Luke found his first practice session with his new Padawan Master an eye opening experience. Vader had been a powerful but ponderous opponent. Dai-Men - though much the same size - was light and graceful as a dancer. And fast, incredibly fast. Luke estimated he'd received at least five mortal injuries in ten minutes sparring with lighsabres set to lowest possible power.
The Master disengaged, eyeing his panting, sweating padawan with knit brows. It didn't take Jedi sensibilities to see he was unimpressed, even alarmed by Luke's performance.
Leia certainly saw it. "Luke held his own against Vader." she snapped defensively from her place on a sofa between Sylkie and Threepio.
Luke shook his head. "I lost." he reminded her, looked ruefully at his new Master. "And Vader's a lot slower than you are."
That seemed to startle Dai-Men, his frown deepened: "He wasn't always. It must be the mechanical limitations of that cyborg body of his."
Luke glanced uneasily at his prosthetic right hand and the Master smiled reassuringly. "I don't think your hand will be a problem, Luke."
"Then what is?" Luke demanded, thoroughly discouraged.
"For one thing you're waiting for me to act before you react." Dai-Men answered. "Detach your time sense, see what I'm going to do before I do it."
"That's impossible!" his student blurted.
"Very little is impossible with the Force." The Master replied serenely. "And the Force is strong in you, Luke, as it was in your father."
"You knew my father?"
"Most of my life." Dai-Men smiled. "Obi-Wan had been my father's apprentice. He took an interest in me as a child so naturally I saw a lot of his Padawan. We learned about the Force together." His expression turned thoughtful. "Anakin came late to the training. Like you he had much to unlearn."
"How old was he?" Luke asked.
"Nine." said the Master.
"Nine!" his student echoed, stunned.
"Far to old according to the Codes." Dai-Men went on. "The Council made a special exception for him."
"If nine was to old when did Jedi start their training?" Luke demanded.
"One year was considered ideal." the Master replied calmly. "Though exceptions were occasionally made for children up to four years old."
Padawan and Princess stared at him speechless.
"The reason for starting so young was to prevent the very problem Luke's having now," Dai-Men explained. "he's been raised to accept certain limitations which he must now unlearn."
"That's what Yoda kept saying." Luke agreed gloomily.
The Master re-ignited his lightsabre. "Let's try again." They reengaged, Dai-Men deliberately slowing to half his previous speed. But that was still much too fast for
his student.
"Stop trying so hard." he counseled. "Let go, don't try to control the Force let it control you."
"I can't!" Luke panted.
"Of course you can, I've seen you do it when you fly. Don't think, react!"
Luke bit his lip struggling for the calm openness he felt in a cockpit.
"Your father was a great pilot," Dai-Men continued conversationally, "even at nine. He was a pod-racer you know."
"He was?" Luke asked eagerly, dodging the Master's blade barely in time. "I wanted to try it but Uncle Owen said no human could possibly be fast enough."
"Only a Jedi or potential Jedi." Dai-Men replied as Luke continued to parry his attacks. "In fact that's how Anakin first met your mother, and Obi-Wan, and my father. Your mother's planet had been invaded by the Neimoidian Trade Federation -"
"Mother's planet?" Luke interrupted, counter-attacking, "I thought she was from Tatooine?"
"Anakin was from Tatooine," the Master corrected, giving ground but blocking every blow. "Amidala was Queen of Naboo."
"Queen! My mother was a queen?" Luke gasped barely countering a lighting thrust.
"Elected to the throne at the age of fourteen, just a few months before the invasion." Dai-Men replied. "Father's warning came too late but he was able to free your mother and she decided to go to Coruscant and make a personal appeal to the Senate. Unfortunately their ship was damaged running the blockade and they had to land on Tatooine for repairs."
"And that's when she met father?" Luke asked. Absorbed in the story he was barely conscious of his lightsabre as it countered his Master's blade.
"In the shop of the dealer they went to for replacement parts." Dai-Men agreed. "But the only money they had was Republic credits -"
"No dealer on Tatooine would accept those!" Luke interrupted. Disengaging he circled the Master, looking for an opening.
Dai-Men pivoted smoothly, en-gard, and grinned. "Exactly. A big pod race was coming up and your father offered to drive for them. The prize money was enough to cover the parts they needed.
Luke grinned back as their blades crossed and re-crossed, "I guess he won."
"Of course. The youngest being ever to win the Boonta. My father sensed the Force in him and took Anakin with them to Coruscant to be trained as a Jedi."
"Even though he was so old?" Luke flipped clear over the Master and tried to surprise him from behind.
