wan's cheek. With their enemies watching, such displays of affection were best left undemonstrated. Smiling softly, he folded his hands deliberately inside the folds of his sleeves. "You be careful as well, my Padawan. Do not assume that this is the only patrol sent out in search of us. They will know that once we are separated, we will be vulnerable."

Obi-Wan nodded. Together, he and Qui-Gon moved back down the corridor to where Merrill and Abdura patiently waited.

"Is everything well?" Merrill asked once they came close enough for conversation again.

"Yes," Qui-Gon replied. "I will be accompanying you to help with your wounded, while my apprentice remains here to await the arrival of the relief crews. They will recognize our ship and will likely make their landing here when they arrive."

A sudden frown flashed across Merrill's face. "Are you sure that's wise? Surely it would do more good if the two of you were to-"

"My apprentice is an able engineer," Qui-Gon cut in smoothly. "He will work on reestablishing power to this portion of your facility. It will aid in the relief effort when it arrives." As if to emphasize his words, the lights flickered again, alarmingly.

Merrill seethed silently for a moment, then inclined his head in reluctant agreement. Obi-Wan could tell by the glint in his eyes that he was not at all fooled. He knew that the Jedi were hiding something. "As you say, Master Jinn."

Obi-Wan watched with a feeling of sick horror as his Master walked away at Merrill's side. Abdura was a towering presence behind them, his monstrous shadow seeming to swallow Qui-Gon whole.

Doing what he could to release his fears to the Force, Obi-Wan turned to go back into the infirmary, and see if there was anything more that he could learn from Ben.



Year 23416 odt
Laavoe Treshae

I didn't find out until after it was done that they had separated. If I had known, I would have cautioned against it. Dr. Merrill is a cold man, cruel, who cares nothing for anything save the integrity of his own research. And Abdura is one of those that we call the Eradicators, those whose job it is to put down any uprisings among recalcitrant clones. It is a duty they are called upon to perform fairly regularly, as one clone or another will pass earlier than expected into the insanity that heralds the loss of their cellular cohesion. In many ways, the Eradicators are considered the incarnate executors of Zuckerov's Paradox.

I was dismayed that Qui-Gon had thought it necessary to go alone to find the answers he sought, and to tend to Laavoe Treshae's wounded. I understood full well that it was because of me that the apprentice was left behind, and it became readily obvious to me that Obi-Wan was aware of this, too. He questioned me ruthlessly when he came in that morning to tell me Qui-Gon had gone, and none of my admittedly tenuous answers seemed to satisfy him. I wanted to help, but the truth was that I just didn't know enough to be of use to him.

One thing I could do for him was to show him where the main terminal was to gain access into the company archives. I wasn't sure what good it would do; all of the files are password- protected, and I'm sure there are enough fail-safes and backup protocols in place to completely crash the system if anyone were to make a determined attempt at unauthorized access. He spent the better part of the day fiddling around with the computer, leaving me pretty much to my own devices. I convinced him sometime in the mid-afternoon that he had to eat if he wanted to be any good to his Master, and while the comment earned me a scathing look that all but seared my skin away, it at least peeled him away from the computer long enough to return to the infirmary and scrounge up some lunch from the pantry there.

One of the things I noticed, and that he never once commented on, was the occasional tremor that passed through the floor beneath us. These made me distinctly nervous, but he only seemed to withdraw further into himself whenever they occurred. When I mentioned the danger inherent in staying here to him, he favored me with an icy glare and told me to mind my own business. As if it weren't my life hanging in the balance here, too.

I suppose I could have hated him, but I didn't. I understood all too well the reasons for the way he treated me; all I had to do was look into his face to see the evidence of the barriers between us. He rarely spoke to me, and although I could tell he was trying to be civil, I could see the effort that it cost him. Cut off from his Master, there was an almost child-like vulnerability about him, despite his ferocity and his self- sufficiency. I knew he wasn't trying intentionally to be cruel. It was more a matter of lashing out at the source of his agony, a mindless reaction to being faced with something so horrible that he dares not even contemplate the ramifications of it. I do not need a trained Force-sense to tell me that my very presence brings him pain.

And so I kept myself still, and quiet, and tried to stay out of his way as best I could. It was the only thing I could do for him, the only thing he would let me do.

It was nearing evening-time again when he gave up in disgust on his attempts to hack into the computer system. He was silent as we made our way back to the infirmary, which had become a kind of base of operations for us. I was hungry again, and knew he had to be as well. I was worried about Qui-Gon, too, but of course I couldn't say anything about this to him. The absence of his Master was almost a visible wound within him.

We had almost made it back to the infirmary when the earthquake hit. There was no warning, at least none that I could detect. Obi-Wan turned to me with a fierce and wild look in his eyes, but before he could utter a word, the floor bucked beneath us like the back of a wild animal. A second later, there was the horrendous sound of rending metal accompanied by a terrible rumbling that rose up from deep in the ground under our feet, and before my horrified eyes, the corridor actually seemed to twist around us. I flailed, slamming against the wall hard enough to see stars dance in front of my eyes, but then he was pulling me forward and I was running.

I was so terrified I could hardly think, but he led me with unerring precision through the rain of falling debris until we were back in the infirmary. This room was situated in the central portion of the facility and thus had a lesser chance of opening up our fragile supply of oxygen to the vacuum outside the dome. Once there, Obi-Wan pulled me down onto the floor underneath one of the interior archways and huddled his body over me. I clung to him, shaking and horrified, as the grotesque cacophony of destruction echoed around us. I wanted to scream, to run, to rail against the helplessness that was being thrust upon me, but he held me firm against the floor, fingers digging deep bruises into my arms.

I believe that his actions saved my life. When it was over, silence descended over us like a shroud. I opened my eyes and saw that it was completely dark. Panic rose up in my throat as I imagined being slowly suffocated in the blackness while our atmosphere escaped through minuscule cracks in the walls.

A touch on my arm calmed me. A moment later, there was a flare of blue light as Obi-Wan ignited the last remaining glow rod on his belt. It cast a sharp, clear light over the room around us, and it was enough for me to see that the infirmary had survived the quake with a surprisingly small amount of damage. The steady drone of the air circulators had gone ominously quiet. Obi-Wan favored me with a silent, unfathomable look before rising smoothly to his feet to investigate the extent of the wreckage.

The exterior door would not open to his command, and the clinic where he and Qui-Gon had spent the pervious night had been completely caved in. I could sense his frustration as he tried and tried again to release the locking mechanism on the door.

I sat with my back against the wall and watched him as he worked, and the increased desperation of his movements made the extent of our situation quite clear to me.

We were trapped.



Qui-Gon followed Merrill through the maze of corridors and junctions to the pressurized tunnel connecting this dome to the next. The entire colony was laid out this way, like a profusion of metal bubbles united by slender threads, a patchwork conglomeration of living quarters and workspaces that made up the life and breath of Laavoe Treshae.

Abdura was a silent presence at his back, and Qui-Gon kept half his attention focused on the strange and silent giant as he walked. The more time he spent in Abdura's company, the more he became convinced that the man's demeanor was closer to that of an executioner than a security guard. He didn't like to think about the implications of what that might mean.

Qui-Gon was more than a little surprised to find that there were indeed wounded waiting for him when he reached his destination. The infirmary in this dome was filled to overflowing, and there were several private rooms being used as impromptu hospital wards. Not one of the patients here resembled Obi-Wan in any way, so Qui-Gon could only assume that the clones were being held in a separate location, if any of them had indeed been injured. It angered him that they would be denied medical treatment just to keep him from learning of their existence. It was almost enough to make him declare his knowledge of the illegal research right then and there.

But prudence won out over emotionalism, and he released his anger into the Force. There were people here who needed his help, and they needed him alive in order to give it. He spent the better part of the day moving through the different wards, offering comfort and healing where he could. Some of the injuries that had been sustained during the quake were grievous; these people had been completely unprepared for what had happened to them. Makeshift orderlies brought him food and drink at the appropriate times, but other than that, he was completely consumed in the task before him. It was worse than most of the battlefields he had been to throughout his career.

He noticed that while Merrill disappeared early in the day, Abdura never moved from his station by the door. Qui-Gon realized that whatever else the man's purpose may be, he was now a Jedi Master's jailer. The thought made Qui-Gon smile grimly. He had no illusions about his status here, and Abdura made no effort to abuse him of the notion - he was a prisoner.

The unsettling vibrations in the ground beneath them were growing more frequent as the day progressed. Qui-Gon made no mention of it; what, after all, were they to do about it?

The people he talked to were grateful for his help but seemed uncomfortable with his presence. It didn't take much for him to figure out why - they were each involved in activities that went against the Republic's most deeply ingrained laws, and he was the embodiment of the forces that would someday rise in judgment against them. He did not let this deter him from his duties, however, and they soon began to, if not accept, at least relax into his presence.

There was one patient in particular that he kept coming back to, because she seemed to draw so much comfort from his presence. Her name was Ayesha. She was a biochemist with an emphasis in cellular-molecular cohesion, and despite the part that he knew she had played in Ben's creation, he found her a pleasant companion.

He took a break after several hours of grueling work and settled by her bedside to eat his mid-day meal. She smiled when she saw him, pain filled-eyes brightening as he sat down beside her.

"Hello, Qui-Gon," she greeted in her soft, whispery voice.

Qui-Gon found an answering smile from somewhere deep within him and reached out one hand to lightly smooth back the silver fur around her eyes. It felt soft under his fingers, like cornsilk. "Hello, Ayesha."

Her race was Ybrellian, one of the more graceful and beautiful peoples that Qui-Gon had ever come across, but there was little of grace or beauty to her now. She had been injured in a generator explosion that had wiped out half of the dome she was working in when the quake hit, and the resultant storm of flying shrapnel had all but severed her left arm. There were also internal injuries to her heart and left lung, as well as to her intestinal tract. Qui-Gon had no illusions that she would survive until the relief crews arrived. It was one of the hardest lessons he had had to learn as a Jedi, that no matter how strong he was in the Force, there would always be lives that were beyond his power to save.

