Chapter Fifty-One: Together in Dreams
Qui-Gon is dreaming.
It's harder to tell than it was the last time she had a dream like this—for that was a memory, her words and actions those of a much younger self, determined years ago. There, her body had been unbroken, her mind not yet weighed down—her words to Dooku were familiar, written into the record of the past years and years ago. Now, when she looks down, her hands are her hands, not some past Qui-Gon's—the nails brittle, cracking here and there, the fingers raw and scraped from running over stone for hours, days. Her back cries out as she moves, her legs are stiff, and she knows that, if she were able to see herself, the black of her hair would be laced with white.
Still, the dream is not without kindness—it's given her a cane, made of wood rather than metal, gnarled and rough and somehow comforting. Leaning on it, she can feel her aches ease, as if the wood is taking her pain into itself. It's such a relief that, were it the only thing that's changed, she would be tempted to accept the illusion—to forget she's dreaming, blissfully lost in the currents of her own sleep.
Beside her, however, is a change too big to ignore—an impossibility.
Anakin Skywalker is here.
He looks older, smaller than when she last saw him, as if he too is weighed down by burdens he never envisioned having to carry—but when he glances over and sees her staring at him, he smiles. "Hi. It's been a while."
Qui-Gon shakes her head. "You're not Anakin. You're the Force."
The Force, or Anakin, or whatever this person is, shakes its head. "We're all the Force. Every living thing, connected, right? First thing Obi-Wan taught me."
"Yes, but you're . . ." She gives up before she can finish, grinds her cane into the dusty rock that is Malachor. "I'm not here to play logic games with an energy field."
"What are you here for?"
Before she can reply, her companion grins in that lopsided way that always made him look like a teenager, shakes his head. "Of course. I sent you. For answers, right?"
"Anakin sent me for answers. Why you sent me, I really wish you'd say."
The grin fades, though it doesn't disappear. What remains is an expression she's never seen on Anakin's face before—the comforting smile a parent would give to a child vexed to tears over a problem that, no matter how tiny, is in their mind the biggest thing in the world. He extends his mechanical hand forward, toward the valley. "Walk with me?"
She could refuse. End the dream right here, and wake up to all the same pains she feels in this sleep anyway. But then, she thinks, the cane will disappear.
"Fine," she says, stepping out in front of him. "Don't lose your footing."
As they stroll down the valley's incline, Qui-Gon notices that Malachor, too, is subtly different. Shadows still pervade, but the clouds are thinner, lighter—sun can be seen in patches, weakly shining through to the planet below, warming her face. The air no longer bristles across her skin; there's moisture, not much, but enough to soothe.
The ziggurat, though, is unchanged. The shadow upon it is so deep, in contrast to the rest of the valley, that it's as if it's not a structure but a featureless mass of black looming over all.
"That's where it happened, huh," says Anakin, squinting as though to pierce through the black. "And there was really nothing left when you got there?"
As Qui-Gon inhales to shout back her reply, she brings her cane down upon the earth a bit too hard, stumbles. Anakin grabs at her shoulders, steadying her. "Easy."
Biting down on her tongue, she breathes, then responds. "Nothing. Whatever wellspring of Force energy Plagueis drew on to do what he did . . . it's gone now. Bled dry. Trust me, I spent a week scouring the thing."
Anakin nods. "Well, it's probably best for the real me if that's the case."
Against her best instincts, Qui-Gon coughs out a laugh. "You admit it."
As if she hasn't spoken, Anakin continues. "A week. But you've been here for months."
"There were . . . other things to do."
Anakin is silent for a time. Eventually, he lowers himself to the ground and sits; with difficulty, Qui-Gon does the same, resting her cane across her lap. The two of them gaze out at the valley, dotted with twisted metal that's slowly, oh so slowly rusting away to nothing. Besides that, all that covers the stone is a faint dusting of ash, one that grows thinner every day as the occasional gust of wind blows it away. Soon there will be no trace of them left at all. Thousands of souls, simply vanished.
