Here we are, new chapter! A slightly shorter chapter than previous, but I hope I made up for it with emotional turmoil. I shall update Tea and Deathsticks tomorrow.
Replies to Guest Reviews:
ErinKenobi2893: I've wanted to get that chapter out for a long time…just never had the time to write. Gaah I've missed your reviews so much! I have all the time in the world, now. I hope I didn't make you cry?
Yavelee: Obi-Wan's voice is a mystery…one that will unravel with the story. So I can't tell you outright. Thank you so much for reviewing!
Olive-Pizza: I've a strange urge to bellow "I'm BACK!" like the Terminator. Thanks for reviewing, and sticking with this.
Guest: I could hear the excitement oozing out of your review. Thank you for making me laugh.
Fanfic Lurker: …I do make strange plot devices out of my OCs, don't I? Never did quite look at it that way – thanks for the insight! I hope you got that message I posted for you on my profile about three weeks back. Lol. *Obi hugs you back*
Zhia: Um. Yes. But I won't tell you when.
Emotional turmoil here we come.
The scientist called Jenna Zan Arbor is not some complex mystery in need of solving. She is a singularly-willed woman who began her adult life as a leading pioneer in multi-species biotechnology, saving whole planets and species alike; and who, in the twilight years of her youth, discovered a burning desire to understand the use of the Force, and in the process of her preliminary experiments quite effectively murdered her own son.
…There is a small gravestone on her estate in Ventrux, etched with the name Ren Zan Arbor.
Now, even as she is young no more, she continues her work, though she no longer treats each success as a victory; there is only the never-ending thirst for answers. And so Zan Arbor is indeed not some complex mystery; her life is a series of causes and outcomes, exactly like the experiments she conducts daily. She is what she has made of herself.
This, of course, renders her crimes all the more heinous.
(:~:)
Dooku's world has dissolved into fire.
It has happened before; agony and sorrow closely follow the footsteps of every Jedi Shadow. But this is different, because the source of the flames is from within. There had always been resentment there; but now it has grown and twisted into a worm of unimaginable power that commands his limbs and activates the 'saber in his hand with a twitch of a finger that seems not his own.
The yellow-gold glow of Dooku's lightsaber throws scattered shadows on the darkened corridor walls. The gold of a sentinel's blade is a symbol of how the pure light of the Force drives out the encroaching dark; but Dooku's 'saber only seems to magnify the grey border of luminance and shadow. The tongue of starfire no longer glows with undiluted light. Rather, the edged plasma seems sullied, like the grimy fluorescent striplights of the Coruscanti underworld.
The last door crashes open with enough force to rip reinforced durasteel from wall.
And there the prey stands, stricken by the harsh limelight of tainted gold fire, pinned in place by a gaze without warmth, without life.
Faced with the horrible wrath of a Jedi that cares not for restraint, mercy, or pain, Zan Arbor's breath catches. She knows in this one terrible moment that this, too, is something she helped to create; but it is not a victory.
No.
A dark claw closes around her throat, sucking the very life out of her limp form, suspending her on a weightless plane of agony.
"Who…?" she mouths, past the suffocating grip.
The Jedi – or not Jedi – speaks, each word a hammer-blow that leaves Zan Arbor gasping for toxic air. "You took the light from my apprentice. I am here to do the same to you." The voice brings to mind images of silk polishing ice, cool and smooth and utterly deadly.
Hung upon the gallows of living hell, Zan Arbor can only stare, eyes bulging with a newfound feeling of pure fear, as that same cold voice says plainly, "You will be blind."
The formless claws on her throat tighten, and a blazing spear of vengeful fire lances for her eyes.
A voice. "Master!"
And the heat scorches Zan Arbor's eyelids.
(:~:)
The Force had screamed in jarring half-harmony with Qui-Gon's fleeting steps as he swept through the corridors, following a path in the Force as obvious as a trail of rotting corpses. Each pace brings him closer to that awful miasma, the chasm that warps the waters of the Force into a hungered maelstrom that threatens to swallow him as well. The last fragments of the old bond between Qui-Gon and Dooku wither and snap, crushed by the sheer weight of seething shadow.
A word claws itself up through the bile in Qui-Gon's throat.
"Master!"
The word cascades down upon Dooku like a sudden downpour, bringing with it and unbidden memory of a brown-haired, cerulean-eyed young padawan. But Dooku does not sense the flickering presence of a half-trained Jedi; instead, the Force-signature behind him is ringed with the blazing penumbra of a master of the Living Force.
