Chapter Text
Yan catches the crime in action, which makes the effort of arranging and rearranging every recording device at the edge of the wooden bed worth the blood-pressure spikes over the last week.
The villain of this weeks-long saga is captured perfectly on the holo, and she holds with both terrible little hands the fattest, ripest, most blushed tomato in ten square miles. Her guilt is undeniable. Her punishment shall be swift.
She does not even deign to have swollen nipples to provide a reason for this injustice.
Yan shuts off his holos and stands up to put on his tall, rubber boots.
There’s a net in the shed with his name on it.
Yan moved out here to escape dramatics—all of them. His cottage is built of stones that do not cry and weep and moan about taxes. The well nor the pump complain about city planning and ‘too many lanes’ for cyclists. Necessity of a three-quarters majority vote on the ratification of a treaty that has been de facto legislation for 400 years does not enter or exit the garden.
And it is thus Yan’s intention to die out here.
Him and the squirrel. He will pass on with only the regret that he did not forsake the Order sooner. How much longer could he have lived this peaceful (goddamnit) existence if he had not been so determined to repair a broken pipe from the inside. How much calmer would his mind have been. Yan has never felt so connected to the Force as he does here, unearthing the net that will catch the squirrel in this dark, confounded shed with its collection of nails jutting uncharitably up from the floorboards.
He will deal with those beasts at another time.
The Force implores him forward on a more pressing mission.
His fingers wrap around the wooden handle he is seeking. Triumph pops like fireworks across his mind.
The squirrel must be Force-sensitive. She has escaped Yan’s net for three full days now, and she mocks him by staring right at his face in the window as she holds a full apple in her tiny, grubby paws and chews right through its flesh with her mouth full.
Yan points two fingers at his eyes and shoves them back towards her own. The window’s glass is the only thing that protects her. That and her wit.
Yan must admit that he has underestimated his opponent. She is much spryer than he is, and solution-oriented. His net is useless what with the holes she has led him to tearing in it. She knows better than any creature in this place which briars to perch upon so that the thorns might rip through thin wire. She knows which trees contain knobs that are especially jagged.
A cruel witch, she is. A hellion.
Yan will not rest until his tomatoes are safe from her reign of terror. He drains the bitter remains of his caf and stands sharply to grab his coat and wallet.
He must away to town. He has had an idea.
Sidious is waiting in town. Yan leaves the gardening supply shop with his new weapon in hand to find him standing right in the middle of the pavement outside, dressed in deep reds and brocades, standing out like a sore thumb among the ride-on mowers and tractors lined up in front of the automatic doors. A few thoughts pass through Yan’s mind.
The main two are opposites. To engage, or not to engage?
Sidious does not take well to being ignored, so sadly all conversation is not avoidable, but not engaging can involve enthusiastic agreement with zero follow-up if one is so inclined. And Yan is very inclined at the moment. The plastoid owl in his arms needs to be set in the sun so that its head may begin turning. Wind will pass through a small set of holes in its body that will replicate a hooting call.
If the squirrel no longer fears Yan, then he must find something that she does fear, and that is this. And this needs to be implemented in the garden immediately, if Yan hopes to protect any more tomatoes.
So.
“My apprentice,” Sidious says, “I have noted that you have been absent from your post lately.”
So.
“Taken ill, I have been, my master,” Yan says smoothly, as though he is not one such person who waltzes around town wielding a great, horned, plastoid bird.
Sidious blinks in a fashion that resembles the very same creature in Yan’s hands. Yan blinks back innocently.
“May we walk?” Sidious asks.
“We may indeed,” Yan says.
They may walk straight to his vehicle. And they do. Sadly for Sidious, Yan’s steed these days is something of a one-seater speeder, and he only has one helmet. It is round and blue and there is a white stripe down the center of its shell. Yan has affixed a reflective sticker to the back of it in the shape of a great, green-yellow star.
