Midnight Whispers
QAF Brian and Justin Fanfiction

 

Chapter 3

 

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

 

--- Essay on Man - Alexander Pope

 

*

 

There was only the blinding, bright, painful, chilling whiteness, as opposed to the absolute, relentless, smothering blanket of starless night.

 

There was nothing else; he was nothing else, existing only in the one or the other, at the whim of the power - whatever it might be - that controlled this barren place.

 

Awareness had crept up on him, like a beast stalking helpless prey, and sprung, clawed and pungent and shrieking, at the last moment, causing him to leap to his feet within the core of that brilliance, his mind scrabbling for purchase on a slick, oily reality that would not be grasped.

 

Disorientation had swelled within him, until it consumed him and exploded through his consciousness to join and intensify the piercing brightness, and he had been forced to swallow the nausea that gripped him with clammy tendrils of foreboding.

 

Where was he? What was this place?

 

It was the first question - the instinctive question - but, as it happened, it would not be the most important of those that would soon occur to him.

 

He spun wildly, shading his eyes against the white glare, only to comprehend that his efforts were futile; there was nothing to see.

 

He was at the center of a big, white, featureless box - walls, floors, ceilings all composed of some kind of ceramic substance, stark white, with a faint gloss, creating subtle reflections of the shadowless illumination which bathed every inch of the cube with a pallid glow.

 

The light itself seemed strange, hued slightly toward blueness, but with warm undertones, so that his hands, when he looked at them, appeared bloodless and spectral, but backlit as if touched by some inner fire.

 

He looked around again and blinked to focus, but it was difficult. The intensity of the light was just below the threshold of pain - just within the limits of tolerance - and he was unable to control a shiver that traced up his spine.

 

Instinctively, he recoiled and felt the back of his knees impact against the only object, other than himself, within the box; a padded platform, as white as the environment around it - a bed; the bed from which he had risen just moments before. The impression made by his body was still discernible, though fading rapidly, and, drawn by some irresistible impulse, he reached out to touch the surface. It was neither cool nor warm, soft nor hard. It just was, in exactly the same way that everything around him just was.

 

He settled himself on the platform, noting that his attire, what little there was of it, was in perfect harmony with his surroundings. He wore only leggings - white, featureless, sufficient to cover the essentials, but no more - cropped off above the knee, and roomy enough to be unbinding, though snugger than he would have preferred, but such details hardly mattered now.

 

There were more weighty matters to consider.

 

Such as  the wrongness of this place; everything about it - the feel, the smell, the taste, the very texture of the air he breathed felt wrong. Felt horribly unnatural, as if what he felt and smelled and tasted and breathed wasn't air at all, but some lifeless, sterile, ancient remnant of atmosphere from a dead world. A bitterness, like the taste of ashes, formed at the back of his throat, and he had to resist an urge to gag at the intrusion.

 

Sensory deprivation, he thought, but no, that wasn't quite right either. His senses were working perfectly, as far as he could tell. But everything around him was muted, as if he had been withdrawn from reality and partially submerged in a transitional dimension, existing between two worlds but touching neither.

 

He wrapped his arms around his knees and lowered his head, blocking the light as best he could, a light that had no visible source - another of the oddities of this place.

 

But, at least, there was no overt threat, not that he could determine, and, although he noted a certain stiffness in his body, as if he had just recovered from a long illness or a serious injury, he felt well enough; he was sure he had felt worse before; he was sure . . .

 

His breath left him in a whoosh, followed by a beat of silence that was broken by a hoarse, desperate inhalation as he fought to fill his lungs.

 

In truth, he wasn't sure he had felt worse; he wasn't sure at all.

 

He had no memory of anything beyond this place.

 

No memory - no name - no identity. Nothing.

 

And, with a suddenness that left him reeling, his disorientation intensified, lodging in his throat, sending him curling into himself, curling around an emotional, physical center that had ceased to have any meaning, curling like a child, with his arms clasped tight over his head.

 

That was the beginning; it would go on - and on - and on - until he began to believe there would be no end, and the cold, emptiness that formed within him, at the core of his being, during those first moments of epiphany, would grow and swell and extend frigid tentacles throughout his mind and his body. He began to believe he would never be warm again.

