Lineage X

Chapter 10

Light and the space between light, where void brimmed with invisible radiance, the surfeit of star-stuff unseen by the eye, and so erroneously named "dark." Planets, systems, clusters of stars, the slow-procession of a galaxy's arm, milky soft luminance and drifting nebulae…

…drifting atoms, drifting creatures in a primordial sea, drifting clouds scudding upon some world's virgin skies, drifting… thoughts… a thought, a particular thought, a mind , a spirit so sharp and bright and –

"Focus!" Master Yoda's gravelly injunction jerked him back to the present moment, like a clown in some comedic act, tripping hilariously upon some loose floorboard.

Qui-Gon Jinn hissed in a pained breath and rubbed at one temple, casting an accusatory glance at the ancient Jedi.

"Wandering, your attention is. Stay with me, you must. Begin the meditation again, we will." The diminutive green master closed his eyes once more, ears drooping languidly beside his wrinkled skull.

"No, Master. Wait. I thought – I felt – "

Yoda's eyes popped open as he emitted a vexed and grumbling sigh. "Yes?"

The tall man composed himself, smoothed his fingers out upon his knees, inhaled deeply. "I felt Obi-Wan."

He waited for rebuke, or for the abrupt rescinding of the old troll's tenuous favor, but none came. "Hhmmph," the old one replied. "Hmmmm."

"Please, Master. With your permission." His breath was all but bated, awaiting the answer to his unspoken entreaty. Yoda appeared rapt in his private thoughts, head tilted to one side, a single ear perked as though listening.

"Very well," he agreed, at last. "Help you I will." A blunt digit was thrust up at him, cautionary. "Once."

Qui-Gon bowed from the waist, where he sat, and then closed his own eyes, sinking back into the Force, coursing upon its waves in tandem with the Grand Master, two whaladons plunging deep beneath a measureless, boundless ocean.

And there- drifting, and then coalescing, bright and desperate, besieged, warped by pain and surrounding darkness: that same thought, that same spirit…

Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan. Hear me.

He would have assumed himself to be going insane, had he not known for certain that he was already irremediably so.

Still, that voice was so welcome and impossible, the syllables of his own name like sweetest music when issued in that tone, from that long-dead oracle, that he responded anyway, clutching at the meager pittance of comfort they offered.

"Master?"

But the dead do not speak- and Qui-Gon Jinn was quite incontrovertibly dead. Obi-Wan had felt his extinction in the Force.

And yet you feel me now.

"Master?… Master!"

And that was all, a miserly gift bestowed upon a starving pauper. But it was enough to precipitate thought, and that thought another, and another, an avalanche of clarity cascading down the slopes of his determination. Qui-Gon was dead. And he, Obi-Wan, had come here to die, to perish and so defeat the monster forever, protect all those whom it would in future slay, blot out its darkness from the universe forever - his last and consummating act, the only path of nobility or honor left to him.

He did not need to hide from the avengers; they wielded death, and death was his friend, his ally in this final battle.

Legs treacherously wobbling beneath him, the injured thigh refusing to bear weight, he clutched at a piece of scaffolding and hauled himself upright. Forward. Toward the arbiters of justice, toward the end. He grasped his 'sabers in shaking hands, stumbled a pace in the right direction, and came to a stunned halt, pain-shredded mind barely able to comprehend what he saw.

She ducked beneath a skewed slab of durasteel, her tunics glimmering pale in the gloom, her hair fretted with golden starlight, her eyes seeking his face.

"…Siri?"

He stumbled backward, coming up against the heavy support strut, withdrawing in horror. No, not Siri. Not her. Not now.

"Obi-Wan."

"….Force," he whimpered. Not Siri, not Siri, no no no. "Go away," he rasped. "Please. Go. Get away from me."

It was the wrong thing to say. Siri Tachi's delicate brows rose in challenge. "Who gave you the right to order me around, Kenobi?" A bold pace forward, closing the gap between them.

"No!" His voice broke. "Siri, no! I'll hurt you, I'll kill you – please, go! Go away! Leave now!" he accented the desperate plea in the only manner he could. Both 'saber blades shot from their hilts, thrumming hot and menacing in the still air.

The woman was insufferably obstinate. "You actually think you can take me, when you can barely even stand?" she scoffed, inching closer. "You really are an arrogant son of a vetch, aren't you?"

He grinned, shakily. Siri's image glossed liquid at the edges. Oh, Siri.

"Go away," he growled, heart pounding. "I'll kill you. I'm a monster."

She stepped inside his guard, vulnerable, exposed. He could cut her down in a blink at this distance. "No argument there," she growled back. "But I know you won't kill me."

"Siri.." He squirmed backward now. He had to do this, there was no choice, no other option. "Let me go."

She watched him warily. "Adi and Master Windu are just outside. If you go out there sabers blazing, if you attack them…" Siri looked away, then fixed him again with a burning gaze. "They'll kill you."

He swept his weapons up, without warning, forcing her to leap backward in retreat. He gathered his flagging strength. "Out of my way. I'm finishing this." There was no time to explain to her, to tell her all the things, any of the things that remained half-expressed, unconsummated between them. There was no time for apology. He mutely begged her to see it, to forgive him.

"What?" She blocked his exit, her own 'saber snapping into life, a higher pitch joining the chorus of his own blades. "NO. Over my dead body. You're not going out there to commit suicide unless you go through me."

