A Long Time Ago In a Galaxy Far, Far Away…

Force Shadow

I

Faces.

Voices.

Images.

Feelings and sounds.

They swirl and mingle, fuse and dissolve.

They all become light and he plummets toward it.

The light writhes and flounders like a restless beast, devouring infinity in its dazzling tentacles.

At first he is afraid, for he knows that within the light are his birth, his death, the future, the past, a swirling maelstrom of time and space beyond his comprehension.

He feels his heart racing, though he knows he is beyond such physical trappings as a circulatory system. Fear floods his being. But fear is a product of organs, glands and hormones, and in his present state his fear is as redundant as the skin, flesh and bone he has left behind.

[-there is no emotion, there is peace]

He tries to calm himself, teaches himself to love the light that he is hurtling towards.

As he reaches it's writhing, blinding mass he feels his love reciprocated in its dazzling fallout.

The love intensifies with proximity as he falls further toward its nucleus.

Here is so much love, so much knowledge, so much fact. He knows that to contain it would lead only to madness and death.

[-there is no death, there is the force]

Instead he gives himself to it slowly, in measured increments. Lets it flow through his loosely bound consciousness.

Like a raft weathering a mighty storm he lets it toss him about, plunging him into waters of life and death.

Some old and familiar, some new and unsettling.

Images, sounds and sensations flicker through his being, rippling and shimmering as though seen through water.

He sees himself aged fourteen, dutifully polishing an azure blue Ilum crystal under the watchful eye of his benevolent master.

"The crystal is the heart of the blade-"

The image shimmers, flickers, fades

He is now four years old, his knees hurt as he is unaccustomed to kneeling. A familiar squat, green form hobbles past him. When it speaks its voice is croaky and frail yet booming with hidden power. He raises his eyes to it. At its core shines an aura of brilliant white light. Warmth and love radiate from its very being.

"Surrender your mind to The Force, you must!"

He feels himself yanked out of his body and irresistibly pulled into the white light.

Now, as though falling through a canyon of white fire he sees himself dangling over a cavernous pit. Above him a man, a heretic-

[at last we will have revenge]

-sneers down with unspeakable malice, a soul tortured by infinite hatred. Beneath the aggressor's flesh he sees a core suffocated by the roiling black smog of hatred, pierced every now and then by lances of scarlet light.

As he sees his younger self vault to the lip of the pit he falls down into its inky black depths, the shadows rolling into black smoke. As he falls through the smoke he feels it become thicker, and denser until he is seeping through it like rain through soil.

The black smoke singes and chokes his spirit, offends his very being. While his first instinct is to react with disdain and hatred, there is an infinite sadness within its depths.

At the bottom of the pit, a tiny pale smudge expands, flickers and takes shape. Forms a human head

Illuminated by a sparse, flickering light the disembodied face of a once great man fills his vision. Piercing, dark eyes filled with a dozen lifetime's worth of pain and regret, stare at him imploringly.

"Forgive me."

The old man's voice is rich and deep and, yet pathetic.

And now he is falling away from the head and the voice and the sadness. He tries to form his thoughts into words.

"I…"

The effort is excruciating. It is an effort that the body cannot know and few minds can achieve.

"I forgive you Dooku. The Force forgives you."

And the offending smoke somehow recedes. As if a sigh of relief breathed straight from the soul has caused it to dissipate.

Now he is falling and rising at the same time. If he had a body the sensation would turn his stomach.

He feels his essence lurch, carried on a tide of infinite power. The light creeps in at the periphery of his vision, streaks, like sunshine lancing into his being. It is the most exquisitely joyous and painful feeling imaginable.

He feels the light propel him with unimaginable speed into flesh, into the world of the material.

He fills his own body in a place and time unfamiliar to him. He stares past the sapphire beam of his weapon at a huge, dark and abominable foe.

