Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars! And I definitely do NOT look like George Lucas!
A/N: I've been itching to write this for a LONG time. And here it is.
*
The hut was cold when Obi-Wan awoke. Shivering beneath her furs, she blinked at the dark ceiling before sitting up to swing her legs over the side and let her feet rest on the dirt floor. The hard packed earth beneath her feet was cool. She hurried to make the palate that she and the remains of her family slept on.
Her mother, her brother, and she were the only ones left of the Kenobi line.
Luckily, her mother was the village wise-woman and medicine guru; her brother a scout and warrior…She herself was the Student. It granted them the right to private quarter and less questioning with rations. Not that they took advantage of the second one.
She walked to the hearth that sat in the middle of the room and poked at the fire. Wishing with all of her might that it would grow, she was unsurprised to see it do so. Her mother said that Obi-Wan just had a way with things. Not even her mother could ask the Mother to do something and have it happen immediately.
It put Obi-Wan in a precarious position.
The village looked at her as if she was their savior. It worried the Kenobis. The question always hung in the balance of what Obi-Wan could…and could not do. In that lied great danger for the young woman.
Closing her eyes, she crossed her legs and sat before the fire on a comfortable rug. Today, in the stillness of the morning, would be a good time to meditate. Stopping her small shivering she briskly rubbed her calloused hands over her encompassing sleep clothes. She breathed deeply and began sinking into herself. Time ceased to matter as she felt the push and pull of Gaia's energy, the heartbeats of the hibernating snakes, the rush of the nearby river's water beneath the frozen top layer.
She was startled aware by the pain of the Mother as something sharp pierced her sensitive sleeping skin. Obi-Wan jumped to her feet and without care ran out of the hut.
Snow crunched crisply beneath her bare feet, cold air pierced her lungs with each intake, but still she ran. All she could feel was the sharp, screaming pain of the Mother echoing in her head. She felt it like a spear in her side.
She didn't hear the shouts of the villagers as they saw her frantic pass down the middle trail. She didn't see them pick up their weapons and follow after her.
She was heading for the Circle. The others knew that something had happened.
Drooping bare branches smacked at Obi-Wan's face as she cut through the forest. She could feel the surge of the Mother urging her on, and as snow fell on her from its high up home among the tops of the trees, Obi-Wan was almost frantic.
For the first time since the Fall, Obi-Wan felt fear creep into her chest and spread into her running limbs.
Something had happened, she knew. Something that would change her life irrevocably. She Knew.
Reaching the clearing, her lungs breathed deeply the cutting air as her eyes locked on the steaming crater in the middle of the large circle.
The villagers stopped behind her and her attention was brought to them when a heavy fur cloak was dropped onto her shoulders. She snapped her head up and saw her brother's slim face and dark hair. She relaxed and accepted the boots he offered her. She pulled them on without regard to the wetness of her feet. They instantly warmed her almost frozen appendages. She cupped her cold hands over her nose and mouth to keep in some of the hot air she was breathing out.
She noticed then that the wind had stopped.
A bad sign? She couldn't tell.
The villagers' weapons clinked as they shifted and Obi-Wan took a step forward from the line of trees. They followed her. The crunch of the snow was almost obscenely loud to Obi-Wan's ears. She stopped thirty feet from the crater and turned to look for her mother. Surely she would know what to do.
Jay-Ree Kenobi was behind her, her face wearing a thoughtful frown. They all peered to the crater as a buzzing whirl filled their ears.
What happened next would change Obi-Wan's life…forever.
.
His name was Qui-Gon Jinn. And he was taller than her mother, quiet an impressive feet. Obi-Wan had to practically crane her neck to meet the strange man's face.
He was a Jedi, a peacekeeper for the Galaxy, he had said. He was the focus of everyone's attention. An alien.
With a broken ship and no way to contact his people.
Wow.
Taken to the village, he and Jay-Ree negotiated a deal. The remains of their metal to fix his ship in return for-
Something.
No one knew what it was, not even Obi-Wan. Kai-Al couldn't even get it out of their mother, and Obi-Wan's brother could be very persuasive when he wanted to be.
Jay-Ree kept her mouth closed and eventually, people stopped asking.
But no one stopped wondering.
Qui-Gon became a part of village life. For the rest of winter he lived with the Kenobis. When the snow finally began to melt, he began to work on his ship. He used his light sword to heat and maneuver the metal they had given him into fixing his craft. The young children often went to watch him work.
Obi-Wan continued to learn, study, and be a student to her mother.
Life went on.
Until the horrible day that Kai-Al died.
A hunting accident, they said. Tragic. Obi-Wan had felt his death as if it were her own.
