CONNECTION - Part 2
by Anne Davenport
They had just gone into hyperspace. The ship's crew, all two of them, had left the Jedi in the Baron's private cabin. It was small for a private suite, but large and plush for a small space cruiser. Most of the furnishings were in shades of blue, trimmed with bronze, with a sitting area of low tables and padded chairs on one side of the cabin and another sitting area on the other, dominated by a large couch that could be curtained off and converted to a private sleeping area.
Obi-Wan spoke with the ship's protocol droid in its alcove at the other end of the cabin. Qui-Gon lay wrapped in Obi-Wan's robe in a plush, deep blue recliner by the long table by the window port. They had found his boots and belt; Obi-Wan had put them with his lightsaber on a corner of the table. But his captors seemed to have disposed of his clothes, so they had traded the disposable kaftan for a knee-length, cream-colored silken shirt from the Baron's closets.
Obi-Wan approached and laid a tray on the table.
"Qui-Gon?"
Qui-Gon opened his eyes.
"The medical droid did say that you should eat something..." Obi-Wan nudged the tray toward him. Qui-Gon could not think of anything that he wanted to do less than eat. Which, of course, meant that he should. He sat forward and looked over the offerings.
Obi-Wan had quite over-done it. Or perhaps it was the Baron's droid. The tray was laden with sliced fruit, dainty vegetables, soft savories, crackers, flavored spreads, sweets, cookies, tiny pastries. And a choice of water, juice or tea. Qui-Gon picked the easiest thing to start with, the tea. It was too sweet, but cold and felt good going down. He selected the plainest looking cracker that he could find and a bit of fruit next. Obi-Wan watched every bite.
Qui-Gon knew he had to look terrible. The stern black medical droid on the planet had filled him up with nutrients and fluids and insisted that his symptoms were consistent with a quarter cycle of deprivation, not days. In spite of the droid's attention, Qui-Gon did not feel much better. His hypersensitivity had gone, but his whole body felt stretched and weak. He stared out the cabin windows at the swirling netherworld of hyperspace.
Tired of being watched, Qui-Gon gestured toward the tray. "You should eat something, Padawan." Obi-Wan nodded, poured some water and ate a cookie. Obi-Wan looked worn out, his tunic rumpled and stained in a few places, but hardly ill. Qui-Gon leaned back in his chair.
"Are you feeling better, Master?"
"No," Qui-Gon answered without pause or a look back at his apprentice. "But...I don't feel any worse."
"Perhaps we should have stayed?"
"We will be on Couroscant in a few hours. It is unproductive to reconsider leaving at this point, Padawan," he replied a little testily, closing his eyes. He felt the Force but it felt strangely distant and that disturbed him to his core. The Force was the Force. It was all changing, but there was no changing it. That meant that there was something wrong with him. Something wrong in a way that no medical droid could fix.
"What do you see, Padawan?" he asked.
"Master?"
"You're staring, Obi-Wan."
Without even looking, Qui-Gon knew that Obi-Wan had lowered his eyes.
"What do you see, my young Padawan?"
"You look worn out. Older. Deathly older. Master."
"Hmm." Obi-Wan's honest appraisal reassured Qui-Gon far more than his solicitations. It was impossible to go forward without a clear picture of where you were. He folded his arms across his chest, arms buried deep in the opposite sleeves of Obi-Wan's robe. They covered him, but the sleeves felt annoyingly too short.
"I feel...disconnected. Still. Yes." After failing so thoroughly to achieve any sort of balance in himself on the planet he had simply stopped trying. Rested. Waited. He had sat passively while the government droid ministered to him. He'd let it and Obi-Wan lift him into a float chair to take him up to the ship on the landing pad. He'd ignored the distress he had sensed from his apprentice. Balance was not something to struggle for. Grasping for it would only make it disappear faster. He accepted his present state as they took him to the cabin and Obi-Wan spoke to the pilot before they had left the planet.
Now...he felt as if he were drifting closer to picturing the source of his internal disturbance. His Padawan sensed a deathly weariness in him. He didn't sense that, but his mind told him that Obi-Wan's insights were clearer on this, even if his own feelings failed him. He needed to—.
"Will you be finishing soon, Master Jedi?"
