Chapter Thirty-Five: What You Must

Qui-Gon is dreaming. She knows this because, when she puts one foot in front of the other, there is no hesitation, no reflexive memory of pain to make her half-limp. She strolls confidently, head high, stride even. It's the walk of a younger woman, one who has everything ahead of her and whose hurts have amounted, so far, to nothing.

Nor are her surroundings that of the Aquilae village—there's no sea air rushing into her nostrils, no call of local avians as they dive for fish, no horizon rising and falling in waves. There are stars above, but they're unusually close—and while grass mutes the tread of her feet, and an occasional breeze brushes against her face, she knows she's not outside.

It's the Temple courtyard. The gnarled tree rises before her, pulsing against her senses with the lifeblood of the Force. And leaned against it, head tilted back to gaze at the constellations above, is . . .

Dooku. He too is younger—his beard is still gray, not white, the lines in his face not so deep with exhaustion as they will be all those years later on Serenno.

"You've returned," he says, not looking in her direction. The rolling bass of his voice is softer here, as though he doesn't wish to disturb the tree, or the stars, or the other Jedi who wander through the chamber.

"It's good to see you too," she replies, collapsing to the ground—oh god, how she's missed being able to just sit without worrying about the ache—and pressing her own back to the trunk of the tree. Above them, white and blue specks turn in their courses, light-years upon light-years away.

"Not that you asked," she continues, shooting a furtive glance her master's way, "but I think it went rather well. For my first mission alone, anyway."

Dooku arches an eyebrow as he turns to meet her gaze, hawk's eyes carrying a touch of amusement. "I was under the impression that you had assistance."

"Ah, well, Obi-Wan did help, I suppose," she admits, then snorts. "He's a nice enough sort, if you could remove the stick from his—"

"Qui-Gon. Please," her master says, laying a hand upon the ancient wood behind them.

Nodding, she pats the trunk herself in apology. "I'm untraditional. Your fault, really."

Rather than dignify her with a response, Dooku turns back to his stargazing. Following his eyes, Qui-Gon sees he's watching a cluster of dim blue near the edge of the courtyard ceiling—very distant, and very old.

Aloud, he says, "Knight Kenobi has a distinguished pedigree. His master was my own, many years ago."

"Makes him your hermit classmate in a way, I suppose," she says brightly, chortling at the idea of Dooku and Obi-Wan sharing a rug somewhere in a swamp while a wizened old gremlin instructs them.

This close to the tree, its aura amplifying their own, Qui-Gon can instantly sense her master's distinct lack of appreciation for her humor—and he must have sensed her imaginings of a moment ago, for he sighs and says, "The tendency to paint Master Yoda as an eccentric is one you would do well not to imitate, Madam Jinn."

"Madam?"

Rather than continue her banter, Dooku looks steadily into her eyes, the sharp blue of his own wavering not one inch. Qui-Gon has seen this look many times over the years, but it still never fails to make her feel just a little intimidated. It's as though her master aims to pin her to the tree with just his gaze, and some childish part of her feels as though he could.

"You have never had a mission alone, as you put it, my young apprentice. Nor have most of the Jedi. We've grown used to comforts, to networks, to comrades. Your mission you undertook with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Your equipment you obtained from the Temple quartermaster. Every step of this adventure of yours"—when he says adventure, it's as though he's somehow sneered without so much as curling his lip—"has been aided by others."

She searches for a retort to fire back at him, to deflect, but nothing comes. Her heart is curling up within her—Dooku is stern, yes, but he doesn't often try to sting. "You make it sound shameful."

At that, those raptor's eyes soften. Reaching forward, he lays a wrinkled hand upon her arm. "On the contrary. We are, after all, an Order. And I am sure you fulfilled your mission well. But you must understand, Qui-Gon, what alone truly means.

"For the last four hundred years, Yoda has had no company but the students he consents to teach. He trained me forty years ago—before I arrived to learn, he had not taught an apprentice for nearly half a century.

"Imagine it, Qui-Gon. He exists as much outside of time as is possible for any being in this galaxy. He simply is, until a student arrives and stays with him a year or two and reminds him of what goes on beyond. No other Jedi I know could manage it."

