An Old Hope
by ardavenport
- - - Part 2
"Aaaauuggghhh!"
The young man fell to his knees, collapsing forward. Ben heard crying and he silently waited for him to regain control. He felt a tug on the frayed and dusty hem of his robe.
"I - - - I didn't know there were any left. After all this time," a voice in the darkness below said before choking again.
"Who are you?" Ben asked, keeping his voice neutral. The Force was vibrant with a tumble of joy and grief.
"I am Ping Alduto," the young man stammered. "I - - - was an Initiate at the Temple. . . .during the Clone Wars. But there wasn't a Master for me. So - - - so, I was sent to the Agri-Corps."
The statement broke Ben's calm and he was thankful for the darkness that hid his reaction from sight.
The Agri-Corps.
They would have been targeted just as much as the Jedi Knights, but being non-combatants they would have been even more vulnerable when the clone troops came to kill them. In all the years since the purge, Ben had hardly thought about them, other than that they must all be dead.
He had never thought that there might be survivors. Or that he would encounter any.
"When it happened," Ping Alduto continued, "my group didn't believe that the Jedi could be destroyed. Until we were surrounded, arrested by the local security on J'Delyn. We heard they were sending clones to take us away. But there was a problem and they couldn't come right away." Though Alduto kept his head down, and some of his narrative faded into weeping whispers, Ben heard every word.
"That night, Knights Ooju and Helem Hal broke into the jail and we escaped. They were in a neighboring system when it happened. They told us that if a Jedi wasn't with the clone troops when they attacked that they had a good chance of getting away. There was a signal from Coruscant that the war was over and that everyone should return but they didn't believe it. Later it changed. . . . . said the Temple was lost, everyone in it was killed and that everyone else should stay away. It said that the Emperor was a Sith Lord."
Ben knew that message very well since he had written it, after he and Master Yoda had broken into the Jedi Temple to change the recall message set by the clones to draw any surviving Jedi into their trap. Back when he had been a Jedi Knight a member of the Jedi Council. Master Kenobi. General Kenobi. Obi-Wan Kenobi.
"The clones came after us and Ooju and Helem Hal led us into the forest to survive. We planted that whole forest. The Agri-Corps did. The Imperials burned it down in a day to find us. But we got away. Stole a ship. Hid." He fell silent, still groveling at Ben's feet.
Back then, there had been debates in the Council about cases like Alduto's. Because of the wars, the losses, there were fewer Masters to train new Padawans, further decreasing their numbers. It had been suggested that they increase the age at which Initiates may be selected until the wars were over, when more Masters would be free to train the young. But other Council members, particularly the senior ones, argued that the Jedi should not alter the Code under duress, but wait until the end of the wars to decide. Reluctantly, Obi-Wan had agreed to postpone any final decisions about the Initiates sent to the Agri-Corps until the end of the Clone Wars. But it had been difficult. He remembered very well being in their position. Hoping to be chosen. To be trained to be a Jedi Knight. It was an old hope. One that had almost run out for him before circumstances and the Force itself, he believed, brought him to his apprenticeship with Qui-Gon Jinn.
At the time of the Council decision, Obi-Wan had consoled himself with the half-belief that the Force would retrieve the worthy ones to be trained. After the wars. Their assignment to the Agri-Corps would be a cruel disappointment for many of them even though they were told that their fate was not final. There would be time for them later. After the wars. When they were done with battles and campaigns, when there would be plenty of Knights available again to train them.
Now the wars were over. And all the Knights were dead.
And the cruel decision to turn them away had actually spared at least one group of rejected Initiates. They were still alive.
Wetness dried on Ben's cheeks, cooling his skin.
"Where are the others?" he asked quietly.
Alduto audibly gulped a few times, still struggling for control.
"After we found a safe place, Ooju and Helem Hal left us. They said that they had to try to kill the Emperor. It was there duty. Their only duty. To destroy the Sith. We begged them not to go. We heard on the holo-net that Master Yoda himself tried to kill Papatine. We didn't know if it was true. There were so many lies then - - "
"He did." Ben stated. "He failed." His voice roughened suddenly on 'failed'.
Alduto did not seem to notice; he gasped. He sniffed and sat up. Ben could make out the paler shade of the skin of his face, looking up at him.
"We begged them not to leave us. That they'd just get killed. But they said it didn't matter. Nothing else would matter until the Sith were destroyed. But before leaving they made us promise to survive. That was still important.
"They didn't come back. We heard they failed."
