Legacy IV

Chapter 23

Night fell.

And beneath its softly descending shroud, Qui-Gon Jinn lay dying. Obi-Wan cradled the tall man's head, oblivious to his solitary witness, to the carnage strewn about them, to the grotesque sculpture of the krayt's bones, to the prurient moons peeking over the Black Hills' crenellated peaks. The Force's subtle chiming jangled into discord, into pain-fraught dissonance, raking over nerves and binding two into one, translating the gaping hole in the Jedi master's chest into a shared torment, a black hole into which rushed strength and wisdom and joy – never to return.

Once-strong fingers clutched urgently at the younger man's sleeve, twisting feebly in the grimy cloth. "..You…." The syllables rasped past a throat raw with unshed screams. "..You ….did not….?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "No. No, Master."

Relief briefly eclipsed the grimace of pain upon Qui-Gon 's face. Head lolling, he managed the thinnest of smiles. "…Good boy."

Such evocation of another time, another reality, brought a peculiar ache; jaw and throat aching, Obi-Wan merely nodded, strengthening his futile, protective grip.

The Jedi master 's eyelids drooped, then dragged themselves open again, his peerless spirit fighting upstream against the inexorable tide of oblivion. He struggled to speak, but the effort proved too colossal.

The words were borne gravely by the Force instead, sharpened to desperate clarity by pain. The boy. Promise me.

Another tight, frantic nod. I will take him to the Temple. I will speak for him before the Council….. I promise… I –

A gasp escaped them in unison as the first convulsion seized the tall man's frame, luminous spirit throwing off the ruined shackles of gross matter, writhing free of its mortal coil.

Qui-Gon!

Skin ashen, soaked in cold sweat, the dying man raised one hand, eyes glazed with emotion, and touched his friend, his student's face, one fingertip rasping delicately over a cheek wet with blood and salt tears. "…..Brat," he murmured, with his last failing breath.

Choking down a sob, Obi-Wan pressed his forehead against the Jedi master's , holding him close as the second, and the third racking convulsions shook the once-powerful body, as soul tore loose, by agonizing degrees, from its anchor and sanctuary, as -

Ice-vibrant intuition cascaded down his spine, galvanizing him to action. One hand fumbled in his belt pouch, fingers all but numb with dread, with terrible audacity. The vitals blocker Torbb had recovered from Uticus' hoard – he found it, clumsily clipped the tiny cylinder into the emergency hypo in his med-kit. Other objects tumbled to the sand in his haste, as his hands shook with a strange palsy.

There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force. He plunged the noxious, dangerous, unpredictable…. life-saving… elixir into Qui-Gon's jugular vein, and tossed aside the empty cartridge.

His heart stopped; his blood froze; the Force contracted to a single deafening point of nullity, an annihilating void sucking all things into itself, blackness nothingness-

Psyche bucking wildly, he thrashed free of the bond, of the yoke binding them together, and collapsed upon the hot sand, shuddering head to foot even as the Jedi master stilled into deathly silence beside him.

A few intrepid stars wheeled overhead, against a curtain of inky indigo. A pallid face, round and callow, appeared above him.

"Mister Obi-Wan?"

Speech came slowly. His teeth were chattering. "A—ana-kin."

The boy was weeping. "Mister Qui-Gon's dead."

He reached an arm out, brushed fingers against a stretch of cold bone and skin, the lifeless shell of a corpse. Not a corpse. "No…. he's not. He's…." there was no word for this, for the coagulation and cessation of energy that lay lumpen here beside him – a place where the Force did not flow, nor ebb, but merely stagnated, a perpetually disrupted melody, a coda extending into impossible minutes. "…suspended."

Anakin frowned, swiping a sleeve across his own face. A sticky detritus still clung to one tiny nostril. He sniffed heartily. "What did you do?"

He sat up, the warm breeze knifing through him like frigid blades. "I don't know." his voice was rough, sounding unfamiliar in his own ears.

"What do you mean suspended?"

"I don't know."

"But what's gonna happen?" the child insisted, demanding the security of a concrete answer.

Exhausted, stunned, he shook his head. "I don't know."

Dissatisfied, shaken to the core, Anakin drew closer, gnawing at his lower lip, arms hugging his slender frame. "I'm scared."

