DE-CEASE
by ardavenport
Jedi patience is legendary. Qui-Gon is legendary among Jedi. He has pushed back the despair of uncertainty to wait and watch, his eyes and hands still searching for, still needing the sustenance of recognition.
His daily routine is that of his Padawan, of bathing and feeding, trimming of hair and nails, massaging limbs out of their clinch only to have them curl up again against the pale torso. Even after the last flurry of tests, Qui-Gon imagines a twitch of hand, a fluttering eyelid, some little peephole out of Obi-Wan's waking nightmare, so that his Master can see inside. Even after so many months, he still probes for any response, a tiny crack in the rigid walls of catatonia that imprison his Padawan's mind. He never finds it.
He would trade whatever status he has as a Jedi Master for only that.
He will.
The patience of the Jedi Council is not legendary. They want him to move on. Go. They gently suggest that he leave his Padawan in the care of doctors and impersonal care-givers and a barren hospital room. Those carefully-worded, formal 'suggestions' tighten in his throat. But his revulsion is not for sensible advice of the distant Council, but for himself because for some fraction of a second he pictures himself accepting it.
He knows that distance will only initiate his own slow deterioration, a drought of even the trickle of hope that he lives on now. But if he stays, Qui-Gon wonders how long he can hold off that inevitable decay, before the work of the unseen horrors that consumed his apprentice drag him into his own form of depression and madness.
The door to their hospital cell opens. Footsteps and rustling layers of fabric enter.
Qui-Gon looks up.
Dr. Jraye stood before him, a strange look on his wrinkled face. Hope? Was that what it was supposed to look like? Qui-Gon's hand, his fingers, extend toward his Padawan without touching him.
A tall being stood next to Jraye; he/she/it is mostly humanoid wearing layers of blue veils hanging down from the head and the shoulders of a sexless body. The tattooed face is harsh and grave with fleshy jowls.
And the eyes. . . . the eyes are perfect and featureless and white.
]]]]o]]]o]]]o]]]o]]] ooo-eee-iii-eee-ooo [[[o[[[o[[[o[[[o[[[
The eyes have expanded, become the whole void that he curled up in. It has lost all its edges to press in and smother him with infinite, white distance. The meaning of Master and braids and sleep and one. . . . one. . . .one have faded into wisps of memory that he still grasps for.
It was creeping into him. The white slowly invaded, replacing him cell by cell. When it was done, there would be no sleep, no shelter, no sweet darkness where the eyes couldn't see. He tried to cover himself with those few remaining rags of words with their fading meaning, but they crumbled into dust, into nothing but more white. He stared down at the marks on his hands; they were scabbing over, frosted with white. What were the cuts for? It was so important, but he couldn't. . . . one one one
A spot.
One little black spot marred the terrible, merciless void.
He gasps with relief. He can't remember how he knows what it is, but some primordial reflex of his body drinks it in, the sensation of knowing that the predator has moved on to a different meal.
The eyes were looking at something else.
Not at him.
The white now buzzes with annoyance.
The imperfection could [i]not[/i] be tolerated by the eyes. Obi-Wan hides in the distraction, his attention fixed on the growing dark, now expanding into a hole that his little finger might fit into.
He hears his heartbeat. He still has a heartbeat, getting louder and louder, almost drowning out the angry white. But it wasn't real, at best only temporary. When the eyes expunged this new blemish they would stare back into him this time. They would strip the last hanging strands of color and flesh from him and he would be white bone, skin and white eyes, stretched out on whiteness. Perfect.
It was a storm, this expanding black, now with flashes of deep crimson inside. He hears thunder rumble, rolling to him. He wants to stretch toward it, anticipating cool rain. But he dares not attract the attention of the white fury.
He also instinctively fears the black. It grows larger as if it is rushing at him, to smash him. His skull with crack, his bones will break, his blood and insides will ooze out and smear in the void. But the white would turn him into something so much worse than the comfortably known terror of velvety black that he wants to leap out to meet that inky, starless pit of blackness, veined with deep, deep red.
It has grown to the size of his head, an uneven blotch and the humming void screams into discordant chords; the thunder recedes. The white now slowly began erasing the edges of the imperfection.
No! Not wide enough!
The edges of the black break up into smudges of smoke that vanish in the white. His heart beats faster. It would get smaller and smaller and then be gone, the white wiped clean. He would be left behind.
Obi-Wan tenses and dives into the breach before it can be scrubbed away.
The white screams.
The eyes, seeing him again, burn, freezing body and thought. But the black has caught his hands, then wrists, arms, head, shoulders. It sucks him in and he plunges downward, deeper and deeper. He opens his mouth wide to shout with joy. The eyes were gone! They would not have him.
Muddy black fills his mouth and nose, choking him. His body thrashes as the pressure increases on his chest and head from lack of air. His animal instinct struggles to breathe and blood throbs in his temple, one one One ONE. But still his exhilaration howls louder into ecstacy. Free.
His heartbeat stops.
He could die.
]]]]o]]]o]]]o]]]o]]] ooo-eee-iii-eee-ooo [[[o[[[o[[[o[[[o[[[
"UUUUUU-uuuunnnnnnnnaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHH !"
Sound? Sound? SOUND?!
The white above him was not white at all. It was full of lines and cracks and patterns criss-crossing its flat, dull surface. Dark hands and heads and bright, blazing lights further crowd that imperfect white plain. His body convulses. He still choked, but now on a tough, smooth tube, forced between his teeth, snaked down his throat.
