Chapter Two: These Old Wounds
Cobalt sea met cyan sky in a perfect line that seemed to stretch on forever. The view was only broken by the sight of stony cliffs, their rocky edges topped with a vibrant grass like morning dew on a garden. Rising above it all was a cylinder carved of the same stone as the cliff face—its polished surface glinted in the midmorning sun, save for the parts of the cylinder that were wrapped in the embrace of barren tree branches
Qui-Gon Jinn looked on at the lighthouse—it was perched precariously on the cliff's edge as if it were some long-necked bird gazing out at the sea. Beside the lighthouse, a flag wavered in the gentle morning breeze. As each oscillation stretched the tattered cloth out fully, Qui-Gon could make out the emblem embroidered onto it—twenty tick marks arranged in a perfect circle, like a clock face with too many hours on it.
She sighed at the sight, and marched forward toward the lighthouse's front door. With each step the base of her spine ached—the phantom pains of a war wound suffered years ago. Still, she walked without the aid of a cane; to an outside observer, the only sign of an injury would have been the slight arrhythmia of her gait.
As she reached the door of the lighthouse, she leaned into it with her shoulder and gave it a shove. Carved from solid wood rather than the stone of the cliffs, aged by years of salty winds, it gave slightly as she pushed. There was a softness to the touch, not unlike the feeling of a well-used boat dock beneath bare feet. It creaked as it swung inward, opening to the warmth of the lighthouse interior.
When she'd first found the place, not long after her arrival on Aquilae, Qui-Gon had taken great care not to move anything from its final resting place. The interior served as a snapshot of how the long-deceased lighthouse keeper had presumably kept the place. At the rear of the room, a spiral staircase led upward to the building's peak. A fireplace was set into one wall—beside it was a desk littered with workbench tools, and on the opposite wall sat a series of bookshelves.
The center of the room bore at least one trace of home. A tree jutted upward, its branches snaking outward through the walls of the stone structure, winding around the outside of the lighthouse like grapevines on a trellis. The tree's roots burrowed beneath the floor—cracks in the stone zigzagged away from each point where a root had taken hold. Around the base of the tree, the same twenty tick marks found on the flag outside were carved into the floor in even intervals, each inlaid with a sliver of colorful glass.
To most, the sight would have meant nothing—it merely represented an ill-fated attempt to plant a tree inside a lighthouse. Qui-Gon knew better. Stepping forward, she placed the palm of her hand against the tree and closed her eyes.
Nothing.
The tree wasn't dead, not in the traditional sense—but it had lost its energy, or perhaps never had any in the first place. That was how Qui-Gon had found it, and it was how it had stayed with each visit, despite her repeated attempts to reinvigorate its connection to the Force.
Another time, perhaps, the voice at the back of Qui-Gon's mind whispered. That's not why you're here.
Removing her hand from the tree, she took a step back and exhaled slowly. The voice was right—she'd come here for another reason, and it wasn't proper to keep the Force waiting. Making her way toward the spiral stairs at the rear of the chamber, Qui-Gon hoisted herself up onto the first step with a wince.
Up she climbed, each step proving slightly easier than the last. For though the tree lacked any link to the Force, the lighthouse itself served as a sort of antenna. Its rising form channeled the energy that bound the universe, pointing it upward to the heavens. The higher Qui-Gon went, the more she could feel it coursing through her, and as she reached the apex of the lighthouse the feeling was as strong as it could possibly be.
Arriving at the top reminded her of the truth: this was no lighthouse, not in the traditional sense. It cast no illumination, served not to guide wayward sailors away from dangerous shores. It cast a different kind of light, one that only certain individuals could see. It was a guiding beacon for those connected to the Force.
The circular room atop the lighthouse contained no lamp nor lightbulb, no lens to focus a beam across the sea. Rather, a series of gears and mirrors and shards of kyber crystal hung in the center of the space, a complex clockwork creation that Qui-Gon had only the barest understanding of. But she knew enough.
Gears ground against each other; mirrors spun and rotated, bouncing sunlight off their surfaces and into the shards of crystal suspended between them. With each tick of the elaborate clock, each crank of machinery or shifting of a crystalline mirror, the energy of the Force pulsed outward from the contraption. Qui-Gon inhaled slowly through her nose, willing her heartbeat to slow—an old technique, a favorite of her Jedi instructor. The key, his fellow Jedi Masters would have once said, to his unshakable demeanor.
Each beat of her heart was more distant than the last, and before long the thumping beneath her ribs perfectly matched the ticking of the ancient machine. She let each wave of the energy wash over her, falling to her knees and opening her palms in a meditative pose as her eyes fluttered shut.
