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Chapter 43. Frustration Before Answers

Nothing.

Yet there had to be. Answers were there, just waiting to be discovered, waiting for the right flash of insight or piece of missing data. Jorak rubbed his eyes and repeated his personal mantra: Things are never as they appear!

Corollary: When all else fails, return to the beginning and review what you know. And what Healer Jorak knew – really knew – rather than surmised was a lot of nothing. Disentangling and tracing all the fading impressions from the minds he had studied indicated an unknown entity common to all. A faint surface impression was certainly possible, arising from a Naboo guardsman or physician's aid, which was why he had returned to Naboo.

And to be thorough, he had decided he should go to Tatooine as well before returning to the Temple. From what he understood, Kenobi had not left the ship – there had been no interaction except comlink between the two Jedi during the stay other than Jinn's bringing the new hyperdrive back before retrieving the boy – and there had been no interaction between the Jedi's party and the boy until they had left the planet.

But there had been interaction of a sort – between Qui-Gon and the Sith, a battle at first unobserved. The boy, Anakin, had run to the ship and alerted Obi-Wan and the crew. From that point on, between the pilots, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, Jorak and the Council had a pretty good picture of what had transpired.

Could the Sith have mentally tampered with Qui-Gon Jinn's mind, introduced a mind-altering toxin – no, he slumped back. There had been no trace of a chemical toxin and the only observed organic damage had been to Obi-Wan.

Fused, like an overloaded circuit, the Master Healer had muttered when Kenobi had been examined back at the Temple.

Fused – well, that could be explained by the combination of power and power backlash Kenobi experienced. From what he understood, Kenobi was already burning out from the sheer amount of Force he had been channeling through himself and when one added in the stinging backlash of the bond's severing – well, it was a Force miracle that Kenobi hadn't been reduced to a mindless wreck of a man.

He leaned back in his seat; idly listening to all his notes from the beginning, when he was first notified of the "debacle on Naboo" and asked to lend his special talents to unraveling something that baffled even the Jedi Council. This datapad held more surmises and theories than actual results, so far, but perhaps the larger computer in the Temple might make something of all this – he had already started to transmit some of the material back to the Temple.

When he had first discovered his unique abilities, many years prior, he had tried to categorize Force impressions via line graphs or key wording specifics such as intensity, frequency and the like. Such was an imperfect method; the mind filed impressions while the computer filed data. In some cases, he had recorded brain patterns and tried to superimpose Force signatures and echoes and had a small measure of success correlating such.

Jorak had contemplated and meditated on the patterns before the impressions faded entirely away; isolating the strands had proven difficult. Even the known patterns, of Jinn and Kenobi in particular, were off, "tainted" as it were. Force patterns were nothing easily committed to a computer database; not easily searchable.

He sighed, and set that line of thought aside for the moment. There had been something about the bond – old and new – within Qui-Gon's mind he had been wishing to revisit. Before Qui-Gon had been released he had run another scan; on young Anakin as well, as part of the physical exams the Council had ordered.

He listened to his final entry of a day before, lost in thought.

"All three subjects are scheduled for check-ups within the next few days. I have decided to run a complete genetic profile and cross type as well as update…"

For no reason other than it was expected, Obi-Wan scowled as the needle entered his veins. "First you swab my cheek; then pull everything out of me you can think of and then you administer the coup de grace with a needle."

"Oh, hush, Obi-Wan," Bant replied, patting him on the arm consolingly.

"If I 'hushed up' you'd really think I was sick and stick me with even more needles," he grumbled. Bant laughed and conceded that point.

Obi-Wan grinned back: then tapped his head. "I thought the idea was that there was something wrong up here, so why all the blood work and stuff?"

"This is a very thorough and comprehensive routine physical, my friend, that's why. Overkill, you might say, but there's some younger padawans-in-training who can use some lab work so the Master Healer has decided you get to be the guinea fowl. Your contributions to future generations of healers will be greatly appreciated by the entire medical team."

"Ooh, so dramatic!" Obi-Wan teased her.

"Well, not just you– you have to share the limelight because we're doing the same for – ah, oh," she coughed.

"Oh." Obi-Wan nodded. He reached over and tapped Bant's knee. "Don't be afraid to mention his name. Master Jinn. Or his – Anakin. I can't flinch forever from hearing their names, besides I've got a lot of names to call on if I need to – Garen, Master Windu – Bant." He winked at her.

"I come after Master Windu?" Bant never could carry off pretend-offended, but she tried anyway. Of course it didn't fool Obi-Wan. It never did.

"I saved the best for last."

"Still the charmer, I see." Bant tweaked his nose. "Get dressed now and get out of here – see you at last meal?"

Twisted, entwined, warped – tangled, matted and knotted. A mess. A frustration, an anomaly, an irregularity…no matter how many synonyms Jorak threw at it, it remained stubbornly infuriatingly glaringly complicated!

What that little mental tantrum out of the way….