 

On that first day, after a period of cowering within his own mind, he had realized that he was waiting for something - waiting for anything - and that he was, in effect, accepting that his fate - his present, his future, even his past, as it would have to be revealed to him - everything was held within unknown hands; hands which might prove to be gentle and benevolent, or might not; he found then that he didn't much like the idea of being so dependent on the whims of a faceless, anonymous stranger. Therefore, he would not sit and wait for deliverance; he would act, even if his actions were severely restricted by his circumstances.

 

A more thorough examination of his cage (for so he termed it in his mind) revealed a tiny 'fresher tucked into a corner, but that was the only relief from the angular starkness, and the facilities were minimal, including only a tiny sink, with a tap that provided a mere trickle of cold water, a receptacle for waste, and a shallow arch with a low pressure shower; basic necessities, but nothing more. No soap, no towel, no comb, no razor, no toothbrush - fundamental needs met, creature comforts ignored.

 

Minimal, but he supposed he should be grateful. He wouldn't, at least, die of thirst, and he wondered briefly why such dark thoughts should have occurred to him. To this point, nothing had happened that could be construed as an overt threat, but he trusted his instincts, although he had no idea why he should. For all he knew, he might have the worst instincts in the history of sentient life.

 

Despite the almost liquid light that enclosed him, there was darkness in this place, darkness that watched - and waited - and hungered.

 

He sat on his bed for a while, deliberately putting such brooding thoughts away; he dozed for a while; then he decided that sitting around - looking at nothing, remembering nothing, thinking of nothing - would be a fast track to insanity, so he would need to focus on something else.

 

Gingerly, stretching to test muscles and sinews and tendons, he settled, with a fluid grace, into a position that felt comfortable, a position that his body seemed to know, even if his mind didn't, and eased into a physical regimen that felt as comfortable and familiar as an old, well-loved garment. Though he started easily, even tentatively, he soon fell into a natural rhythm, and the pace of his routine increased - and increased again.

 

Soon he was flying, and, if asked, would have had no idea how he knew how to do that. As he soared out of a running, forward flip with a twist, body completely at ease in a graceful arch, he felt a surge of pure joy and accepted it as the gift it was, without attachments, without symbolism.

 

He continued until he felt exhaustion approaching, then slowed into languid stretches, to relax and unwind.

 

Finally, when his breathing was settled completely, he showered, drank some water from the trickle in the sink, and lay down on the cushioned platform.

 

The moment he stretched out, the light was gone, and he was plunged into a total, unrelieved blackness.

 

He wondered if he should be alarmed; he wondered if he had been afraid of the dark, in whatever life he had left behind him; he wondered . . .

 

He was asleep before he could finish the thought.

 

When he wakened in the morning - if morning it really was - the radiant light flared to greet him, and a tray filled with fruit and coarse-textured bread was set on the floor beside his bed, along with a pitcher of a lightly spiced ale.

 

And thus was established a pattern, which he grew to resent rather quickly, but was helpless to alter. After a few days, he attempted to stay awake, to be able to confront the person who crept into his cage during the darkness to drop off a new tray of rations, and retrieve what remained of the old, but he realized quickly that such an attempt was futile, and that whoever observed him - and he knew, without knowing how he knew, that he was, indeed, being observed - had the means to put him to sleep without a single indication of what lay ahead. Gas, he assumed, dispersed through the air he breathed, through some hidden vent.

 

He lay in his bed, and tried to hear the telltale susurration that would tell him where the air port might be, but there was only silence. And the next day, in the brightness, which he was beginning to imbue with a presence that was almost sentient - a malevolent presence that delighted in keeping him exposed and off-balance and incapable of preserving any scrap of privacy - he conducted a meticulous search, certain all along that he was wasting his time, but realizing that he had nothing better to do.

 

And that was quickly becoming the root of the problem; he had nothing better to do, and he could only exercise, only pace, only sit and think and stare into nothingness, for so long, particularly when he had access to no memories, no images from a past that was only a big, gray void, nothing to color a world gone stark and echoing with emptiness.

 

He quickly lost track of the days, as there was nothing to mark time's passage, and, slowly, but inexorably, something within him began to change, something that he gripped tightly with bone-white fingers and tried to suppress, something that he was determined to conceal within the garish, white light.