There was no censure in her eyes as she gazed up at him. Qui-Gon found himself captivated by the ice-blue intensity of her gaze.

"There is illegal research going on in this facility," he said at last, holding her gaze steadily.

She hissed softly, the tip of her slender tail thumping the floor at the side of the bed. She was one of the few who had opened up to him in any way, and he feared at first that he had just succeeded in completely alienating her, but then she let out her breath in a whistling sigh. It was the sound of breath being drawn through a punctured lung.

Her expression softened. "You have questions."

Qui-Gon suppressed a wave of guilt at coming to her for answers while she was on her deathbed. But she was the only link that he had to the mystery surrounding Laavoe Treshae, and he could not afford to pass up the opportunity she presented.

"Dr. Merrill insinuated that your work here has obtained funding through the Senate," he said quietly. Part of his attention was focused on the guardian at the door, who was watching them suspiciously but made no move to intervene. Abdura was a dark shadow at the edge of his vision. Qui-Gon kept his voice low as he added, "Is that true?"

Ayesha closed her eyes against a sudden surge of pain, but whether that pain was physical or moral, Qui-Gon didn't know. "It's true," she whispered.

Qui-Gon's heart lurched, even though he had been expecting this answer. "Do you know who authorized the funding?" he asked.

After the briefest of hesitations, she rattled off a list of names, all of which he recognized. Qui-Gon was shocked at the breadth of this corruption in the Senate. "Thank you, Ayesha," he said sincerely, when she had finished. His hand found hers under the sheet that covered her and squeezed gently.

Her smile was wistful as she gazed up at him. "I'm dying," she said, with perfect serenity. Only the pale echo of fear in her eyes belied her outward show of calm. "Tell me, Jedi. Do you think that this confession will remove the stain from my soul?"

Qui-Gon wasn't sure what religion this woman followed, or what kind of an absolution she expected from him, but there was one thing he could tell her with absolute certainty. "The Force will be with you," he said, running a hand lightly over her eyes to close them and giving her a subtle Force-suggestion to sleep. "The Force takes care of its own," he told her, and her breath sighed out of her in relief as sleep carried her beyond the grasp of the pain. "And it remembers."

There was an uncomfortable moisture in his eyes as he released her hand, and he wiped the stinging dampness away from his lashes as he turned to go. He did not expect her to awaken again.

He estimated that it was growing close to nightfall when he finished up with the last of his patients. The lack of exterior windows made it hard to be certain. Heaving a weary sigh, he lifted the only dry corner of one blood-drenched sleeve to wipe the sweat away from his brow and gratefully accepted the glass of juice that one of the orderlies brought him. He sipped at it slowly, his attention focused unobtrusively on the unmoving form of Abdura where he stood in the doorway. It was unlikely that the guardian would allow him to return to Obi-Wan now that his duties here were done. Qui-Gon was weakened in both body and mind, and he would need to get at least a little sleep before he was ready to challenge the guard.

Realizing that there was no point in prolonging the inevitable, he set his empty cup aside and stalked over to where Abdura stood. Hands folded in the sleeves of his robe, he said, "There is nothing more I can do here. Perhaps there is someplace where I could rest?"

Abdura stared at him for a long, disquieting moment, and then his gaze fell onto the lightsaber hanging from Qui-Gon's belt. Qui- Gon lifted his chin slightly in mute challenge of the unexpressed request, and Abdura's eyes narrowed. He nodded shortly. "This way."

Abdura's voice was very deep and softer than Qui-Gon had imagined it would be. It sent a chill through him that he couldn't quite explain. Maybe it was the utter lack of emotion in the words, as if they were being spoken by something that did not possess a soul. Firmly, Qui-Gon pushed such notions aside. Superstitious nonsense was not going to help him now.

The quarters that Qui-Gon was shown to were small and sparsely furnished. There was only one door. He half-expected Abdura to insist on following him inside, but the giant only closed the door behind him when he entered. There was the unmistakable beep of the lock being engaged.

Well, at least they weren't insulting his intelligence by pretending that he wasn't a prisoner here. Qui-Gon felt oddly comforted by that fact. And whatever their plans for him, he really did need to get some sleep or else he would be beyond the point of usefulness to his Padawan. Thoughts of Obi-Wan sent a pang of anxiety through him, and he reached out along their bond, reflexively checking to make sure that his Padawan was okay. Obi-Wan's presence sprang into his mind instantly, and while it was tinged with dark swirls of worry and frustration, his apprentice seemed to be unharmed.

*Be safe, my Obi-Wan,* Qui-Gon thought as he settled down onto the bed that had been provided for him. He wished that it hadn't been necessary for them to separate like this.

He was just beginning to drift off to sleep when the currents of the Living Force began to swell around him. He opened himself up to it without hesitation, the ease of long practice allowing him to focus on the images that swam in a turgid frenzy through his mind.

"Oh, Force," he whispered against his pillow, feeling the icy clench of horror settle deep into his stomach.

He was out of bed and halfway across the room before the first shockwave hit, and he barely stumbled as the floor buckled beneath him. He could hear screaming from out in the corridor, and the sound sent his blood pounding through his veins in a flurry of unsuppressed agitation. All of those lives, helplessly trapped by this moon's violent cataclysm. The futility of such a fate enraged him; if this facility had been prepared with adequate safeguards, the scientists could have been removed before the quakes ever struck.

Banishing such unproductive musings from his mind with careful deliberation, Qui-Gon sank to his knees in front of the door and ran his hand lightly over the panel that covered the mechanism which controlled the door's movements. A brief probe of the Force showed him that it was something more than a simple privacy lock; apparently security was one of the things that the scientists had emphasized in the development of their stronghold in place of safety protocols. It would take far too long to hot- wire the mechanism.

Fortunately, there were other options at Qui-Gon's disposal. He stood and reached for his lightsaber in one smooth motion, thumbing it on as he rode the concussive trembling of the floor beneath him. There was an enraged rumbling in the air, so loud that it pained him, and he winced in muted sympathy for the tortured dance of the moon's tectonic plates. Drawing on the swirls of Force around him, he plunged the tip of his lightsaber into the panel beside the door at the exact spot where the Force told him the fire suppression detectors were. After about two seconds of subdued hissing accompanied by the acrid scent of burnt circuitry, the fire suppression programming responded to the increase in temperature and the door slid open. Qui-Gon had never heard of a lock that would trap an occupant in what it believed to be a burning room.

The corridor outside was in chaos. Qui-Gon paused in the doorway for a moment, letting his eyes sweep over the terror-stricken individuals who ran pell-mell down the hall. Abdura was pressed up against the opposite wall of the corridor, looking fierce, and it was obvious that he was trying to direct the panicked scientists toward the infirmary. Located near the heart of the dome, it would be one of the safest places they could go to wait out the quake.

It only took a handful of seconds for the giant to notice Qui- Gon, but by then Qui-Gon was already moving. The Jedi Master darted down the hall in the opposite direction from the medical bay, knowing that there was nothing he could do to help these people, and he felt more than heard Abdura's furious roar. Heart pounding, Qui-Gon skimmed over the wildly shuddering ground. The floor of the corridor appeared almost to be rolling in waves like the sea, and the walls were groaning in anguished protest. They weren't going to last much longer.

*Obi-Wan,* he thought desperately, but then there was no time for thought as he ducked underneath a falling piece of masonry and rolled through a collapsing archway into the network of rooms beyond. His instincts screamed at him to find a secure place at the center of the building to wait out the disaster, but he knew without having to look that Abdura was coming up close behind him. Qui-Gon's hope was that he would be faster and more agile than the giant and could easily lose himself in the catacomb of hallways that bisected the dome. His only chance of escape was to outdistance his pursuer quickly so he could find a place to hide.

The floor tilted crazily under him with a hideous screech of tearing metal, and Qui-Gon rolled, bruising his shoulder as he fell against the shifting ground. Resolutely, he clamped down on his fear and scrambled to his feet. It took every bit of skill he possessed not to fall right back down again. Panting heavily, he ducked under another rain of unidentifiable debris and ran.

He emerged into a vast chamber that was laid out in concentric circles of interconnecting walkways and strange, hanging storage tanks. Qui-Gon skidded to a halt, stunned, and cast about for some other way to pass. There was none. The floor dropped away beneath his feet, and the only way to cross over that chasm was across one of the wildly gesticulating catwalks that spanned the room. Some of them had already pulled loose of their moorings and were jutting out at dizzying angles to hang suspended into open air. He froze, uncertain what to do, when he felt a whisper in the Force behind him. Sensitive to the warning, he looked over his shoulder to see Abdura running toward him through the room he had just vacated.

His decision made, Qui-Gon turned and jumped, landing with unerring precision on the catwalk directly beneath him. It groaned under his weight, but he didn't stop to determine if it would hold. Calling on the Force to steady the planks under him, he leaped to another catwalk when he reached the end and scrambled up the frighteningly diagonal slope of it toward the doorway that he could just barely see at the opposite end of the chamber. The lights flickered alarmingly around him.

It was about halfway through his wild flight that he came close to one of the translucent tanks that hung suspended throughout the room. He would have passed by without pausing, but his attention was caught by the peculiar flicker of Force that surrounded it. Unsettled, he took a moment to run his palm over the ice-smooth surface and strained to peer inside.

At first, he could make out nothing through the opaque liquid that swirled sluggishly through the interior of the tank. Then he thought he saw a vague outline swimming up toward the surface, and his heartbeat seemed to slow unaccountably as he watched it come. His mind steadfastly refused to identify what it was he saw, until the darkly etched hand came into view, slender fingers splayed against the wall of the tank. It was so clear, he could see the whorls in the skin of the fingertips. Behind it, there was the faintest suggestion of a body floating suspended in the fluid.

*No.* Qui-Gon's mind turned numb as he backed away from the tank, and his eyes moved away from the horror in front of him to take in the dozens of identical tanks that surrounded him, connected to the latticework of catwalks by an intricate arrangement of wires and cranes. His connection to the Force turned tenuous as his mind rebelled against the familiarity of the Force-signature around him, carbon copies of a sense that was almost, but not quite, his Padawan's.