Despite their enormous age differences, Kai-Al and Obi-Wan had been close since before the Fall. His death hit her as hard as it hit their mother. They mourned, and buried him beneath his favorite tree, sword over his chest.
Summer passed, as did fall, and soon winter was at them again.
Qui-Gon's ship was almost fixed.
He still ended up being stuck there on Gaia through winter again.
And Obi-Wan didn't really know the man, for all that she saw of him. He was always looking at her strangely, and asking her odd questions about her beliefs. He didn't talk about his Jedi life, or his friends. But then again; he was a grown man and Obi-Wan was a soon to be eighteen year old. She understood his hesitance…kinda.
She missed her brother. But she had moved on. Mostly at night, when it was cold and all she had for heat was her mother did she think about him.
About his teasing of her, about him teaching her how to punch, how to take down a grown man twice her size, how to clean a dead animal, how to make a weapon out of anything, how to fight.
But other than that…she didn't think about him. Or maybe she just tried not to; she didn't really care to distinguish.
And soon enough, her mind was on other things. Like her mother. Like Jay-Ree taking her aside and into their hut, one cool spring night. Of helping light the hearth fire and then sit, worry over taking her.
Qui-Gon was no where to be seen.
Obi-Wan should have known to be suspicious.
.
"Obi-Wan…my gift, my child. You will go with him, learn from him, and you will live. He will be your master, and you his student. Learn well, my girl, for I see that you shall need it." She said softly, only for her daughter to hear. Her baby…her Obi-Wan. Jay-Ree would do this, for her. And as she took her daughters face into her rough, dyed hands, she knew that there was never any choice to their parting.
"They will kill you." Obi-Wan whispered back. She felt the tears begin to well as she leaned into her mother's comforting hold. Her own hands reached and touched her mother's weathered, beautiful face. The worry for her mother's life was forefront in her mourning mind.
The villagers would never have agreed to loosing Obi-Wan. Not ever. And Obi-Wan knew that her mother would die for her choice of bargains.
"And I am willing to pay such a price." She said back. She felt herself begin to cry as she looked into her baby's watery, anguished blues. Her only child left alive. Her son, Kai-Al would have wanted her to live.
"For me." Obi-Wan croaked out, anger warring with sadness. The sadness won, and she longed to weep without restraint.
"You are the only one who we could hope would survive." Jay-Ree knew this. Knew it like her daughter often Knew. Kai-Al, gone though he was, was included in the statement.
"Gaia is fading." It was not a question. Obi-Wan had been feeling it since right after the Fall of humanity. She knew that the Mother was dieing…and she could do nothing. The heat from her anger and from the fire soaked into her body, and she wanted to rage. It was…so unfair.
"New life will come." Jay-Ree said with solemn certainty. Her fingers found the shinning silver of Obi-Wan's earrings, and she brushed them gently, listening to them chime together in the silence of the hut. Their home.
"You will be born again." Obi-Wan said, with the same quiet certainty that her mother had just held. The Mother would not allow such a pure, good soul as that of her mother's to go to waster. Yes, Jay-Ree Kenobi would live again…and Obi-Wan would likely never see it. Just like she would never see Kai-Al born again.
"I shall. And even then I shall know of you in my heart." She would know Obi-Wan, her other, younger half. Her daughter for always. She knew that they would meet again…she hoped with all of her being that it would be so. But the Mother worked in mysterious ways, sometimes, and Jay-Ree found it hard to be sure.
"I don't want to go." Obi-Wan was really crying now. Hot tears falling down her face to be caught in her mother's hand and her fast, choked breathing were the only thing to show her sorrow.
"You do not have a choice, my daughter. This…is the last gift I can give you." Jay-Ree's voice hardened. She would not see her daughter wasted.
"Mother…I will go, and I will live…for you and for my people… And someday, I hope that I shall live for me too." Obi-Wan was without hesitation in telling her mother the truth. She sniffed loudly.
'Please, ask no more of me.' Her blue eyes begged so loudly. Jay-Ree smiled, even as her tears began to fall.
"We will always be beside you, Obi, always watching. You will carry us on. You shouldn't have to bear this burden, and I weep for having to give it to you." Jay-Ree said.
"I accept." Obi-Wan spoke, choking on her words as she bowed in her mother's hold; wilting from the pain of it all.
"Our people shall forever live then, in the starry black. With you, Obi-Wan. Daughter, student, friend, woman in your right…and unforgettable to my Self." Jay-Ree finished the ritual with the naming. She felt her daughter's pain, and knew that she would forever be guilty. She had done that to her. She had hurt her flesh and blood. She would pay for it. She only hoped that Obi-Wan would forgive her. That Kai-Al would forgive her.