He asks if Sidious would like to join him for tea at the estate. Sidious asks if there is perhaps somewhere closer.
There is not. Yan is very sorry about that.
Sidious gestures to one of the many tiny, mosaic-filled, whitewashed cafes that seem to pop up like weeds around the street corners. He asks if these would not be suitable for their purpose.
Yan decides in the sort of blasé manner that his former-master used to have towards human consumables that these establishments are not private enough for the dealings that must occur between himself and his current master. They will not do, he informs Sidious. The estate is not far. All Sidious must do is sit on the back of the speeder and hold on tight.
–And perhaps secure the sleeves of his robes. That would not do anyone any harm either.
Sidious does not enjoy the ride to the estate. He staggers off the back of the speeder and begins emitting foul language and anger into the Force.
It is so very pleasing when a well-made plan comes together. Yan dismounts his steed and hangs his helmet on his arm. The owl, he takes into protective custody as well.
He invites Sidious to join him upstairs in the drawing room for tea. The muddy, grassy ground sinks beneath both of their feet as they make their way up to the front entrance of the looming manor that Yan’s father had so kindly left for him to manhandle from a dreadful brother.
It is empty but for the long-employed staff who greet them with surprise at the front entrance. Yan declines to relinquish his bird, but he does allow Chablisa to take his helmet for the time being. He asks if tea might be scrounged up from the recesses of some corner. Chablisa is more than accommodating.
She leaves Madize to take Yan and Dooku to the drawing room, and there they are left to their own devices. Yan sets the owl on the flat top of a piano and sits in a chair that has not had the pleasure of being sat in for about as long as Yan has been of a mature age. He crosses one leg over the other and invites his master to join him in the opposite chair.
Sidious declines. He has questions about the army instead, which Yan endures as one does a firing squad.
Yes, the army is functioning as required. Yes, Yan has briefed the generals. Yes, there are regiments and platoons dispatched to meet the jedi on—well, wherever it is that Yan was supposed to send them.
Yes, yes, yes. Not to worry, all is as asked.
Sidious squints at him for a good long while. Tea arrives. It is abysmal. Serrenians take their tea at a temperature intended to remove the top layer of skin from the roof of one’s mouth. It is important that the tea be heated to this degree so as to ensure that the taste of the stuff is not the first or last impression of it that one leaves a gulp with.
Yan has seen pyres less burnt than these leaves. But to critique this important cultural ritual of his very own people is akin to setting the treasurer of Sereno’s capital city desk ablaze—which Yan has also contemplated more than once upon being graced with the treasurer’s presence.
Sidious clears his throat after the sip of tea. Yan refrains from telling him that that won’t help. Experience is the best teacher after all.
“I am growing concerned that you are not taking these matters seriously, my apprentice,” Sidious eventually says. “I feel a certain reluctance from you in the Force, and I hope you are not wavering from our path.”
Yan’s hindbrain provides his mouth with every platitude this shriveled old fool wishes to hear. He no longer must be conscious of the actual words said. They are no different to those he has said to politicians and priestesses and eldermen the galaxy over, and their effect is the same as well.
Sidious is placated. Suspicious, but placated, which is very well where all humans ought to be at most times in Yan’s opinion. The last time he let his guard down for even a second, he ended up with a third padawan.
Speaking of which—
“You don’t think that one of your former students might be persuaded to join our cause?” Sidious is saying. “Someone who can be trusted to know right from wrong?”
Yan strokes the gold-leaf handle of the teacup in his hand. Sidious is referring to Rael. He has become fixated on Rael and Xanatos lately, convinced beyond all evidence that these two can be brought under some semblance of control. Yan finds it comical. And interesting, given that Xanatos’s string of near-death experiences have turned him into more of a wildly swinging cannon than a person and given that it is not unheard of for Rael to forget that he is both a member and arm of an organization.
Sidious does appear to be angling for an ‘in’ into the lineage. He wants everyone but the third grandpadawan from Qui-Gon, it seems.