Darth Vader towers over him. The hideously scarred face of his protégé and friend forever masked by a new face of jet black plasteel. The dark lord lurches, his ruby blade searing a smouldering gash into the wall behind him.

Back in the world of the flesh, his body feels leaden and unfamiliar to him, his muscles and joints are stiff and he barely manages to duck under a shower of sparks. A voice fills him with a surety and a confidence that feel unfamiliar to him.

"You can't win Darth,"

He spits out the Sith title like an insult,

"If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

He spreads his feet, body poised, saber held forward in the classical Shii Cho style. He is aware of his movements but also of the fact that he is not controlling them. At least, not THIS version of him.

The half mechanical Sith Lord strikes, the shock of the deflected blow running through his blade, along his arms and through his body.

With absolute serenity he knows that he is going to die and with this realisation the light consumes him again.

As it sucks him into its billowing white folds the pain is stronger and more intense than before. He knows that its power will soon consume him and there is work still to be done in the world of the flesh.

He pulls, straining to resist, a tiny fish swimming against the mightiest of tides. He feels its infinite power pulling him in each and every direction, threatening to shatter his consciousness and drag him into its all encompassing mass.

He must escape.

He must.


Obi Wan Kenobi's eyes snapped open. He was kneeling once again on the hard, mud floor of his home on Tattoine. He was breathing heavily, his robes were soaking with sweat. It plastered his hair and beard to his face.

He waited for the sense of weakness and disorientation to pass. It seemed to take longer every time.

Wearily he rose, his knee joints clicking in protest at the effort. His legs and hips felt stiff, the onset of arthritis irrevocably taking its toll on his body.

He trod to the bathroom of his humble dwelling and drew some water, filling the clay sink embedded in the wall.

After splashing his face he mused at the age and battle ravaged face that stared up at him. Approaching sixty in years there remained an intensity in his grey blue eyes that was both scholarly and combatant. His hair that had once been sandy in colour was now a steely grey, streaked with silver, his beard almost pure white. It was an old face but it was also full of the character that younger faces tended to lack. He reached for a rough brown cloth and dabbed himself dry.

On tired feet he padded to his favourite chair. He would read a holotab for a while and then get something to eat before making his usual, covert visit to the Lars homestead.

He felt again the creak of his aging joints as he settled into his seat. A dull ache growled in his thigh from his almost forgotten wound on Geonosis. He winced at the memory of the white hot jab of Count Dooku's lightsaber.

From a stack of holotabs on a nearby side table he selected a highly illegal tome of collected Jedi philosophies that he had acquired some years ago on the black market. Indeed, he thought as he ran his hands over its smooth surface, thumbing the activation button, his mud hut was filled with contraband. Jedi lore and philosophy, musings of the great political and historical minds of the old republic, holocrons of saber techniques, even a few modest examples of Old Republic art were unabashedly strewn about his dwelling. Fortunately Tattoine seemed as beneath the notice of the Empire as it had been of the Republic.

"Or perhaps Lord Vader deliberately shies away from his childhood home." He mused.

His thoughts stirred something dark and strange inside him and he no longer felt comfortable seated. Instead he made his way over to the large, wooden chest that occupied the greater part of his utility room. He removed a familiar plasteel cylinder.

Anakin's saber.

In its engineering every bit as unorthodox and reckless as its owner. The energisers had been customised to allow for a higher energy output than was strictly advisable. This allowed for a slightly longer and fuller beam but often caused the onboard microprocessor to short out. Every few days he would ceremoniously dismantle it, polish the lenses and the crystal, and carry out the repairs that time and inactivity made necessary for such a weapon.

Why did you keep it?

A voice from the past. Speaking to him through the veil of death.

"Qui Gon."

He turned and saw the pale, spectral form of his old master swathed in an aura of blue light. He could not help but smile upon seeing his old friend's face.

"I see you more clearly every day, it seems."

Indeed. You are improving in your meditations, my friend. This afternoon was a particularly impressive effort.