The attack came out of nowhere, and he staggered against the railing of the catwalk with a pained cry, one hand moving to clutch at his suddenly blood-soaked shoulder. He was able to spin fast enough to miss the next shot, and his lightsaber was ignited in his hand before he even realized he was reaching for it. He could see Abdura balanced on one of the catwalks above him, taking aim again with his blaster.

Qui-Gon ducked behind the tank behind him, springing onto an adjoining catwalk and steadying it with a distracted touch from the Force. The worst of the tremors seemed to have subsided by now, but the walkways were still unstable.

Breathing harshly, he planned his next movement with careful precision. He had a feeling that Abdura would prove to be an excellent shot with that blaster. With the catwalks swaying wildly under them, it was a miracle that he'd managed to hit Qui- Gon at all.

Without stopping to think, Qui-Gon pushed away from his position behind the tank, his robes billowing out behind him as he vaulted over the rail to the crosswalk below him. He felt the heat of a blaster bolt pass within inches of his arm, and he spared a moment to admire the skill of the man who hunted him even as he leaped for the next walkway above him and to the right. This one snapped loose of its moorings at one end and swung crazily as his weight hit it, but he crouched down and hung on for dear life as it carried him closer to the catwalk right above and to the left of him. He jumped, grabbing onto a trailing wire with one hand and pulling himself up onto the new walkway with a faint hiss of pain as the movement put strain on his injured shoulder. A shower of yellow sparks sprayed across the side of his face, stinging lightly, even as the next blaster bolt hit the space that he had just vacated.

Now he was on the level directly beneath Abdura's. Without pausing, Qui-Gon continued his swinging motion until he was scrambling up on top of one of the suspended tanks. It shifted alarmingly under his weight, but he steadied himself with an effort and sliced up with his lightsaber, cutting a deep swath through the metal grillwork of the catwalk.

There was a screech of tortured metal, and then the catwalk was swinging away from him, carrying Abdura with it. Qui-Gon didn't wait to see if the man made it to safety. Drawing the Force into him, Qui-Gon leapt into the air, just barely making it to a walkway that hung above the doorway he sought. Deactivating his lightsaber and returning it to his belt, he swung downward and flipped head-over-heels until he stood on the platform outside the doorway.

Casting one last glance over his shoulder, he saw a cavern filled with flickering light and mammoth, half-seen obstacles swinging wildly through the shadows. The uncomfortably familiar Force- sense was thick behind him.

He knew it was too much to hope that Abdura might have met his end. The man moved with the grace and reflexes of a professional soldier, and it was unlikely that a maneuver so simple would hold him up for very long.

Qui-Gon started down the corridor without another thought, tearing off a strip from the bottom of his robe and wrapping it around his bleeding shoulder as he moved. He had done what he could to help the people injured here; he had fulfilled his duty to the Force and to the inhabitants of Laavoe Treshae. Now he wanted only to return to his Padawan, and insure that he was unharmed. The impressions he received along their link were agitated at best, but that was only to be expected no matter what his condition. At least Qui-Gon knew that he was still alive.

Now all he had to do was find a connecting passage that was still pressurized enough to bring him back to the other dome. And hope that Abdura didn't make it there first. Whatever else he may be, the Laavoe Treshae guardian was both cunning and fast, qualities that would easily put him one step ahead of the Jedi Master if Qui-Gon wasn't careful. For surely there had to be no question about where Qui-Gon would go.

*Hold on, Obi-Wan,* Qui-Gon thought, trying to push as much reassurance as he could through their bond. *I'm coming.*

He only hoped that he could get there in time.



One good thing about their predicament, Obi-Wan thought with a wry spike of humor, was that the coffee-maker still worked.

He set the battery-powered machine on slow drip and paced around the confines of their prison, searching for any sign of failure in the room's integrity. There was none. This discovery did not comfort him as much as it might have. *Now we can slowly suffocate to death as we use up all of our oxygen instead of having our oxygen disappear into space.* The thought was strangely comforting in its optimism.

At least they weren't going to starve. The pantry in the infirmary was well-stocked, and there was a multitude of different drinks to choose from. And they had coffee. Any catastrophe with so many high points stacked against it couldn't be all bad.

"You know he's not going to come back," Ben said, playing absently with the glow rod on the table in front of him. The steady light cast his features in stark relief, and he looked suddenly alien to Obi-Wan, as if there were nothing at all familiar in the sight of him.

"He'll be back." Obi-Wan tried to keep the mindful disdain in his voice, but it was growing more and more difficult. Maybe it was because Ben steadfastly refused to return his ire. All of Obi-Wan's snide comments, the looks, the sneers, the carefully veiled insults, just seemed to slide right off of the man as if he hadn't even noticed the attacks.

Sighing, Obi-Wan moved to sit down on the plush chair across from his nemesis. "What are you thinking about?" he asked, reaching for the pot of coffee on the table next to him and pouring himself a steaming cupful.

Ben's eyes flickered in surprise as he glanced up at him. "Excuse me?"

"What are you thinking?" Obi-Wan refused to meet the other man's gaze and instead concentrated on sipping at his coffee without scalding his lips. "When you look all far-away and miserable like that. What makes you look that way?"

The clone seemed to think a moment, as if considering how to answer. "Life," he said at last. His voice was subdued.

"Heavy thoughts for a clone," Obi-Wan said, not kindly. Immediately, he regretted the words. What was wrong with him? Couldn't he carry on a normal conversation with this ... man, without falling back on his own deep-rooted insecurities? So Ben was a clone. And not just any clone, but his clone. Obi-Wan was disgusted by the very idea of it, offended on a basically spiritual level that refused to let him just accept it and get on with his life. Yet at the same time, he realized there was very little to dislike about Ben himself. In fact, Obi-Wan might have been pleased to call him a friend, were their circumstances different.

"It's all we think about, Obi-Wan. It's all we are."

Obi-Wan puzzled over the cryptic statement for a moment, unsettled by the note of finality in the words. "What do you mean?" he said at last. His coffee sat forgotten in his hand.

The eyes Ben turned on him were pale blue in the light of the glow rod. His smile was sad. "Surely you've heard of Zuckerov's Paradox."

Obi-Wan had to think about that a moment. "You mean the premise that artificially engineered transposons cycle into rotating degeneration after a certain number of generations?"

Ben nodded solemnly. "It's not just transposons, Obi-Wan. It's all artificially generated genetic matter."

Obi-Wan's mind refused to grasp what Ben was telling him. "I don't understand." Ben just looked at him, with those softly sorrowful eyes of his, and suddenly Obi-Wan knew what the clone was trying to say to him. His chest constricted in sudden sympathetic pain. "How long?" he asked quietly.

"For a perfectly structured specimen, ten years, tops." Ben sounded as emotionally detached as if he were discussing the weather. "I've been 'alive' for more than eight years now. In all probability, I am in my final year of life."

For a moment, Obi-Wan couldn't breathe, so struck was he by the horror of what Ben was saying. "You're dying?" he ventured, when he thought he could speak again without having his voice give out on him. He struggled to match Ben's disinterested tone.

The smile Ben favored him with was wry. "We're all dying, aren't we, Obi-Wan? Some of us just go a little sooner than others. And it's not as if anyone will mourn my loss, now will they? Except maybe the scientists who created me. All those years of hard research down the drain."

Obi-Wan was surprised by the bitterness in his doppleganger's voice. Judging by the sudden harsh look that crossed Ben's face, so was he.

"Don't mind me," Ben said, his gaze dropping again to the glow rod on the table between them. There was a suspicious huskiness to his voice. "I tend to wax melancholic when I'm trapped in infirmaries by earthquakes waiting to be rescued."

Obi-Wan had to take a sudden gulp of his coffee to smother the strangled laugh that rose in his throat. He was half-afraid that his laughter would sound as sick as he felt if he let it escape. So his clone had a sense of humor. What difference did it make?

"What do you want, Ben?" The words were out of his mouth before he could censor them. Feeling that they needed some manner of elucidation, he added, "If you could have anything in the universe, anything at all, what would you choose?"

Ben's eyes were hard chips of azurite as they focused on him. "You," he said, without hesitation.

Obi-Wan felt his stomach clench. "What?"

"You," Ben repeated. The sudden intensity of his regard did not falter. "Your life. If I had my choice of anything in all the universe, I would be you." His voice tightened, but he didn't seem able to hold the words back now that Obi-Wan had unlocked the floodgate of his emotions. "You have everything, Obi-Wan, and you don't even realize it. You have a life, and you have the Force, and you have Qui-Gon. You have a future. You have a past. You have a family and you have friends who love you. You don't know what a torment it is for me to sit here, and have to look at you, and know that you are everything I was meant to be. You're the living presence of everything I've ever longed for. And I hate you for it." Still his voice was completely without inflection. If anything, he sounded tired. Closing his eyes, he leaned back and rested his head against the wall behind him. "So rest easy, Obi-Wan Kenobi. In another year or so, I'll be out of your hair for good. Sooner than that even, because they'll never let me live through the insanity that comes in the final stages of the Paradox. Who knows? At the most, I give myself only a handful of months to live."

Obi-Wan stared, his fingers clenched white-knuckled around the forgotten mug in his hand. His heart was pounding in his chest. How could this monster just sit there, and look so very calm, when he was throwing back in Obi-Wan's face every insult that he had dropped since they'd met? Obi-Wan felt dirty suddenly, and the shame roared in his ears as it rushed through him. He had treated this man unfairly from the start, without a thought for any feelings that he might have. Ben had lived his life in a laboratory, with no family, no friends, no companionship except that of the scientists who saw him as an object to study. Yes, he was a clone, but he was also a man. A man who was staring full in the face of the end of his existence.

"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan whispered.

Ben's eyes slitted open to look at him. "I don't need your pity, Kenobi."