When they opened again, Qui-Gon was no longer alone atop the lighthouse. She was no longer in the lighthouse at all.
The deep earth tones of a polished hardwood floor stretched out beneath her feet. Her eyes followed the grain of the wood, its undulating waves contrasting with the perfectly parallel edges of each slat, until she came upon the edge of the room she now stood in. The floor met the wall and stretched upward into a bookshelf that reached for the ceiling, its shelves packed with leatherbound tomes. Gilded Aurebesh script was inlaid along each book's spine, the titles reflecting the hues of a perpetual sunset which filtered through grand glasswork windows that formed one entire wall of the rectangular room.
"I haven't been here in ages," she whispered, reaching out to brush her hand against the softness of one book's cover, grinning as her fingertips traced each letter of the title. Her voice carried an otherworldly resonance, as if it were coming from somewhere other than her own mouth.
The baritone echo of the voice that came after hers wavered much the same, though beneath the strange timbre there was no mistaking whose words she was hearing. "Strictly speaking," Count Dooku said, "you've never been here at all."
Her former Jedi instructor sat at a desk positioned in the room's exact midpoint, resting atop a woven area rug and carved from an exquisite imported wood. He was hunched over a notebook—though his posture remained somehow impeccable—reading glasses perched at the edge of his nose and writing stylus cradled between his fingers. He gingerly placed the stylus on the desk as though it were liable to shatter if one set it down too hard. The faintest hint of a smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. "Hello, Qui-Gon."
She turned from the bookshelf to face him and offered a slow nod. "Dooku." Qui-Gon's eyes wandered around the room until a glance out the window proved his statement true. Though the space appeared identical to Dooku's old university office—back when he was a professor rather than a count—the view was not the one she remembered. Absent was the central campus green of the University of Taris—instead the window framed the skyline of Stratum Apolune, dozens of floating spires linked by outstretched bridges. Giants holding hands above the clouds.
The way it used to be, a voice in her head said. Before—
Her heart caught in her throat, and she couldn't finish the thought. "You made this place."
He nodded, clasping his hands atop the still-open notebook. "Familiar spaces are useful for introspection. For meditation."
"You miss it, then?" She felt herself move across the room as if her body were a ship being steered by someone else, heels clicking against the hardwood as she walked. "Being a teacher, I mean."
A sigh escaped the count's lips. "A teacher of philosophy? Or a teacher of the Force?"
Qui-Gon shrugged, offering a smirk. "Is there a difference?"
This was enough to make him crack a smile. "The students," he said, raising one eyebrow. He gestured to the hair atop his head. "Teaching at university didn't turn me gray, Madame Jinn."
Flourishing her hand, she leaned slightly forward in a mock bow. "You're welcome."
Closing the cover of his notebook, Dooku leaned back in his chair ever so slightly—the furniture creaked in response to the motion. "What brings you here, Qui-Gon?"
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the ticking of a clock, or perhaps the distant movement of the lighthouse mechanism back on Aquilae somehow slicing through the image of Dooku's office. A fireplace crackled here too—set in the wall behind Dooku's desk, the wavering flames framed the count in haunting silhouette.
"There was a disturbance in the Force," she said after some time, turning to lock eyes with Dooku as she spoke. "A wave of unspeakable darkness."
She watched as his face shifted—the slightest tightening of the jaw, the briefest narrowing of the eyes. His hand almost imperceptibly shaky, the count removed his reading glasses and placed them on top of the notebook's leather cover. Gaze turning to meet hers, Dooku gave a single shake of his head.
In that moment, Qui-Gon knew. "You felt it too."
"Qui-Gon," he said. "You don't have to do this."
Her scowl served as an unspoken question; though she said nothing, the count continued.
"You are on a journey," he said, placing his palms against the desk and shoving against it to rise to his feet. "One of great importance. Do not let events occurring halfway across the galaxy distract you from the here and now. If you open this door, there is no shutting it again."
"Dooku, please," she interrupted, taking a half step in his direction. "When I felt it . . . "
She trailed off, recalling that morning, when the disturbance had washed over her. It had struck her like the icy rush of a northern ocean wave, nearly knocking her over as the fear and darkness had plunged into her gut. "You'd have me choose willful ignorance? No. If I decide to ignore this, it will be an informed decision. What happened?"
"I strongly advise you to—"
"I'll make my own advice," she interrupted, wincing as her voice echoed off the office walls.
Her old teacher closed his eyes and inhaled sharply through his nose. "I sense great fear in you, Qui-Gon. You want the answers to your questions, and yet you do not. You fear those answers." He paused, rounding the desk before speaking again. "What are you afraid of?"