The flames that encroach the periphery of his world flicker even as a new, searing line of emerald fire halts at his back.
"Master." Qui-Gon's voice has the barking rasp of a mouth completely dry. "Give your 'saber to me. Please."
Dooku does not loosen his Force-grip around Zan Arbor's throat, nor does he turn to face his former apprentice. "I do not intend to kill her," he murmurs. "I only wish for justice."
"This is not justice. This is revenge."
The Sentinel watches the tip of his lightsaber hover over Zan Arbor's glazed eyes. "I am a shadow cast by the Light," Dooku declares bluntly. "I do what needs be done."
"Anger is only a temporary power," Qui-Gon murmurs. "I remember well; it is what you taught me." His words fall quietly. "I beg you, Master, do not take this path." Then, even softer: "Do not commit the same mistake Xanatos did."
Do not do what he did, and so deprive me of a mentor as well as a son.
Tamesis Dooku takes a breath; and in those heartbeats, the Force shudders. He turns to look over his shoulder, and is momentarily surprised that the Jedi standing behind him does not have a long padawan braid down to his waist, or earth-brown hair bound back in a nerf-tail.
The Jedi Guardian's blue eyes meet the black of the Jedi Sentinel's, separated by a gulf as wide as heaven and hell.
But they both hold fear.
"Master," Qui-Gon whispers. The emerald length of his 'saber wavers slightly with the tremble of the hand that grasps it.
The warp and weft of the Unifying Force reverberates with the swaying shatterpoint of crystalline strings. It would only need a twitch of Dooku's wrist to break…
Hiss-snap.
The Sentinel's adamantine shields do not give, but his long yellow-gold blade retracts into its hilt. Zan Arbor's eyes roll back into her head as she crumples to the ground, senseless. Qui-Gon wordlessly steps forward and presses two fingers to the side of her neck; Dooku watches impassively.
"Her pulse is steady, but weak," Qui-Gon states, not quite meeting the other Jedi's gaze as he deactivates his 'saber in turn. "…You very nearly killed her," he observes detachedly.
Dooku's voice is a low rumble, like approaching thunder. "As I said, that was not my intent."
"And was your intent to blind her any better?" Qui-Gon chuckles mirthlessly. Something in his voice must have caught Dooku's attention; Qui-Gon senses the sentinel's gaze fall dagger-sharp onto the back of his head. "Forgive me. I forget myself," Qui-Gon murmurs, reaching up to rub at his tired eyes.
The Force stretches like a bulging bolus of liquid, teeming with questions and words that cannot be voiced. In the end, Qui-Gon straightens from his crouch, turns toward Dooku, and says simply, "I had thought you a better man, my former master."
"Someday, my padawan," Dooku replies emotionlessly – Qui-Gon notices the distinct lack of former – "You will learn to do what is necessary."
Qui-Gon's blue eyes harden to ice. "Then I hope to the Force that day will never come."
Dooku returns Qui-Gon's glacial stare with a veiled gaze that does not quite cover his somewhat unsettled air.
They are halfway to the transport, the comatose form of Zan Arbor suspended in the Force behind them, when Dooku shatters the silence. "Would you have done the deed?"
"What deed would you be referring to?" Qui-Gon inquires, his gaze still fixed pointedly to a point somewhere ahead.
"If I had persisted in taking the woman's sight, would you have…stopped…me?" There is a slight note of something in Dooku's tone. Qui-Gon does not deign to analyse it.
The response is long in coming. But at last, a sigh slips out of the younger Jedi's lips. "I could not stop Xanatos," he whispers wearily. "I could not bear to…end…him."
"…Why would that be relevant?"
Qui-Gon's steps slow, then halt. Dooku pauses and half-turns to scrutinise his former apprentice. The Sentinel's long shadow just brushes the other Jedi's boots. For a moment, Qui-Gon's lips twitch in the imitation of a smile; the hollow smile of one who realises at last that the person he faces does not comprehend him at all.
A deep, centering breath.
"Of course it is relevant," Qui-Gon whispers, looking past Dooku's silhouette to the first glimmer of dawn. "Well, it was. It seems it no longer is, now." His usual propensity for complex wording seems to have left him.