Obi-Wan shook his head. He felt numb inside as he set his cup aside and moved forward to sit on the low couch next to the other man. Ben's eyes tracked him warily.

"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan said again. His eyes dropped to the floor between his feet, unable to meet the fire of the other man's gaze. "I'm sorry you're not me. And I'm sorry for...for everything that's happened to you, and for everything that didn't happen to you, and should have." He stopped then, unsure what he was trying to say, or if he wasn't just making the situation worse between them.

"I know." Ben's voice was soft. His hand reached out to touch the slender length of Obi-Wan's Padawan braid, straightening it almost imperceptibly against the other man's chest.

Obi-Wan never truly made a conscious decision to move, but the next thing he knew, he was leaning forward and pressing his lips to Ben's. It took only the slightest of motions to close the distance between them, and the movement had been made before he was aware of his intention to make it. He didn't think, didn't feel anything except for the excruciating numbness inside of him, a mirror to the unconscionable emptiness that this pale, shallow copy of himself had known all of his life.

Ben made no move to return the kiss, but neither did he pull away. His lips were soft under Obi-Wan's, and Obi-Wan licked his lips slowly as he leaned back again, fixing his gaze on the other man's face. Ben's eyes were closed.

"Ben?" Obi-Wan said. His heart was pounding. A part of him recoiled in fervent abhorrence at what he was doing, but the greater part of him was caught up in the other man's pain. *This isn't me,* he told himself firmly, desperately willing himself to believe. *This is just a man, a lonely man, who happens to be the bane of my existence.*

*A man who just happens to have my face.*

Resolutely, he pushed the thoughts aside. He didn't want to think right now. "Ben, are you all right?" He brushed one finger across the back of his companion's hand. The smooth skin seemed to jump under his touch.

"What are you doing, Obi-Wan?" Ben's voice was a harsh whisper. Obi-Wan could see the rapid flutter of the pulse under the skin of the other man's throat.

Obi-Wan shuddered, but then he was leaning in to touch his mouth to Ben's again. This time, Ben's lips moved ever so slightly under his.

There was a kind of dark fascination to this touch between them. Obi-Wan slid his hand lightly up Ben's arm, feeling the tremors move through those lean muscles, and cupped his hand around the other man's neck, letting his thumb trail up over the curve of his jaw. With the lightest of touches, Obi-Wan traced his tongue over the swell of the other man's bottom lip.

Ben gasped. "Obi-Wan." There was a note of warning in his voice, but it was almost subsumed underneath a low, rumbling growl that sent chills racing down Obi-Wan's spine.

"Shh," Obi-Wan said. He smoothed his hand over Ben's hair, trailing his fingers over the man's throat and chest, trying to soothe the tension out of him. Oh, but he should be condemned for what he was attempting to do. This was wrong, it was sick, it was entirely of the darkness, but he couldn't stop. Carefully, not wanting to startle, he drew Ben's lower lip into his mouth and began to suckle on it, catching it lightly between his teeth. Ben's sharp, indrawn breath was swallowed by Obi- Wan's hungry mouth.

Now Ben's arms moved up around Obi-Wan, smoothing over his shoulders and back, pulling him closer even as he pressed forward against him. Moving gracefully, Obi-Wan sank to his knees in front of the other man, positioning himself on the floor between Ben's knees, and leaned in for a deeper kiss. The hot, solid length of Ben's arousal pressed against his stomach, and the feel of it made Obi-Wan wild. His stomach was clenched tight with unacknowledged dread.

*This is wrong,* a small voice in the back of his mind whispered urgently to him. *Wrong, wrong, stop, don't do this, please, you can still stop this from happening...*

Obi-Wan ignored the voice, sliding his hands up Ben's thighs and sinking his fingers deep into the other man's flesh, drawing forth a strangled gasp. He swallowed the sound greedily, closing his mouth over Ben's and stroking deeply with his tongue. Ben groaned under him, his back arching forward as Obi-Wan's violent kiss bruised his lips with the force of his claiming.

"Relax," Obi-Wan whispered to him, dizzy with need. His hands moved to pull open the barrier of the clothing beneath him, palms sliding almost frantically over silken skin. He bent to capture one bronze nipple between his teeth and sucked, hard.

"Yes!" Ben hissed through clenched teeth, almost sobbing as his hands scrabbled at Obi-Wan's back. "Please. Gods..."

Obi-Wan wasn't sure if Ben even knew what he was pleading for. Quite possibly, the man was caught up in the same bloody haze that had fallen over Obi-Wan's vision. All Obi-Wan knew was that he wanted further intimacy, craved it, needed it, and as his hands clawed their way to the waistband of Ben's pants, he panted his passion into the other man's open mouth, his thoughts consumed in a swirl of lust and longing.

The sound Ben made when Obi-Wan's fingers closed around the hardness of his erection was almost enough to give Obi-Wan pause. It was somewhere between a sob and a scream, and it sent tingles of trepidation spinning through Obi-Wan's mind. Belatedly, he remembered that this man had never had sex before, had never been kissed, or touched in a carnal way. Even as he realized this, Obi-Wan was stripping off his own tunic as best he could with one hand, using his other to keep up a steady caressing movement on Ben's blatantly aroused cock. He tried to gentle his touch, but the fire in his veins forbade it.

A slight tug on Ben's arm, and then they were both on the floor, legs intertwined, hands and arms reaching, mouths opening into each other's as if each sought to swallow the other whole. Obi- Wan had never known such mindless desire, and it frightened him, but even the fear was deeply provocative on some level.

*Why am I doing this?* Ben was clearly distressed, the uncertainty rising off of him in waves, but Obi-Wan couldn't stop, couldn't even consider it, and he was all but devouring the other man as he squeezed and licked and bit his way across that virgin body. Clothes fell away from them as if of their own accord, and the feel of their naked skin sliding together was as painful as it was arousing. Obi-Wan's breath caught in the lump in his throat, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the feel of the skin under his hands, and the hot panting breaths of the man beneath him.

Much later, he would consider that maybe he had wanted to punish Ben for committing the crime of being alive. More likely, he would decide, he was seeking to punish himself. He had been the one to belittle Ben's existence, to treat him as if he were something less than insignificant, as if he were a direct affront to Obi-Wan's own uniqueness in the galaxy. It wasn't rape, for Ben was all willing in his arms, but it was a crime nonetheless. And it was a crime that Obi-Wan would never forgive himself for.

But for now, there was only the hot slide of flesh against flesh, and the gasping cries that Ben made as their groins ground together in rabid harmony, and the curious roar of Obi-Wan's own unsheltered thoughts as they tumbled unchecked through his mind. He could feel his climax rushing towards him, coiling with scalding heat in the pit of his belly, but he held it off, determined that Ben would share this fire with him. Ben was keening now, a wild, unfettered cry that seemed to rise out of the depths of his throat with the abandon of a wounded animal. His head was tipped back, eyes fixed unseeing on the ceiling, the slender curve of his throat bared for Obi-Wan's consumption. His mouth hung slackly open, and the breaths that hissed past his parted lips were maddening to Obi-Wan's fevered perception. Fingers dug almost painfully into the curve of Obi-Wan's back, holding their bodies together.

"Obi-Wan!" With a shout, Ben's body spasmed, and liquid heat spread out across Obi-Wan's stomach. It was what Obi-Wan needed to let his own controls go, and he followed his new lover with a deep-voiced cry, burying his face in the curve of the other man's shoulder. The release exploded through him, wiping out any last vestiges of coherent thought.

When it was over, he found himself collapsed on top of Ben's quiescent form, completely boneless in his post-coital lassitude. Ben was struggling to breathe underneath his weight, and after another moment's pause to scrape the battered pieces of his psyche together, Obi-Wan rolled off of him.

Ben was trembling. His eyes were closed, and Obi-Wan could feel the rapid pulse of the man's heartbeat under the arm that Obi-Wan had thrown across his chest. Obi-Wan sighed. "Are you all right, Ben?" His fingers stroked soothingly into the shoulder under his hand, trying to ease the tension out of it.

"I didn't know," Ben whispered. His voice was filled with quiet awe, but there was a wealth of shattered pain to the words. "I never knew, Obi-Wan. Gods help me, I never knew."

Obi-Wan raised himself onto one elbow so he could look down into the other man's face. Ben's eyes were wide and dazed. "It wasn't what you were expecting?"

"I didn't know what to expect."

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, bending his head to rest his brow lightly against Ben's cheek. He sighed, feeling like a complete and utter fool. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault, Obi-Wan." Ben's voice was strangely vacant.

"Yes. Yes, it is, damn it." Feeling a sudden surge of anger, Obi-Wan reached for Ben's chin and turned that eerily familiar face to look at him. He was shocked and dismayed to see tears in the other man's eyes. "It's all my fault, Ben. All of it. I ... I had no right to treat you like that. Like a ... like an object. You don't deserve that. You don't deserve any of it." Before he even knew what he was doing, he was pressing kisses to the other man's mouth, his cheeks, his eyes. Light, tender kisses that were nothing like his previous claiming passion.

The tension vanished from Ben's body as if it had been bled away. "Obi-Wan," he sighed, and his hands moved in an aimless, wandering pattern over Obi-Wan's back.

"Shh, it's okay now. It's all right." Obi-Wan carefully folded the other man into his arms, and they lay together in the soft light of their last remaining glow rod. It was a steady light, unbroken, and it cast shadows sharp as razor blades around them. "Everything's going to be all right."

It was a lie, and they both knew it. But Ben seemed willing to accept the fiction, and they found some measure of comfort in each other's presence as they lay waiting for sleep to claim them.

Obi-Wan's last coherent thought before he gave into his weariness' tidal pull was that at some point during the night, he must have gone completely and irrevocably mad.



Year 23416 odt
Laavoe Treshae

I still don't know why he did it. Perhaps he figured that physical intimacy was the only way to break down the barriers that stood between us. Or maybe the tension between us had grown to the point where it had to find an outlet in either sexual energy or physical violence. Whatever the reason, I am grateful for it. Obi-Wan Kenobi is my first lover and, as the universe will have it, my last.