Obi Wan nodded and managed a tight smile.

"It certainly took its toll on me physically. To tell the truth I remember very little."

He stared down at the metal cylinder in his hand.

"A shadow. Something… ominous."

From out of the past two baleful eyes stared up at him through a wreath of fire. Dragging itself up a hill of soot and ash, driven by hatred and rage. Cracked lips snarled at him…

"I hate you. Those were his last words to me."

Tears welled in his eyes. The years had not stripped the memory of its pain.

Those were Darth Vader's last words to you. You will commune with Anakin Skywalker yet, my dear Obi Wan.

"Yes." Psychologically he had tried to distance the persona of Darth Vader from the young man who had been his apprentice but it was not easy. Anakin's personality was composed of so many shades between the dark and the light.

"As far as I am concerned, Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Anakin." Obi Wan said decisively.

The ghostly Jedi nodded sagely.

And that is why you kept Anakin's weapon? As though there were a part of his essence trapped within the plasteel and circuitry?

Obi Wan ran a finger through his beard as he considered this. His mind drifted back to the aftermath of the desperate battle on Mustafar.

He remembered the strange emotional distance with which he retrieved his fallen opponent's weapon from the scorched, ashen ground. He remembered how numb his hand felt to the burning of the metal cylinder in his hand. It was with uncharacteristic mercilessness that he strode back to his ship. It was not until some time later that he found himself able to weep for the man he left for dead on that awful planet.

"At the time. I don't know why, but… It… It felt like the right thing to do." Obi Wan murmured gravely. He hung his head, lost in the sadness of the memory.

Qui Gon strode over and put an ethereal hand on his old friend's shoulder. He did not feel the physical contact, of course, but Obi Wan's lip curled into a half smile at the sentiment.

"I shall give it to Luke, when he is old enough."

He stared intently at the silver hilt of the saber, his thumb rested lightly on the activator switch.

He nodded, self assuredly.

"Yes. I think that Anakin would have wanted that."

Obi Wan looked up to discover that he was alone. The small mud hut seemed cavernous and empty for want of his dead master's presence.

He took two paces forward and activated Anakin's lightsaber. The warrior within him, the man who was once a general in the Clone Wars, delighted secretly in the snap-hiss of the blade's activation. It adored the power that hummed within its glowing blade. He knew there was vanity in such thoughts, and an aggressive pride that was almost dangerous. He also knew that he trusted in his Jedi training to keep these feelings in check.

He cut a few arcs, experimentally in the air. Parrying and countering the blows of an imaginary enemy. His movements were slower than they used to be, his techniques too long out of practice but the aging Jedi's swordsmanship was still impressive in its technical mastery. He remembered a teenaged Anakin's gentle chidings in one of their regular sparring sessions.

"You do everything far too much by the book, Master." His roguish smile illuminated by the blade of his saber.

"And if that were such a bad thing, then there would be no book, my very young apprentice." The older man countered.

Anakin was a showboat. He leapt and twirled unnecessarily. His defence wide open in cocky defiance. He trusted far too readily on his affinity with the force rather than on time honoured martial techniques honed and perfected over generations.

That had been his ultimate downfall in their last battle.

Obi Wan grimaced at the memory and the blade of Anakin's saber flickered slightly with an angry buzz, as if it were also upset by the painful reminiscence. Holding the saber out at a safe distance Obi Wan peered intently at the blade. A few sparks spat angrily from the hilt and the humming blade seemed to sizzle erratically.

The energisers needed replacing.

The ones Watto had sold him had not been correctly calibrated. He would go to the market and get replacements before visiting Lars' moisture farm.

With a sigh he shut down the saber. Again his eyes appraised the weapon, the innocuous looking hilt bearing the scuffs and scratches of untold glorious and terrible battles.

With a grin he flipped it over it in his hand;

"Sentimental old fool."

And tossed the lightsaber back into the trunk.