"I heard as well," Ben echoed. Ooju and Helem Hal were not the only surviving Jedi to try to assassinate the Emperor. And each failure was used to the fullest on the holo-net to further brand the Jedi as enemies of order. Enemies of security. Enemies of the Empire.
Ben stared forward at a colorless shadowed wall before him in the alley. They were alone, surrounded by darkness and the distant thumps and calls of nightlife beyond the buildings. No one seemed to have taken notice of the blaster fire of a moment ago. That sort of thing was ignored if it could be on the mean streets of Mos Eisley.
The Force was strong around him, thick with old emotions. They would pass. But the passage was always hard. Regret, grief, loneliness. They swelled inside him, connecting him to the stricken young man on the ground at his feet, still grasping the hem of his robe, a lone acolyte praying for a hope reborn.
"How many of you are there?" Ben asked, keeping his voice steady this time.
"At first, thirty-one, not including Ooju and Helem Hal, but our group was too big. We had to split up, go to different worlds. I and two others apprenticed as ship crew for free-lance freighters, passenger ships. But we couldn't always get births on the same ship. I was alone on my last job, but the captain lost his ship gambling here." The young man laughed humorlessly. "Everyone got stranded. The only ships I can get work on will only offer indenture. If I do that from a world like this I might get stuck with it for years. If I ever get out of it. I - - - I was just trying to get passage to Birinus Prime. But I don't have enough," he confessed.
"How much do you need?"
"Another two hundred. Local currency."
Ben took his winnings out and held it in front of the young man's face.
"Take it. You have enough now." Alduto's reached up, clutching at Ben's hand. He withdrew it as soon as Alduto had the money.
"But - - but what about you?" Alduto stammered.
"I have another path than you. This world isn't safe for either of us to stay on." Ben turned and walked away, back to the turn in the alley, past the bodies of the women he had killed.
"But - - - but you can't go!" Alduto clambered to his feet and ran stumbling after him, kicking through garbage and sand. Ben turned to the side at the last moment before Alduto reached him. His desperate grab missed and Alduto fell forward onto the ground. Ben kept going, heading for the entrance of the alley.
"Wait!"
Ben stopped. He knew he shouldn't have, but his detachment broke again. The desperation in Ping Alduto's voice was so familiar. It had been in his own voice, full of hope once, when he was a boy asking Qui-Gon to take him as his Padawan. It had been his desperation, his hope, felt it so deeply that it was the only important thing in his universe.
"You have to come with me." Alduto approached slowly from behind, cautiously. They were still deep in the shadows in the alley, the street lights many steps away. Ben closed his eyes and exhaled.
"Our paths - - - "
"You can't go after Palpatine," Alduto implored standing close at his side now but carefully not touching. "You - - can't."
"No. I won't," Ben answered, not expecting this request.
"You can't. . . ." the young man paused, obviously surprised to hear the answer he was begging for. Then he continued with the request that Ben had been dreading.
"Good. Good. Then - - then, you can come with me. You can - - -"
"No. I can't," Ben cut him off. Still staring out toward the street, He took a step forward.
"There has to be a reason why you're here." Alduto stepped with him. Then he moved in front of him, blocking his way. Even with the light from the street behind him, Alduto's face was more visible than it had been at the end of the alley. He was young and thin, his dark eyes earnest, his straight black hair disheveled. He was almost Ben's height.
"The galaxy's too big. If we're meeting here, then it has to be the will of the Force."
"Do you claim to know that better than I?" Ben asked softly, his head down, in shadow, under his hood. The young man looked uncertain, but he did not move aside.
"You could come with me. You could - - -"
"Train you? And the others? To be Jedi?" Ben slowly shook his head. "And then what? Go after Palpatine? Kill the Sith? If you were to be a Jedi, that would be your first priority. Your only priority. And you would all die."
"Why? You're not."
"It not time yet," Ben said quietly.
"Time. . . . ?" Alduto repeated. He struggled to understand. Of course he could not. Not know about Obi-Wan and Yodas' hope that Anakin's children would finally become the undoing of the Sith. He did not know how, but when Ben sat alone in his hut, in his exile, with not ever the presence of his old Master, he could still feel the guidance of the Force deep inside him. Wait. Watch. The Sith and events had to come to him. Alone.
Standing before him Alduto looked defeated, but he rallied for his last attempt.
"I want to be a Jedi. If not. . . .I don't know what I am. Not anymore," he finished, years of uncertainty, abandonment and unhappiness in his voice.