I woke up sometime later that night to find that he had covered me with his robe. I clutched the thick brown fabric close to my chin and inhaled deeply; it was heavy with the scent of him. He was no longer lying beside me, and I was saddened that he felt the need to run from me. But neither did I feel the need to search him out. The glow rod was lying where we had left it on the table, and I was thankful that at least he had left me the light.

I believe I dozed off again then, and I was awoken by the sound of clanging coming from outside in the corridor. Instantly, I sat up, and I saw Obi-Wan moving with perfect stealth to stand behind the door. His lightsaber was in his hand, although it was unlit. He was already fully dressed.

Taking his cue, I shimmied out from under his robe and reached for my own clothes. The air tasted stale as I breathed it, and I was reminded again of the resounding silence where before there had been the comforting hum of the air circulators. I wondered suddenly how many cubic meters of air there were inside the infirmary, and how long it would take us to exhaust our supply if it was not possible to free us.

I moved to stand behind Obi-Wan, and he stilled my questions with a gesture of his hand. His eyes never left the door.

After a few more tense minutes in which the clanging outside the door grew steadily louder, he relaxed and lowered his lightsaber to his side. The eyes he turned on me were full of relief, and I knew what he was going to say before the words left his mouth.

The smile he favored me with was radiant. "It's Qui-Gon."



Qui-Gon cleared away the last of the debris that was stacked against the jammed infirmary door and almost melted in relief when he was finally able to reach his Padawan through their mental bond. It was always difficult to project through so many turbulent emotions, and Obi-Wan was full of them.

He understood full well why Obi-Wan had not used his lightsaber to cut through the door. With no guarantees that the corridor outside was still pressurized, Obi-Wan risked opening up the infirmary to vacuum if he acted in haste. Even as Qui-Gon ignited his lightsaber to begin slicing through the jammed structure of the door, his efforts were matched by a blue-white glow that was spreading through from the opposite side.

Between the two of them, they made short work of the portal, and then Qui-Gon was stepping easily into the main room of the infirmary. To his immense relief, the chamber seemed to have survived the quake more or less intact. Obi-Wan surged forward to meet him, and Qui-Gon gave in to the urge to fold the young man in his arms. He nuzzled into the side of that sandy head, inhaling the scent of the man that he loved with reckless abandon. "Are you all right?" he asked.

Obi-Wan nodded, tightening his arms around him. His hair was slightly damp, and by the fresh-scrubbed smell of him, Qui-Gon guessed that he had found the water for at least an attempt at a shower. "Yes." He pulled away to probe gently at the makeshift bandage on his Master's shoulder. "Let me take a look at this."

Fortunately, they were in the right place for an impromptu examination. Qui-Gon shrugged out of his robe and sat on the edge of one of the diagnostic beds while Obi-Wan tended to him. "Abdura," the Jedi Master answered the unasked question. "I was half-expecting him to have made it here before me. It seems he's had orders to eliminate us if it turns out that we cannot be contained." He deliberately made no mention of the cloning tanks that he had seen; the memory was something that would haunt his nightmares for a long time to come, and he had no wish to share this image with his Padawan.

"Did you discover anything?" Obi-Wan took great care to clean out the wound. The cuff of muscle surrounding Qui-Gon's shoulder had been cut cleanly through by the blaster bolt, but fortunately the heat from the blast had cauterized the greater part of the injury. It was a flesh wound, and after an appropriate session in a bacta tank, Qui-Gon would be sure to regain full use of his arm. Obi-Wan let out his breath in a thankful sigh.

Succinctly, Qui-Gon related all that Ayesha had told him. "It is imperative now that we return to Coruscant," he said. "We must deliver this information to the Council."

"Abdura will try to stop you." It was the first time that Ben had spoken since Qui-Gon had come into the room. The clone's gaze was nervous where he hovered at the far side of the room.

"Let him come," Obi-Wan said grimly, applying a dose of pain medication and a temporary bacta patch before carefully bandaging Qui-Gon's wound. "There are two of us now, and he won't have an earthquake helping him this time."

Ben frowned. "I don't think he's going to come. He knows there are two of you. He also knows that you have to get to your ship in order to get out of here. That's where I'd guess he's waiting for you. He's very intelligent; his kind has to be."

"His kind?" Qui-Gon met his gaze curiously, not liking the familiar way in which Ben referred to the guardian.

"We call them Eradicators. There are twelve of them altogether." Ben's voice was quiet. "They ... dispose of damaged or intractable clones. All they do is kill. They are ... efficient at it."

Qui-Gon digested this in silence for a moment. He could feel the controlled waves of protective anger that radiated off of Obi- Wan, but his Padawan had a solid rein on his emotions. To Qui- Gon's surprise, a great deal of his apprentice's rage seemed to be self-directed. Ben was less easy to read, his emotions a turbulent blend of fear, determination, restlessness, expectation, and guilt. It was this last that gave Qui-Gon pause and made him wonder at the subtext of emotion flowing between the two men.

Ben was silent as he watched the Jedi interact. Obi-Wan did not make eye contact with him as he worked, which was more or less the behavior that Qui-Gon had come to expect from his Padawan as regards to the clone, but there was an odd cast to the silence between them that Qui-Gon was hard-pressed to explain. It was almost ... companionable.

It wasn't until after Obi-Wan had finished with his ministrations and was cleaning up the evidence of his work that Qui-Gon noticed the passion mark on the side of Ben's neck.

Qui-Gon sucked in his breath in sudden startlement and turned his gaze to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan did not look up as he wiped up the last of the blood spots from the cover of the bed.

"Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon said, very quietly. "May I have a word with you, please?"

Ben took a step forward, his expression one of acute anguish. "Qui-Gon-"

Qui-Gon silenced him with a gesture. His eyes never left Obi- Wan. "Padawan?"

"Of course, Master." Obi-Wan threw the towels in the disposal basket and straightened as he turned to face him. His face was composed.

Ben moved toward the clinics at the rear of the infirmary before he could be asked, taking the glow rod on the table with him and leaving them with the one that hung from Qui-Gon's belt. He cast a last, indecipherable look at Obi-Wan before disappearing through the archway leading into the inner rooms, looking distinctly miserable. Qui-Gon was disturbed that the man felt the need to run away from this conversation, although he appreciated the effort to give him and Obi-Wan some privacy.

"What happened, Obi-Wan?" Qui-Gon's voice was soft. There was no mistaking the distress strung throughout his Padawan's form, for all that he tried to hide it.

"I think you know the answer to that, Master." Obi-Wan's tone matched him for inflection. He seemed to be trying to bore a hole through the floor between his feet with his eyes. "I have no excuse to offer."

"And why should you need one?" Qui-Gon reached out to finger the slim braid at the side of the younger man's head, tugging lightly to get his apprentice to look at him. "I love you, Obi-Wan, but I do not own you. Your body is yours. As is who you choose to share it with."

Obi-Wan looked stricken. "But he's a-"

"He is a man, Obi-Wan." Despite all of the horrors that he had seen and learned since he had come to Laavoe Treshae, Qui-Gon was honest about this. He harbored no ill feelings toward Ben. "And he is alone in the world."

"Yes." Obi-Wan leaned back against the table behind him, losing some of his defensive posture. He rubbed at his eyes tiredly, a defeated gesture. "He's so ... innocent. I want to hate him. Part of me does hate him, or at least what he stands for. But he has so much more of a reason to hate me."

Qui-Gon frowned at this. "I'm not sure that I understand."

"He's jealous of me." One corner of Obi-Wan's mouth quirked up in a wry grin. The emotion in his eyes hardened the expression, sharpened it until Qui-Gon winced in muted sympathy. "He wants to be me. And he's dying. Did you know that clones only live for ten years? He's only got a year or so left, although he expects to go insane long before then."

"Zuckerov's Paradox," Qui-Gon said thoughtfully. It wasn't something that he would have thought of, but it certainly seemed to apply to this situation. He felt a sudden wave of sympathy for Ben, this lost and winsome Force-child who had been abandoned by the wayside. And how many others were there just like him? How many of them shared his quiet spirit, his sensitivity, his light? Suddenly Qui-Gon understood his Padawan's need to embrace the boy in physical lust; the emotional turmoil associated with him was just too painful, too focused. And the pain tied up in their involvement together was already so pronounced...

"I hurt him." Obi-Wan's voice was a harsh whisper. His eyes had shifted away again, unable to meet Qui-Gon's gaze. "I used him, Qui-Gon. And he doesn't even blame me for it." The low laugh that he gave was filled with self-directed scorn.

"Did you stop to think that maybe he thanks you for it?" Qui-Gon steadily met the anguished glare that Obi-Wan shot at him. Resolutely, he continued, "Maybe he's grateful for the chance to have been made love to, no matter what your reasons for doing so. It doesn't have to be love between you, dear one. Sometimes all it takes is a tender heart." His fingers ghosted over Obi-Wan's chest.

Obi-Wan's eyes glittered in the blue light of the glow rod that hung from his Master's belt. "We have to get off this moon, Qui- Gon. We have to get him back to the Temple so he can testify against the people who did this to him. I want him away from this place. I ... I don't want him to have to die here."

"Nor do I, my love." Qui-Gon carefully slid his arm around Obi- Wan's shoulders, and when the younger man didn't protest, he pulled him forward into a deep embrace. He kissed his Padawan soundly on the side of the face. "Nor do I."

Obi-Wan's head moved back almost blindly until he found Qui-Gon's mouth with his own. He pushed his tongue between Qui-Gon's lips, hands lifting to cup the sides of his Master's head, and Qui-Gon moaned in sheer pleasure as that talented mouth attacked him, drawing out his very essence into itself. Weariness crashed over him with a tidal pull, and he felt his emotions skitter out of his control as he was subsumed by the love that he felt for this man.

"I love you, Qui-Gon." Obi-Wan burrowed close to his chest, sighing deeply.

"And I you, love." Qui-Gon rested his cheek on the top of his Padawan's head.

