Lineage IX

Chapter 11

Meditation was impossible.

How could one hope to derive insight, or even comfort, from the Force that was so brutally expurgated from this repulsive place? Measured breathing and calming exercises had some effect – at first. But the prolonged deprivation of… life itself started to take an implacable toll.

Enclosed in cold stone, he had no sense of time, and very little of space. Isolated from the fabric of being that penetrated and bound the world together, he could feel not one of the other Jedi he knew rationally must still be inhabiting the Temple's upper reaches. He shone like a frantic young star, solitary in a boundless void.

And it was torment.

There is no ignorance. There is no fear. There is no death. There is only the Force. Where the Light kindles, there dwells hope.

He did at least have his 'sabers. He laid the weapons across his knees, centering on the twin crystals embedded in their painstakingly crafted hilts. They seemed to faintly chime for him – but even this familiar resonance was muffled, like a sound heard underwater or through a thick occulting veil. Anxiety crept in a black miasma at the borders of his senses, filling in the missing places in the world's tapestry with the wild phantasms of overwrought nerves.

Firebeetles crawled in the shadows… until he looked directly at the place.

Blood seeped down the dank walls… until he turned, sharply, and saw nothing.

Zan Arbor's medical droid hovered just outside his peripheral vision… until, with a half-strangled snarl, he whirled about, 'sabers gripped in his shaking hands, to discover that the cell was empty of any presence but his own.

Release, release…. But there was no means of doing this. He was on his own here, shackled within the limits of his all too mortal and vulnerable flesh, stripped naked of his soul's very marrow. Reduced to such pitiable straits, not trusting his overactive imagination, knowing that sleep would never claim him here in this realm of blank delusion, he fell back upon his native defense against every hardship.

Brooding unrepentantly upon all that had transpired, he retreated from harrowing circumstance into the more familiar realm of self-dissection and analytical condemnation. There was a strange comfort in rediscovering the time worn ruts of guilt and insecurity, the childhood tracks overgrown by better habits, abandoned to oblivion as a gentle hand had firmly guided him along more salutary paths.

But they were still there, he now discovered, beneath the obscuring layers of discipline and will. And they seemed to welcome the melancholic tread of his thoughts.

After all, who was he deceiving but himself? Devoid of the Force, he was nothing – not even a man except in name. A normal child might by now have grown into his place in society and intellectuality – but he? He had devoted his every waking moment since infancy to the cultivation of something extraneous to his basic nature, to the attainment of a goal so far above human striving that failure was inevitable, that there was always "much still to learn." His accomplishments had all been in this ideal realm, this fragile architecture of Jedi virtues, while his personal self remained… stunted.

Needy. Grasping. Puling and whining for comfort like an infant - for Qui-Gon, for Tahl, for Siri, for all that they represented. Perhaps even for the connections severed on his behalf so long ago before he could consciously remember. What was that, if not greed and immaturity? He called his desire for Siri love—but what if it was nothing more than the pathetic stirrings of his ego? Of his animal, emotional, untutored self?

And look at you now, another part of his mind joined in. Consumed by thoughts of Siri – of the charming object of your affection - and thereby incapable of touching the Force. Oh, it was easy to blame that on the thanatosine… but appearances could be deceiving. Perhaps this was a test, and he would be released later only to discover that a Jedi pure of heart, unsullied by base impulse, would not feel the effects of such imprisonment, that the walls of this place were but a mirror of his inward state, a polished glass in which he might behold the mutilated caricature of his destiny, the wreck he had made of the Force's initial bold strokes, like good stone ruined by a poor sculptor.

And abandoned even by the one that had sworn to see the work brought to conclusion. He had consoled himself, a year ago, with the notion that it had been his own choice to stay – but focus determines reality, and surely the excruciating crossroads would never have been reached had his focus been more perfect, less subject to frailty and doubt? He deserved to be formally repudiated before the Council; Qui-Gon's gentler means of separating from him was a mercy offered to a pathetic life form, one that the Jedi master knew would break in the face of a harsher dismissal. The illusion of choice softened the blow – but now, seeing through the ruse, he allowed the full shame and sorrow of rejection to overwhelm him.