Head tilted back, Jorak reflected on what nagged and tickled at him, these Force signatures so unexpectedly convoluted and enmeshed, master and former padawan – and newest padawan.

Qui-Gon Jinn had gone so far this time as to even defy his own standards of conduct, like a man possessed. Out with the old, in with the new….

Signatures…bonds – wait! There had been something about the bond – old and new – within Qui-Gon's mind he had been wishing to revisit as well.

With growing excitement, he remembered the newer bond he had found in Qui-Gon's mind, but not Obi-Wan's – the shadowy tendrils… his eyes suddenly widened and he leaned forward, an old memory niggling at his mind, demanding his attention. His mind made a sudden, dizzying, impossible leap…that he should reject as the wild ravings of a tired mind but could not. "No, that is not possible," he murmured.

It couldn't be, could it? Ridiculous - yet, still.

But was it – impossible?

Inform us of any theories, he'd been told. He reached for his comlink. Mace wasn't available, but Yoda would be should he care to hold or call back.

The ship's navicomputer beeped, accepting an incoming call. Deep in thought, he reached for the comm button, ready to spout a wild theory at Yoda, one he was already coding for transmission, a backup routed and relayed through a secondary relay as backup.

"Master Yoda?"

Static was his only response. Jorak raised his head and blinked. It finally registered on the healer's mind.

Why the navcomp - he had programmed no new data.

Qui-Gon Jinn was normally a serene man and an even more serene Jedi - other than those times he was arguing with the Council, as he well admitted. He lived in the moment, dismissing the past as long gone and the future as not yet arrived.

But his dreams continued to gnaw at him during the night. They were reminders of a past he was beyond and perhaps a warning of a future to come.

It was getting harder to dismiss them and concentrate on the present – on Anakin, for the child who bore the burdens of the past and expectations of the future on too-small shoulders. The whispers were there, at the edge of his mind, reminding him, always reminding him, that Anakin was the Force's highest precedent and thus his as well. No one and nothing else mattered.

Only Anakin.

Yet ever who he was, some part of him rebelled against that proclamation. He knew others mattered, even if not as much.

He knew this.

And wondered why the Force was so insistent otherwise.

Niggling doubts, brief stabs of regret, pained protests while tossing in restless slumber thus were symptoms of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn's failure to accept the Force's will - of his human failing. Never before had he been so assaulted by such feelings except when he had not been receptive to the Force and suffered that entity's rebukes.

Yet when he opened himself to the Force and asked what would you have me do there was only one answer, one name, thrumming in response: Anakin. To each question, each doubt, each fear, only Anakin. That left but one, no one he could unburden himself of his doubts and fears except that one: Ni'sha. She alone was unbiased and fair-minded, not hostile and dismissive like Yoda and Mace who had already aligned themselves against him.

How would she interpret these dreams – as forewarnings? Visions? Or merely as by-products of his subconscious, a mind not satisfied with the answers of a conscious mind?

He hated these reoccurring nightmares, be they true or false, for they held the power to destroy him with their truths about his former padawan – and of him. Was Obi-Wan all that he feared, or nothing that he feared?

For in the depths of the dark, he knew he had cared for the boy, cared so much that the horrible truth hurt perhaps more than even Xanatos's betrayal had. The first had taken his love and betrayed it; the second had given his love long before it had been granted in return and had in turn been betrayed – no, no – that was wrong, wrong – had betrayed him rather than had been betrayed himself.

Obi-Wan - who had healed a man who had had no wish to be whole once more and who had again healed that same one as he had been sinking into the Force's eternal embrace.

Obi-Wan - his former padawan – now a dealer in death, a denizen of the dark.

Deep within himself, Qui-Gon shuddered, in some tiny part of himself that begged admittance to his cognizance. Once, he could not have even imagined such a possibility. Now – the impossible was possible, even if something within him rebelled against it, crying out to be heard.

His former padawan – an unrepentant murderer, a practitioner of the dark arts.

Everything within him rebelled against that thought except for one unsettling thought: Were these dreams a sending of the Force, a warning that his former padawan was indeed lost and a warning of what the future held? Had the taint gone that deep that Obi-Wan could someday commit such evil deeds?

Coolly practical, Ni'sha had been less horrified than he had been, for as she had reminded him, dreams were not reality and never had been.

"Your fears for Anakin and your fear of Obi-Wan no doubt tangled in your subconscious."

It was a reasonable explanation – if they were dreams. The whispers in his mind told him it was not the explanation.

So though he was not prone to visions – he wondered if perhaps they were.

So he forced himself to relive the highs and the lows of the past few weeks, the joys and the sorrow, the happiness and the heartache, sharing it all with Ni'sha.

And all it had done was make him weary, so weary now- half ready to collapse as if all the battles were coming to a crescendo within him. If truth be told, even he was beginning to feel as if the entire Temple was out of sync, as if the arrival of the Chosen One had brought disharmony rather than heralding the harmony to come.