"I don't know. That's why I'm afraid."
Dooku's eyes slid closed, his head bowing in a slow half-nod as a resigned sigh escaped his lips. He gestured to the office's window. "You must have answers? You'll find them there."
When she spun to face the massive sheet of glass, Stratum Apolune had disappeared. In its place was a skyline she'd come to know all too well—the downtown capitol district of the Galactic Republic. Skyscrapers lacquered in mirror-glazed transparisteel bounced daylight back into the sky, speeders weaving between them in perfect rows of traffic like a marching line of ants.
Qui-Gon could just make out her old place of employment in the distance of the image. The tower which housed the Office of Interplanetary Outreach jutted into the sky mere blocks from the most notable structure on the block—the Senate Building.
Its domed shell was home to a smoking crater, the curved dagger of a warship jutting out of the wound.
Qui-Gon's eyes grew wide as her heart plunged within her chest. "Is that the Charybdis?"
Dooku—who had moved to stand beside her so silently it was as if he'd simply appeared there—nodded. "It started small. A band of clones and pirates carrying out terrorist attacks across Coruscant. This"—he gestured out the window—"was their grand finale."
She cocked her head to one side. "A bit theatrical for Maul, isn't it?"
"Not Maul," Dooku corrected—when she shot him a sideways glance, he offered the slightest of shrugs. "Not only Maul."
A stretch of silence gave way to realization, and Qui-Gon couldn't help but gasp. "Clones and pirates, you said?" she asked, though she didn't wait for Dooku to answer. "Valis is with him."
"So it would seem."
In that moment, she realized what it was she'd been afraid of. "The Jedi Temple."
Dooku seemed unfazed at the mention of the Jedi Order's home. "What of it?"
"Was it attacked?"
Spinning on a heel, the Count of Serenno strolled away from the window, offering Qui-Gon a shrug and a sidelong glance as he moved. "Why would it have been?"
Her eyes grew wide with desperation as she jabbed a finger toward the window. "Two Sith attacked Coruscant. Why wouldn't it have been? If you're so convinced the Temple is fine, prove it."
Dooku stopped in his tracks, firing a stern glare at his former student. "If you're asking me to show it to you, I'm afraid I cannot. My connection to that place has long since withered away."
"That can't be true!" she shot back, leaning forward as she spoke as though her words were carrying her deeper into the room. "You lived there for decades, Dooku. The Temple was your home, the Order was your family."
The stern glare of the count held firm. "I cannot sense what happened at the Temple. But I am confident your Jedi friends are safe."
"How?"
"It would have made the news."
When a sharp breath escaped her lips, Dooku held a hand high as if to interrupt.
"I apologize," he continued. "I intend no callousness. But the fact remains: if the Temple of the Jedi Order had been discovered on Coruscant, much less destroyed, it would be the only thing anyone was talking about on the holonet. No news is good news, Qui-Gon."
She whirled around to gaze out the window, her eyes following the smoke that curled upward from the smoldering remains of the Charybdis. He was right, of course. She stretched her senses out as far as they would go—beyond the walls of the vision of Dooku's office, beyond the clouds of Aquilae that hung above her corporeal form. Though she failed to reach as far as Coruscant, the expansion of her feelings brought some level of comfort. The Jedi were safe. For now.
Qui-Gon blinked, and when her eyes had opened again the Capitol Plaza was gone, replaced by the view of Stratum Apolune bathed in evening sunlight.
"You sense their safety, and yet your heart is still laced with worry." Dooku said. His voice came from across the office—when Qui-Gon turned to glance over her shoulder, she saw him settling in to one of the office's armchairs.
"Yours isn't?" she asked. "The last time Maul and Valis were together—"
She bit back the words before she could say something truly unforgivable, looking at the vision of Serenno's capital as it floated in the distance. The last time Maul and Valis were together, they brought down something much larger than a temple.
He must have known what she'd intended to say. But when her old master spoke, his voice was gentle. "Of course it is. You were right—the Jedi Temple was my home for many years, I can't erase its mark on my life. But I don't let my worry distract me from the tasks I'm given now."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Qui-Gon asked softly, her gaze still fixed outside the window. She could hear the chair creaking behind her as Dooku moved about.
"I left the Jedi Order to make a journey across the galaxy. I did so with the aim of studying all aspects of the Force. Of learning things the Jedi could not teach me. I sought to broaden my understanding of this energy that binds us all together." He paused, and all Qui-Gon could hear for a moment was the sound of his breathing—or perhaps the distant ocean wind of Aquilae. "You are on a similar journey now. Tell me, Qui-Gon," Dooku continued, "why did you leave the Jedi Order and undertake this journey?"
