"You want to do what?" asks Qui-Gon. Looking into the past... he wasn't sure if Yoda could do that reliably, much less Kina, even if she was the Chosen One. "If that works, it would be very helpful, but the Sith are fueled by pain and suffering. It most definitely would be dangerous."

"Yeah.  It could.  It will.  But...I think we need to take that risk.  ...can you help?  Please?"  She's...for just a moment, the child that she is, desperate for approval, desperate to help, sneaks out from beneath her mask.  "It's...I don't think I can do it alone...but we're stronger together.  Please, Qui-gon?"

"I... yes, I think we can help you get through this. Obi-Wan and I will be there with you, through the Force. Hopefully we can share a part of the burden."

"I would like to register that this is a VERY BAD IDEA and will go HORRIBLY WRONG," says Obi-Wan.

"Thank you.  The both of you.  You're not wrong about it being horrible, Obi-Wan, but so has everything else - erm, been.  Sometimes your only choice of suck is what flavor you get."  She sticks her head out the door of the room, and a brief exchange with C3PO nets them at least one droid observer - perhaps even two, if R2-D2 isn't busy at the moment.  "...alright.  Let's do this."

"I suspect an important part of the process will be to reassemble it now, and pay attention to the way it was first assembled," says Qui-Gon. "Do you have a clear image of how the saber fits together?"

Kina dims the room lights, and spreads the parts out before her as she sits on the floor, patting two spots to make a triangle of Force-Sensitives with the saber in the center.

"Yes.  I took it apart."

Then...she reaches out, tentatively, to Qui-Gon, to Obi-Wan, to anyone who will help, her presence ever so deft, ever so keen, but thready, flimsy, tentative...yet in that smallness able to weave together and entwine herself with the strength of her bonds.  Bolstered by the strength of those connections - by Qui-Gon Jinn's surety and faith in the Force, by Obi-Wan's determination - she reaches back, to when these parts before her had only ever been just that, to when this saber was a glint in its maker's eye...and the kyber crystals, glowing a bloody red, resonate.

There's a boy, not much older than Kina. He's doing exercises, running up against the wall, then taking a few vertical steps and leaping off the side with a spin. He lands, slamming into the hard ground with his bare feet, and immediately runs forward again.

After a few repetitions, the boy trips on the edge, and as he tries frantically to steady himself, he lands flat on the ground. There's an agonizing snap from his back, and as he frantically tries to move his limbs, they burst into searing pain, and he falls back to the ground, his head pounding.

"GET UP."

The boy turns his head despite the pain, to see a man standing over him, wearing a black cloak and exuding an energy fueled by pure hatred. "GET UP." The boy stutters out a plea, tears beginning to leave his eyes, and then he feels himself being thrown through the air, his limbs snapping back into place with another series of burns -

Several years later, Maul is practicing the exercise again, by now drilled down to a simple repetition, but it's been days since he slept and he's exhausted and he knows he's making more and more mistakes and he can't let himself make the mistake or he'll be angry but he can't stop because he's being watched but he can't - Maul makes one too many mistakes. This time he lands on his foot in just the wrong way, his ankle snapping beneath him, and no matter how painful it is, he's almost thankful for the chance to fall to the ground and have a brief break -

He sees the presence striding towards him. No! Wincing at the prospect of the all too familiar pain, Maul reaches for the Force towards his foot, hoping to at the very least be able to adjust it himself, be able to decide his own pain, but the Force slips from his grasp - it snaps into place anyway, under the harsher strength of his master. "ENOUGH. GO TO BED."

Maul is at the verge of crying, but he manages to swallow and force it down, and he gratefully scampers off to his room, ready for a final chance to sleep -

When he opens the door, there's a droid waiting for him, and a blast of fiery energy slams into his arm, carefully aimed not to cause permanent physical damage but to instead force as much pain and shock as possible -

By now, Maul is nearly an adult, and he's put a lightsaber together, meticulously connecting each part with his bare hands, ready to present it to his master in the hope that he'll have a slight chance of earning some respect. But it's not right, and a burst of white light flares from it at the wrong angle, crackling and hissing before it disappears altogether, and the blade pierces his leg and he screams and he wishes it would end but no his master is there and he has to hide the pain before he sees -

"I think your mistake is simple enough," snarls his master, a laugh behind his voice. Maul feels a surge of hatred towards him, and immediately pushes it away -

"No!" his master hisses with contempt. "You act like a Jedi. Pain, hatred, they are not something to be hidden away, something to be pushed down and kept outside of your world. Don't ignore your emotions! USE your pain!"

