Brother, Mine (5)
Long ago, when the Galaxy was a hopeful place and everything in my world was in order, Master Yoda stood before a group of Padawans and attempted to describe the nature of the Dark Side of the Force. I was among them, and I remember his exact words, because I have often since then turned them over in my mind.
Such is the power of the Dark Side, Master Yoda said, that its lightest touch, the merest brush of its presence, strangles joy and strives to imprison the soul.
Like most kinds of received wisdom, the words stayed with me while their deepest meaning remained just beyond my grasp. True understanding is always rooted in experience and I had no experience of this.
Until now.
Vader's presence on this ship is like a blight on my soul. It is taking most of my strength to battle the sense of foreboding that wants to creep through my veins, and a heavy feeling like grief weighs down my heart. I feel as though I can barely breathe. It's hard to think clearly. The only thing that seems to be flourishing is my capacity for self-doubt. I bitterly regret the choice I've made to seek out this dark thing.
I shouldn't have come here.
Perhaps it is that loss of faith, that wavering in my determination, that has brought the vision crashing down on me again.
Vision.
I've stopped referring to this phenomenon as a dream. In my current state, stripped bare of all illusions and perilously close to the end, there is no longer any room for self-deception. The problem is that, while dreams can be pushed aside, a vision, as my Jedi Masters once taught me, comes as a call to action.
The walls in my cell begin to shimmer.
Oh, no. Not again. Not now. I'm here. I can't turn back. What more do you want from me?
I know that the Force is calling to me through these visions, as it has been calling to me for a long time. Reason tells me that, through a jumbled stream of events, some seemingly coincidence, and others that are undeniably my own decisions and choices, I arrived some time ago at the point my Jedi Masters used to refer to as the One Point – that point at which all choices have been made, all other paths have fallen away, and all that remains is the necessity to act immediately and decisively. If there is no choice but to act, then there is no room for uncertainty.
(A Jedi does not hesitate to choose, or to act.)
And yet I have hesitated to act for a long time. By dismissing these visions 'dreams,' I tried to ignore their call.
(A vision is a dream that entails a task.)
The shimmering grows brighter, as though a light had been switched on in my cell. My heart sinks.
If not for the galvanizing effect of Alderaan's destruction, I still might not be here. It was outrage, pure and simple, that drove me to Tatooine to consult the wisest man I know. When I couldn't find him or Anakin's son, fear for the boy's safety drove me onward and brought me this far.
But since the moment I was shown into this dark place and left to perish in profound isolation – if not in body, then certainly in soul – my resolve has weakened, and I have grown increasingly uncertain about my purpose. The moment I sensed Vader's arrival, doubt devolved into despair.
I was wrong. I am endangering the boy. I should not have come here.
Even the vision had abandoned me. Now, in my darkest hour, it seems it has returned.
The shimmer resolves itself into an image of the boy in the marketplace, just as I had seen him then, but with the light around him made visible. He hovers just beyond my reach, so bright that I hold my hands in front of my eyes to shield them. It is a futile gesture. There is no hiding from that which is experienced inwardly.
"No," I protest aloud, futilely reaching out for the retreating boy with a hand that grasps only air. "Come back, " I plead, wanting desperately to hold onto that light. What I really mean to say is "don't come," because I know what will happen next.
As always, despite my empty grasping, the boy's overwhelming light disappears behind a shiny, seamless, smooth wall; a wall that is as black as the walls of my cell, only as slick and hard as molten rock that has been cooled in the icy depths of space.
The hand that is reaching out for the light instead bumps against this indifferent surface, startling me yet again with the intense clarity of the experience. The images are so vivid that all of my senses are activated and heightened. I can touch this wall that has appeared out of nowhere, separating me from the boy. It is utterly smooth and seamless, cold, and hard like obsidian. It blocks out my vision, but not my hearing. Yes, even that sense is engaged. My stomach twists into a knot of dread.
I hear someone scream. I know who it is.
I press both hands against the glassy wall, straining to see. I don't want to see. Yet each time the vision draws me in and I am helpless against it.
The dark barrier grows a little bit translucent, as if lit from inside, and a shadowy figure appears inside of it. He is flailing against the wall. I can hear him gasping.
"No!" I plead.
The light grows brighter and Anakin's hideously distorted face appears. He looks much as he did the last time I saw him, although I never saw him in this state. His features are twisted with pain and rage. Periodic flashes of a piercing bluish light flare behind the barrier, and each time it does he cries out. He is trapped, he is suffering, and I am the only witness.