"So isolation is a virtue," she says, crossing her arms, lapsing into that teenager's wheedle that she's tried so hard to eradicate from her voice but that still slips in every now and then.

"Nothing is a virtue in and of itself," he says sharply. "I've instructed you better than that."

Qui-Gon nods reluctantly.

"But there are some missions, some paths, that end in the utmost solitude. That require us to sacrifice all that we are so that others may live." Sighing, he leans back against the tree once more and closes his eyes. "The Jedi of today are an Order of prosperity. Of adventure. We have not always been so, and it is not guaranteed that we will remain so.

"I fear not enough of us are truly worthy of doing what we must alone."

Qui-Gon wishes she could question him further. Ask him if he knew, in this moment—before he left the Jedi, before the war, before everything lost focus—what her future held. But this dream is not just a dream—it is a memory. And in this memory, she does not speak to Dooku further.

They simply stay there, under the night sky, watching the ghosts of light-years past.

Pain pulled Qui-Gon from slumber. Without warning, the blissful lack of sensation in her back wrinkled into a twinge—not much, but enough that she knew it wasn't just her dream-self's spine aching from its long rest against the tree.

Although, she realized as the pain crystallized into something sharper, the tree hadn't vanished when she'd awoken. In fact, she was still propped against it.

Hauling herself upright with a wince, she turned and saw the column of gnarled wood that had served as her bed: the lighthouse tree, living and not living, limbs still pulsing with inner motion and yet utterly bereft of any Force energy. A lattice of nothingness woven through the lighthouse, serving now only as a parasite inseparable from the structure that housed it.

That was how she'd fallen asleep, she remembered, the context for her absurd resting place trickling back into her sleep-slowed mind. She'd come back during a break in the storm, tried one last time to spark whatever embers of the Force remained within the ancient roots back to life. Hoped that if she could do that, the tree and the lighthouse would combine to give her . . . something.

Jesmyn would be angry, she knew, blinking hard in an attempt to adjust her eyes to the pitch black of her surroundings. It was the middle of the night—if Qui-Gon returned now, there would be a row. Best to stay here til morning.

"I'm not going anywhere." That's what you told them. That's what you promised.

As she took a step—not toward any destination, just to have something to do—something in her back seized. Pain bloomed in a sudden rush at the base of her spine, a slicing sensation that was enough to make her cry out. Qui-Gon's step turned into a stumble, and she found herself overbalanced, tumbling forward. Only her hands smacking into the tree's bark with a loud thwack stopped her from falling. When she steadied herself, gasping, and looked at her hands, she saw a splinter worked deeply into her left index finger.

Where the unfolding wail of her back had made things fuzzy, the sharpness of the sliver embedded in her finger had the opposite effect. As it throbbed, the Jedi saw her surroundings take on a startling clarity.

The fireplace no one had lit since time immemorial. The workbench littered with tools she didn't know how to use, texts that had given nothing, a flickering candle whose light guttered with the howling wind outside. Beneath her feet, the twenty perfect tick marks encircling the tree, each a different color of glass, pulsing with the candlelight as though trying to tell her something.

But that wasn't it, she knew. There was nothing in the ornamentation, just like there was nothing in the texts, the tree, the lighthouse, the whole damn planet. Just dessicated information too sapped of life to help anyone, or empty husks that contained not a shred of their former purpose. As soon as she extinguished the candle, the pretense would vanish, everything returning to dust-coated slumber til she returned the next time hoping to breathe life into it. And the next time. And the next.

Above, there was a sudden groan—not the lighthouse creaking with the wind, but something sharper, more defined. The noise ground on, and Qui-Gon realized it was the beacon up above. The gears, shifting on their own. Mocking her.

The splinter twinged once more, and her mind went blissfully blank with anger.

Marching over to the workbench, her footfalls muted by the waterlogged wood below, Qui-Gon looked down at the rust-speckled tools. The biggest of them, a wrench that looked like it had been designed for the hands of a species bigger than humans, lay near the candle—when she picked it up, it immediately tried to sink back to the bench, the weight more than she'd anticipated.