She spun around to face him. "I didn't leave the Order!"
Dooku said nothing at first, merely opening both palms toward the ceiling and raising his eyebrows. After a suitable silence had lingered, he spoke. "Perhaps there lies the problem."
"The Jedi make an easy scapegoat, Dooku," Qui-Gon said between half-clenched teeth. "I'll grant you that. But me staying with the Order is not the problem here."
"I never said it was," Dooku replied lightly. "The problem is your lack of focus on your present task. I abandoned my own to take the throne as Count of Serenno, and look how that turned out."
In an instant, the sight outside the window transformed. Gone was the whole of Stratum Apolune, soaked in sunset oranges and teeming with life. Ashen clouds and light tinged with sorrow blanketed a city that was a shadow of its former self—the few giants that remained in the sky now stood alone.
The view of what Serenno had become made Qui-Gon's stomach sink. When she could bear to look no longer, she turned her gaze toward Dooku. "You can't possibly think that if you had just continued your travels, Stratum Apolune would still be here."
Solemnity flashed across the count's face, his eyes turning toward the floor. "I think that every day."
A moment of mutual mourning hung in the air between Dooku and his former student; when the silence had gone on long enough, he raised his eyes to look at her. "I do not ask for pity, Qui-Gon. I made my choices, and must live with them, just as your friends must live with theirs. But you too will have to live with yours.
"You're right, your allegiance to the Jedi is not incompatible with your journey of discovery. But it may be a hindrance to it. A distraction, if you will. If you ignore this incident on Coruscant, someday there will be another that threatens to call you away. And another, if you ignore that one. You will spend your days looking to the horizon rather than living in the present, never able to glean anything of value from the here and now."
"So, what? I should just ignore this disturbance in the Force and . . . get back to work? Focus on the 'here and now'?" The final words left her mouth with the deflated energy of resignation.
"I can't tell you what to do, Qui-Gon. I'm not your teacher anymore," Dooku replied, leaning forward in the armchair and placing his elbows on his knees. "I can tell you that if you leave what you're doing and return to the Jedi Order, that will be the end of it. Once returned to, the Order is not so easily left again."
The sound of crackling fire bloomed within the office, its light and sound now coming from multiple angles. Qui-Gon turned to face the window—Stratum Apolune had gone again, replaced by the image of a burning pyre surrounded by robed figures.
A Jedi funeral.
She remembered this one well—she had stood by Dooku's side as the pyre had been lit, and watched as the flames glinted in the tears rolling down his face. The Order had lost a Jedi that day, but Dooku, Count of Serenno, had lost a friend.
"That is not—" Qui-Gon began, her voice cracking as she spoke. "What happened to him will not happen to me."
"The Republic is at war, Qui-Gon, and the Jedi are far too tangled in it. You said it yourself: two Sith attacked Coruscant." He closed his eyes. "This will get worse for the Jedi before it gets better. If you go back, I can't protect you."
"I didn't ask you to," she said. "You're not my teacher anymore, remember?"
A long sigh left Dooku's mouth. "That doesn't mean I want you rushing into danger, Qui-Gon." Shoving against the structure of the armchair, Dooku rose to his feet. "But you're right. Ultimately it is up to you. All I can do is offer advice. Stay where you are. Learn about the Force. If you must return to them, the Jedi will still be there when you're done."
His final words danced across Qui-Gon's mind like a distant echo, and moments later she couldn't be certain if Dooku's office had ever been there at all. The sky of Aquilae returned around her, harsh light and salted air swirling about the ancient machine perched at the top of the lighthouse.
She hauled herself to her feet with some effort, every muscle in her body protesting along the way. Her head pulsed with each heartbeat as the energy of her encounter with Dooku flowed back out of her. When she'd summoned enough strength to walk, her erratic steps carried her away from the lighthouse's peak, back toward reality.
Hobbled, uneven footfalls saw Qui-Gon nearly tripping onto the ground floor of the old lighthouse—as she fell, she reached out and caught herself on the corner of the desk that had once belonged to the lighthouse keeper. Bound tomes were stacked haphazardly around the desk's centerpiece—one in particular stood out amongst the pile, a well-loved and tattered copy of a text widely used by Jedi. The Aurebesh script along its spine was worn down to the point of illegibility, though its cover still boasted visible type: Aspects of the Force, Volume I – The Light.