Dai-Men spun and parried with effortless skill. "I understand there was some trouble with the Council over that but they eventually saw reason."
"What about Mother's planet?" Luke asked, doggedly pressing his attack. "Did the Senate help?"
"Not really," the Master replied, allowing himself to be forced back but countering every blow. "Amidala didn't wait for them to act. She returned to Naboo and formed an alliance with the Gungans, a nonhuman species who shared the planet, then led her own counter-attack capturing the Federation Viceroy."
"Good for her!" Luke exclaimed, lunging.
Dai-Men side-stepped, knocking Luke's blade out of line, and smiled reminiscently. "Padme Amidala was an extrordinary woman, beautiful, brave." he shook his head half-humorously. "I had a terrible crush on her when I was about your age."
Luke recovered, successfully blocking his Master's riposte. "Uncle Owen never even told me her name."
"That'll be enough for today I think." Dai-Men disengaged, extinguishing his sabre.
"Huh?" Luke abruptly snapped back to full consciousness and realized he was holding his own weapon at ready, his arms quivering with exhaustion.
The Master smiled and spread his hands. "You see, you can do it."
Luke looked at Leia. She stared back round eyed from the edge of the couch. "That was - incredible!"
"I engaged your conscious mind," Dai-Men explained, "leaving the Force free to work through you."
Luke stared at the hands gripping his lightsabre as if they belonged to somebody else.
Dai-Men had also been enlightened by the practice session. The boy was alarmingly slow and had a limited repertoire of moves. Somebody, presumably Obi-Wan, had taught him the basics but no more. 'No time' he reflected, folding his arms as he gazed out the port into a whirlpool of stars. 'and a Force apparition can't spar.'
Frankly Dai-Men was amazed Luke had lasted as long as he had against Vader. He frowned, but apparently Anakin wasn't the swordsman he'd once been either. The two of them had been evenly matched in the old days. The Master knew he'd improved over the years, and had assumed the same would be true of his old sparring partner. Evidently he'd underestimated the limitations imposed by that cyborg body. Heavy, mechanical, difficult to influence with the Force.
'Poor Ani.'
He pulled his mind back to his new Padawan. Physical skill wasn't everything of course, the Force counted for much more. Unfortunately Luke had problems there as well. He wasn't comfortable with the sabre and found it difficult to surrender control.
Suddenly Yoda's words made sense; above all Luke needed the faith to trust in the Force. A lesson Dai-Men had learned thoroughly in a hard school. But transmitting that faith to his Padawan would mean touching on some questionable ground. He sighed, troubled. He didn't want to confuse Luke with conflicting philosophies - yet Yoda knew their difference quite as well as he did. The old Master would have been within his rights to insist Dai-Men limit himself to the technicalities of sabre-play but instead he had asked - no demanded - more.
The Master unfolded his arms, decision made. He would teach Luke exactly as he'd taught his other Padawans, and let the boy himself decide the path that was right for him.
Leia walked a somewhat depressed Luke back to his quarters. "You had him on the defensive." she offered encouragingly.
"Because he let me," he replied ruefully, "he wasn't going all out, Leia, even in that first bout." looked down at the scorch marks on his shirt. "He'd cut me to ribbons in a real fight."
"Well he is a Master after all, you'll learn, Luke."
"I'll have to learn fast," he said quietly. "time's running out."
"Why do you say that?"
Luke turned to look into frightened brown eyes. "Because it's true, I feel it....and so do you."
Leia bit her lip. "The Alliance can't survive another defeat." she admitted, "The next battle will be the last, one way or another."
He put an arm around her and she leaned into his shoulder seeking what comfort he could give.
"Yoda and Ben kept telling me to follow my feelings but when I did they said I was wrong." Luke complained, explaining to his new Master why he had left Yoda and couldn't go back just yet.
"Was it your feelings you were following or your fears?" Dai-Men asked softly.
Luke's shoulders slumped. "Fears I guess, I sure wasn't much help to Han and Leia."
"The future is always in motion." the Master said, just as Yoda had, and continued. "It's dangerous to base your choices on might bes."
"Then what should I base them on?"
"Listen to your feelings and trust in the Force." Dai-Men replied, "That is the first lesson of a Jedi and the last."
"But how do you tell feelings that come from the Force from your own?"
His Master grinned. "That's what all the lessons in between are supposed to teach you." Then he continued seriously. "Your ultimate aim is to become one with the Force, to shed personal fears and desires and seek only to know the will of the Force and to do it."
"That - sounds hard." Luke said inadequately. It sounded damn near impossible!
"It is." Dai-Men smiled. "I've been working at it for forty-six years and I'm not there yet."
