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After Melida/Daan, Obi-Wan couldn’t stay still. Qui-Gon thought it was social anxiety at first, thought that he just couldn’t stand being around other people like before, but he noticed it even when Obi-Wan thought there was no one near. He just… couldn’t hold still. He would tap his foot or shake his leg or tug at his earlobe or twitch his cheek, all in a rhythmic pattern that made sense only to him.
Most of all though, it was his hands. Obi-Wan’s hands were always flitting about, as if it was a matter of life and death that they keep moving.
Perhaps it was to him, still.
Qui-Gon’s mindhealer encouraged him to be more expressive with his affection for Obi-Wan as a means of reassuring the boy that he was loved and that he had a place by his side. Qui-Gon found this harder than he expected. Not because he didn’t love Obi-Wan — he really, truly did — he just didn’t always know how to express that in a way that was natural. He leaned more towards little things around their quarters and advice while training, exactly as Dooku had raised him — which, he could admit, might be part of the problem.
“How about an activity you could do together?” Healer Ski’dl suggested.
Qui-Gon tilted his head. “Like more sparring?”
“Something that doesn’t have to do with Jedi training,” she replied. “So you can show you value him as a person outside of just that. And it might be an easier way for you to express affection than big grand gestures.”
He nodded slowly, already deep in thought.
That conversation had been a few weeks ago. In the time since, Qui-Gon had tried a variety of activities that he thought might help with Obi-Wan’s restlessness, from knitting to crocheting to painting and sculpting, but nothing had seemed to catch on. Sculpting had been the closest; Obi-Wan seemed to find some therapeutic value in throwing the clay at the wheel, but the sensory feel of it on his hands bothered him greatly. Having exhausted all other options he could think of, Qui-Gon turned to something he had not done since his Padawan days: wood carving.
It did not start well. Obi-Wan grew frustrated with his mistakes and threw the wood across the room, where it clattered into the wall with great commotion. Instantly, he froze and hunched in on himself.
“Obi-Wan?” Qui-Gon asked, setting down the small wooden bird he had been attempting to carve. “Are you alright?”
“I’m sorry, Master,” Obi-Wan breathed into his knees. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, I’m sorry, I just got — got so — I’m sorry.”
Obi-Wan’s own mindhealer told him about Obi-Wan’s struggle to contain his emotions. It was not only, the man explained, because his limitations had shifted, but because the emotions that Obi-Wan felt were much larger than they had been. It was like Obi-Wan had been stretched far, far past his breaking point, and afterwards was unable to feel things the way he had before.
So Qui-Gon took no offense, felt only concern. “It’s quite alright, Obi-Wan,” he chuckled. “I’ve wanted to throw the things I’ve been carving myself before. Luckily, wood is a very forgiving material.” He crossed over to the other side of the room and picked up Obi-Wan’s project where it had landed. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the carvings Obi-Wan had made, at least none that he could tell. But that wasn’t really the point of all this, not yet. So he set the block of wood back in front of Obi-Wan and sat down himself to continue his work quietly. Obi-Wan breathed to himself for a minute or two before raising his head once more and picking up the tool.
The next few sessions they had went similarly. Obi-Wan still took out his frustrations — with himself, with his situation, with others — on the wood block, leaving it scarred with deep gouges. He threw it, occasionally, and seemed frustrated when it did not break. This confused Qui-Gon at first, and worried him — was his Padawan developing destructive tendencies? Would they be expressed next on himself or others?
Healer Skid’l calmed these fears.
“Think about it, Qui-Gon,” she said. “This is a great outlet for him. Would you prefer he switch to living targets?”
He was aghast. “No!”
“Then let him have this. In fact, make it better for him. You’ve been using thick blocks of wood, yes?”
Qui-Gon nodded, mystified.
“Try thinner strips. Pliable, almost.”
So he did. Obi-Wan did not throw them. Instead, he broke them in half.
This elicited a similar panic as the first time he threw the wood. Obi-Wan’s face drained of color and he practically folded himself in half, breathing apologies into his knees. But after being reassured that it was okay, after they had taken a few deep breaths together and Qui-Gon had gotten him a new piece of wood, he seemed… so much calmer. Like finally, something loosened within him.
That was the first time Obi-Wan made any sort of design with the wood. It was nothing elaborate, just a few patterns of curved lines following the arc of the wood, but it was something. A sign, perhaps, of a shift in something greater.
Over the next few months, Obi-Wan continued to heal, both in mind and body. He gained much needed weight, stopped flinching quite so much at sudden loud noises, was better able to get through the day without a spike of panic or anger or fear. And all the while, he and Qui-Gon carved wood together. As Obi-Wan became more and more calm as he worked, Qui-Gon was able to start teaching him designs. They started with wooden spoons, because that was what Qui-Gon had learned first and it was pretty simple. Obi-Wan took to it like a house on fire. He made so many spoons that they had to donate them to a local shelter. Then they moved on to little flowers inlaid in wooden blocks, and followed that up with little birds.
And still, Obi-Wan broke the wood. It seemed to be almost a ritual at this point. He would sit down at the bench where he had left his latest project and pick up a wobbly strip of wood that Qui-Gon had lying around for this exact purpose. Then he’d bend it further and further and further until it snapped in his hands.
