NABOO REVIEW

by ardavenport

- - - Part 3

"Padme did bring your father here for dinner. Once," Sola Naberrie announced during another lull in the after dinner conversation.

Someone dropped a metal eating utensil onto a silicate dessert plate with a loud clatter.

"Only once?" Luke asked, looking up at his aunt.

"Yes," she answered. "He was protecting her from an assassin. It was not long before he and Padme were married." She averted her eyes. "But that was secret. She didn't even tell me about it until almost a year later."

Nobody else at the Naberrie family dinner table seemed interested in following up this topic.

Leia had stayed with the Naberrie's on her visit to Naboo and been warmly welcomed. Luke found them and friendly, but he had felt them holding him at arm's length since he had walked in the door. He had known why immediately.

Leia looked more like their mother. Luke looked more like their father.

So, the conversation had remained mired in ordinary topics like the weather in the lake country, the local fauna and pets. Luke had gotten some smiles when they had compared Sola's career as a waste systems engineer to his earlier life as a moisture farmer, but that moment of warmth vanished when Sola politely shut him out again. Dinner might have been spent in uncomfortable silence if his cousins Ryoo and Pooja, their husbands and his Aunt Sola's cousin Tresin and his special companion Megos had not started up their own conversations. About weather, the local fauna and pets. Having exhausted his expertise on those topics, Luke remained mostly silent while he ate his dinner.

Now, Luke sensed something more serious finally rising to the surface.

"Padme loved your father very much," Sola said. "He seemed a bit broody and silent to me, but . . . . he would look at her with. . . . longing. Padme laughed it off at the time since he was a Jedi and forbidden to marry. But that wasn't the case in the end. Really, she was infatuated with him. And I think that it was somehow more romantic and exciting for her that it was all done in secret."

A sudden thrill of panic flashed inside Luke as he felt a presence emerging nearby. But the image he saw standing by the wall, behind his cousins, across the table, was Qui-Gon Jinn again, not his father.

Luke took a steadying breath.

"You want to ask me about my father," he said, looking directly at his aunt.

"Sola. . . ." his Uncle Darred laid a hand on his wife's arm, but she dismissed his caution with a quick head jerk.

"Yes," she acknowledged, gathering her courage. "We were told, officially, that Padme was killed by the Jedi, during the insurrection. Of course, we did not believe this. But later, it was rumored that she was killed by Darth Vader," she finished with Anakin Skywalker's Sith identity.

"Yes. That part is true." Luke kept a steady gaze on her, as he said this.

Sola Naberrie looked away, closing her eyes, putting her napkin down. The other family members exchanged stricken looks.

"Thank-you," Sola replied solemnly. "I appreciate your honesty at least. And now if I might beg your leave. . . ." She pushed her chair back, but Luke stood up before she could.

"No, please. It is late for me, if you'll excuse me. I need to get up early for tomorrow."

Without hurrying, he left the table before any of them could either give permission or object. He did not need to get up any earlier than they did; they were all going to the ceremony. Entering the hall, he went to the stairway to go up to the room he had been given for the night.

The presence of Qui-Gon Jinn occupied the room as he closed the door.

Luke glared at it, now unimpeded by the potential embarrassment of other persons seeing him staring into space or talking to imaginary people.

"Why are you here?" he demanded. He removed his belt and laid it and his lightsaber on top of a polished wooden set of drawers.

// Because I am needed, // came the answer immediately.

"OK." He unwrapped the sash around his middle. "Can you tell the Senate that the Jedi Order won't be able to resume the same duties it had during Old Republic? For a while it's just going to be me." He neatly folded the sash, put it by the belt and began removing his vest. "Or could you tell Corran Horne and the others that being a Jedi is more than lightsabers?" The folded vest went next to the sash. "Or at least tell it so they'll hear it?" He loosened his collar and took off his shirt. "Oh, and the roof of the Jedi Temple leaks and people complain about he halls being drafty."

// Do you need those things? //

Shirtless, Luke gaped.

"No, what I need is to fix it!" He threw the shirt down into a corner.

This got him no more of a reaction than he would have gotten from Master Yoda. Even less. Yoda would have been disappointed in him. Qui-Gon Jinn seemed completely unconcerned.

Turning away from the image, he strode to the window and looked outside. It was night, the gardens dark, the lighted windows of other houses in the distance. Closing his eyes, Luke exhaled slowly. He knew better than to get frustrated, but there it was anyway. It had been building up and now he finally had room to let it go.

Behind him the presence remained.

He opened his eyes. He saw his own transparent reflection in the window pane, the bluish image of Qui-Gon Jinn behind him.

"You can't help, can you?"

// That is for you to discover. //

Luke felt a little pleased that he took this non-answer better than the last one.

"I don't have time to do that. Everyone wants something and they think I'm supposed to know what's coming next. Or what I'm doing." he finished, his eyes on the bearded, bluish face. He had thought that when they reopened the Temple, recovered the Archives stolen by the Emperor and found others to help, that things would be clear.

// What are you supposed to be doing? //

Clenching his teeth, Luke whirled about and walked over the place behind him where he had perceived the Jedi standing. That space felt no different than any other. Qui-Gon Jinn was just as omnipresent as Ben or Yoda or his father, no more or no less in one place than any other. He snatched a pillow from a chair, threw it on the floor and sat down, cross-legged.

Closing his eyes, he cleared his mind, arms resting on his knees. In the Force, he still felt Qui-Gon Jinn's presence, but it was not a distraction. He had learned to quiet his thoughts and let go of far worse to meditate, like a room full of people yammering for attention.

For a time he saw nothing, felt nothing. Slowly, dingy, foggy greens intruded into his thoughts.

Dagobah.

Damp and rank. Muddy and full of snakes and slime.

Yoda's small mud hut, with the low ceilings that he always had to be careful of hitting.

Yoda turned to him from the fire in the hearth.

~~ Pass on what you have learned. ~~

The image shifted. Yoda remained, but now stood bent over his gimer stick on the polished floor in the immense entry hall of the Jedi Temple, light streaming in through the tall windows as it had before the purge. His coarse robes were new and un-frayed. And clean.

~~ Pass on what you have learned. ~~

And he heard his own voice answering in the large empty space of the Jedi Temple.

~~ I don't know what that is. I'm still learning it. ~~

Yoda smiled up at him, obviously very satisfied with himself.

Luke's eyes opened.

The ghostly blue Qui-Gon Jinn remained, standing by the window and looking mildly interested.

A slow smile curved Luke's lips.

Qui-Gon Jinn watched, his expression a little more interested.

He would pass on what he had learned. But he was still learning. So, what he had learned was a moving target. It had always been that way. He had just forgotten it. Become wrapped up with grand plans of how to teach others how to be Jedi when that was still in flux.

He sighed. The crowd of touchy archivists, fussy builders, their droids and demanding Jedi wannabes and their families and hangers-on back in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant would be unhappy to be presented with this revelation, that the future of the Jedi was in flux and unknowable. But his task was not to make them happy.

Which was also something that he had forgotten.

And someone else could fix the roof. People had been offering to help; he needed to learn better how to let them.

He looked up at the transparent presence before him. The Qui-Gon Jinn presence tilted an imaginary head, curious.

Luke smiled, but said nothing. He relaxed his shoulders and closed his eyes again.

- - - End Part 3