Of all the star forsaken absurdities! Why did she feel a need to make a heroic gesture at this moment? "Blast it, Siri!" he hollered. "Out of my way!"

"No."

He grabbed the strut for support, dropping his shoto. Damn in all to the… "Siri! Please!"

She raised her weapon. "You want to die, you have to take me with you."

He clung to the cold metal of the pillar, limbs trembling. "Siri, no."

"Then surrender. It's kill me or surrender." She stepped warily closer, and closer, until they stood a mere arm's width apart, 'sabers growling to either side,

"I'm Lost," he choked out, pleading for her to understand, to see it.

"That's why I came to find you. I promised." She came closer still, the unsullied white of her tunics brushing against the blood-stained mess of his, red grime speckling the pure linen, her free hand reaching, slowly, cautiously, to encircle his sword-arm's wrist. He started at the touch of her fingers.

"Drop it," she whispered. "Ben'ke. Please."

An eternal second's pause, in which destiny hung in the balance, teetering between hope and despair.

His 'saber hilt clattered to the floor, its sapphire flame expiring. Siri's blade likewise disappeared.

"Siri… "

But she smothered further protestation in melting warmth, fingers tangled fiercely in his long hair, a muffled sound of approval conveying her delight in the sturdy hand-hold provided thereby.

The howling shadows withdrew in respect, guttering Light blended with angel-fire, rekindled, hope blossoming amid a ravaged garden. He drank deeply of her wine, as though tasting the gift for the first time, reverently savoring its bouquet, its softness, its promise. They sank down together, until he was slumped against the strut, Siri pressed close against him, the agony erupting in his thigh and chest smearing into joy, into melting surrender.

"Siri," he gasped when she let him breathe.

She held his face in both hands. "Ben'ke, sweet stupid gundark, you're so hurt… listen to me."

He was listening.

"I have to arrest you… we're taking you back to the Temple. I won't let them kill you."

He shook his head. So tired. "The Young… I promised…" he stuttered, hoarsely.

She stroked his cheek. "We found them. Cerasi and Nield and some children and a few others. All the survivors. We're evacuating them. You're done. It's finished."

He nodded. Gratitude and relief welled feebly within him, but he was too tired to wrap words about their mercuric inner forms. Siri's hands were fumbling with his. "What..?"

"Binders," she smirked, clipping the restraints fast in place. He could sense a thrill of amusement in her voice, but he was too tired to decipher its meaning. She drew closer again, breath cascading over his face. "Surrender?"

He leaned in, slowly. "Never." It took a long time to convey every subtle nuance of that word. Time spun out into intoxicating aeons, breathless minutes.

They parted again, but not far. Siri gently pushed damp hair off his forehead, smoothed it back, rubbed a thumb over the groove between his brows, as though attempting to eradicate the sharp furrow of pain carved there. "We're going home now."

Dread lanced through his belly and chest. The Temple, the Council….

"Shh, shh," Siri soothed. She fished something out of a belt pouch, fiddled with it, then pressed a soft patch of something against his neck, over the carotid artery. "I'm sorry… they insisted."

"What is that?" He couldn't muster the strength to raise his bound hands to investigate

Siri carded fingers through his hair. "I don't know… Ben To gave it to me… I think you're going to be out cold for a very long time."

He nodded. He was dangerous. Very dangerous. A murderous servant of Darkness, in point of fact. But he was so tired, so ludicrously worn out, that even this obscene fact was safely distanced to abstraction. "Oh," he replied, helplessly.

"Come here," Siri commanded.

He slumped into her arms, into sweet homecoming, into unconditional surrender, as the blunt hammer of whatever drug was in the med-patch descended upon his senses and thrust him hard over the edge, into a merciful oblivion.

It was a solemn procession that wended its way through the derelict city and out its unhinged gates toward the two Jedi ships just beyond. Adi Gallia and her padawan led the way, weapons drawn and ready, lest their egress be blocked by the last pitiable and decaying remnants of the Fallen. Behind them, carrying their own battered and exhausted children, trudged the Young – Cerasi and Nield and a handful of staunch friends, their ideals crushed into the bloody dust of their native planet, their dreams reduced to blackened seeds which must seek new soil or wither forever. Last in the slow convoy strode Mace Windu, dark face composed in stern lines, his tall figure simmering with banked power. He bore the limp and heavy burden of the Order's neglect in his arms: Obi-Wan, unconscious, badly injured, stained with Darkness, wrapped in the Korun's own thick cloak, a bitter prize of war carried back to the Temple to face judgment.

They divided their numbers into the two vessels in mournful silence, each grieving a separate loss or nursing a disparate fear, the younglings whimpering in anxiety as they boarded the unfamiliar starships, the Young casting final parting glances at their ruined homeworld, the Jedi steeling themselves for the trials yet to come.

Melida-Daan shrank to pallid insignificance beneath them as they rose, its scarred and war-pocked surface fading to a grim cautionary tale, a stark memorial to the Republic's folly and the madness of a fallen luminary, its last citizenry still wandering aimlessly among its blasted halls until time and decay at last claimed them too, and reduced all to uniform dust.

The stars circled in their paths, the galaxy spun its endless dance, and the two sojourning points of light disappeared into the limbo of hyperspace.

If a third ship followed swiftly after, en route to some distant rendezvous known only to the illuminati of some dark, forgotten sect, they remained none the wiser.

END PART I