It was perfect.

The lump of metal, clutched in both Qui-Gon's hands, made her steps feel more forceful, resounding against the floor with a strength beyond herself. When she reached the spiral staircase at the back of the room, her boots fell against it with an echoing clatter. The vibrating iron joined with the moaning wind outside and the rattle of metal on metal further up above, a discordant music that set the Jedi's teeth on edge and added a pounding headache to the pain that kept her moving.

Qui-Gon.

Where are you going?

The voice wasn't hers—she didn't know who it belonged to, the whisper that of someone who'd passed beyond space or time. It wasn't one she'd heard the last time she was here, but she knew somehow it was connected to them—all part of the same taunting hallucination.

"A lot of good you've done," she spat as she hauled herself up the stairs, one hand against the railing while the other drooped toward the ground with the weight of the wrench. "At least Dooku and Yoda were brave enough to show their faces when they were useless."

Normally, the ascent grew easier with each step, the beacon's energy adding strength to her own. This time, with each stair she felt the wrench grow a little heavier, her feet a little less steady. She swiped angrily at a trickle of sweat as it rolled down her brow, and another voice whispered.

You know what you must do.

It took everything she had to resist whipping her head around to look behind her. The voice hadn't been inside her head—it was with her, in the room.

Another step. Another step. Another, and now she was on the final curve, near the top of the structure.

Even in the darkness, the kyber shards and bits of mirror that hung suspended in the clockwork seemed to shine, reflecting light invisible to the human eye. The light danced before Qui-Gon's eyes, beckoning to her, the same promise she'd sought ever since she first entered the structure.

Qui-Gon, a third voice said, your path lies before you.

With a roar, she lashed out with the wrench.

It glanced off the nearest gear with a shower of sparks, illuminating the massive dent Qui-Gon had made in the metal. Her next blow twisted spokes, and with a great kachunk of obstructed motion the machinery stuttered to a halt, the single warped piece locking the entire thing into place.

She swung again, and again, and again, and any trace of the weather outside or the voices within was obliterated by the sound of destruction—glass breaking and falling to the floor in flecks of light, kyber splintering into tiny crystals as though shattered by a jeweler's hammer. Qui-Gon's shoulder cried out as the wrench connected hard with one of the central gears, the impact reverberating through her arm, but still she swung, boots grinding glass to powder as she moved across the apex of the lighthouse.

When she'd finished, her shoulder on fire and her chest heaving for breath, the mechanism was still standing—she couldn't have destroyed it entirely even in a stronger state—but every piece of the beacon was either in ruins beneath Qui-Gon's feet, or dangling in fragments. Some gears had broken off altogether; others remained only as mockeries of their former selves, twisted by the wrench's impact into useless curls of metal.

At some point during this rampage, it had started to rain once more. Droplets pattered on the lighthouse ceiling, and from across the ocean a low rumble of thunder sounded.

That was it. No one to speak to her. Nothing to whisper her name through the dark.

With a long, shuddering sigh, Qui-Gon lowered herself to her knees, careful not to grind any shards of mirror or crystal into her shins. The weight of the wrench, no longer supported by adrenaline and rage, clattered to the floor. In her left hand, the splinter of tree still throbbed.

There. You've done it. Temptation removed. You can go back to Jesmyn. Tell them it's gone. Live your lives together.

But even as she told herself this, she saw with perfect clarity what would happen after that.

You'll come back. Keep talking to the tree. Try to somehow put the beacon back together, maybe. Or you and Lor will keep going over texts in a place Jesmyn can't reach.

Each time you'll fail, and each time you'll break something. And each time you'll go back looking for someone to tell you what to do.

It wasn't the Force showing her this future. No premonition, no vision. Just her, and her knowledge that the last two years had gained her nothing.

She needed to get up. Sweep away the debris, prepare an apology to the village for the morning. Rest in a proper bed. But it would be so much easier to just stay here, on her knees, free of the need to lie to anyone.

How long had it been since she'd last been in that position?

Qui-Gon.

When the voice came—once again not in her head but behind her—she released a sob she hadn't even known she'd been holding back. The gasp of air rushed out of her, a wordless answer to the sound of her name.