"With you, mother. Teacher, friend, woman, unforgettable to my Self." Obi-Wan said back, completing her part. Her eyes still held her mothers, as they had since Jay-Ree had sat her down beside the hearth with her.
'I will never forget you.' Obi-Wan's eyes spoke again.
'I never asked you to.' Jay-Ree's said back.
Letting go, Jay-Ree quickly stood and left Obi-Wan where she sat. With precision and deftness born from years of packing, she readied Obi-Wan's bag. It was plain canvas, with only one change of clothing. In it she placed her own book of knowledge along with Obi-Wan's cards and stones. The only picture of them, from before the Fall, was placed carefully between the worn pages of all of Jay-Ree's, and Kai-Al's, knowing. Obi-Wan would learn from the book, and from the good man: Qui-Gon Jinn. Closing the bag, she turned to find her daughter staring at her, grim faced and pale.
Jay-Ree shook her head when Obi-Wan opened her mouth to speak, and gestured to her daughter's cloak with a hand. Obi-Wan paled even further as realization washed over her.
She would be leaving this very night.
At her mother's stern look, she pulled on her boots and cloak. Her mother, doing the same, picked up the canvas bag and then pushed her daughter through the crawl space in the back of the hut. No one could see them leave. It would mean sure death for the both of them.
Once outside, the chilly spring night enveloped them. Darkness pressed around them as they hurried to the Circle. Jay-Ree urged her daughter before her, checking behind her shoulder at every stick breaking in the silence of the nighttime woods.
It took them no time at all to reach their destination.
There was no moon and Obi-Wan squinted her sore eyes to see the shadow of a tall man beside the crater. It was Qui-Gon. He was back in his Jedi robes and was leaning on the side of his ship. Obi-Wan felt the rage grow again behind her shock created shield. She now knew why he had looked at her like he had. Like he was testing her with every word she spoke. He wasn't a pedophile; he was going to be her Master in return for them fixing his ship. She clenched her teeth as they hurried over to him, fighting the urge to beat him into the ground.
How dare h- she stopped her thoughts short. He wasn't the one sending her away from her home, from her mother. Her mother was. And Obi-Wan couldn't hate her; couldn't get mad at her. She understood. If she had been Jay-Ree, she would have done the same for her only remaining child. She knew it.
When they got to the man, he only nodded to them. They had to stay silent. Jay-Ree handed her daughter her bag and pushed back the hood of her cloak. In the dark, neither of them could see very clearly, but still they tried. They tried to memorize each other's face and keep it in their mind.
Fast fingers undid the buckled bands that decorated Jay-Ree's right arm. She grabbed her daughter's arm, and redid the bands. She never hesitated in pulling off her necklace and fastening it to her daughter as well. They were Obi-Wan's by birth right and Jay Ree would have no use for them now.
She smiled at what she could see of her daughter. So beautiful, so, so young. She was stunning with the bands of their ancestors decorating her arm, the faces of the Kenobi family carved in stone around her neck. Stunning, Jay-Ree thought. Just like she herself had been when she had received them.
Brushing back her daughter's fiery hair with a shaking hand, she pressed a kiss to Obi-Wan's forehead.
Obi-Wan had stood shock still as her mother adorned her but now she grasped her mother in a breath taking hug. She couldn't cry, but she held her mother with all of her strength. It would be the last time.
They would never say goodbye. For them…they knew that they would meet again. Gaia would make it so.
And as Qui-Gon helped her into the second seat of his ship, buckling her in and speaking not a word, Obi-Wan didn't look back. Not until the ship started and was rising in the air did she look out the clear covering down to her mother.
The picture of Jay-Ree, dark hair flying in the wind, brown eyes illuminated by the light of the engines, and a smile so wide and sad that it looked like it would kill her would forever remain in Obi-Wan's mind.
She pressed a trembling hand to the glass, and blew her mother a kiss farewell.
She would never know if it was returned or not, because with a burst of light, they were gone.
.
Jay-Ree had barely a chance to breath after Qui-Gon and her Obi-Wan had disappeared before the villagers were upon her.
She turned to face the weapons and torches with a smile still on her face.
She didn't really know what had happened, but one of them had figured it out, and before she knew it, they were rushing her.
It all seemed to slow down as she looked at their fearful, enraged faces and unsheathed her dagger. In the dim, flame filled light, the metal glinted softly. Clasping it in both hands, she positioned it and shoved with everything she had.
It slid cleanly through her chest, between her ribs, and kissed her heart as it came through the other side. She fell to the ground, dead before the soil touched her knees.
Jay-Ree Kenobi died with a smile on her face and hope in her heart for the daughter she would always love.
Obi-Wan.