And a switch is thrown back within Maul's mind, and a mighty blast of fury pours from him, and as he roars in anger, the pieces of the blade fly apart and then shoot back together, reforming in the perfect arrangement, surrounding two crystals that have changed to a bloody scarlet. The blade ignites in Maul's hand, and with a brutal swing he attacks his master -

- and Kina knows pain, knows suffering, but this is wrong, this is not its purpose, - "Mom?  Why does my foot go ouch when I drop a wrench on it?"  "Because, little Kina, your feet aren't supposed to have wrenches dropped on them.  Pain's how your body tells you you pushed it too far.  And sometimes you have to, but you have to take care of yourself when you do, as best you can.  And if you do something that you know is going to hurt to do...Make sure it's for a very good reason." - Kina is seven, and being lashed for a theft someone else did; it was worth it, she saved a life - she's saving lives now, if she sees more, if she knows, if she hears his master's name, sees his master's face, there's still two crystals -

Qui-Gon's trying to hold back the pain, to take on as much as he can for her, but it's overwhelming even him, and the vision starts to flicker away.

He glances over at Kina, and he sees that the parts of the saber are starting to rise up, almost like in the vision, but it's different, and at the center of it all sits the crystals, and -

- they're starting to shine gold as the core of a saber forms, but Kina hasn't finished, two are still red - she can endure the pain, she was a slave on Tatooine, she can endure the suffering, you just need to brace her, make her well when it's all over, Qui-Gon, that's why you're here, support -

Now Maul sits in his room, where his master holds a hologram of a much longer lightsaber, from which two blades are emerging. He drops two clear kyber crystals into Maul's hands, and strides out of the room. Maul takes out his original blade, along with a collection of other parts, and begins to disassemble it with his mind, while his hands clench over the crystals. Maul looks into his mind, touching that one place that holds his anger, drawing from its power just as much as from the Force. He reaches for his pain, and when he opens his hands, the crystals have reached the same bloodred state as the others.

And it's over. Letting out a breath he didn't know he had been holding, Qui-Gon looks back to Kina, who now holds the reassembled blade.

"...He was just...so broken, by the time he made that second blade...I don't know if I should turn it on or not.  And...we do have to try and figure out who his master was.  Is.  Could be."

"I don't feel much of the darkness that was there before," he says. "I think you've made the crystals yours."

"How about we take a break first," suggests Obi-Wan.

Kina wobbles to her feet, handling the lightsaber like it could spit hot fiery death in either direction at any moment and thus not pointing it at anything she wants to keep intact.  "Not a bad idea.  I don't really know what to look for, anyway.  Do you do investigations?"

"We don't have a lot to go on," says Qui-Gon, "but I got a glimpse of a window and there was quite a bit of lava present; it fit the environment of Mustafar. A full planet doesn't narrow it down very far, but his master's likely somewhere around there."

"It's definitely probably worth checking the place for hidden Sith bases or what have you."

The hidden Sith base isn't on Mustafar, of course. It's on Coruscant, and it's a simple apartment, holding only a few unremarkable people, and of course Palpatine, the innocuous Senator from Naboo.

At the time, Palpatine hasn't realized much that anything is wrong. He felt a small twinge when Maul died, but he didn't feel any specific details; as best as he can tell, the Queen should be arriving on Coruscant soon, with the Jedi eliminated, and it will be time to continue his plan. And so he's waiting, standing in the open area outside the Senate dome, ready to greet them when they land. It's only when they start to enter the orbit that he feels the presence of the Jedi - and of something else.

When the ship comes to a stop, Palpatine walks forward, tentatively, a smile on his face to mask his uneasiness. He sees the Queen, accompanied by a few handmaidens and soldiers, and some droids, and yes, there they are, the Jedi. Then they did defeat Maul. He's disappointed; he had thought Maul was strong enough to resist them, but -

Wait, who's that kid?

The kid with the Force swirling around her with more power than he's ever seen, a beacon that seems to reach out to him stronger than the Temple itself.

The kid with Maul's lightsaber hanging at her side.

There are many people who might be disturbed, to find their apprentice dead, to find their most powerful relic hanging from an eerily dangerous child, to find that their plans are going to have to change in the next few seconds. Palpatine, however, isn't feeling worried at all.

He's thinking, How can I use this?