"You need to get some sleep before we even attempt to go up against Abdura." Obi-Wan's voice was firm. "If Ben's right, we'll have to fight our way to the ship."

*Assuming it even survived the quake,* Qui-Gon added silently, but he kept the thought to himself. There was no need to outline what he and Obi-Wan both already knew. And he truly was remarkably tired. "Just for a couple of hours," he agreed, not wanting to risk more than that. They were vulnerable for as long as they stayed on this moon, and the sooner they left it, the happier he would be. Letting his eyes drift closed for a moment, he added, "I sense that we have a small amount of leeway here. There is no immediate danger as long we do not relax our guard."

Obi-Wan nodded. He pulled back slightly and held Qui-Gon's gaze for a moment. After a brief pause, he shifted his gaze away and said, "This could be the last night that any of us are alive. I don't ... I don't want him to be alone."

Qui-Gon understood. "As you say, love." He bent to kiss the younger man lightly, a tender, sensual brush of lips, and some of the tension drained out of Obi-Wan's frame.

They found Ben lying on one of the patient beds in the interior wing of the infirmary. He was on his side, one hand curled under his face, lashes dark against the pale skin of his cheeks. He sat up in surprise as they entered, and it was not difficult to tell that he had been crying.

"It's all right, Ben," Obi-Wan said soothingly. He perched on the edge of the bed and brushed the hair back away from the other man's face, a calming gesture. "We're going to rest a little before we make an attempt on the airlock."

Ben's eyes shifted uncertainly to Qui-Gon. The Jedi Master was spreading out some blankets from one of the other beds onto the floor, making a cozy nest of fabrics for them to lie on. The addition of a handful of pillows completed the picture, and the glow rod was removed from his belt to be thrown casually on the bedside table next to the other.

"But what about Abdura-" Ben's eyes were wide.

"One of us will stay awake at all times," Obi-Wan said, letting the backs of his fingers slide along the curve of the other man's jaw. "We'll know if anyone tries to enter the medical bay. You're safe now. Just get some rest."

His task done, Qui-Gon moved to the other side of the bed and took Ben's hand in his own. "We would be honored to have you join us, Ben," he said quietly. "Or you may remain here. Either way, I think it is best if we remain together for the rest of the night."

Ben's eyes fixed on Qui-Gon's with crystal clarity, and once again the Jedi Master was struck by their resemblance to his Padawan's. The similarity between them was so exact that it almost pained him.

Slowly, Ben nodded. He moved off of the small bed and down onto the nest of blankets that Qui-Gon had prepared for them. Qui-Gon stretched out behind him, one arm sliding around the younger man's waist to hold him close, and Ben's breath left him in a whooshing sigh as he relaxed into the embrace.

"It's okay, Ben." Obi-Wan's voice was gentle as he settled down on the other side of him, one hand moving to touch the curve of the other man's waist. His thumb massaged lightly at the slope of the ribs under his hand.

A subtle tremor passed through Ben's body as Obi-Wan's hand moved over him, and he shifted ever so slightly back against Qui-Gon's long frame, his eyes falling closed with a soundless sigh. Qui- Gon's own eyes closed as he felt the warmth of the other man's body seep into him.

It was an odd feeling, lying here with his Padawan and his Padawan's clone. The Force signature coming from them seemed blurred somehow, rather like looking at two identical negatives that were arranged just slightly off-center from each other. To his immense surprise, he was growing almost used to the sensation, and he was becoming adept at detecting the slight differences that distinguished the man in his arms from his Padawan.

Obi-Wan's hand moved to stroke his Master's arm where it rested around Ben's waist, and Qui-Gon opened his eyes to see his Padawan's gaze deepened to a blue so dark that it was almost purple in the light of the glow rods. Instant arousal spiked through Qui-Gon as he drank in that needy gaze, and he knew immediately what it was that his lover wanted.

"Go easily, my dear one," Qui-Gon murmured, but Obi-Wan was already lifting a hand to trace the lines of Ben's brows, brushing lightly over the rise of the prominent cheekbones to trail down across the planes of his face. Ben's breath stilled to a harsh whisper as those delicate fingers danced over the skin of his lips, pausing to explore the cleft of his chin before stroking back up to touch the line of his lashes where they lay against his cheeks.

Obi-Wan was trembling as he leaned in to touch his lips to the other man's forehead. The skin felt fevered under his touch, and Ben drew in his breath in a sharp gasp at the contact, as if it had burned him. "Tell me what you want, Ben," Obi-Wan whispered. He trailed a line of soft kisses down the side of Ben's face, and the touch was both simple and undemanding, making it very clear that he would stop if he was asked to. Requesting, not taking. Not this time.

"You," Ben answered, and while the response was the same as the last time Obi-Wan had asked him this question, the meaning now was entirely different. One of his hands moved tentatively to touch Obi-Wan's side, trailing down across the slope of his ribs to curl over the line of the other man's hip. His eyes opened and met Obi-Wan's with a tender courage that cut right to the Padawan's heart.

Obi-Wan kissed him. Qui-Gon drew in his breath in shock at the sight of it, these two men pressing their lips together in such a fashion, identical blue-green eyes closing in rapture as their tongues slid into each other's mouths. There was no hiding his arousal now, and Ben must certainly be aware of it, but for now he just wanted to watch them. They were beautiful, and he didn't believe that he would ever see a more erotic sight than these two mirror images loving each other.

Ben broke the kiss first with a deep gasp for air, but Obi-Wan was already pulling open the front of their tunics, trailing his fingers over Ben's chest and pressing forward against him. He hissed as their skin touched, and he swallowed Ben's answering moan with another deep kiss, plundering that sweet mouth for all he was worth, the need and the longing swirling through him until he was panting from the intensity of his desire.

"Easy, love." Qui-Gon's hand on his back stilled him, brought him back down from the edge. Obi-Wan reluctantly pulled away, met dazed blue eyes that stared up at him with breathless arousal. Ben's arms were tight around him. Obi-Wan could feel Qui-Gon's need singing to him through the bond that they shared, and when he glanced up to meet his Master's gaze, he found sapphire eyes gone almost black with desire. Obi-Wan moistened his lips in frustrated yearning.

Gently, Qui-Gon cupped Ben's face in one hand and tipped his head back so that he could reach the younger man's lips. He bent to kiss them, slowly, languorously, and Ben melted under his touch, yielding with perfect submission to whatever his lovers chose to share with him. Obi-Wan stared, captivated for a moment by the sight of Qui-Gon kissing this exact replica of himself, and his hand moved down to the uncomfortable hardness of the flesh between his legs, massaging it heavily through the fabric of his pants.

Qui-Gon and Ben were still kissing as Obi-Wan slid across the blankets and began tugging the leggings down over Ben's hips. Ben made an inarticulate cry and arched back against Qui-Gon's sheltering frame, but Qui-Gon only smoothed a soothing hand over his brow and murmured softly to him in words that Obi-Wan couldn't quite hear.

It took only a few moments for Obi-Wan to peel the clothes away from Ben's willing body, and then only another handful of seconds for him to shed his own attire. Gloriously naked, he surged up and captured Ben's mouth in a deep kiss, sucking a ragged moan from his doppelganger's throat. Qui-Gon's hands stroked over the bare skin of his back, and Obi-Wan arched into the touch, feeling his controls slip away like wisps of smoke carried on the wind.

Ben was so marvelously responsive under him. With a groan, Obi- Wan slid his hands down over that hard body, laying a line of hot, open-mouthed kisses across throat and shoulders while his own unfettered need sang through him. Ben's gasping cry brought a smile to Obi-Wan's lips as he smoothed his tongue sensuously over one hardened nipple.

Qui-Gon watched his Padawan continue to make slow love to this man in his arms and felt his own arousal heighten. It was almost painful now, and he reached down to release his straining erection from the confines of his leggings, cautious of any signs of discomfort or uncertainty on Ben's part. Qui-Gon's body knew what it wanted, and it was being most emphatic in its demands, but he was not about to push anything on this young innocent that he was not prepared to accept.

Ben made no move of protest, however, as Qui-Gon's penis pressed up against his backside, and he let his head fall back against Qui-Gon's shoulder with a deep sigh. Qui-Gon ran his palm lightly over one narrow arm, letting his fingers curl around the younger man's hand. "Tell me now if you do not want this," he whispered in Ben's ear, but Ben made only a half-articulate sound of encouragement, his eyes falling closed as Obi-Wan continued to work expertly at his nipples.

Qui-Gon moved his hips back and then eased them slowly forward again, letting his penis slide in between Ben's thighs until it nudged at the back of the younger man's sac. Ben let out his breath in a hissing sigh and clenched his fingers spasmodically around Qui-Gon's, but Qui-Gon bent to kiss the side of his neck, giving a light scrape of his teeth, and Ben quieted with a last incoherent murmur.

Qui-Gon began to move, the lovely friction around his cock bringing him quickly to the edge. So easy to imagine that this was Obi-Wan he was making love to, except that Obi-Wan had never had this core of submission in him, this tender fragility, this deep, heart-rending sorrow. Qui-Gon groaned deep in his throat as his climax came at him, Obi-Wan's hands sliding around him to hold the three of them tightly together in this moment, and his Padawan's hot mouth closed over the backs of his knuckles where they clenched around Ben's, suckling in a burst of moist heat that flooded his mind with lustful exhilaration.

Qui-Gon came with a harsh cry, spraying his passion between Ben's legs to splash across his Padawan's stomach. Obi-Wan's eyes half-closed with erotic appreciation as he accepted his Master's offering, hands sliding slickly through the puddle of semen on his belly, and the force of his arousal slammed through the bond that they shared with an intensity that stole Qui-Gon's breath away. Almost frantic, Qui-Gon turned Ben around so that they lay stomach to stomach, arms closing around the younger man and pulling him close. Ben complied instantly, pliant under his hands, and Qui-Gon immediately captured the boy's mouth in a bruising kiss, lost in the heat of Obi-Wan's need and desire.