Beneath the book sat a second volume, The Dark. Qui-Gon reflexively recoiled at the sight of it. Though copies of the first volume of Aspects of the Force were distributed freely within the Jedi Temple, copies of the second were kept under the close watch of the Temple's chief archivist—to be checked out of the library only by Masters, or on occasion students with special authorization. She recalled her chaperoned sessions to the Jedi Archives, where rows of students sat at a long table, reading the assigned passages from this forbidden text under the close watch of Master Jocasta Nu.
In the evening, late after one such session, she'd been visited in her dormitory by her own teacher. Dooku had brought with him a few texts from his personal collection—further volumes of Aspects of the Force Qui-Gon had not even known to exist.
"Look around this room," Dooku had said as he placed the books atop Qui-Gon's desk. "Study each object. Are light and dark the only things you see?"
She hadn't answered him. He would have kept talking regardless of what she said—he had, after all, a point to make.
"Of course not. There is color; there is texture, depth, and weight." She recalled him picking something up from her desk—a trinket of some sort, from Qlik's workshop—and turning it in his hand as he spoke of all its qualities. "Waves of sound ebb and flow around each and every thing. The passage of time sees it all age." Dooku had paused, setting down the object and kneeling beside Qui-Gon's bed. "So it is with the Force. To reduce its vastness to a mere binary is hopelessly simplistic."
He had been right, Qui-Gon knew—she'd come to realize it in her time away from the Jedi Temple. And yet, as she moved through the room that comprised the base of the old lighthouse, two things stood out to her. The first was the pulsing glow of the fireplace. The second was the great shifting shadow cast by the tree—which only grew as the fireplace flickered brighter.
If the Jedi are the light of the Force, she thought, what is one to do when there's a growing darkness in the galaxy? Running back to the Temple wasn't the answer, if Dooku was to be believed.
Qui-Gon sighed and reached out an open hand, snatching an old broom from a hook on the wall. As her fingers closed around the wooden stick, she felt the phantom vibrations of a lightsaber pulsate through her arm. Shifting her grip on the broomstick so it was positioned more for swordplay than for sweeping, she brought the pretend blade to bear and put on her best imitation of her old Jedi instructor.
"Sloppy footwork, Madame Jinn!" she muttered in an overly posh impression of Dooku's accent. Shuffling forward and thrusting with the point of the broomstick, she imagined herself back in the Jedi Temple courtyard doing lightsaber drills with her fellow students.
Then, in an instant, she grabbed the base of the broomstick with both hands and whirled in a circle, slashing the wooden handle through the air. She could hear the hum of her old lightsaber, see its green glow washing across her sleeves. She moved not as a student but as a Jedi Knight, cutting down the agents of evil who threatened peace in the galaxy. Hums and hisses of plasma on plastoid seemed to sizzle through the air as Qui-Gon Jinn, Knight of the Jedi Order, leapt through the air and stabbed downward with her imaginary blade.
When she landed on her feet and spun around, she saw a figure cloaked in darkness rushing toward her. Beneath the shadow of its hood, the specter's irises glowed a piercing yellow. It brandished a red-bladed lightsaber, and stalked toward Qui-Gon with cool confidence, pure determination, and sheer will.
She gasped and fell backwards, tumbling into a bookshelf set against the lighthouse wall. The wound in her abdomen burned with the memory of pain so intense it might as well have been real, then went searingly cold as she exhaled. Qui-Gon squeezed her eyes shut and let the broom clatter to the stone floor—when she opened them again, the hooded figure had disappeared.
Scrambling to her feet, she made for the lighthouse door; shoving against the gently textured wood and nearly ripping it from its hinges. She stumbled outward into the flowing grass of the cliffside, fighting the urge to stare back at the lighthouse as she ran. She'd come back later, when she was more certain she hadn't just seen something real. Right now she needed to think.
And to do that, she needed to be as far away from here as possible.
Jedi Archives: On the Matter of Permitted Texts for Jedi Students
[excerpt from a letter penned by the Jedi High Council, addressed to the Jedi Master Dooku of Serenno]
Of greater concern is the distribution of, as you so generously referred to them, "extracurricular texts" to your Jedi pupil. Did it not occur to you, Master Dooku, that if the second volume of Aspects of the Force is considered a restricted book, the volumes following it would be considered such as well?
Your student faces a difficult path ahead, as all students at her stage of training do. We educate our young Jedi on the concept of the dark side as a matter of warning—but it is no secret that this precautionary education can quickly turn to undue temptation. This is hardly the time to muddy the waters with further considerations about what lies beyond the concept of light and dark.
We urge you to collect these texts from Madame Jinn and keep them in your possession until a more appropriate time. Furthermore, we ask you to consider whether such concepts are really something we as a Jedi Order want taught within our Temple walls. If you find this disagreeable, perhaps a more in depth face to face discussion would be beneficial.