And as Dooku watches his erstwhile protégé step past him toward the stirring embers of the sun's rising, he feels a pang for something he does not, and never truly will, understand.
(:~:)
Obi-Wan drifts on a timeless plane of endless dream, curled snugly in a coracle of whimsical thought. The Force laps in gentle waves on the edges of his little boat, and he cares not where its currents carry him, for each breath is the slow swelling and receding of the tide. He could have wandered for eternity, but soon enough – or a long time after, for it is hard to tell in this place – the coracle's smooth hull bumps against a bank. Obi-Wan frowns in his doze as the jarring motion makes him aware of a presence close by; another craft, not a small as his coracle but somehow made of living wood, with a hearth-fire blazing at its heart, spreading warmth to Obi-Wan's little boat, suffusing his limbs. The warmth grows stronger, which turns to scorching heat and pain–
The Force slips out of his grip, and of a sudden, he is not curled in a coracle, but lying on a cocoon of blankets that is still far too cold when compared to the dull fire in his bones. The light burns when he forces his heavy eyelids to rise. Panic claws its way up his throat, only to halt at the barrier to his lips.
The glaring light extinguishes abruptly. A familiar shape moves on the edges of his blurred sight, and a calloused palm grasps his shoulder and gently eases him back onto the pallet even as he becomes aware of the stiffness of his muscles.
"Must you insist on pulling your bandages, my very young padawan?" a softly amused voice intones.
Obi-Wan scrabbles at his cluttered thoughts: that voice has a name, a title, an honorific, and a home…
Master Qui-Gon.
Obi-Wan goes limp with relief.
"Good." Qui-Gon says dryly. "It would do you well to remain thus." Although he cannot see it, Obi-Wan can hear the smile in his master's words.
"I'm going to adjust the light level. Stop me if it pains you." The darkness recedes, leaving a comfortably dim glow. In the gentle yellow light, Qui-Gon's weathered face seems less severe, if a trifle wearier, than usual. Obi-Wan's gaze searches beyond the older Jedi's chair and falls on the slumbering form of Ezhno, curled up in another chair with Qui-Gon's cloak tucked around him. The hyperdrive's low thrum echoes in the walls; in the fuzziness of his mind Obi-Wan realises they must be halfway to Coruscant by now.
"You have a very loyal friend," Qui-Gon says, unexpectedly. "I believe I quite like him."
Obi-Wan smiles weakly. Something edges at his memory; something he should be ashamed of… Confused, he glances over at Ezhno again, only for his eyes – now better adapted to the darkness – to move to the very edge of the lamplight and glance upon another bundle of blankets at the far side of the medbay; a Nautolan boy with bandaged eyes…
Qui-Gon shifts so his broad form removes Huei from Obi-Wan's line of sight. "Not now," he says firmly, in answer to the vaguely querying notion that pulses mutedly in their bond.
Apparently Obi-Wan is sufficiently exhausted, because he lets the matter drop and allows Qui-Gon to tuck the blankets more firmly around him instead. A frown downturns the corners of his lips when he realises how slowly the Jedi Master completes the task; as though each movement causes great weariness. A movement into the light reveals that Qui-Gon's pale blue eyes seem clouded with a great burden of rain, yet to fall.
The spike of alarm is more than sufficient to cause Qui-Gon's gaze to snap towards Obi-Wan. Something brushes by his sleeve, a whisper of wind, like the fluttering of a newborn moth. A glance down at his wrist reveals Obi-Wan's good hand fumbling for the corner of Qui-Gon's sleeve. A moment later, the sluggish fingers trap the triangle of rough fabric and latch on like some particularly stubborn Seafah shellfish.
An extremely weak Force probe prods at Qui-Gon's shields; the older Jedi heaves a minute sigh before cupping the probe as though it were a flickering firefly. He is about to speak when Obi-Wan's useless attempt at shielding finally collapses, leaving Qui-Gon fully aware of the outpouring of concern that suffuses Obi-Wan's Force-signature.
Oh, precious child.
"I hardly think it is my condition that warrants concern, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon answers, trying valiantly to stop the grin from pulling at his lips.
His charge's small mouth sets into a firm pout, and the firefly of a Force-probe slips out of Qui-Gon's grasp. The fingers curled around Qui-Gon's sleeve jerk stubbornly. Tug.
"There is nothing to worry about, pada–"
Tug.
"Truly–"
Tug.