Ben matched him, passion for passion, fingers sliding through Qui-Gon's long hair to cup around the back of his skull. Qui-Gon was grateful that there was no hesitation in the boy, and no fear. Ben was embracing his newfound sexuality with all of the enthusiasm that Obi-Wan had ever shown for this act, and there was nothing but trust and desire radiating out of him when Qui- Gon spared a delicate tendril of Force to brush across his thoughts.

Obi-Wan was trembling as he pressed himself up against Ben's back, dropping a line of open-mouthed kisses across the back of his doppelganger's shoulder blades. His knee slid in between Ben's thighs and moved them carefully apart, drawing a strangled gasp from the other man as he realized what Obi-Wan was planning to do. Qui-Gon immediately moved to soothe him, kissing him gently, thoroughly, calming the wild tremors that rocked through him.

"Only if you want to, Ben," Qui-Gon reminded him, dipping his tongue into the younger man's ear. He was all but shaking with the echoes of Obi-Wan's arousal, but he knew that a word of dissent from this man would bring their lovemaking to an abrupt and unmitigated end.

"Yes," Ben hissed against Qui-Gon's neck, and his body writhed sensuously in between the two Jedi. His penis was hard against Qui-Gon's hip, twin to the Jedi Master's own returning erection, and he rubbed himself forward against the older man in an unabashed plea. "Oh, please."

Obi-Wan's hand slid decadently through the semen smeared across his stomach, and Qui-Gon moved to claim Ben's eager mouth in a kiss as Obi-Wan moved forward to prepare him. Ben gasped as Obi- Wan's fingers brushed against his opening, but there was no protest in him. Qui-Gon swallowed the cries, knowing there would be pain as his virgin body was opened for the first time, but he knew from experience that Obi-Wan was a kind and compassionate lover.

Ben's hands fisted in the front of Qui-Gon's tunics as Obi-Wan's fingers stroked into him one by one. His body shuddered in Qui- Gon's arms, and Qui-Gon did what he could to soothe, offering kisses and comfort as the need arose. Ben's eyes were wide and dark as they stared up at him, his expression one of absolute wonderment, and Qui-Gon couldn't help smiling as he bent to kiss the man lightly on the tip of the nose. "It gets better," he whispered, holding the boy close to him in a possessive hug.

Then Obi-Wan pressed up close behind him, and Ben's breath left him in a wafting sigh, his hands clenching spasmodically around Qui-Gon as his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Obi-Wan was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and Qui-Gon could see the effort that it cost him not to drive full-length into this delectable body in one hard passionate thrust. Qui-Gon sent waves of reassurance over their bond, even as he smoothed his fingers lightly across Ben's cheek, trying to calm both of his lovers at the same time.

"Breathe, Ben," he chided gently, and slowly, the tremors quieted out of the body he held. Obi-Wan began to move again, and Ben settled his head against the curve of Qui-Gon's neck, reduced to hitching gasps and inarticulate cries as Obi-Wan slowly filled him. Obi-Wan's eyes met Qui-Gon's and held them, and Qui-Gon bent forward to capture his Padawan's mouth in a bruising kiss.

When the movement began between them, Qui-Gon thought that he would go mad from the intensity of it. This was his first time of sharing his Obi-Wan as a lover, and the eroticism of the act was undeniable. Ben's erection pressed hard against his hip with each thrust that Obi-Wan made, and Qui-Gon found himself pressing forward against it, his own newly hardened penis sliding slickly along the boy's warm abdomen. The sensations spiraled through him, echoed and redirected along the bond that he shared with Obi-Wan, and he found himself making nonsensical yet extremely heartfelt cries against his Padawan's open mouth. Obi-Wan strained against him, matching him for passion, while Ben rode the wave of lust between them.

It was over quickly. Ben came first, his passion spreading out across Qui-Gon's stomach with a harsh, triumphant cry, and then Qui-Gon followed him, growling out Obi-Wan's name as the explosion washed through him for the second time. Obi-Wan climaxed at what seemed the very same moment, and his shout as his body's pleasure was achieved carried through the confines of the room with a rough, primal beauty that was music to his Master's ears.

For several minutes, they lay together in a pile of overworked nerve endings and satiated flesh, and then Obi-Wan rose to fetch a damp cloth to clean them all up. Ben lay with Qui-Gon's arms wrapped protectively around him, and his eyes were filled with warm contentment as he stared up at Obi-Wan.

"Go to sleep now," Obi-Wan told him, smiling as he tucked a blanket around the two men to ward off the steadily cooling air. "I'll stand watch."

Ben sighed with perfect trust and cuddled in against Qui-Gon's chest. Qui-Gon's eyes were weary but content as they met his Padawan's, and Obi-Wan leaned in for a lingering kiss before he rose to leave the room.

Before he had even passed through the doorway, they were both asleep.



Year 23416 odt
Laavoe Treshae

I don't know how to describe the depth of the gift that they gave me. That they would welcome me into their relationship, however briefly, spoke of a world of trust and acceptance that was completely alien to anything I had ever experienced. For the short time that we had together, I felt as if I truly belonged, as if my life had value, as if I were something more than a means to an end. It is a feeling that I cherish deeply, and I am inexpressibly grateful to them for sharing it with me.

But is has driven home my understanding of the depth of their own relationship, of the love and the trust that they share together. I am afraid for them. They came here to help us, and now there are men who wish to kill them for it. The thought makes me angry, and this is not a feeling that I am accustomed to. For through their generosity, they have succeeded in teaching me more than what it is to be cared for, to be cherished, to be found desirable and deserving of love. They have taught me that there are more important things in this wide, teeming galaxy than the sanctity of my own existence.

I do not know if they will thank me for what I am about to do. I can only hope that they will understand the need that fuels me to this. Abdura is a fearsome fighter, a killer, an assassin who has won his honors many times over in the slaughter of the clones whose usefulness has come to an end here. And he will not be alone. There are others, equally skilled in the killing arts. There is no possible way that the Jedi will be able to reach their ship alive.

Not without my help.

Forgive me, my friends. I leave you this journal in the hopes that it will help you to understand. I can only hope that it will serve in place of my physical testimony in front of your Council, and help bring those who have perpetrated the injustice of the research at Laavoe Treshae to task for their crimes. I do not understand the depth of the connection that you have to the Force, as I have never been trained in its ways, but I feel in my heart that this is that path I am meant to take. Perhaps it is the Force speaking to me, and there is something grander than this life waiting for me once I pass beyond its boundaries. I find it comforting to believe, despite what I have been taught by those who raised me, that I do indeed have a soul.

And to you, Obi-Wan Kenobi, I wish to make a special note. My brother, my father, my lover, my friend. You have been all these things to me, and no matter what personal feelings of animosity that you may have held, or may still hold, against me, I want to tell you how very grateful I am. Thank you, my friend.

Thank you for my life.



Obi-Wan looked up from where he bent over the lighting panel in the main surgical bay of the infirmary, sensing Ben's presence moving around in the room behind him. Assuming that the boy was just scrounging around for some breakfast, he turned his attention back to the network of wires that spread across the floor in front of him. He was attempting to trace back along the power pathways to discover where exactly the power failure had originated. If it were something that could be repaired, their chances of reaching their ship alive would increase immeasurably. He knew that their chances of escaping Laavoe Treshae were not good in any case, but actually being able to open the airlock when they came to it would be a definite bonus.

His vigil had been a quiet one. There was no movement in the corridors outside the infirmary, even though he drew steadily on his impressions of the Force to warn him if there were anyone trying to approach. It appeared that Ben was right; the guardians of Laavoe Treshae would be waiting for them to make an attempt on the airlock that housed their ship. The thought did not comfort him.

It was then that he realized Ben's presence was moving into the hall outside the infirmary. Puzzled, Obi-Wan dropped the tools he was holding and rose to his feet, scooping up the glow rod that sat on the floor next to him. When he moved out into the main room, the enormous chamber was eerily silent.

"Ben?" he called, hesitantly. He could tell by the echoing silence in the room that it was empty. Ben's Force-signature clung like the scent of roses to the walls and panels around him, but the boy's physical presence was gone.

The next thing he noticed was that his robe was missing. Obi- Wan's eyes moved to take in the small patch of floor where he and Ben had first made love, and afterwards fallen asleep together inside its comforting folds. There almost seemed to be an afterimage there of the passion they had shared, and the lingering memory of Ben's cries carried on the air, so clear for a moment that Obi-Wan could almost believe they were real.

Feeling his heart clench inside of him, Obi-Wan moved to the back wing to wake his Master. Qui-Gon came awake immediately, gazing up at him with solemn appraisal as he took in his student's anxiety.

"Ben's gone," Obi-Wan said without preamble. He couldn't keep the fear from his voice, but Qui-Gon did not censure him for it. "He took my robe."

Wordlessly, Qui-Gon rose to his feet, and Obi-Wan could feel him reaching out with his senses, verifying that what Obi-Wan had said was true. His expression darkened, and his gaze moved to the small black object sitting next to the glow rod on the bedside table.

"What is it?" Obi-Wan said harshly, a strong feeling of trepidation beginning to coil in the pit of his stomach.

Qui-Gon reached for the object and turned it carefully over between his long fingers, examining it closely. "A data chip," he said after a moment. His eyes were shadowed.

Obi-Wan's eyes narrowed in sudden anger. "We have to stop him. The power outage is due to a failure in the central power grid beneath the dome. The individual circuitry still seems to be operational; if we can find a temporary power source, we should be able to open the airlock door. There's no reason for him to do this."

"It just might work, Obi-Wan." Qui-Gon's voice was soft, but he was already moving out of the clinic and down the hall toward the main room of the infirmary. "As far as the guardians know, there are only the two of us. If they see him, wearing your robe, a great number of them may be coerced into following him and abandoning their post. It will greatly increase our chances."

"Do you want him to die?" Obi-Wan was incredulous. "They'll hunt him down like a rat in these warrens. He won't have a chance."

"Doubtless he considered that before he made this decision." Qui-Gon's voice was calm. The look he favored Obi-Wan with was full of compassion. "He's made his choice, Obi-Wan. If we do not move now, it will have been in vain."

