I guess a lot of you thought I killed Obi-Wan. Well, now if find out if someone did - or did not.
BTW: there's a fair amount of time-jumping in the early part of this story but it settles down to a chronological progression soon. I don't necessarily recommend this format, but I had no one to run it by and it seemed to work to reveal/hide what I wanted.
Chapter 13. Time Alone Cannot Heal All Wounds
It was a somber journey back to the Temple.
Yet a faint sense of relief could be sensed in the Force; the Jedi were bringing their own back. Alive. Both of them, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.
The padawan was kept under sedation per the Jedi healer's recommendation. He was lucky to even be alive.
No one knew exactly what had happened, only that he had been found crumpled on the floor at the side of his bed. Blood on the side of the bed all but confirmed he had fallen and hit his head. As near as they could figure, he must have had a dizzy spell and fallen right after the Queen and Anakin had left his room.
Scalp wounds were notorious for profuse bleeding and Obi-Wan had bled profusely. Not surprisingly, his body had gone into shock. That was what had all but stolen his life, for the head wound, once cleansed, revealed itself to be far less worrisome than it initially appeared.
How long he had been without a pulse or breath was not clear.
It was a miracle of the Force, some whispered, that had led Qui-Gon there to find him.
The additional miracle, if such it was, was that the turmoil in the Force had alerted Mace Windu as well.
The devastation in Qui-Gon's eyes was heartbreaking.
Mace grabbed several healers in response to the numbed anguish reverberating within the Force, snapping a terse command to follow. They found Qui-Gon on the floor, red-stained hands trying to staunch blood and Obi-wan lying in his lap. He seemed almost in shock himself, in his grief even refusing to release the young man to the healers' care.
Mace took one look at his old friend and gently coaxed him to let go of the limp body, then after one last stricken look at the boy on the floor, took Qui-Gon's arm and gently led him back to his own room, sat him down, and cleansed him of Obi-Wan's blood.
"He's dead, Mace. My Obi-Wan is dead." His voice was hoarse and his hands atremble.
But he had been wrong.
If one defined death by the cessation of breathing and beating, Obi-Wan had indeed been dead - though not in the final way doctors defined it - and was now alive, but damaged in a way he had not been before. When he first regained a semblance of consciousness, he was incoherent and dazed, unable to explain what had happened.
It wasn't just that he could not remember, but that speech itself was slow and halting, as if the mind had trouble connecting his thoughts to actual spoken words.
Brain damage from lack of oxygen? No one yet knew for sure.
"It's a form of mental shock," the healers advised those who cared. Qui-Gon was not amongst them.
Though he had been in tears over "his Obi-Wan" when the healers first arrived, Qui-Gon had later shaken off his concern for his former padawan with a serene, "He is in the hands of the Force now, not mine."
Mace had all but thrown up his hands and left the Jedi master with "his Anakin" while he silently released his frustrations to the Force by imagining any number of colorful ways of knocking some semblance of sense into his "old friend," scenarios that would most assuredly violate every tenet of the Jedi code.
There was little else to do having already interviewed all parties to the liberation of Naboo, not to mention a rather frustrating interrogation of the captured Nute Gunray before an official request came through that such be left to the Justice Department. Thus Mace had had little to do other than keep company with Yoda and keep watch at the side of the padawan whose fate he had found he deeply cared about. He had come to be almost as fond of the boy as Yoda, much to his surprise.
Yoda, wisely, made no mention of the same.
Diplomacy was the art of deceit, or so many armchair scholars claimed. The truth of the assertion, like many things in life, depended on one's point of view.
Many would argue that deception in itself was not necessarily bad, deception in its mildest form merely the practice of social etiquette with no intention to harm but rather the opposite, such as the trivial and harmless deception that the Republic ship would arrive directly from orbit to settle within the large central square of Theed.
Unbeknownst except to a few, the ship unofficially landed to allow the Jedi healer onboard to disembark and head directly for the medical center. The remainder onboard awaited their "cue." Once all the Naboo dignitaries were assembled, they would officially arrive, prompting the kick off of the scheduled festivities.