It had all started with Tatooine.

Inexplicably, the warm wash of the Force's welcome had first been felt by Obi-Wan, his less than ideally connected to the Living Force padawan. He'd sensed it in the young man's slight lean to its pull, the carefully attentive lines of his face and the puzzlement in his eyes as he'd turned to his master: curiosity, recognition, and confusion all battling for dominance. Concerned and seeking to reassure, he had laid a hand on the young man's arm and felt the same sensations, the same stirring of the Force as the valiant Naboo ship had broken free to the ever-sublime darkness of space – not emptiness, no, for where the Force was there was no such thing as emptiness, only the illusion of such and the veils had now parted.

He had known it at once. Destiny awaited.

He was the only one to embrace it. All the others – feared it. Denied it. Sought not balance, but the status quo, found refuge in the comfort of tradition without a thought to the cost to both one made of flesh and bone or for those he was born to save; held both he and it at arm's length.

A boy, for Force's sake – a gift from that same Force – not a piece of refuse to be eyed askance, treated with disdain and then discarded as unworthy of the recipient, but one be to celebrated and made welcome.

A boy – one with feelings, a boy with dreams and hopes, a boy once a slave now a savior to be.

A boy – one with feelings, a boy with dreams and hopes, like – like other boys before him; their images filling his mind's eye and grief filling his heart: one with locks so glossy black it was nearly iridescent, touched with a hint of the of waning day as twilight shifted towards dark and one with tawny hair the color of a Rishiki tree's bark burnished red gold with twilight's warmth, boys he had loved and boys he had lost. Their loss wrenched at his heart even now.

With difficulty, he banished thoughts of other boys, of other dreams and hopes. His hand trembled until he had himself in hand again. The Force had led him to Anakin…it had beckoned with glorious joy and triumphant news that he had yet to unravel.

Nerves a-tingle with anticipation for that destiny to reveal itself. As euphoria receded into practicality, he had come to realize that Destiny was as well a time of Trial – for the Jedi Order, for Obi-Wan, and for himself – a trial in the form of a small, lonely boy with gifts beyond imagination. Would the Order adhere to the Force – or to tradition?

The failure was spectacular and illuminating. There was still time for the Order to embrace change. It would begin with embracing Anakin Skywalker. It was too late for Obi-Wan Kenobi; he had rejected the Force's gift and in return, the Force had rejected him as Qui-Gon Jinn had on the cold floor of Naboo: it had asked the Master to step aside from the Padawan who would not.

It hadn't had to be that way.

Not if Obi-Wan been the man and the Jedi the master had thought him to be. But he had been less, far less.

He had elevated his own wishes and desires over the Force and over the need of the galaxy and the shock of that betrayal still reverberated within the master's heart and mind: he whom had seemed destined to overcome his less than auspicious early days and exceed expectations under the tutelage of a master who had grown fond – and complacent.

Oh, Obi-Wan – I had such high hopes of you…why, my padawan, why did you disappoint me?

Obi-Wan had heard the Force and heard his master and the message was clear – Obi-Wan had served the Force's purpose and now it was time to step aside. It could have been as a knight, had he accepted it as the offer it had been. He would now be a knight, had not both the Council and the Padawan denied the Force and the trial become a measure of failure rather than success.

As always, thoughts of Obi-Wan brought him nothing but headache and heartache, for what he had thought he had once had and what had never been. The veil of illusion had been lifted, but the memory of false affection still plagued him with indecision – until the Force whispered that all was well and to trust in it.

Cherish Anakin.

Forget the one who came before.

But it seemed his unconscious mind could not let go; he could not obey the Force – he could not help but cry one word.

Why?

The one and only – and none too happy about that state – Sith Lord stared out a transparisteel window, hands clasped behind his back. He was thwarted and nothing thwarted him for long.

He could not gain access to Kenobi. Not yet, at any rate. He should have been an open book, his mind laid bare minus his normal shielding, easily penetrated by a Sith even from a distance. But the Force cocooned him, or perhaps the Jedi themselves.

It was an anomaly, an abomination.

It was intriguing.

Kenobi was a nothing who defeated Maul, a nobody sought by another powerful dark side user, an average Jedi padawan allowed to be a conduit of the Force to heal an all but dead Jedi master.

It meant Kenobi was more than nothing, something other than a nobody. But what?

He wanted Kenobi – to discover his secrets and pervert his feeble light. A broken shell of a man he had been on Naboo, an insect to be squashed but intuition told him to stay his hand. The dark side insisted he was a treasure waiting to be plundered. He might yet make deconstruct a diamond into coal, make a blade of persimmon out of barely tempered light.

A Child of Light would fall, only to arise, a Sith of Darkness.

In time, replaced by the swayed Chosen One no doubt, but the young boy was yet too untamed and wild. By the time he was ready two would battle for the title Sith. Only one would be left standing in the shadows, the other - would be devoured by it.

And he smiled.