The helpless rage still seethed through Obi-Wan, but the core of rationalism inside of him knew that Qui-Gon was right. Leaving his Master briefly to duck back into the surgical bay where he had been working, he snatched up the portable sterility-field generator that he had been experimenting with on the circuitry. At Qui-Gon's questioning glance, he said, "It's a power source. The voltage should be sufficient to open the airlock door."

They moved together into the corridors outside the infirmary, Obi-Wan just a shade behind and to the left of his Master's strong form. He kept his emotions carefully bottled away deep inside of him and concentrated firmly on the task at hand. His hand was slick with sweat where it gripped the handle of the generator.

"Stay focused," Qui-Gon cautioned lightly. He had doused the light of their glow rod and returned it to its place on his belt for later use, and the corridor around them was pitch black. He moved unerringly through the network of broken tunnels, skirting the raw edges of tortured destruction where the quakes had worked their wrath.

Their sensitivity to the Force kept the Jedi from being truly blind, but Obi-Wan still felt uncomfortable in that clinging darkness. Perhaps it was the unnatural silence that pervaded this place, or perhaps it was the knowledge that remorseless killers were hunting them through these empty corridors. Whatever the reason, it made the halls of Laavoe Treshae feel like a tomb.

After what felt like centuries of wandering, Obi-Wan detected a faint spark of white light hovering in the darkness ahead of them. Qui-Gon immediately slowed, sinking back close to the wall as he considered their options.

"Six of them," he said after a moment's concentration. His voice was a soft breath against Obi-Wan's ear. "I'd say that Ben's diversion worked."

Obi-Wan fought the twist of pain that the words evoked in him. His hand closed around the hilt of his lightsaber.

The generator was too large to adequately stow anywhere on his person, so Obi-Wan merely tightened his grip on it and resigned himself to fighting one-handed. He had learned enough from Ben's descriptions and from his Master's account of Abdura's attack not to take these warriors lightly. He nodded tightly to Qui-Gon in the darkness, knowing that his Master couldn't see him but knowing that Qui-Gon would be able to read his resolve, and then they were both moving fluidly forward down the corridor.

The first blaster shot came much sooner than Obi-Wan expected, but he was ready for it nonetheless. He sensed movement in the tunnel ahead of him, darkness, a cool, encompassing sense of purpose that set his nerves on fire, but then Qui-Gon was running past him, the sudden snap-hiss of his igniting lightsaber drawing an immediate shower of blaster fire as he erupted with silent fury into the room in front of them.

Obi-Wan ducked and rolled, holding the generator close to his chest as he darted around the edge of the doorway, using the darkness as a shield as he made for the airlock door. A dark shape loomed in front of him, and Obi-Wan fell back with a faint hiss of surprise, dismayed at being outmaneuvered this way. But then his lightsaber was ignited and he spun into the attack with all of the strength he possessed, driving back his attacker with the force of his assault. He called on the Force to give him added speed and accuracy, slipping neatly aside to avoid the blaster bolt that came at him from an unseen direction and catching the next one on the edge of his lightsaber blade.

Force, there were too many of them. What would they have done if it had been the full twelve Eradicators that they had to face? Obi-Wan was barely aware of Qui-Gon moving off to his right, a blurred swirl of long hair and green light as he threw himself into the attack, trying to shield Obi-Wan enough so that he could make it to the airlock door. Blaster fire exploded around them, ricocheted off spinning blades of light towards attackers who seemed to know better than to stand still and await the rebound shots.

Obi-Wan ran. Trusting unwaveringly in Qui-Gon's ability to defend him, he dropped to his knees in front of the large oval door in the far wall and set the generator down in front of him. He winced as a blaster bolt landed just a handful of feet away from him, carving a deep runnel in the twisted metal of the floor, but he didn't let it distract him from his work.

With steady fingers, he ripped off the panel covering the manual controls. The circuitry was undamaged, he noted with some relief; apparently the guards had been hesitant to destroy the panel, knowing full well that they needed an escape route off of this rock, too.

Long wires snapped and twisted between his knowing fingers, and he drew on his memory of interior circuit designs as he wired the generator on the floor in front of him into the fused circuitry of the panel. The sound of battle raged behind him, and he caught a brief flash of pain along the bond from Qui-Gon, quickly suppressed. Obi-Wan narrowed his attention grimly to the work under his hands, refusing to let it distract him.

Finally, he saw the service light next to the door blink on, and he gave a small gasp of relief as he slammed his hand down on the switch that would open the airlock. Now if only there wasn't a vacuum behind this portal, ready to suck them all out into space, and if their runabout hadn't been swallowed up by the moon during the quake...

A small puff of air breathed onto his face as the door slid open, and he stared in wonderment at the closed landing ramp of their ship, which was just visible down the length of the truncated airlock. "Master!" he cried, casting a desperate glance over his shoulder. He saw that there were four bodies littered over the floor of the hangar, but Qui-Gon was still hard-pressed against the remaining two.

Surging to his feet with sudden purpose, Obi-Wan drew his lightsaber and ignited it in the same breath. Without another thought, he moved forward to stand at Qui-Gon's side. "Go!" he urged, taking the brunt of the maddening assault as he slipped in front of his tiring Master.

Qui-Gon faded back with a barely discernible limp, and Obi-Wan winced in empathy at the pain that pulsed over their bond from the wound that had been scored into Qui-Gon's left thigh. Spinning to deflect another volley of fire, Obi-Wan began to back away slowly to follow him. The guardians seemed maddened by the sight of their prey escaping them, and they pressed forward with renewed frenzy, but Obi-Wan was already at the door of the airlock. Qui-Gon waited until Obi-Wan was safely past its threshold before palming the control that would seal the door. Without pausing, he sank his lightsaber up to the hilt in the control panel beside it, drawing forth the sudden, acrid smell of melted circuitry.

The sudden silence was deafening. Obi-Wan turned to Qui-Gon with a despairing look in his eyes, but Qui-Gon shook his head minutely and started down the ramp toward their ship. Struggling against the sudden emptiness that yawned open inside of him, Obi- Wan followed.

It took only a few minutes to complete the take-off procedures. Their runabout, while terribly scored from the stresses of the quake, was still in working order and responded easily to Obi- Wan's commands as he performed the pre-flight check. Qui-Gon was silent in the seat beside him.

"We can't just leave him here," Obi-Wan said stonily, without looking up from the controls.

Qui-Gon sighed. "We cannot go back for him. If he is able, he will find a place to hide until the relief crews arrive."

Obi-Wan shook his head, fighting back the unexpected sting of tears. "They'll find him. It's what they do, Master. It's all they do." His voice was even.

Qui-Gon said nothing as the engines roared to life, and Obi-Wan made no further comment as their ship lifted away from the airlock and made its way up off the surface of the moon. Laavoe Treshae was a ruin of devastation beneath them, resembling nothing more than the shattered and desiccated skeleton of some monstrous animal.

Obi-Wan refused to glance back as he entered the coordinates for Coruscant into the navi-computer. His hand was steady as he reached for the toggle that would engage the hyperdrive, and even though his soul screamed at him in fervent accusation for his betrayal, he did not hesitate as he pressed the control.

The stars bled into outlines around them.



Year 23416 odt
Jedi Temple - Coruscant
(Padawan Kenobi recording)

The investigation into the events surrounding the funding of the illegal research being conducted on the moon of Laavoe Treshae is being conducted by an elite corps of the Republic's most able truthfinders, accompanied in force by several teams of Jedi Knights. I do not expect that the full breadth of this corruption will ever be found, but already several resignations have been asked for and received among the members of the Senate. Punitive measures are being taken against many of the agencies that have contributed to this violation of our most sacred genetic tampering law.

Ben's body was discovered during the evacuation of the moon, identifiable by the Jedi Padawan robe that he was wearing. He had been struck down by blaster fire, and while it is my sincere hope that he found a painless end, I am not optimistic that those who took his life would have been concerned with such details. I do not believe that it would have mattered to Ben either way, however. His courage in this matter has been absolute.

It was discovered during the evacuation of Laavoe Treshae that there were no fewer than six hundred and eighty-six clones being studied within the complex (not all of them descendants of my genetic samples), not counting those that were currently being grown and educated in various cloning tanks situated throughout the facility. Those that were not yet at full growth have been eliminated per the Council's order, while those that have already achieved maturity were shipped to various rehabilitation clinics along the Outer Rim. I would venture to guess that their existence is an embarrassment to the Jedi order, and that the intention of my superiors is to distance themselves from the problem as efficiently as possible.

I argued strenuously against the murder of the clones that were still suspended in the growth tanks, but although my Master backed me completely in this, I was overruled. It still pains me to think of the lives that have been lost in this fashion, before they have even had the chance to begin.

At Master Qui-Gon's request, Ben's body is being shipped to Coruscant to be given a proper funeral. Ben's sacrifice saved our lives, and no arguments that the Council may raise will deter us from this course of action. The testimony recorded on the data chip that he left for us has served to outline key points in the societal structure of Laavoe Treshae, highlighting key aspects of the research that was done there and leaving absolutely no doubt as to what the goal of this research had been. The scientists have been seeking to determine the viability of coaxing Force sensitivity into unfertilized embryos, in effect attempting to create Force-users out of previously non- sensitive genetic material. The Senate has no choice but to apply its full resources to investigating this matter or risk winning the affront of the entire Jedi order. That, at least, is the gift that Ben has left us with.

There are always roads in life that we feel we should have taken, eventualities that we should have foreseen, all of the various "what ifs" that make up the breadth and depth of human experience. I do not pretend to believe that there is anything I might have done to change the way events on Laavoe Treshae transpired, but it grieves me that the life of this bright and noble soul was lost to us in this way. And the sacrifice of that life is no less poignant for the brevity of its existence. They say that the stars which burn for the shortest duration burn with the brightest of lights. Here, if nowhere else, Ben's courage and magnanimity will be remembered for what it was.

Farewell, my friend. May the Force be with you always.

End.

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