It is tedious. Yan is 97% sure that the endgoal here is to have him select his own replacement. Sidious is growing anxious. He is displeased to have selected an apprentice who has grown unafraid, bored, and moreover disappointed with him. He wishes for someone who will follow him blindly, and while Yan was perhaps that person a decade or so ago, he has now somewhat lost the zest for the cause.
He doesn’t blame anyone, really. It is the natural order of things for emotions and passions to develop and fade. He has since realized that what he was truly seeking at the time he accepted Sidious’s offer was to leave the Order. Grief over Qui-Gon, frustration over the endless grind and argumentation at the council, and the constant threat of Master (former) Yoda assigning him another padawan the second Yan dropped his guard made him tired. ‘Burnt out,’ as the youths say. ‘Hysterical’ as the non-youths say.
It all persuaded him that there was greener grass in another pasture, and there Sidious was, holding out the key to those sweet grasses.
How naïve he had been to think that that pasture wasn’t also plagued with red flags and tape.
“I will speak with Rael,” Yan says. “It has been some time since we’ve talked.”
Sidious makes pleased sounds and gestures at this. He has additional suggestions as well regarding the children of the lineage. He would like Yan to lure them into a trap, please.
Yan tells him that he would very much enjoy doing that, if he knew what they even looked like these days.
Sidious pauses.
“You don’t know what they look like?” he asks.
Yan holds a hand and rocks it from side to side in answer.
“Anakin? Obi-Wan? You don’t know what they look like?”
“Obi-Wan is Qui’s little one, yes?” Yan asks.
Xana doesn’t like him. The few times Yan has managed to pull a thread of sense from his ramblings, he has described young Obi-Wan as ‘a rat,’ ‘a roach bully-able by mice,’ ‘a shred of ash that must be extinguished.’ He is of the staunch opinion that young Obi-Wan would better serve the world pickled and naked in a jar for scientific study.
Outside of this, all that Yan knows of young Kenobi is the trouble he’s made over the years for Yan’s youngest, and this is a feat worthy of recognition and examination.
Qui-Gon, prior to his untimely end, was what Yan will call his ‘experimental’ padawan. He picked him up younger than Qui’s padawan siblings, much younger. Master Yoda allowed it on the condition that Yan not remove Qui from the crèche until he was old enough to tie his own boots.
Yan certainly did not spend any time trying to teach a toddler this skill. That would be manipulative and deceitful, and anyways, it didn’t work because Qui was both loveable and entirely void of thought until he was at least seven standard. He much preferred sitting in Yan’s lap and spewing forth a river of absolute nonsense that managed to be extraordinarily endearing in the meantime.
He fit in Yan’s arms and even allowed himself to be carried this way until he was twelve whole years old, and then he exploded in every direction and left his poor old master mourning the days of having a sweet, obedient, loving child as a padawan.
Those truly were the last of them. Qui’s path began to wind in ways that Yan could not keep up with from about the half-way point of his apprenticeship to adulthood. He developed a strong sense for the Living Force and read more philosophy than was safe for any one person to exert their efforts consuming.
If Rael was a sunflower and Komari was a morning glory, then Qui-Gon became a variegated, climbing, pea flower disaster—or rather, an experiment. A success? Who knows. Yan’s hubris does not extend to determining if a strange life lived is any more successful than a plain one.
That being said, it is Yan’s understanding that young Obi-Wan is and was Qui’s own experimental padawan. Qui did begrudgingly take after his master that way, and he did occasionally begrudgingly call Yan to ask his advice on highly specific scenarios with his youngest. Yan is fairly certain that one of those calls involved Qui banging his forehead on a kitchen wall while asking Yan how precisely one convinces a war-traumatized child that the holo-drama character he has invested himself in emotionally has been flagged to die this whole season.
Yan doesn’t see why Sidious is invested in the babies when Obi-Wan is right there, in the prime and ripe for mayhem from the day he was born.