I want to be a Jedi.
Ben remembered those words burning into his own heart when he was much younger. Now he was a Jedi. Had been a Jedi, but his only priority remained to defeat the Sith. There was none of that old hope to spare for this former Initiate.
Ben shook his head.
"I'm here because you were careless." Ben grasped the young man's thin shoulder. Alduto started, overwhelmed by his presence and the connection in the Force, one he would not have felt for years. Ben pressed his advantage, the first physical contact between them jolting the young man. "Ooju and Helem Hal were right. You must survive. You and the others."
It would have been easy to feel more secure in what he said if Alduto had responded with anger or bitterness. But Alduto did not make it easy. He nodded and accepted. And held back his tears.
They left the alley together, walking slowly in silence.
"You should leave this world. Tonight if you can," Ben finally said when he sensed that Alduto could speak again. The younger man nodded.
"I can. I will."
They slowly headed in the general direction of the docking bays. The other persons of the night passed them by with no acknowledgment. They were two people walking together and not very vulnerable, so they were ignored.
"Where will you go?" Alduto asked, his head down, staring at the sand and shadows immediately in front of his feet.
Instantly, Ben recognized the young man's error. Since Mos Eisley was a spaceport Alduto had just assumed that Ben was another traveler using Tatooine as a stop. It was a careless assumption, but one that suited Ben's needs very well. Ben was sure that Alduto, or his comrades, would not be able to resist the urge to try to find him if they knew where to look.
"Away from here." It was a convenient half truth. He would be returning to his desert exile when he had replenished his funds in the gambling houses again and purchased his supplies.
The night crowds were thin in the alleyways around the docking bays.
Alduto pointed ahead of them.
"The Indomitable. They leave later tonight. That's why I wanted to win. I knew I might attract attention, but if I could win big quickly, I could just take my winnings and get out of here, before anyone got too suspicious."
Ben nodded. It was a foolish plan for such a rough world. But one that had brought them together. The Force was with them both.
They stopped just outside the entrance to the docking bay.
"I - - - I know you can't tell me where you're going," Alduto began. "But I have to know. What should I do?"
"Survive," Ben said, turning and looking at him intently from under the shadow of his hood. "There has to be something after the Sith. Someone."
"Not you?"
"I cannot forsee that," Ben admitted. "But I doubt it."
Alduto lowered his eyes, turned away, his face weary. Older. His head down, his eyes flicked once toward the shadows under Ben's hood and then straightened. He walked away, not looking back.
"If you meet anyone else," Ben called after him. Alduto froze and turned, his expression surprised, but no less surprised than Ben.
"Tell them. . . ."
He paused.
"Tell them that it isn't time yet. To go after the Sith. The time isn't right."
"How will they know when it is?" Alduto asked.
Ben smiled at such a simple question. Such an obvious answer. Alduto realized it, too.
"The Force. . . " he whispered.
"May the Force be with you," Ben told him.
"The Force be with you," he answered. His eyes shifted away from Kenobi, but not toward the docking port. He looked lost. Abandoned.
Ben watched him, transfixed by the swirl of emotion he felt coming from him. He shared them. They were his as much as the young man's. They were both cast aside by events, their old lives excised from their existence. The past was so foreign to the present that it was like an amputated appendage, badly missed, but forever gone.
Alduto blinked, let his head fall back and exhaled. 'Let the pain flow out of you through the Force. Heal and renew you with its strength. A Jedi's strength flows through the Force.' Ben mouthed the old Jedi healing exercise that passed through the other's thoughts. It seemed to help the younger man, but the words had the opposite effect for Ben, as if Ping Alduto's sorrow and disappointment were flowing into him.
The younger man looked back, his expression surprised again to see Ben still there. Then pain really did flow out of him, to be replaced by sympathy. Ben wondered what the Force and his own shadowed eyes revealed to the former Initiate.
"I'll tell them," he said. Then he managed a sad smile. He turned away, going into the docking port without looking back.
Ben stared at the entryway after it closed. He felt an unexpected possibility slipping away.
Abandoned by that possibility, Ben turned and walked away, arms tightly holding his robe close to his body, his footsteps muffled in the sand. The hooded shadow left, going back down the street into the night toward the hostels and cantinas and gambling houses of Mos Eisley.
- - - END
(This story was first posted on tf.n: 1-May-2007)
Disclaimer: All characters and situations belong to George and Lucasfilm; I'm just playing in their sandbox.