After all, he no longer had the Force to buttress the crumbling edifice of his devotion.

Even as a tiny indefatigable part of him cried out that this was all untrue, that he must keep his face toward the Light – the eclipsed and extinguished Light – he bent forward and laid his forehead against the unforgiving stone, and poured out his festering heart in silence.

When the fatigue inducing double-shift in the ship's galley dragged to its anticlimactic end, Qui-Gon collapsed across the bunk assigned him in the crewmen's quarters – one, he was assured by a helpful shipmate, the idiot Kreebo had never really much employed, since had spent the greater part of his spare time drunk as a depressed Wookiee in various dim corners of the vessel.

Praying to the Force that the stained blankets and mattress coverings were not infested with bedmites, the Jedi master stretched out and closed his eyes, reaching into the universal currents for peace and restorative sleep.

Instead, he dreamed.

He discovered the boy curled on the refresher floor, in the aftermath of a sick spell. The Force was disturbed, unsteady, a nauseating panoply of shadow and light.

"I'm Dark."

He slid down the wall and sat on the floor himself. "Why do you think that?"

"I'm to kill Syfo-Dyas. I will be his death. I am his death. I am death."

Qui Gon centered himself in the Light, anchored them both in its warmth, dispelled some of the ravenous night gathering in the corners and edges of the small room. "I know you see things that way. But I think, in this case, you should admit to error. Master Tahl would never believe such things of you."

"She doesn't know me. I crave vengeance. I'm no better than Xanatos. I'm going to Turn."

The Jedi master frowned over the conundrum huddled beside him. Light danced over the boy fondly, full of promise and hidden purpose. "Is that what you truly want?"

"No! But everything I've done has led to pain. I tried to learn, Master, I did! I wanted to be a peacekeeper, a Jedi … but it's all ended up going wrong. I don't understand."

That was a good sign, though. "Then I want you to meditate on this: what has been lacking in all your choices thus far? I think perhaps that when you discover that missing piece your path will not seem so shadowed anymore."

"My path leads straight into shadow," the twelve year old boy said, in a voice far too deep and weary for his years. He huddled against Qui-Gon then, hands buried in his robe, face hidden in the folds of his tunics, shoulders quivering as he succumbed to desolating grief.

"Don't Turn," he begged his apprentice, his future apprentice, his former apprentice. "Obi-Wan! Don't –"

He jolted awake, to find himself soaked by cold water.

"Shut up, " his irritated assailant barked, slamming the empty canteen down upon the decks. "Keep it to yerself."

"My apologies."

He lay rigidly awake after that,seeking a connection that seemed to unravel into the cacophony of grunting snores and creaking hammocks about him, and fade into an irredeemable distance.

Dooku discovered the padawan curled on the cell floor in the aftermath of a sick spell. There was no Force here – but the tang of vomit in the air bespoke a disturbed and unsteady state of mind, one that oscillated nauseatingly between light and shadow but found no rest.

Ignoring the mess, he dropped to one knee and nudged his apprentice's shoulders. The lesson needed to be taught… but there was no call to be uncivilized.

"Come now," he ordered. "I think that will be enough."

Kenobi dimly registered his presence and clambered to his feet, skin unnaturally pale against his dark tunic, pupils dilated slightly. He was shaking as with fever. "Master."

The Sentinel pursed his lips, rightly interpreting the younger man's obvious devastation as symptomatic of a deep, vital and unshakable connection to the Force. To deprive a Jedi of his birthright was to slowly kill him – or more rapidly drive him over the brink of insanity. Prisoners here had been reported to dwindle and fade at an alarming rate. "I hope the point has been sufficiently demonstrated," Dooku said. "This is what passion means for a Jedi. You would not wish this upon your lovely friend either, would you?"

At the very suggestion of subjecting Padawan Tachi to the same conditions, a flare of protective fury welled up in the padawan's eyes. His posture straightened into defiance. "Siri has done nothing to deserve –"

"I did not issue condemnation, merely a warning. I have noticed," the silver haired man added, "That you are altogether a faster learner when it is others' well being that is at stake. I merely invite you to consider the repercussions for both parties involved."