Sidious is insistent, however, that Obi-Wan (brown hair, blue eyes) remain outside of the discussion. It is Anakin (dark brown hair, dark blue eyes) who is important to their cause. Obi-Wan will only cause problems. When Yan speaks to Rael, he must avoid mentioning Obi-Wan.
Yan agrees that this is the best way forward (it is not the best way forward). He asks Sidious if there is anything else that he must add to his schedule.
For now, there is not, so Yan stands and asks Chablisa for his helmet back. They must ride back to town.
Yan makes sure to find several potholes on the way to keep Sidious’s old heart on its guard.
See, Yan could cast out some lines to draw in the members of his lineage one by one by one, pulling each to Sereno and whispering in their ears until their soft-hearted wills begin to tremble. He is more than capable of doing this, he’s even equipped with some fishing wire. But if he is honest, he would rather expend his energy in setting up his owl in the garden of his cottage.
He’s had his fill of people for the month. His attentions must return to his nemesis and her filthy, furry little hands.
By the time he has again forsaken town, estate, and master, he discovers great rips in his rhododendrons.
This is war.
Yan employs the owl. He sits it first on the edge of the roof and then begins a process of moving it around the garden, keeping the squirrel and her kin on their toes. They sense a predator watching them. When the wind blows, they even scurry away at the hoots that emit from the owl’s plastoid form.
Battles have been won with less triumph than that which Yan experiences in the face of this small victory. His tomatoes are safe for now. He may return his attention to cultivating the purple-striped cabbages. He has been monitoring their progress for several weeks now and has yet to note any purple hues along the spines of their leaves.
He is beginning to think that he has been sold false cabbage seeds.
His foot taps against the wet grass before their line of great, ruffled leaves.
Between this indignity and the army that approaches from the west (the slugs), he fears that he requires reinforcements for retaining the peace and prosperity of this place.
He calls Rael.
Rael arrives as a tangle of disheveled linen and that’s fine for him because all Yan needs at the moment is another set of hands. Sense is optional. He introduces Rael to the cottage, to the well and its pump, to the garden, to the Owl, to the frightened squirrels and the cabbages and Rael works his jaw and purses his lips all around his face before saying,
“Master, I thought you were a Count.”
“I am a Count,” Yan tells him.
“This is a peasant cottage,” Rael says.
“It’s on the estate.”
“Is it?”
“It’s a summer home.”
“Are you sure?”
Yan is not, but it doesn’t matter. It is summer, and this is his home. All the criteria have been met and no one was living here before he bought the patch of land and set about making it habitable, so there.
Rael puts on the gloves that Yan batters him with.
“I thought you were taking over the affairs of the Confederacy?” he asks.
Yan’s insides boil at the thought of it. He must fetch a wheelbarrow.
“You didn’t just leave them to their own devices, did you? You can’t do that, they’re barely a confederation. You’re the only one giving them any kind of organizational structure. Without you, they’re nothing.”
Well, they should have thought of that before putting all their money in with a retiree from the Jedi Order. This isn’t Yan’s problem. He has delegated the tasks needing delegation and he has appointed qualified persons to oversee the sprawling bureaus and their affairs. If jobs are done properly, then there is no need for someone to sit at the top of the tower they make.
Rael accepts the bucket thrust into his chest. Yan hikes up the wheelbarrow so that its wheel is free to roam.
“Your energy is all over the place,” Rael notes. “I like it. It suits you.”
“Stop your dawdling,” Yan says. “There are hundreds of them.”
Snails. Slugs. Yan cannot catch a break. Rael helps by singing to them. His voice is not made for the pleasure of humans, but luckily, resembles some sort of klaxon that awakens and draws out the snails and slugs. They have been sitting out here, picking vermin off foliage for nearly an hour when Yan remembers that he has been assigned a task by Sidious.
“Where is my grandpadawan?” he demands into the silence.
“Long dead,” Rael replies without missing a beat.
“Not that one,” Yan says. “The new one.”
