Chapter 23: Numb and Lost

The house on Thyferra was spacious, bright, and clean. It had four bedrooms and two refreshers, a kitchen with plenty of counter and cupboard space ready for the clutter of a family and the projects of children, and the garden in the back was a veritable paradise of every shade of green in existence, with liberal dashes of others color in the spectrum. They had a large common room with floor space waiting to become a minefield of toys and blocks, a dining room table and chairs ready to be made in a child-size fort, a room set aside for music and art. Everything was ready. It needed only a family to fill it.

When Qui-Gon and Julune had first seen the house, shopping around just after their marriage, they were hesitant. It was downright extravagant for two people, let alone just one, as Julune's uncle would be staying there while they were gone traversing the galaxy in search of atmospheric anomalies. But it was perfect. It was exactly what they wanted. Everywhere they looked they saw bright and cheerful visions of a future they longed for, and they could not say no.

Now Qui-Gon stood a few feet inside the doorway, staring around the common room, noticing the potted plants that had arrived before them and had been arranged by friendly hands—probably those of Uncle Javis. He would be by later to greet them, the niece he had raised as a daughter and the nephew-in-law he had taken into his heart with all the joy of a well-pleased father. They had the rest of the day to accustom themselves to their new life in their old home.

Absently, he touched that dim corner of his mind, and was shocked, as always, to feel nothing. He mentally jerked away as if he'd been burned, though his body was still, only his eyes blinking quickly. Would he ever get used to that?

Julune gently passed her hand down the length of his arm as she walked silently by, knowing that he needed time to adjust. She sank down on the couch with a small sigh and closed her eyes, weary from the long journey and even longer wait in customs while they explained every single planet they had visited before coming home. Qui-Gon watched her for a moment, love stirring painfully in his breast, then looked away. He tried not to think of how this homecoming should have been, with three of them coming in the door, excitedly talking and making plans, giving the third member a grand tour . . .

His eye fell on a shelf of knick-knacks, small things he had gathered in his journeys before he met Julune. One stood out in particular, one he hadn't thought of in years. He stepped slowly over and hefted it into his hand, feeling the weight of the smooth, dark rock, studying the tendrils of red that wove through the matrix of water-worn minerals. It felt cool and foreign against his skin, but somehow comforting.

It should have been a gift. Qui-Gon could not say how he knew this, but it was infinitely true. It should have been a gift for a thirteenth nameday, a welcoming gift that saw a boy safely ensconced in the heart of his father, forever and always. It should have been a symbol of two paths joining into one, stronger and more joyful for the binding. But now, it was only a rock.

Heavily, he set the river stone back on the shelf and made his way over to the couch, lowering himself next to Julune. She curled up against him immediately, rubbing her head against his shoulder, the gentle swell of her stomach pressing his side.

"I'm not ready to move on," she murmured, her voice cracked and low with tears spent or hidden.

"I know." He stroked her hair, trying to lose himself in the silky softness against his callused fingers. "We have a few days to settle in. Perhaps it will get better."

"No, Qui-Gon. You don't understand. I don't want to move on."

He pushed his forehead against hers, hard, trying to convey all that he felt with the inadequate language of touch. "I know. I do understand, truly."

For a time they sat in silence, listening to the quiet emptiness of the house around them, the rustle of the tropical breeze coming in the open window as it moved in the drapes. In the end, it was Julune who said what they both knew, her voice heavy with their new burden. "But we must."

"Yes. We must. We will."

There was no comfort in the understanding. There was only duty. Qui-Gon placed his hand against his wife's belly, feeling the quickening of life within. More than ever, he longed for the birth of their child. Only that event could be momentous enough to overshadow what had happened to them in the past two weeks, to give them memories powerful enough to overlay the ones they had just made. The older images would never fade or be lost, but that was as it should be.

Julune laid her hand over his, tightening slightly to convey her comprehension. They had no bond in the Force to share their thoughts and feelings, but somehow they managed despite that, managed to know each other as deeply as two people can. They needed no words.

Which was well, for neither could speak.