Cool, hard pain lances his neck, his arm. The convulsions stop, his body falling back onto a firm padded covering that hisses and squeaks with the trembling motions that still remaim in his limbs. The sounds, the heads made words and he desperately reached for their meaning, denied to him for so long.
"Life support", "Breathing", "Blood pressure" the concepts tumbled into his brain, no longer frozen in white. The light refocused, brightened on him and he turned his head away. They were staring at him.
A new head hovered closer to him. Eyes like blue water under a blue sky ignited his memory, almost bled to nothing in a white void.
A keening sound of pure emotion forced its way out of this throat, around the tube.
He reached for the face, the beard, the hair.
The other heads grabbed him, making "No, no" noises, but their hands fell away from him and that was followed by thumping sounds. He wondered if the two things were connected.
Strands of brown chestnut now twined his fingers while Master touched his arms, gently touching the thin tubes coming out of them. Winding another loop of hair around one finger, he touched its silky smoothness to his lips and breathed in. It smelled washed and fresh, not a greasy, abused braid, a thin lifeline in an infinite white prison. His face was wet and that clean hair brushed his cheek. Drops fell on his forehead and he closed his eyes, blissfully welcoming that salty rain.
]]]]o]]]o]]]o]]]o]]] ooo-eee-iii-eee-ooo [[[o[[[o[[[o[[[o[[[
White, unblinking eyes stared at him.
Qui-Gon ignored them.
The nurses and doctors had taken away their tubes and machines. Jraye kept fearfully looking toward him, wary of another invisible blow from the Jedi that would hurl them all away against the wall again. His spectacles were cracked.
After they had all retreated, the Quazhruz Holy remained where he/she/it was, the guardian, the savior who had freed Obi-Wan.
The Quazhruz and all his/her/its kind were also insane.
They were one of several minor cults of Force-users on a few outer rim worlds, sects of individuals whose talents were too unremarkable to serve the Jedi, but still drove them to seek [i]something[/i]. Every few centuries, Jedi assemblies muttered words about doing something about these remnants, but nothing was ever done. Qui-Gon doubted that even the unnaturally prolonged ravaging of one Jedi Padawan would inspire any action.
And one deadly, intangible bubble of their workings had clung to his Padawan as they had blindly traversed some unmarked sacred ground on a mission whose purpose he could not recall.
Perhaps the doctors tests had been right. Obi-Wan had some defect, a hidden potential for madness that the Quazhruz energies clung to until they hatched into the monster that had swallowed him whole. Chance had brought them together.
Except that Qui-Gon knew that there was no chance in the Force. But whatever twisted meaning lay in the nightmare, he cared not to look for.
Stuporous with drugs from the doctors, Obi-Wan lay dozing, though his grip, of both hands, on his Master's arm still retained the strength of madness. Qui-Gon's free hand stroked his hair and shoulder, his fingers sensing that faint, long-awaited response, even through the haze of sedation.
Those strange featureless eyes watched every motion.
Qui-Gon had sensed nothing from this being when he/she/it arrived and spoke of imperfection in the Quazh, he/she/its word for the Force. He had not realized how terrible that 'nothing' was until the Holy sank into his/her/itself, chanting, blue-draped arms outstretched over his insensate apprentice.
He sensed 'nothing' but impenetrable walls around an innocent mind, a monstrous 'nothing' that he realized too late that the Quazhruz prized and cultivated. He had never imagined any being turning, and turning and turning the Force inward into a tight unbreachable 'nothing' on the outside, madness on the inside. And unable to penetrate the Holy's barrier with either mind or body or Force, he witnessed one scarred and tattooed hand slamming down on Obi-Wan's chest. His body, so carefully tended for so long by his Master, writhed and convulsed before falling back down on the bedding.
Apparently whatever perfect little shell of the Force that had trapped Obi-Wan, that the Quazhruz called heaven, could only be pierced by ritual sacrifice. The walls collapsed where there was nothing living left behind to hold them up.
Seizing the Holy, he had thrust the being aside, but the doctors rushed in, displacing him with their machines and needles and clipped jargon. Even drowning in desperation, gasping for hope, Qui-Gon had known to stay back. It had only been a minute, less than a minute, when Obi-Wan's heart had been still, and Qui-Gon's hung over an abyss.
Now the Quazhruz Holy stared down at them, contemptuous of the lesser beings who had marred it's perverted purity. But he/she/it also stayed safely out of Qui-Gon's reach as well. And now that he comprehended the nature of 'nothing', he would not touch this creature with the Force.
"It is undone," the Holy spoke, voice flat, one last affirmation to it's chants of hellish perfection.
Truly undone, Qui-Gon thought. Obi-Wan lay emotionally stripped and raw, his broken mind free now to relive and regurgitate whatever torment he had endured for so many months. Qui-Gon knew he would salve the wounds as best he could, but the scars, if they ever healed, would always remain.
Qui-Gon sensed no darkness from the Quirdz Holy, only immaculate insanity. The crude binary division of the Force into easily defined light and dark meant nothing to this creature. He supposed that he looked equally abominable to he/she/it.
His fingertips touched the base of that long, thin braid and slid down along its whole length.
"No," he said sadly. "It was done too well."
]]]]o]]]o]]]o]]]o]]] The End [[[o[[[o[[[o[[[o[[[
Note: This story is also a sort of continuation of the story 'Cease' by LuvEwan (with permission) also posted on tf.n (4-Oct-2006), but alas, not here, unless it's under a different title.
Disclaimer: This story was first posted on tf.n 7-Jan-2007. All characters and the Star Wars universe belong to George and Lucasfilm; I am just playing in their sandbox.