"Anakin!" The cry rips out of me against my will. I know it is only a vision, a projection of my fevered mind. I know that, but I can't help responding to what I see and hear and feel so deeply. I begin to run both hands over the wall in desperation, searching for a crack or an opening of some kind that I can use to release him. I can't find one. He doesn't respond to my cry; he doesn't seem to notice me. And yet I realize with a familiar sickening lurch that his hands are pressed against the wall from within as mine press upon it from without, palm to palm, almost touching, yet mercilessly separate. No matter where I move my hands, his move also. We remain palm to palm, the thick, cold barrier between us. I can't escape. Nor, it seems, can he. I feel panic rising.
Calm down, I remind myself sternly. This is a representation It's not real. See? I force myself to focus on his hands. They are both his own, and yet Anakin first befriended me after he already had lost one of them at the Battle of Geonosis. This logic, along with the reminder that I have experienced these images countless times before since leaving Tatooine, should help me to find some kind of calm detachment from what I am seeing.
It doesn't.
Once, long ago, I tried to coax Anakin to tell me about his experience on Geonosis – his first encounter with what we now know as the singular Force-power of the Sith. He didn't say much about it at the time, only, "It's like nothing you could imagine."
But I have a very good imagination. I know anguish when I see it, and Anakin's trapped agony tears through me as though it is mine. Physically separate though we are, this macabre image invariably plays itself out in my heart and in my guts as well as in my senses. I grow desperate, scrabbling futilely at the wall to find a way to get him out, to make it stop. I can't. The wall is flawless. I am helpless. My powerlessness galls me, and I can feel a kind of smoldering knot form in my gut that seems to resonate with the maelstrom that is churning inside that wall.
Calm down, I order myself again, hating what is to come. Don't react. Don't give in to it.
Despite my sincere efforts to remain calm and centered, anger begins to well up in me. I don't know where it is coming from. Is it mine? Is it his? Despite the wall, I seem to be inwardly linked with the figure whose palms are pressed against mine.
The feeling of growing fury is terrible, and I am defenseless against it. I begin to identify with the anger. It becomes my own. I am angry, and suddenly he is the brunt of it. I am furious with him for having chosen to seize the darkness, and then for having left me behind to get lost. I rage at him for destroying the life we knew and for having left me alive to watch helplessly. Alone in my cell, locked into a vision I cannot escape, I roar my pain at his betrayal and at the same time I curse the impenetrable wall that I cannot help him to escape. The mixed-up anger, rage, and pain consume me so completely that I don't have the strength to fight them. I am trapped, just as he is. I know that this is my life from now on; this will go on forever and forever. I will remain here in this nightmare for an eternity because my last strength, every shred of it, is being transmuted into searing rage. It rocks me in an all-encompassing storm that wrenches me out of myself, drags me into some unknown, bottomless hell.
The horror leaves me nauseous. Helpless though I am against it, I cannot imagine – I don't want to imagine – what monstrous skills and techniques it requires to harness this kind of dark rage and to use its power deliberately. The wall remains cold and impenetrable, easily containing the heat and fury inside. Behind it I sense malevolent power and endless hunger. It is a force that consumes without end and yet never has enough, an all-encompassing juggernaut that devours everything in its path, even me. It is sucking the light out of the Galaxy. Made manifest, it destroyed an entire planet, and will destroy more. It has to stop. It has to be made to stop. But it never will…
And just when I am at my worst, sobbing, and sick, some remaining shred of awareness alerts me that I am not alone. Slowly, painfully, I try to pull myself out of the dark hole into which I have descended. The sound of my cell door sliding open accomplishes what my will alone cannot, and I snap back into waking consciousness of my surroundings.
Two white-armored Stormtroopers carrying blasters step inside my cell one at a time and flank the open door, filling the already small space with their hard-edged presence. A third man, a grey-uniformed officer of some kind, steps inside after them and remains standing in front of the opening on splayed legs, his hands clasped behind him, and stares down at me.
I seem to be huddled in the middle of my cell on my knees. Rumpled and crumpled after many days in confinement, my face wet with tears, and blinking in the sudden shaft of light that stabs into this dark box from the white corridor outside, I must be an unprepossessing sight. As my vision clears I can see the contempt on the officer's face. I look up at him enquiringly.
"Lord Vader wishes to see you now," he says disdainfully.
Still shaking with emotion, I curse Vader silently and passionately. I begin to get unsteadily to my feet. Of all the times to send for me … and yet I know why he suddenly decided to see me now. I know exactly why. I wonder, somewhat hopelessly, whether I have the strength remaining to smooth out the violent disturbances that my intense emotions have set off in the Force. As it is, I can barely stand.
But I do stand, because I have no choice. The grim-faced, grey-uniformed officer turns smartly and leads the way out into the corridor, while the two Troopers fall in behind me, blasters pointed at my back. Under those circumstances, I not only stand, my feet find a way to get moving, and I walk.