X

These nights were the worst. The nights when the labors of the day hadn't tired Obi-Wan enough to force sleep, when all he could do was lay here on his side, listening to the harsh, uneasy breathing of the other slaves who shared his cell, staring at the weeping gray duracrete blocks in front of his face coldly lit by moonlight from the tiny window high on the wall. The nights when all he could do was think.

The first days had been both the best, and the worst. They had been the best because he was still in shock from losing the Force, and the world was trapped in a haze meters outside of his reach. His mind could not be touched, not by any of the things that made those days the worst: Martin's gloating greed, the humiliation of the auction, the grunting, sweating man who bought him, the first day of labor in the fields that had him aching long before nightfall, the stench of the slave quarters, and the entire, overwhelming horror of being in a place where droids were more valuable than sentient beings, where life was short and brutal and meaningless, where no one cared if a worker fainted from heat and lack of water—not even his fellows. Even the first beating had barely registered on his numbed senses, though he did feel the pain of it as if through layers and layers of thick, choking fabric.

Feeling had returned, though he wished with all his heart that it had not. Obi-Wan tried to find a way back into the haze, but without the Force, he could not meditate, could not lose his conscious mind in the calm flow. He had learned to find a kind of stillness, to sink within himself and concentrate on one thought or feeling until everything else faded into gray, but he could not stay there for long. The first blow would bring him out of that stillness, as desperately as he struggled to stay in it.

Even at night, with nothing to distract him, no movement, no sound, he could not stay there, not even long enough to find sleep in these nights that were full of a darkness that reached beyond the physical. He couldn't control his own mind, and he knew that he was weak, useless—no wonder no one had wanted him for a Padawan, not even Xanatos. So he just lay here, thinking.

He thought a lot about Andros Martin. The man was not a Jedi, obviously. That was why both he and Qui-Gon had been wary of him, even without full knowledge of his treachery, and even Julune had sensed something wrong. But they would have thought something was wrong even if Martin had been a true Jedi. Obi-Wan held no blame for the Jinns, only himself. He should have meditated. He should have trusted his feelings. They were always much more reliable than his mind.

But Martin had been able to touch the Force. They had felt his presence in it, felt his strength. He had suppressed the bond, burying it in ice as black as the space between the stars. It had taken no thought for him to do that, no effort. He was powerful in the Force. A Dark Jedi? Even—the stars forbid it!—a Sith?

Obi-Wan didn't like where his thoughts were leading him, so deep and cold, into the darkness of a cave. He prayed that Martin was only a Force-sensitive who had not been given to the Jedi, like Qui-Gon. (But how very unlike Qui-Gon this man was, how completely opposite in every way.) A Dark Jedi or a Sith would be ruthless enough to follow the Jinns back and destroy them, so there would be no witness to testify against him. Let Martin be only a slaver, a black-hearted slaver with an eye for a profit and gifts that exceeded those of his peers.

As on other nights like this, Obi-Wan tried to turn his thoughts away, back to the light and warmth that was his stay on Bandomeer, as inauspiciously as it had begun. He had replayed those memories until they became soft and ragged at the edges and he was no longer sure if this or that had really happened, or if he had only invented it now, when he desperately needed to remember something of life. Sometimes he buried himself so deeply in these memory-dreams that he could almost feel Qui-Gon's warmth surrounding him, hear the stalwart heartbeat drumming in his ear, smell the hint of spice the big man seemed to carry with him. Sometimes he could taste nerf-and-jili stir fry, fresh-washed sweetberries, even the acidic bite of yughor. Julune sang him a folk song, sweet and lilting with only a touch of sadness to make the light more brilliant in contrast, and he drifted off cradled in a blanket of care and gentleness.

How long had it been? Weeks, months? He didn't know. It didn't matter. A single day would be too long, far too long, and it had been many days.

Tonight the memories had not power enough to rescue him from this reality. Again his mind returned to the thought that prevented his rest, worrying it as a wild animal would gnaw a trapped leg. He wasn't going back to the fields tomorrow. The master had noticed him while passing by, making sure that harvest was going well, and he wanted him in the house. What did that mean? Would there be better food, a better place to sleep? Would the tasks be easier? Would there be a kind word now and then, even if only once in a great while?

He hoped so. But he didn't believe it. Nothing got easier from here. It was just going to get worse.