"Eugh!" Qui-Gon actually started at the sound of the Baron's bronze-plated protocol droid's voice coming up from behind him. Obi-Wan leaped up, crossed behind his Master's chair to shut the thing off. Then he bodily carried it back to its alcove. Qui-Gon never really cared about droids one way or another. He used them when needed and ignored them otherwise. But Qui-Gon now sat up, rigid in the chair, his disquiet magnified into genuine discord. It was unthinkable that a mere droid could surprise him like that. The half-revelation that he'd been nearing had completely evaporated.
Obi-Wan hurried back to his Master. His blue eyes wide, Qui-Gon looked almost panicked. Whatever it was, whatever was wrong, it was worse. He regretted not more forcefully waving the droid off when he had seen it approach. But no, the droid had not caused the problem, just aggravated it. Obi-Wan knelt by his Master's chair.
"Obi-Wan." Qui-Gon almost choked, then swallowed. He reached down and Obi-Wan took his hands. "What do you see?" It was very bad. Whatever was wrong, Obi-Wan felt with a certainty that it would kill his Master if it was not stopped. But if he could have named it, he would have driven it away or laid down and taken it on himself it he could.
"You look...as if you can't breathe, Master." It was the first thing that came into his mind, without thought. Trivial as it was, he offered it to his mentor rather than stammer for the right words that he didn't know anyway. But the older Jedi did look as if he were starved for oxygen as well as sustenance. That whatever was wrong was slowly, inexorably strangling him.
Qui-Gon's eyes widened with surprise. He blinked a few times and withdrew his hands. Then he pressed them together before him, fingers intertwined. He pressed them to his stomach, just below his rib cage. Obi-Wan recognized the gesture. It was the simplest Jedi training. You imagined the Force flowing through you with each slow breath. One way to inhale, the other to exhale. Jedi taught it to small children in the Temple as one of their most basic lessons.
Yet Qui-Gon seemed to be having trouble with it. His breaths were shallow, unfinished. He strained, his eyes closed. Obi-Wan stood and pressed his hands over his Master's. He breathed in deeply, down through his whole body to the base of his spine and the Force flowed with it. The he exhaled, the Force giving him strength as he pushed all the air out. Qui-Gon seemed to catch on the second time he did it.
The Force doubled around them, tripled and more. Such a simple thing, Qui-Gon thought. Something that he had known since before he could remember anything at all had been missing; something too trivial to see.
After long minutes, he lowered his hands. Obi-Wan stood to face him, his expression still grave, but no longer distressed. Qui-Gon felt as if he'd been washed clean. The Force flowed through a Jedi, gave the Jedi strength. But for days he had been disconnected from the material world that the Force flowed through. When he had stretched out his mind to Obi-Wan he'd been relying on the Force within his own body, the one source of life energy that he had been connected to, but nothing else. And that had cost him, drained him terribly. But he had no idea how to draw on the Force without his body; he never would have thought of doing so.
"Master? Are you well?"
Qui-Gon nodded. "Yes, thank-you, Obi-Wan," he said sincerely. "I think I am. For the first time in days it seems." He sighed wearily and leaned back in the reclining chair, its cushions giving him only physical comfort. He had been so very mistaken. He'd actually wondered if he might have attained a kind of oneness with the Force; the kind that no living being could ever achieve. No wonder Obi-Wan had sensed a deathly illness in him. He'd been using the Force to pull strength from the cells of his own body, but nowhere else. If he had not stopped it, he would have been dead within a few days. And then he really would have been one with the Force.
Next to him, Obi-Wan looked hopeful. He laid his hand on his apprentice's. "Thank-you, Obi-Wan" he said softly. "For your excellent insight." Obi-Wan laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled back, his blue eyes glad. Qui-Gon thought he saw a hint of wisdom in them. He glanced at the table next to him. With his returning strength he actually felt an appetite as well.
He reached for a plate and invited his Padawan to join him. They ate mostly in companionable silence. Obi-Wan thankfully gave more attention to his food than to Qui-Gon. But as they finished Obi-Wan did begin to ask Qui-Gon about what had happened to him. To both of them.
"I could sense your presence, but it was as if you were everywhere," he explained. Qui-Gon nodded.