"Great. I don't have forty-six years."
"I know. But you have time enough to make a start. To commit yourself to the path."
"I've done that!" Luke protested.
"Have you?" The Master's tone was gentle but not his words. "Do you truly understand what it means to be a Jedi? It's a hard life, Luke, the Force gives much but in return it demands everything: Your whole heart, your whole mind, your very soul, lifelong and beyond."
Dai-Men's blue eyes held Luke's like a vise and he realized the Master was right. Up to this moment he hadn't seriously considered what it meant to become a Jedi. He'd thought of it in terms of skills to be mastered, of the Force as a weapon to use against Vader and his Emperor. But it was more than that.
He'd have to let it into himself, let it change him. To be a Jedi meant loosing the self he was now and becoming somebody new. Somebody wise and powerful like Dai-Men or Ben.
Time slid out of focus as he looked down a tunnel of years at a phantom of the Luke Skywalker he might become: Brown robed and gray haired, face lined with sadness and strength. Wielding a lightsabre with sure skill. Counseling, teaching, following the Force wherever it led. Could he really become that man? Did he want to? Did he have a choice?
He closed his eyes squeezing back tears, regrets, fears. Found himself thinking, 'Someday I'll tell my own students about this moment.' and for an instant he was that older Luke looking back, remembering the decision that changed his life.
Then the vision faded and he was an uncertain Padawan again looking at his Master with grief, fear and resolution. "I want to be a Jedi." he said quietly.
"Then let us begin."
"Follow your feelings -"
"And trust in the Force." Luke finished for his Master, allowing a hint of impatience to leak into his voice. They had been working together for some weeks now and familiarity had taken the edge off his awe.
Dai-Men arched an amused eyebrow as he extinguished his sabre. "Am I repeating myself?"
His student had the grace to look abashed. "You do say it a lot." he half apologized.
"No doubt I do. It's something my father once said to me." he didn't add it was the last thing his father had ever said to him as a living man. Turning away from Luke Dai-Men caught a glimpse of his own reflection in a port. It could almost have been his father as he'd last seen him nearly forty years ago.
The day after your seventh birthday was a big day for any Jedi. It marked the beginning of formal training in one of the Acolyte schools. But like all Jedi passages it went unmarked by any ritual, your parents or guardian simply walked you to your new quarters and sent you in to face your new Acolyte master and classmates alone.
Only his father had been with him on that momentous walk. Mom had said her good-byes the day before and said she saw no reason to repeat them. At the time they'd taken it for one of her characteristic confusions but later Dai-Men wondered if she'd done it on purpose, to give him and his father those moments alone together, knowing they'd be the last. He'd never asked her, and he never would. But Dad at least must have known his time was running out and that he wouldn't live to see his son as a Jedi.
Dai-Men vividly remembered that walk; the long white corridors of the schools level; the silent, powerful presence of his father beside him and the feel of that big warm hand, palm callused by decades of sabre practice, holding his own. He'd been excited but also scared, and close to tears at the thought of leaving his parents' cell. He'd realized he was taking his first steps out into the world and away from their protection.
Finally they reached the momentous door, no different to look at than any of the others. When his father knelt down to face him the tears finally overflowed.
"I cried too." Dad said, in his warm, deep, tender voice, gently wiping the tears away with a finger. "Your mother and I will always be with you, Dai-Men, wherever we are and wherever you go."
All he'd had been able to manage by way of answer was a loud sniff as he struggled to blink back the tears.
Qui-Gon cupped his son's face with the hand that wasn't caught fast in Dai-Men's small, icy grip. "Let the past go." he counseled softly. "Concentrate on the moment. And be mindful of the Living Force."
He'd nodded convulsively. "I'll remember."
"It will be a hard life." Dad finished quietly, "but you will find out who you are." and for the first time the son realized his father had tears in his eyes too. "You will make me proud."
Dai-Men flung his arms around his father's neck and clung fiercely. Qui-Gon embraced firmly in return then disengaged himself to rise and knock on the door, one hand still resting on his son's shoulder. Then he looked down: "Follow your feelings, and trust in the Force." The door had opened and Dai-Men had gone in, never to see his father alive again.
The reflection in the port changed, folding his arms into the sleeves of his ample brown robe, smiling at his son and Dai-Men smiled back into gray-blue eyes much lighter than his own. Then Luke touched his arm and he was looking at his own reflection again.
"Master?" Dai-Men looked down at him.
"Truth can stand repetition, Luke. Follow your feelings and trust in the Force. It's just that simple, and that hard. Soon you'll understand.