Post Hoc
1.
Coruscant had for all intents and purposes forgotten the natural cycle of night and day, dark and light, rest and activity. It was alight at all hours with myriad artificial constellations, abuzz at all hours with ceaseless business and traffic. Its citizens, its pedestrian plazas, its spaceports, its industrial sectors, its sprawling underlevel slums: all these had forgotten the ageless rhythms of nature, exchanged them for the perpetual insomniac bustle of technologically advanced society.
But the Jedi Temple had not forgotten. True, its occupants often enough kept late hours, or made their departures or arrivals in the middle of the night as need dictated, but the texture of life within the high white walls of this sanctuary was purposefully attuned to the forgotten cycles of the natural universe. At sunset, lights were dimmed and a relative hush was observed: study and meditation, and rest, dominated. Young initiates were in bed, their elders quit the Council chamber or the dojo in favor of the archives or the gardens or other private, introspective venues. Balance was all, was the key. Day was for action, evening and night for contemplation and rest.
For at least one, however, there was no rest.
Obi Wan Kenobi wandered the corridors of the vast Temple complex, traversing the labyrinth of halls and passages with the unconscious ease of one brought up within its confines from the earliest childhood. The night wore on, endlessly. This marked his third night without sleep – not an uncommon occurrence in the life of a Jedi, but one uncommon enough within the hallowed precincts of the Temple.
He had been home for seven days tomorrow morning.
He had been a Jedi Knight for ten days.
He had witnessed Qui Gon Jinn, brother and father, die only twelve days ago.
As though waiting for a lull in which to strike and catch its victim off guard, grief had bided its time, waiting in ambush until routine had gradually replaced the creative outpouring of energy that accompanied a new beginning. It waited. Twelve days. Ten days. Seven days. Three nights. And then it had launched its attack, waxing in power like a fever until it was sharper, deeper, more crushing even than its first brutal epiphany in Theed. As though it had fermented in the long days following the event, when there had been no time to engage it, to face it, to indulge it. It had returned headier and more potent; suppressed, it had festered and grown to obscene dimensions.
He had been taught to observe and analyze such emotions, to allow them to flow through without allowing them to carry him away. To be detached, serene.
He only half succeeded. He could not allow the pain to utterly dominate and control him, though it rose like a black tide, a wall of drowning ache, cold and pitiless loss. He had duties, foremost among them the education of his highly unlikely new apprentice. Yet neither could he stand rock-firm and allow the waves of mourning to crash against his resolve and move past. He compromised, riding the crest of the storm, staying just ahead of his own sorrow. Not quite serene, but not quite submitting to temptation. Staying just ahead, outrunning despair by a sheer act of will.
Nights were worse. Sleep was elusive – impossible. Walking helped.
He had tried the Room of a Thoussand Fountains, but every burbling melody in the flowing water, every elegant dappling of light and dark foliage, every familiar twist of the path, was laden with unwelcome memory. He walked on to other places. To every place. To no place. Walking became a purpose in itself, a kata. The past and the uncertain future faded into the nebulous phantasms they were, until only the present moment remained. In that moment, there was fullness and peace.
And a strong, warm voice saying, Keep your focus in the present moment, where it belongs.
So , ironically, there was no peace there after all. No escape.
Exhaustion was finally setting in. That could prove to be his ally. A new idea occurred to him, and he turned his steps toward the dojo. It would be empty now, in the small hours of the morning, and he could lose himself in , say, three hundred repetitions of the level four Ataru velocity. After that, he should be ready to drop in his tracks, into a dreamless and griefless sleep. He reached the entrance and eagerly slipped through the broad doors.
To his astonishment, Yoda was waiting within. The old one stood half-hunched over his cane, face scrunched into a fretwork of contemplative furrows and lines. His gold-flecked eyes were alight with a quiet, private amusement as they rested upon the newcomer. The ancient master remained unmoving, serenely accepting the deferential bow of greeting he was immediately offered.
"For saber practice, not the right time is it," he observed. "But too late is it, or too early?"