"You know how I lost this arm?" her companion asks her, raising his metal hand from his lap.
She does—Obi-Wan told her after her recovery, when she returned to the Temple and found her friend a master with his own apprentice. Still, she shakes her head. "I suppose you'll tell me."
Grinning, Anakin looks back down toward the valley. "We were on Had Abbadon, in a refugee camp in the caves. The Confederacy was pounding at the door, bombardments nonstop. There was this big boulder hanging from the ceiling, just this massive sphere of rock that had somehow held on for gods know how long, and all the activity jostled it loose. I knew it was gonna happen before it did—felt it. Even back then, before I knew what the Force was, I knew what those feelings meant. So, I dove in front of someone, knocked them out of the way, and . . . bam. Rock came down, smashed into my hand. Pulverized it. Padmé sliced me out with a cutting torch, and when I was conscious enough to do the job I bolted on a replacement."
Qui-Gon winces—she knew the arm had been pinned under a rock, but Obi-Wan's description wasn't quite so colorful. "I'm sorry."
Anakin waves the metal arm in dismissal. "Eh, it was only a problem when I was using Liz's arm as a replacement. The new one works just fine. Padmé misses it more than I do." A low chuckle escapes him. "Let me tell ya, she was mad. You're a gods-damned moron, Skywalker, crippling yourself for someone you never even met before."
"That does . . . sound like her."
Smirking, he looks back toward her. "We came there looking for some quick money just before the bombardments started. After we got trapped, things were looking really low. We'd come there looking for a way to keep the Dancer fueled, keep ourselves fed, and all we got was one less arm. I thought to myself sometimes, You could have just let them be. Maybe they would have gotten out of the way; and even if they hadn't, it wouldn't have been your fault."
But Qui-Gon knows him too well for that. "No, you couldn't have."
Slowly, he nods. "You know, I think you're right. Which is funny, because that reminds me . . . you could have just let all this be." He glances back down at the valley, and for a moment Qui-Gon can once again see them all, locked in endless battle. "Carved a path through, checked out the temple, seen that it was empty. Gone to look for your purpose elsewhere."
When she's silent, he doesn't press her; simply returns to watching the sun climb a bit higher in the sky, pierce further through the clouds.
After about half an hour has passed—in the dream, at least—her companion rises. "I'm not, you know. The Force," he adds, when she looks up at him in puzzlement. "Doesn't work that way. The Force doesn't talk. But it can express its will through anything it wants. Right now I'm just on your mind, I guess. Makes me useful."
Qui-Gon looks back down at the valley. "I should be angry at you. I am angry at you."
"You don't need to be happy. You just need to keep going. You're really close now. Almost home."
Nodding, she looks down at her bloodied hands and sighs. "Home. Where is that, I wonder?"
"You'll know. When the time comes."
"I suppose that's the best I'm going to get."
When she meets Anakin's gaze, he smiles apologetically. "Best I can do for now. But you'll have the others."
Ah yes, the dream-voices—the ones that for all this time have been silent for the first sleep in months. "So I won't see you again?"
"Hey, I'm not Anakin anyway, right?" With one last grin, he raises his flesh hand in a wave. "May the Force be with you."
Before she can reply, he's simply slipped into nothingness.
For a few moments after that, she's alone—nothing but her and the cane and the empty valley. Then, whispering through the air around her, the voices are back.
You know what you must do—
—what you must do, your time is—
—time is almost come, it's time to—
—time to WAKE UP
When she awoke, she was at the apex of the ziggurat, returned to Malachor—the real Malachor. It had to be, for the shadows had returned, the atmosphere once again scouring her skin. The wooden cane was gone, her fingers clutching at nothing as she reached for it.
The whispers, however, had not left. They were too quiet, too intermingled, for Qui-Gon to make them out, but she could hear them in her head, a low steady undercurrent.
Letting them fade to the bottom of her awareness, she repeated what the dream had told her. "Almost home."