I'm scared too. He shook his head, yet again. Fear is a path to the Dark Side. "Don't be," he advised, gently.

The boy edged closer, mutely pleading for… something. Reassurance. Comfort.

There is no death. No fear. No passion. If the boy was to dwell among Jedi, then he must understand. "Anakin: you must not –"

But before he could impart his feeble admonition, the child had thrown himself into his arms and was sobbing violently against his shoulder. Taken aback, too tired to object, he held the bundle of coarse cloth and quivering limbs, and tipped his face upward to the distant passionless skies, begging the Force to expunge the memory of this night, to scour the annals of history clean and somehow, miraculously, right this abominable, unfathomable wrong. And to hold him together long enough to make it back to Coruscant, to present a façade of dutiful competency.

He dared not feel this moment any longer. If he did, he might fall.

Anakin was screaming loud enough for both of them, anyway.

Torbb Bakk'ile was the first to arrive in the scene. The Republic shuttle set down a stone's throw away, its open ramp casting a ghastly beam of radiance across the dark sand, silhouetting the vast Knight in blinding light. Her deep umber cassock swirled as she descended, topknot cascading over one broad shoulder, black synthleather tabards accentuating heavy musculature and a more than generous bosom.

"Hells' moons, Kenobi!" she bellowed, forthright as ever, "Nice way to skip the scene without a word! I had to walk a klick and a half to find –"

Her tirade abruptly cut off as her gaze lighted upon Qui-Gon's intert form. Three strides brought her to the site of disaster, eyes roving over the littered bodies and the krayt skeleton. "Fierfek," she breathed, dropping slowly to one knee beside her fallen colleague. "By the Force….."

"A Sith warrior," Obi-Wan tersely explained.

Torbb's dark eyes widened as she glanced up at him. One enormous hand gripped his shoulder, fingers digging in painfully. "I'm sorry, brother. Are you at peace?"

There was no use in prevarication. He shook his head.

She squeezed harder, eliciting a wince. "I am sorry." Then, to Anakin, "Who in stars' name are you?"

"I'm, uh, Anakin," the boy replied, goggling at the newcomer. He tugged on Obi-Wan's sleeve, leaning in to whisper in his ear. "IS she a Jedi too?"

"Meet Jedi Knight Torbb Bakk'ile, he made the requisite introduction.

"I'll get the hovergurney," the pragmatic newcomer announced. She stood, scowling ferociously. "The sooner we're off this hell-forsaken dustball the better." Her long stride carried her back up the ship's ramp in a swirl of dark cloth.

Anakin swallowed. "'You're gonna leave now?"

"We must." Obi-Wan braced himself. "And you will have to accompany us. That creature…"

"The evil guy."

"Yes. He wants to take you, Anakin. You won't be safe anywhere but in the Temple."

The boy nodded, solemnly. "It's okay," he decided. "I'm free now. Or I will be, 'cause I won the race and I've got lots of money!. And Mom is coming with us, right?"

Drawing a hand over his face, the young Jedi groaned inwardly. The boy's mother. Yes – they would have to address that issue. "We will have to find her before we depart." There was absolutely no protocol relevant to this situation, no precedent upon which to rely. But he was fairly certain that a living person could not and should not be wantonly uprooted and transplanted into Qui-Gon's figurative botanical specimen collection, simply as a means of pandering to a deep rooted dependency.

On the other hand, who was he to lecture anyone on the dangers of attachment?

"Are we all gonna fly in a starship?" the boy prattled. "All the way to the Core? Mom will love that!"

Torbb returned at that moment, sparing him the trouble of making reply. Together, they lifted Qui-Gon's maimed body onto the palette and covered him with a thin thermal sheet. Beneath the pale covering, he appeared merely ill and asleep, a fever stricken shadow of himself, but not so obscenely violated. Obi-Wan watched, schooling himself into brutal impassivity, as the tall woman trundled the lifeless Jedi master back into the shuttle.

A speeder's tell-tale whine heralded another arrival: the belligerent moisture farmers returning from their unsuccessful pursuit. Shoving Anakin behind his back, Obi-Wan pivoted to face the new challenge, one hand resting upon his 'saber's hilt beneath the stained and filthy duster's folds.