“I believe her name is Tano.”
“I said grandpadawan.”
Rael tries to avoid the question by lying that he sees a purple stripe coming up from the stem of one of the cabbages. Yan does not need to stand to verify his deceit. He has checked every plant from edge to edge and there is no purple to be found for miles.
“Surely Yoda has assigned you a new one,” he says. “Where are they? What is their name?”
Rael drops two snails into the bucket. He talks to a slug. Yan waits.
“There are to be no more grandpadawans, Master,” Rael finally says. “Qui was your last hope. And hey, you got three out of him, didn’t you? Obi-Wan might take another one. That’ll give you two greats. Tano is fourteen or sixteen or something. You’ll get plenty of mileage out of tormenting her yet.”
Yan stares at Rael over the curly tops of kale. Rael sets the bucket to the side and flattens himself to the sod as if it will protect him from Yan’s silent demands.
“You could marry?” Rael tries. “Make your own grandchildren the old-fashioned way?”
Never.
“Well, alright then. Break Master Nu’s heart, why don’t you.”
“I am not returning to the Order,” Yan says. “I am retired.”
“And fighting us,” Rael points out.
“And fighting you,” Yan says.
Rael waits. Yan has nothing more to give him. Worse, he has just discovered weeds in between the kale. They must go. Now.
“Master.”
“What?”
“You don’t want to fight this war.”
“It isn’t your business when I do and do not wish to fight.”
“Why did you call me here?”
“I was told to.”
“You were told to?”
More or less. Technically, Yan had volunteered to talk to Rael, but the order had gone unspoken. It didn’t matter. Yan’s job was to put forth the effort, that is all he can be reasonably asked to do.
“Master. We know you ordered the clones.”
Clever boy, Rael. This is why Yan took him on to start with. He acts stupid, but his gift for clarity is unmatched. If only he would pass that gift on to a child with the cleverness to make something more impactful with it.
“Dooku,” Rael says. “Why did you do it?”
Hm. Orders. They were easier to follow back then when Yan was desperate for something to guide him.
“Qui-Gon would be devastated if he knew what you’ve done.”
This is unfair. Yan did not invite Rael here for emotional blackmail.
“You are here for vermin catching,” he reminds Rael tightly.
“You don’t want anything to do with this anymore, do you?” Rael asks.
“Less clucking, more plucking.”
“You’re so unhappy,” Rael says.
This is untrue. Totally untrue. Yan’s cottage has brought him greater joy and peace than he has experienced in the last twenty years. He has raised these beds. He has tended the blooms and the greens. The vanquisher of mice, slugs, and squirrels is him, Yan Dooku, with his second-in-command, Owl. Never has he had a more efficient assistant. Never has he needed more than this little square on the hillside. He just didn’t know it until he got here.
“The sith would like yourself and the little ones to join the ranks,” Yan says neatly. “I will appreciate your assistance in herding them this way.”
Rael snorts.
“You need sheep now?” he asks.
“They are not sheep. They are goats.”
Rael lets a honking laugh burst past his lips.
“It’s not going to stop this war,” he says.
“Perhaps,” Yan acknowledges. “But it will be interesting to remove all the major pieces from the board, don’t you think?”
Rael catches his drift.
“Master Yoda as well?” he asks.
“No, no. You let the old man alone.”
“Will the sith kill you for this?”
Mm. The Sith can try. But Yan thinks he might be intimidated by another ride on the old speeder still, so there’s still time.
“What is Obi-Wan like?” he asks.
Sidious sends many missives that take several days to reach Yan because of the abysmal signal he gets out here in in the hills. He opens them when he gets them and sends back confirmations of receipt. Sidious asks him if he spoke to Rael. He confirms that he has and that Rael has agreed to aid them in bringing the young ones into contact with him.
Sidious is pleased, very pleased indeed. He tells Yan to keep Anakin and Obi-Wan separated as much as possible and to do whatever he likes with young Tano.