Welcoming ceremonies, even a celebration of freedom from tyranny, meant little to the healer. His concern lay with two colleagues and the answers he hoped to find.
The healer was particularly intrigued with Qui-Gon's miraculous survival of what should almost certainly have been a fatal wound. All of the Temple's healers, not just the Council, wanted to know just how Kenobi had kept his master alive. He had neither the training nor the skill.
Equally intriguing: why had such a successful outcome had such a negative consequence on the padawan?
It had been hoped that Healer Jorak's unique ability to pick up faint Force echoes within cells would not only help to provide an explanation for something so unprecedented, but help to devise a viable treatment plan for the padawan's recovery.
Now another factor had complicated the equation: Kenobi's newest injury, information transmitted to the ship upon its reversion from hyperspace.
Unfortunate in itself, it might thwart any real possibility of finding a comprehensive answer.
Thanking the Naboo guardsman who had guided him to the Medical Center, Jorak greeted the two Jedi masters who awaited him with a deep bow. They took him to Qui-Gon's bedside first.
The Jedi was fast asleep, to no one's surprise. Recuperation required energy; the expenditure of such required rejuvenation through sleep. A small frown creased Mace's brows as they entered the room, Jorak noticed with some surprise, but he made no comment, merely retreating to let the healer examine his patient.
What he found was unexpected. The cellular echoes reflected a profusion of Force signatures entangled and interwoven. The older traces should have been the most prominent, overlain by the faintest of traces of the healers who had treated him, not the roughly equal intensity that Jorak found.
Within the mind itself, an old and established bond showed signs of severe damage though a strand or two remained intact while another one pulsed and glowed with new life, overshadowing the longer established and most likely unrepairable one.
Had the bond regenerated spontaneously? Would Kenobi show the same?
Jorak finally straightened up, pronouncing himself more than satisfied with the Jedi's physical treatment and recovery. Qui-Gon's eyes fluttered as he spoke. The healer smiled at him.
"You'll be fine given time – no missions for you for several months. Plenty of time to just sit and smell the roses, thanks to that padawan of yours," he assured the groggy and awakening Jedi, who merely grunted and blinked in response.
Would Kenobi show the same apparent bond regrowth, not to mention the inexplicable and intricate cellular Force echo patterns, Jorak wondered, tilting his head in indication that he was ready to move on. If so, it would take painstaking work to understand the complex patterns in both men. For now he had to concentrate on gathering all the information he could before the sensory impressions faded; the answers would have to be pursued back at the Temple.
He wasn't surprised to find Kenobi looking in worse shape than Qui-Gon; considering he had been all but dead the day before while Qui-Gon had been steadily improving over the last few.
"He hasn't uttered a straight sentence yet." Mace's eyebrows drew together as he gazed at the young man.
"And probably won't for a while," Jorak said calmly. "Well, Kenobi, my boy, what secrets have you to reveal?" The healer's hands hovered over the padawan; delicately probing with the Force.
"The patterns are – complicated," he finally murmured, shaking his head and glancing at the two Council members. "A veritable mess to untangle, just as with his master. However, Kenobi's emotions are more accessible and with him, the echoes bounce off each other and complicate interpretation."
"Much he has been through," Yoda said softly. "Feared for him I did at first."
"Thank Master Windu's instincts." Jorak could not dismiss the possibility that remnants of the vast Force power the padawan had wielded on Qui-Gon's behalf were at least partially responsible, in part or whole, but the mind blocks had shielded the padawan from some of the initial trauma when his mind had been at its most raw and vulnerable.
According to the report he'd read aboard the ship, Kenobi had gone from nearly incoherent and withdrawn to responsive and interacting. Jorak just hoped it was not a temporary aberration, but the beginning of healing.
After a lengthy examination he was quite convinced that Kenobi had suffered two distinct and overlapping traumas.
One most certainly had to be the Force healing – had it gone terribly awry or overloaded Kenobi's sensory inputs? A plausible theory, to be sure, but certainly the severing of the bond had been savage considering Master Yoda's considerable worry about the padawan's retention of sanity.
Had both events worked in tandem? More than likely.