The small craft hovered to a halt; its four riders clambered out, wielding rifles and glow-lamps, faces grooved with rage and fright, a manic edge to their presence. The youngest, a lad in his mid teens, leveled his blaster at the Jedi's face and paced forward menacingly.

Other vehicles thrummed to a stop in a wide circle, delivering reinforcements, and curious neighbors, the local ad-hoc sheriff, anyone who had heard the rumors, those who were drawn to violence as flies to honey. Faces gathered round, silent and staring, fingers pointing at the carnage, at the stranger standing in its midst.

"You!" the young farmer hollered, pacing within point blank range. "I don't know who in the hells you are, or what you are.. but I saw you with that other pizzmahi. You're one and the same thing, I reckon."

Obi-Wan stood his ground. "You are mistaken."

The appalled spectators murmured, gasped. The knot drew tighter, accusing voices a susurration of uncomprehending fear, of bloodlust.

The rifle-bearing youth bristled. "No, I don't think I am. Whatever freakish cult you belong to, whatever the hells this all is supposed to mean, we don't want it and we won't take it!" He raised the weapon higher, taking aim.

"Put that down." A small gesture with one hand, a focused application of the Force…

The rifle wavered in its owner's hand.

"He's farking with your mind now, Owen!" a gruff voice shouted from the crowd's edge.

"Them's adepts of the Black Wizard, that's what they is! Git that child away from'im…. Molesters and murderers is what they all is!"

Owen snarled, and raised the blaster once more.

"Wait! Owen – stop!" A middle aged man stepped from the perimeter, weather beaten face deeply lined and unshaven. He held up a hand. "You're digging a well in a rock-slide. Put that damn rifle away. It's mine, anyhow. "

The youth gaped. "Da!"

Cliegg Lars shoved the weapon's barrel downward. It stayed pointing at the ground. "You all! Piss off… we got the wrong man. The one you want already got away."

Anakin bolted form behind Obi-Wan. "Mom! Mom!" He rushed into Shmi's extended arms, flinging both arms about her waist.

The posse dissolved and withdrew, muttering. Cliegg Lars stood arms akimbo, watching his neighbors disperse into their vehicles and slowly depart, one corroded swoop and speeder after another fading into the night.

"Mom! We're going to the Core, Mom! I a spaceship!"

Shmi lokoed over her son;s shoulder, thoroughly stymied.

Obi_Wan dipped his head respectfully. Jedi. Diplomat. He had a job to do, here. "Your son is in grave danger," he began.

"I understand that," the woman replied, stroking fingers thorugh Anakin's unruly hair. "I … I would do anything to keep him safe. Master Jinn already explained … a little."

Anakin stilled beneath her soothing touch. "We're going together," he proclaimed. "We're free now, or we will be – I'm gonna buuy us from Watto and then we can – "

"Ani. Ani," Shmi interrupted. She squatted down, bringing ther faces close. Her hands cradled his cheeks. "We are already free. Cliegg bet on you, Ani. He won enough to buy us both, and he has freed us. "

The child's mouth opened, then shut. He cast a furious scowl in the farmer's direction. "No!" he shouted. "No! That's not how it is! I won! I freed us! Not – "

"And I am going to marry him."

Silence. Anakin's lower lip trembled. "But you're coming with me."

Shmi's eyes glittered. Her lips twisted into a bittersweet smile. "Ani… my place is here. And yours.. yours is not. You were born for greater things. And now…. You must choose your path. "

Anakin drew back as though physically struck. Seething, shoulders hunched, he stared in disbelief. "You can't marry him! You have to be with me! I have to protect you! He can't take care of you, Mom! He's an idiot and he's old and -"

Shmi frowned, reaching out one hand in supplication. "Ani, don't be angry. I have my happiness, and knowing that you are safe will make it complete. Go, go and become what you are meant to be."

The boy sobbed, a piteous half-strangled sound. "Will I ever see you again?"

Lars wrapped an arm about his bride's shoulders.

"What does your heart tell you?" she asked her son.

Anakin hiccupped and sniffled. "Yes? No? Maybe?" he offered, miserably.

Shmi clasped Cliegg's hand, borrowing strength. "Go," she told her only child. "…And don't look back, Aankin. Don't look back."