He was regarded with wary intelligence, a patient and supple caution, one worthy of a Makashi master duelist. The young Jedi's brows rose, sarcastically. "I am well acquainted with the difference between an ultimatum and an invitation."

Without the Force, the boy was also far less adept at shielding his vulnerabilities. He allowed a cold smile to grace his lips. "Then I invite you to curb your impudent tongue, Padawan."

But it was no use. "I thought this was about curbing something entirely different?" Kenobi lashed out, attempting to bridge the dizzying gap of nothing, to close the abyss so unnaturally gaping between one mind and the next, even at the cost of hostility.

"Your bellicosity invites a proportionate response," the Sentinel warned, amazed that his protégé still had the spirit left to rebel.

Now the insolent varlet folded his arms across his chest, sanguine and disdainful at once. "If you struggle with temptation, Master, perhaps you should stamp it out or douse the fire elsewhere – but do not pollute the halls of this Temple with such base passion."

Dooku's grey eyes narrowed, as one silver brow crept upward in a sharp line of disapproval. "Hm," he softly replied. "Since you have manifestly forgotten your proper place, perhaps it would be best if you remained in this one a while longer."

That had the young man's attention. The Sentinel circled about until he stood between his apprentice and the door. Without the Force, shut within this hellish box, the physical difference between them shrank to inconsequence. They were both slender, compact and wiry, lethally fast and well-trained. Kenobi was also fifty years younger.

But discipline held. Dooku gazed into furious blue pools for a long moment before stepping backward and shutting the door behind him with a grim expression. There were some lines which must be held at all cost; he would make it up to the boy later, when right order had been established. To concede, to succumb to sentiment, would only do further harm in the long run.

And Dooku was very much inclined to take the long view.

"Cheewaga! You can't go around cutting people's hands off on board my ship!" the Captain roared, rage causing him to rise off his chair like an unmoored parade balloon.

"Perhaps not," the tall man reasonably demurred, "But I also prefer not to have my throat slit."

The Toydarian sent a dark projectile hurtling into his anti-grav spittoon mounted on the opposite bulkhead. "One more altercation like that and I maroon you without pay on Uegga, got it?"

"You aren't paying me anyway," the Jedi master pointed out.

"Glad we're clear on that!" the captain barked. "Now get lost!"

Thus dismissed, the tall man wandered back to the galley, where the unfortunate Jallu had been replaced by a derelict spacer, a tattered and worn figure lackadaisically shelling mandrangea beans. Briefly Qui-Gon wondered why the freighter did not employ droid cookstaff for such menial tasks; even in the Jedi Temple, where the rule of simplicity was implemented so far as expedience allowed, droids performed a large portion of such repetitive and grinding tasks. The remainder of the work was, naturally, reserved for initiates and padawans in need of a lesson in humility.

As he sat down to join his new colleague, he again had that unsettling feeling that the Living Force was laughing at his expense.

"Very amusing," he grumbled.

"Hey." The spacer beside him initiated conversation by jostling his elbow. "You ever been out to Uegga before?"

Qui-Gon ransacked memory; he had in fact been in the sector several times – but he opted to answer with a question instead. "It's near Iego, isn't it?"

"Yeah." The ragged fellow snapped a mandrangea pod in two and squeezed out the succulent beans. "I met a guy once who says as there's Angels out on the moons. More like moonshine, if you ask me."

"You do not believe in the existence of Angels?"

Another pod snapped in half. "Eh…maybe at the spaceport hostelry, if you know what I mean." A wet chuckle. "People say a lot of stuff. I ain't never seen an Angel, an' I've seen a whole lotta weird out there."

"Still. Many tales are grounded in reality; much that we consider superstition is but the distortion of truth."

"Maybe," his workmate grunted, thrusting his grimy hand into a sack and pulling out another pod.

"For instance, some people say that Jedi Knights can move objects with their minds, influence the thoughts of others, and perceive the future."

"Proves my point," the spacer grunted. "Jedi's nothin' but a political front. Republic propaganda. Out here you gotta go on common sense, or you'll get bamboozled. Jedi," he snorted. "I never seen one of them neither, and like I said, I seen a whole lotta weird."

"I'll bet you have," was the tall man's mild reply.

They finished the task in amicable silence.