Yan takes this to mean that he has permission to put Ahsoka on scare crow duty. A fine task for an excitable young person, he agrees.
Rael reports in only a few days later to inform Yan in an explosive huff that the children do not trust him and do not believe that he is their uncle in any form. He has had to appeal to Qui’s Feemor to do some of this lifting for him, and Feemor has reported that Qui forbade him to allow his little brother to meet either Uncle or Grandmaster.
This sounds like Qui. No matter. Yan has a solution for this.
Rael is shocked to hear that Xanatos is still among the living (Yan, frankly, is too, but that’s a separate issue). Yan advises him to get in contact with this nephew. Xanatos has no squeamishness around Qui’s last wishes. In fact, any excuse that will again put him into contact with young Obi-Wan is a boon to his sensibilities. He has been trying to hunt his brother for years.
Rael has some hesitancy about this, but ultimately agrees.
When Sidious asks for progress that night, Yan tells him that he’s quite busy organizing a lineage reunion. The interruptions will blow his cover if this keeps happening.
Sidious apologizes, then catches himself and tells Yan to contact him for once instead of forcing him to keep calling. Yan promises that he will, when it is safest to do so. He ends the message, turns off the comm, and goes out to stuff it under a rock on the side of the cottage for safe keeping.
Xanatos is a reliable child. He rattles Feemor by engaging him in a duel on Temple grounds. Feemor is not overly pleased, but he survives the attempt and spends the next several days sniffing for Xanatos through the Temple as a bloodhound does a body.
Young Obi-Wan notices that his favored big brother is not answering his calls. He is hurt and pouts by contacting Master Yoda at the Temple who reveals to him that Rael is, in fact, his master’s brother. Predictably, Obi-Wan is shocked and alarmed and immediately seeks to set things to rights by honoring the elders of his lineage. He brings baby Anakin and babier Ahsoka to meet with Rael somewhere in the Middle Rim.
Rael invites them for yardwork.
Obi-Wan declines for all of them. Rael calls Yan and asks for assistance with wording. Yan gives it to him.
Rael again invites the youths for yardwork. This time, he promises Ahsoka crow-hunting. She is quickly brought on board. Her enthusiasm will do some important work on the resolve of Obi-Wan and Anakin. It just needs some time.
Yan leaves the potion to work its magic and heads out back to town to meet a man about a pig.
Her name is Tulip. Yan has been preparing for her arrival for years now. He is surprised to find her awaiting him, accompanied by no fewer than 8 pot-bellied piglets suckling from her teats. He accuses the farmer of false advertising.
He wants a pig. One pig. That was the agreement.
The farmer says that he’s getting one pig. And a litter of babies. There’s only one pig, though.
Yan cycles through several violent thoughts in the farmer’s direction before giving into the inevitable.
He must extend the pigpen. This will be good work for youthful backs. In the meantime, however, he cannot accept the mother until he has sufficient shelter for her and her children. He tells the farmer that he will back for all of them, and that he, the farmer, is a cheat.
He returns to the cottage and finds a message awaiting him from Xanatos. He has heard that Uncle Rael is inviting everyone to do farmwork. He is wondering if this extends to him, and if it does, if he can opt out. Yan decides in that moment that he cannot.
Everyone must be present but for the dead. And Master Yoda. He is far too busy.
Xanatos states that he is too pretty to get dirty under his nails. Yan notes that he was not too pretty to climb into an underwater mine and just now, attack his older brother in his own apartment. Xanatos pouts. He grumbles. Yan has no pity for him; he is immune to pouting.
All the grandchildren must be present. There are going to be nine forsaken pigs to catch and control.
“Pigs?” Xanatos asks. “When did you have pigs? I thought you were getting goats?”
Well, see, he was, but he kept running into the issue of compost.
“You should do fungus, then. People grow them on rotting things, and you can eat them afterwards.”
This boy is brilliant.
Yan must take himself to the library in town.