Kenobi would have already been reeling from whichever psychic event hit first and all but bludgeoned by the second. Logic alone told him the destruction of the bond must have come second. Nausea and disorientation would have quickly overwhelmed whatever tenuous control Kenobi would have been able to retain, leading to his collapse, both mental and physical.
Defenses non-existent, at his most vulnerable, his mind would have been a maelstrom of chaotic energies feeding and magnifying upon itself without mercy.
"Think of a stretched band suddenly severed," he tried to explain. "It unleashed a ricochet of Force energies inside his mind and body."
"Explaining his disconnection from the Force?"
Jorak shrugged. "He may have cut himself off from the Force in sheer self-protection without even realizing it; he may have irretrievably damaged the midis. It's far too soon for any kind of definitive answer. The Force echoes I can sense, but they're unusual and I need time to sort them out. This second injury will make it much harder; it has clouded the earlier imprints."
As to any spontaneous regeneration of the bond, there was no sign of such within Kenobi as there had been within Qui-Gon. Just tendrils, shadowy tendrils infiltrating the shredded remnants.
And the occasional, all but invisible, small flares of light.
Mace frowned. He had hoped for something more definitive than theories from Jorak.
"Kenobi will continue to be dazed and confused for some time, I suspect." The healer gazed at the two Jedi masters and added gently, "Not to mention that there is residual weakness on one side of his body from the micro seizures he has had and might well continue to be afflicted with, a result of this latest injury. The long-term prognosis, I'm afraid, is unclear. We will have to see how he responds."
"Have faith in the young one and the Force I will," Yoda declared, stroking the young man's hair off his forehead. "A great Jedi he was meant to grow into, so the Force has foretold."
Mace glanced at Yoda: always before Yoda had couched his words regarding Kenobi as one of potential. Never had he spoken as if that future was assured until now. Was this why Yoda had always been so interested in the boy?
Yoda caught the look and interpreted it correctly. "Fond of him, I am, but for who he is, not who he will be."
Will be. There it was again, this sense that Yoda knew what lay ahead in the boy's future.
"Truthfully, he may not be the same ever again, man or Jedi," Jorak stated bluntly before Mace could question Yoda's statement. He sat down and leaned forward. "Functioning at his pre-injury levels would satisfy me. Master Yoda, you said you personally remembered the Jedi who years ago suffered from a similar destruction of the bond?"
Sadness rolled off the little master as he nodded.
"Died he did,' he confirmed heavily. "Strong in the Force he was but not strong enough to keep fighting when the Force withdrew from him."
"Might he have recovered?"
Yoda blinked. "I do not remember hearing if that had been deemed possible. Granted more time, perhaps – but time he did not have."
"I researched the case records and it records that Knight Talar coped with his loss relatively well – or so it seemed until after his death. In hindsight he was in desperate need of support. He did not seek it. It is critical that Kenobi get that support; we can't rely on Master Windu's mind blocks for long. Though he, too, is recuperating, Qui-Gon should be able to provide the emotional support his padawan -."
"No," Mace interrupted. "Qui-Gon – I'm sorry to say, but Obi-Wan is no longer Qui-Gon's padawan – or, it seems, even his concern."
"Ah…I see; I had heard a rumor. His - new master, perhaps?"
Yoda and Mace didn't even have to look at each other.
"A knight needs no master," Mace said firmly, for the padawan had been tested on Naboo and not found wanting. He had proven himself ready; his trials found, faced and passed in real life. "It is not official yet, but Yoda and I agree…he's earned knighthood."
"Even so, if you don't want to lose Kenobi, he needs support – at least until the Force returns to him – if it does."
Mace leaned back in his seat, rubbing his forehead as Yoda merely blinked and sighed. They exchanged glances, for the implication of the healer's words was chilling. "If" the Force returns.
If?
How could one be a Jedi without the Force?
The Council would not cast Obi-Wan out. It would be cruelty beyond comprehension, but to remain a Jedi amongst his fellows would be cruel, too.
The Force would provide a solution. It had not coursed through Kenobi to work a miracle, only to discard its emissary of life.
Such was simply – incomprehensible.