Don't be afraid, said another, this one across the room. It was more familiar, as if she'd heard it before—the last time this had happened.

Some paths must be walked alone.

You cannot escape your destiny.

Another hitching cry—she could feel liquid rolling down her face, swiped at it with her right hand. Beneath her, prickles of shattered beacon ran up and down her legs.

You've known all this time, another new voice told her gently. A warm weight blossomed upon the shoulder that had swung the wrench—something reaching out, touching her. Giving her strength.

So do what you must.

Her thoughts trailed back to the vision she'd had all those years ago, on the way to Had Abbadon—omens of darkness, of death, of her own demise. Fear had eaten her alive after the Force had sent her the premonition. Fear for herself. Fear of the Sith.

Fear of Anakin.

When it had come down to it, she'd acted despite that fear. She'd known the right thing to do.

All she'd had to do was make up her mind to do it.

When she got back to the house, Jesmyn was sitting at the table, a candle illuminating their face, alabaster fingers wrapped around a cup of tea.

"Hey," Qui-Gon breathed, the love that poured through her at the sight stifling her voice to just above a whisper.

"Hey," Jesmyn said back, and nodded at the second cup across from them.

Easing herself into the chair, the Jedi looked into her partner's eyes. Into the face that had been there for her through everything, since Serenno.

The face that already knew what she was about to say.

"I, ah . . . I'll leave the comm unit," Qui-Gon said, exhaling in a quiet rush of air and reaching for the cup to steady her hands. "You can hail someone offworld with it. Have them come pick you up, if you'd like to leave at any point."

"If you don't come back."

The Jedi reached forward, lacing her brown fingers through the Arkanian's white. "I promise you, I will always come back."

She begged Jesmyn to believe it.

After a moment of unblinkingly holding Qui-Gon's gaze, the Arkanian nodded, and squeezed her hand tightly.

"For what it's worth," the Jedi said, heart thudding in her chest as the warmth of Jesmyn's touch spread through her body, "it was the Force. It has been for a while."

"I've known that the whole time," Jesmyn replied, voice as dismissive as it could be while choking back a quiver. "You are the worst liar I've ever met."

Without being conscious of how she'd gotten there, Qui-Gon was standing, arms wrapped around her partner, kissing them with as much power as she could muster. She felt the Arkanian shake with suppressed sobs beneath her embrace, felt her own chest heave with the same.

"I love you," she gasped as they pulled apart.

Jesmyn nodded, lip trembling, and swiped at a stray strand of hair. "Just . . . make it matter, yes? Whatever it is."

The Jedi nodded back, swallowing, and then burst into an involuntary laugh. "If I don't I'll never hear the end of it."

With a surprised chuckle of their own, the Arkanian inhaled deeply. "No, you will not."

Qui-Gon lunged forward and wrapped her arms around them once more, willing her brain to catalog every detail of what this felt like. "I promise," she whispered, rubbing her cheek against Jesmyn's and feeling their tears meld together. "I promise."

Ten minutes later, a single light breached Aquilae's storm clouds, headed for the unknown.

Jedi Archives: Mechanisms and the Force

[fragment of historical Jedi writing found with a crashed Jedi starfighter among the Errivantus Asteroid Field, translated to modern Galactic Standard Basic]

We know that the Force binds the galaxy together, but there is ample evidence to suggest that it does not do so with equal strength in every location. All across the galaxy there are . . . pockets of concentrated Force energy. Linchpins. Convergences. Places of power.

The Jedi Order has no official name for them, but we've known of their existence from the very beginning. It's said that the earliest Jedi planted a tree at one such place of power to mark their first holy site. It's a tradition we've continued to this day, and it's a beautiful tradition. I'm not here to suggest we stray from it. Plant your trees, build your temples, yes! But I must raise the question: what if we could do more?

What if we could build something to help us better understand these pockets of energy? A device to measure their potential. To understand how and why they come to be. To harness their output, and perhaps one day create a place of power where there wasn't one before.

That is why I have to build the lighthouse. This is the future of the Jedi.