It's hard not to squint in the glare of the corridor. I wonder what it is like to work, to exist in that brightly lit environment day in and day out. It must reduce life to a very simple format. There are no shadows.
My soul is still full of shadows, though. As terrible as it was to re-live that vision again, it is unspeakable to have been torn out of it at the very worst point, before it ends. Because normally, there is more to it. There is an ending. A resolution, of sorts. A healing, redeeming image that has haunted me since the visions began. It is the reason I came here. My task.
Without having experienced the grace, the deliverance, of that ending to the vision, I have to find my own way to shake off these shadows. I wonder how much time I have. I'm not fit to see Vader in this condition; I am weak and off my center. But of course he knows that.
A particularly choice expression I learned among the Hutt comes to mind and I realize that I'm still angry. That won't help me. It will only make me more vulnerable.
(To clear the mind, the attention must be brought to the here and now.)
For once, I obey the teachings that were given to me so long ago. Gifts, those lessons were. They are still fresh in my mind. We have reached the end of the corridor in the detention block and are back in the processing bay, heading toward the wider corridor beyond. Doggedly I keep putting one foot in front of the other. As though my Master still were by my side guiding me through the exercise, I breathe deeply and evenly. Cleansing breaths. One. Two. Three.
We turn left and keep going. I continue to breathe slowly and rhythmically while focusing my attention only on my immediate surroundings. I listen to the sounds of my captors' boots on the duraplas floors. The two behind me are marching in rhythm; left, right, left right. The one behind my left shoulder left drags his right foot ever so slightly, creating a tiny syncopation in his walking rhythm. If I were going to attack them, he is the one I would move against first. But of course, I won't. I am, at long last, on my way to see Vader.
I push away the stray thoughts and return my focus to the sights and sounds around me. Good, Poulin, I imagine my Master saying beside me. Just so. The officer who is leading the way still has his hands clasped behind his back. His boots are softer and make less noise. His stride is firm. His steps are not synchronized with those of the soldiers behind me; this officer sets his own pace. His back is straight, his shoulders perfectly square. The fabric in his uniform is fine and densely woven. He is armed only with a sidearm, but he might have another weapon concealed in his sleeve. I skip once with my right foot to shift the rhythm of my walking pace and wait to see whether he notices. He doesn't. He is indifferent to me, but the soldier behind my right shoulder prods me once with the barrel of his weapon, to warn me to keep up.
Interesting. I know now who has primary responsibility for me. My breathing remains steady and even, and the anger has finally slipped into the background. Actually, I think it is gone. There is no room for it when I'm fully engaged with other things.
Thank the Force. I feel steadier now.
The long corridor ends at a bank of lifts. I work out that we are somewhere near the center of the ship. The corridor through which we just passed was empty, but there are two other officers and four white-armored soldiers waiting in the bay with us. I look around surreptitiously. Our small group is standing off to one side in front of a particular lift. The others move away from us, but I catch a few appraising glances in my direction. It is as though they know our destination. And my fate.
By now I am calm and back in my center, and the Force once again flows around me evenly and smoothly, so I can afford to expand my awareness. Gathering my courage, I move from observing to perceiving and extend my feelings, my senses, further and further around me in every direction, to the sides, behind, above and below. I need my courage because I know from the experience of the past few days what I will encounter. I confirm that he is here, close by. His presence is enormous, and powerful. It fills the ship. Between Vader's watchfulness and the painfully bright lighting everywhere, it seems as though nothing on this ship could remain hidden.
The lift arrives and our small group of five enters. The grey-uniformed officer stands beside me staring straight ahead. He hasn't looked at me once since leaving my cell. I suppose he has no reason to, since I'm Vader's business and not long for this life.
A short, silent swoop later the doors open again, this time directly into a short, narrow corridor with a single, large door at the end. The door is closed. My captors don't move, so I don't either. The one on my right finally shoves me out of the lift. They remain behind.
It seems no one is going to announce me. I suppose that means that I don't need an introduction.
I look around. When the lift door swishes shut behind me there is nowhere to go but forward toward that door. I remain standing quietly, gathering myself, reaching out with my feelings for something – anything – that might be recognizable or familiar. Something that might show me how to approach the Dark Lord of the Galaxy. I find nothing of the kind – nothing that is not cold, and hard, and alien.
And then I realize that I have at last arrived at the One Point. In perfect synchronicity the door at the end of the corridor slides open, and unhesitatingly I walk toward it and step inside.
(still more to come.... if you're reading this story, and if you like it, please let me know by leaving a review!)