Obi Wan pressed his lips together. A riddle at this time of night? Or morning? It was just the sort of thing Qui Gon Jinn might have asked…and that realization made it impossible to speak.
"No answer have you?" The diminutive Jedi feigned surprise. "No clever words to impart to Yoda, after so much walking and thinking?" He shook his wrinkled skull, long ears bobbing. "Disappointed I am."
Master Yoda never asked an idle question and never finished a conversation without having the last word, so Obi Wan merely stood and waited. The barb would come, even if he had no heart to rise to the bait.
"Well?" the ancient one prodded. "Waiting you are, hm. For what?"
For you to come around to the point, master. "For your wisdom, master."
Yoda grunted and pursed his lips. "Three days looking you have been. Hm. So difficult to find, I think I am not."
"But you are always worth the wait." He wasn't about to fall into such an easy trap.
"Hmmmmm. Diplomatic you are. Politic." Yoda's eyes narrowed slightly as he went for the weak spot, the precise center of pain, like a predator lunging for the jugular. "Learn that from Qui Gon you did not."
He flinched. Must I endure this? "No, master."
"Yes," the ancient Jedi mused, warming to the topic, "Better at holding your tongue are you. Better at looking ahead, too. These things from your own spirit come. But not such a master of feelings yet, hm? Need guidance there, you still do," he continued, casually, off-handedly, with the accuracy of an expert strike between the ribs.
Please finish and leave me alone. "Yes, master."
"See through you I can," the Grand Master warned. "Think you that came here I did to waste my time? To listen to your disrespect? I think not!" the gimer stick cracked against the polished floor as he took a step forward, huffing in affront – or the affectation of it.
Oh, blast! "Forgive me, master; I did not expect – I am not –"
"Came here to ask me something, you did. Meeting you here, I am, with open ears. Now speak." The words were testy, the tone of command clear and uncompromising.
Obi Wan stared. As a matter of fact, he had come here to perform grueling saber drills until he had wrung every ounce of strength, and therefore emotion, out of his weary limbs. Yoda had been the last person he anticipated meeting here. But he also knew that when the ancient Jedi spoke of purpose, he did not mean conscious choice but the will of the Force. For a Jedi, the latter more truly represented his own intentions than personal will. And so he accepted that, in true and deepest reality, he had come here to ask Yoda something. But what?
"Sit," the old one chuffed.
He sank down cross-legged to the floor, bringing himself almost to eye level with the small, revered teacher.
"Your pain I can feel," Yoda prompted, much more gently. "The loss of Qui Gon like an open wound, it is. The cause you know already." It was a statement, not a question.
Obi Wan bowed his head. He had just been Knighted; it seemed terribly unfitting to confess to such a glaring weakness and failure now. But it was too late, and Yoda knew anyway. Suffering came from attachment. He had known that for decades, been taught it practically in infancy. Now he understood it in his very bones. "Yes, I do."
"To ask why, your question is not."
"No, master." He would not deny the reality of his grief, or even the attachment responsible for it, however misplaced, however forbidden, discouraged, unbecoming. He was not here to justify himself or to make excuses. He only wished to know…to ask…
"All night I do not have. Hmph. Busy they keep me, between the Council and the younglings. Now the time for asking is, Master Kenobi."
How strange the title sounded. But it also emboldened him. "Master, tell me how to defeat my grief." That is what he craved. He would meet his foe and vanquish it. He was done with endurance and acceptance. A Jedi was not passive; some enemies could only be met head on. Like the Sith in Theed. And if he was destroyed in the process, so be it.
Yoda nodded, absurdly pleased. "Hmm. The right question is that. Very good."
"Is there an answer?" Let there be an answer.
The ancient Jedi seemed to look far into the distance, past an invisible horizon. He snuffled quietly to himself for a moment before replying.
"An answer. Yes. An answer there is. Tonight meet me here again, you will, and show you the answer I shall."
"Thank you, master."
"Thank me not yet hm hm hm hm hm," Yoda chuckled darkly. "Some answers more difficult than others are."