In the beginning, Qui-Gon always offered to sand down the rough edges so the broken pieces would still be usable, but Obi-Wan resisted this idea strongly. He simply put the two halves in a box underneath his desk and refused to allow anyone to touch them. Qui-Gon stopped asking. There were bigger problems in the galaxy than one traumatized Padawan’s rather strange coping mechanism.
Eight months after Obi-Wan returned to the Temple, almost a year to the day since he was left on Melida/Daan, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were added back to the active mission-ready roster. It was a moment both of them had been eagerly anticipating, but there was still some amount of anxiety from Obi-Wan when it was made official.
“What if I’m not ready?” Obi-Wan asked, wringing his hands together.
“You are,” Qui-Gon said firmly. “You’ve made so much progress over the past eight months, we both have. We’re in a better place now than we were even a year ago. You are strong, Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan nodded, eyes cloudy. His leg was bouncing up and down where it rested in front of his chair.
“And, to make it a little better, I have something for you,” Qui-Gon added. He reached into an oft-overlooked drawer where he’d hidden the gift earlier that day. Obi-Wan took it hesitantly. It was a very small pack, just big enough to fit securely in the pouch on his belt, and inside were little tools and a block of wood.
Obi-Wan looked up at him. “Is this…?”
Qui-Gon smiled. “I thought missions might be a good time for you to finesse your fine detail work.”
Hope and relief spread across Obi-Wan’s face like the rays of sun in the morning.
And so it went for the next decade. Obi-Wan’s pastime when from something he did only therapeutically to a real talent that he cultivated. He branched out into bigger projects that involved building things for the crèche, or fixing a cabinet (and adding a few embellishments in the process. It became rare to see him around the Temple without some sort of wood in his hand that he was in the process of doing something with.
It seemed to bring him peace and stability and for that, Qui-Gon would forever be grateful. He had watched his Padawan grow and heal and thrive over the past ten years and he could only lay claim to part of that. Obi-Wan had done the hard work himself and he deserved all the credit for it.
For that reason, Qui-Gon almost refused to take Obi-Wan’s braid when he offered it to his (now former) Master at his Knighting ceremony. But Obi-Wan had looked at him with that glint in his eye that meant he wouldn’t accept any other answer, and Qui-Gon knew how important to him tradition was, so he accepted it gratefully and figured that was all.
And then later that night, after Quinlan and Luminara and Bant and Garen and Reeft had gone home full of the best takeout the Temple District had to offer, Obi-Wan pulled Qui-Gon aside.
“I have something for you, Master.”
“You know you don’t have to call me that anymore, right?” Qui-Gon said, amused at all the antics.
“You’ll always be my Master, Master,” said Obi-Wan, then turned to a large object in the corner of the room that Qui-Gon hadn’t noticed before. It was draped in a soft blue sheet and had a vague enough shape that he had no idea what it was.
As Qui-Gon stared, confused, Obi-Wan wrung his hands, a nervous gesture he hadn’t done in years. “I’m sorry I couldn’t wrap it, but I’ve been a little busy.”
Qui-Gon snorted. Obi-Wan’s Trials had been difficult, some of the most difficult in recent memory. He remembered how his heart dropped in his stomach when the doors to the Chamber of Trial opened to reveal Obi-Wan’s prone body lying on the ground. But he hadn’t been dead, just severely wounded and barely hanging onto consciousness. As Healers swarmed him and began to cart him away, he had the strength to say only one thing, his favorite Jedi mantra: I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.
“You can, um,” Obi-Wan started, and gestured towards the object. “You can look now.”
Slowly, carefully, Qui-Gon walked over and pulled the sheet off. Underneath was a gorgeous set of wooden shelves, stained in a reddish-bronze color and covered in intricate carvings — vines, suns, planets, the Force.
Qui-Gon’s mouth dropped open. He did not know how long he spent staring at the piece, running his fingers over the details on the wood and marveling at its complexity.
“Master? Do you like it?” Obi-Wan’s nervous voice came from behind him. “I was thinking you could put your plants on it. But if you don’t want to you don’t have to. Or if it’s not your style I could try making something else. I just—“
He was cut off as Qui-Gon whirled around and enveloped his former Padawan in a massive hug. Obi-Wan froze, then relaxed into it, holding on just as tight.
“I made it from all the wood I broke when we first started carving together,” Obi-Wan murmured into his shoulder. “I saved it all. I wanted you to have it. I know things weren’t always easy, but you were there. You came back. You stayed, even when I broke the wood. I wanted to represent that, somehow.”
Now it was Qui-Gon’s turn to freeze. He looked back at the shelves again. The entire thing seemed to be made of fragmented pieces that had been put back together to form something even more beautiful than the original.
Just like Obi-Wan himself.
Qui-Gon felt his throat grow tighter. “This was all your accomplishments, Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan opened his mouth to protest, no doubt figuring Qui-Gon was going to try to wiggle his way out of accepting the gift, but he continued, “And I would be honored to accept this. You have made me so proud, Obi-Wan. Never forget that.”
And finally, Obi-Wan was still.