"That is how it felt. Space, dimension had no meaning. It was such a shock when I returned, I continued to draw only on myself, but I never realized it. Might not have without your help. You saw far more clearly than I did, Padawan." Obi-Wan nodded.
Qui-Gon finished his second cup of tea. "A Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him. In me it was stagnant. I was isolated. Or constipated, I suppose ." Qui-Gon frowned. That was certainly an unpleasant metaphor. He put his teacup down. "What do you see, Obi-Wan?"
Obi-Wan finished chewing the last of the sweet bread. "You look much stronger. The Force is with you, Master." He smiled.
Qui-Gon considered this. He looked about the ship's cabin. He gestured with one hand. A blue pillow launched itself off the couch, arced high across the room and bounced off the inactive protocol droid. It was a small, harmless test. But Qui-Gon felt greatly reassured with how natural it felt. Another pillow flew off the couch, sailed through the air to land precisely in the bowl of a table centerpiece in the sitting area.
The next pillow, a shiny bronze one, was Obi-Wan's. But it just missed the matching centerpiece in the sitting area, almost knocking it over before falling down in between the chairs. Qui-Gon looked unhappy. He pointed to the opposite end of the room for Obi-Wan and the near side for himself. After a moment two pillows, at opposite ends of the room, leaped up at the same time and met in the center of the cabin before plopping down to the floor below.
It was a simple exercise. Each Jedi used one projectile to "throw" with the goal of hitting the other's projectile. It was a test of coordination between Jedi, working together and anticipating the other's moves. Soon the room was littered with pillows. There were plenty to pick from; the Baron obviously loved his comfort.
They hit their mark every time, but that did not surprise Qui-Gon. Normally this exercise was done with objects more challenging than pillows, but they needed to be mindful of their borrowed surroundings. After a time they stopped. One of them was going to have to get up and reactivate the droid to clean up the mess.
Qui-Gon was quite satisfied that he would be himself again. He could contemplate the deeper meaning of his experiences later. He pulled Obi-Wan's robe closer around him and pulled up the hood; the Baron's taste in clothes was a bit too thin for his taste. Strange, he thought, that existing only in the Force had cut him off from the living world that generated it. He would meditate on it later.
Depa Billaba surveyed the cabin while the ship's pilot and co-pilot retreated to their cockpit.
Well, there was surely a truly interesting story behind this.
Pillows lay everywhere. A deactivated droid leaned in a darkened service alcove. Cups and plates and bits of food littered a large tray on a table by the viewports. One crumpled, blue napkin lay on the floor.
Depa didn't know Master Qui-Gon Jinn or his Padawan very well; she had met him in Council but not any more often than many other Jedi. But she had supported the this mission against other Council members' misgivings and was pleased with hearing of its success. When the pilot emerged and informed her that his passengers were 'resting' she had gone in to see for herself. She didn't sense anything wrong, but she knew that Master Qui-Gon had been captured and injured.
His Padawan, Kenobi, was sprawled in a cushioned chair, his Master in a recliner beside him. Kenobi's hair was too short to be too messy, but he looked like he had been living in his clothes for days. And Master Qui-Gon's clothes seemed to have completely gone missing. He obviously wore nothing but a thin shirt that just covered his body and what looked like his Padawan's robe, since it was ridiculously short on him. His hairy, bare legs stuck out under it with his naked feet out over the edge of the chair support. His boots and lightsaber lay nearby.
Depa had been concerned and puzzled by Kenobi's strange reports about his Master's disappearance, but upon his recovery the entire situation had resolved itself. The planetary government thanked the Jedi Council for their intervention and begged discretion since now they seemed to be at the initial stages of a huge scandal.
But something odd, something intriguing had happened. She sensed no disturbance in the Force, no threat, but there was still...something. And she had only to look at the scene before her to confirm that. Not only had neither Jedi stirred when the ship exited hyperspace, they did not even awaken when the ship had arrived at the Jedi Temple landing platform.
Yes, Master Billaba thought to herself as she tucked her hands into her robe's sleeves, it was a rare circumstance indeed when a Jedi Master and his Padawan were caught in such a peculiar pose. There would be a very, very interesting story behind this.
End Part 2