Qui-Gon cannot help himself; a quiet laugh bubbles out of him, and some of the weight on his shoulders seems to lift. Shifting, he folds a hand over the smaller one that clutches his sleeve, gently detaching it and placing it back under the covers. Obi-Wan makes as if to protest, but his sleep-heavy eyes widen as Qui-Gon leans over and presses a kiss to his forehead.
"Thank you, little one," Qui-Gon murmurs. "If you must know, Zan Arbor is locked away in the brig. You shall have the rest of the truth – but for now, sleep." He infuses the word with a subtle Force-suggestion, and Obi-Wan slips away into dreams of his secret garden in the sun-soaked cloister of the Temple.
The last feeling Qui-Gon receives from his apprentice is a muted apology of sorts. The Jedi's leonine features crease in thought…perhaps he is not the only one with secrets to reveal when the time presents itself. His thoughts turn to other matters, though, when his fingers move from his apprentice's overly warm forehead to the matted, longer strip of hair that curls over one ear.
The tall Jedi rises and steps away from the cot for a moment, returning with a bowl of water and a strip of cloth. He takes longer than strictly necessary to clean the lock of hair, but Qui-Gon knows with utter certainty that he wishes to do this properly. When it is done, Qui-Gon reaches into his pocket for a few beads and coloured lengths of thread.
Master, Padawan, and the Force: their three paths wind into a single whole once more. The braid is not perfect, nor is their path; there are split ends and frayed edges, curves in the road, but these are problems that can be addressed at a later date. For now, master and padawan rest in the moment.
(:~:)
They dropped off Hika at a Republic Service Corps cruiser. She had remained in the cockpit with Kit Fisto throughout the hyperspace jump; the younger ones on the Jedi transport had not even realised she was on board.
"I'm glad this is over," Hika groaned to the Nautolan Jedi as they step down the ramp.
"Is the ExplorCorps too much for you?" Kit had inquired. He was the only one to see her off; Qui-Gon had not stirred from his chair beside Obi-Wan in four hours, and Dooku was ensconced in deep and troubled meditation.
"I miss the Temple," Hika replied, shrugging. "I always wanted to be a padawan; when that didn't work out, the ExplorCorps seemed like the next best choice. But I didn't know they would make me an agent."
Kit quirks his signature smile. "May the Force be with you."
Hika grinned in return. "May the Force be with you, Master Fisto. Oh, and make sure that boy – Ezhno – is well taken care of, would you?"
And then she had simply waved a hand in farewell, and disappeared into the bustling hangar.
(:~:)
Qui-Gon Jinn sits in the half-shadow of the medbay and watches the slow rise and fall of his padawan's bandage-covered chest. The open datapad that rests across his knees bathes his aquiline features in a green glow – not the natural emerald of his 'saber, but the unnatural neon of contrived light. The screen flickers, and a mask of shadow flits across his face, like a velvet mask slid on and off.
Mission Code: ZA-5212
Mission report: I, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, along with Master Tamesis Dooku, Knight Kit Fisto, and Padawans Obi-Wan Kenobi and Huei Tori – were sent to the planet Ventrux to investigate…
Qui-Gon's fingers slow. He finds he has no words to say. What could be said?
We allowed children to suffer unimaginable horrors so we might obtain evidence.
Delete.
Padawan Kenobi dispatched the attacker with a scalpel.
…Delete.
Padawan Tori was, unfortunately, permanently blinded.
Qui-Gon's finger hovers over the delete button.
Master Dooku hunted down the scientist in question and would have burned off her eyes and Force-choked her to an almost certain death were it not for my timely intervention.
The datapad clatters to the floor.
Qui-Gon hunches over and buries his tired, tired eyes into Obi-Wan's blankets. Unbidden, his fingers begin to stroke the crown of downy spikes. Qui-Gon Jinn feels anything but a Jedi Master as he whispers into the unending night of hyperspace: "I'm so sorry."
He does not know whether he apologises to himself, Obi-Wan, or the Force. Memory beckons, and remembrance brings to him Obi-Wan's sheet of crumpled flimsy, and written in ink on its pitted surface, a single sentence:
Do not mock those who Turn, but grieve for them and their loved ones.
And so, amid a surge of gratitude for his padawan, Qui-Gon grieves.
(:~:)
…I may have made things a little depressing. Whup. But I PROMISE it picks up soon. Next chapter deals with some of Huei's future…