As she began her descent down the pyramid's slope one last time, she could see Jesmyn in front of her. Their hair had grown a bit longer, and their eyes were sad, but they were healthy. Happy. Smiling at her, as if to say, I knew you'd come back.
They might not even be there anymore. They might have called a transport, left Aquilae. Decided to move on.
"But you won't know until you get there," she replied, taking the stairs as carefully as she could. "So Jinn, you miserable old bat, you'd better hurry up."
When she reached the bottom, she didn't turn back to look at the ziggurat—at the structure that had consumed her thoughts for all this time, that had almost killed her. For the briefest moment, however, she paused to look one last time at the valley, destined now to remain forever silent. At the empty air where once had stood so many Jedi, even more Sith, united beyond death in a suffering they could never have imagined.
I wish you well, Qui-Gon spoke into the Force. All of you. And I'm so sorry.
The climb up the slope was a long one—every few feet, Qui-Gon stopped to rest, her spine groaning beneath her weight, and wished for her cane. The wind, at least, was at her back, almost like an encouraging hand pushing her forward. Nearly there. Nearly.
Halfway to the top, she sensed what lay on the other side.
She worried for a moment that she was about to cry, but laughed in near-genuine relief when she realized her body didn't have nearly enough moisture for the task. "Oh, I should have known. You wouldn't make it easy. Not now."
Going back to the temple wasn't an option. They were by the lake, her only source of food, of water. They would have seen her ship. If she returned to the ziggurat, they'd starve her out. And fighting them wouldn't work either—maybe five months ago. Maybe when she'd been strong. Now, she had only one option.
The low murmuring that hadn't left her head grew just loud enough to hear, the voices united now in one thought. You know what you must do.
She did.
As she crested the hill, Qui-Gon looked down past her ship—to the bulky Jadthu-class lander that had touched down just nearby, Republic colors muted by the dark. Those who stood guard at its boarding ramp, however, were bright enough to see even through the shadows—white-armored troopers, blasters held ready. After a few moments, one of them saw her. Instantly, he reached up to tap his helmet—signaling the rest of the party, Qui-Gon supposed.
She spread her hands outward, and began to limp down the hill.
As she descended, more soldiers emerged from the other side of the lander, rifles trained on her. They didn't move to meet her, however; simply stood at the ready, waiting. After a few moments, the Jedi realized why.
A pair of crimson silhouettes glided down the boarding ramp, striding past the troopers, toward her. Each held a force pike in guard position, and beneath the masks Qui-Gon could sense that they were tensed, ready for attack.
She chuckled. Oh, boys. That's sweet of you.
As the redrobes closed the distance to a few dozen yards, one of them called out, in a voice artificially amplified by his helmet, "Qui-Gon Jinn?"
Keeping her hands raised, she bent her head in the best approximation of a bow she could manage. "Present. You're very kind to come all the way here to fetch me, I must say."
The guard on the right reached down to his belt, producing a pair of binders. "By order of Chancellor Palpatine of the Republic, you're under arrest, Madam Jinn."
Oh, Anakin.
As the redrobes drew closer, Qui-Gon thought she could hear them speak further, but suddenly she was struggling to make it out. The voices in her head had increased in volume—their words overlapping far too rapidly for her to distinguish what was being said. The roar filled her mind, rushing to block out any and all other senses.
Before the lead guard could bind her, Qui-Gon's knees gave way, and Malachor vanished in the face of an even deeper black.
Republic Archives: A Jedi on the Witness Stand
[from the desk of the Supreme Chancellor]
"A Jedi on the witness stand." Those were your words, no?
Well, congratulations, Director Tarkin. You'll get one after all.
Skywalker came through for us, as I told you he would. Of his own accord, without undue outside pressure. He just needed time.
It is my understanding that this Jedi turned herself in. No resistance, no violence. Perhaps this will be easier than we thought.
Then again, this is a Jedi we're talking about. Perhaps it won't be.
Your Jedi will be arriving soon, Director. I suggest you prepare yourself.