 

He knelt on his little platform, wrapped in brilliance, incandescent in its midst, and tried to reach out, tried to understand who it was who watched him and why they watched him, and what they wanted from him, and slowly, very, very slowly, he began to need, though he could not have defined exactly what it was that he needed, until the need became almost obsessive, and the explanation came to him in a flash of revelation; he needed, he hungered for a sound - any sound - that he did not create. It needn't even be a word or a voice. Just a sound, to prove that his existence was not merely an exercise in solipsism, to prove that he lived somewhere beyond the limits of his own mind.

 

Somewhere within the bright, glaring hours or the pitchblend silence of darkness, despair found fertile ground within his heart and began to grow.

 

And something watched and waited for its time to come.

 

************ **************** ***************

 

He paced the observation chamber - once, twice, a dozen times, a hundred times, a thousand times - and clung to his patience with desperate fingers. He must wait; he must wait and have faith. The young man was infused with the power of the Force, even when he couldn't even remember what the Force was, even when the walls that formed the cube that contained him were triple-deep in Force shielding, even when the drug that permeated the food he ate and the liquids he drank prevented him from hearing the voices that sang to him and tried to remind him of the adoration in which he was held; even then, he was cherished within its caress, and it managed to penetrate the stillness around him just enough to give him some measure of strength when he should have had none.

 

But hope - to survive - must be nurtured and cultivated, and the hours piled one atop the other, and the silence thickened within the young man's heart.

 

And Sidious waited and watched and believed.

 

For twenty-six days, he waited and refused to doubt.

 

The ex-Jedi would break. He would break, or he would die without ever learning the reason for his imprisonment. The Sith would not risk any possibility of the young man regaining his freedom. The Jedi had failed to see the worth of what they held in their grasp; he would not make the same mistake.

 

Twenty-six days, and he could see that young Kenobi had begun to lose hope, had begun to contemplate the desirability of death.

 

It would happen soon, or it would never happen at all.

 

And, then, on the twenty-seventh night, out of the stillness, out of the frigid cold, out of despair, came a single sound.

 

Sidious felt fierce exultation swell within him, as he tasted the sweetness of victory.

 

In the cloying thickness of night, the young man was weeping.

 

The Sith allowed himself a moment of pure delight, as he extended his senses to taste the flavor of his captive's desolation. One taste; that was all he dared allow himself, lest the incredible sweetness become an addiction he could not resist.

 

The time was at hand; now the second phase could begin. The Sith could barely restrain his glee, as he congratulated himself on achieving his primary goal; in order to rewrite the script that determined a person's path through life, one first had to wipe the original slate clean.

 

Young Kenobi had now learned despair and hopelessness; soon he would learn something else, something he had left behind him, long, long ago.

 

Soon, he would learn . . . he would re-learn love.

 

For the Sith lord had also learned much, in his study of those who would stand against him; he had learned that a man of such honor, such strength, such noble courage would never be broken or defeated by pain or might or coercion.

 

He would not crush Obi-Wan Kenobi beneath the wheels of power; such a thing was beyond the range of possibility. The young man would willingly die first, even if he never regained a single scrap of memory; his identity - within the framework provided by the Force - apparently was not dependent on recall. He was who he was, and there would be no changing that.

 

No. One did not break such a man by wielding the weapons of hatred and rage; instead, one allowed such a man to break himself, on a rack of guilt, forged from iron bands of trust betrayed.

 

It had only been necessary to wait for the first breach in the armor surrounding that young heart.

 

The dark Lord touched a com-panel on his control console, and issued his command.

 

"Bring the child."

 

************* ****************** ****************

 

He was tired of being cold; it was the first thought that struck him, just before the moment of revelation.

 

There was . . . was there . . . could there be . . . a sound - outside of himself; outside of his own thoughts.

 

A real sound, a real, beautiful sound.

 

The sound of laughter - slightly shrill, sweet, pure, incredibly lyrical.

 

The young man was on his feet, struggling to rid himself of dream remnants, as his mind registered the vital signs of reality, the chill of the surface beneath his feet, the hardness of the light, the softness of his hair against his shoulders, the slightly stale taste of air recirculated too frequently.

 

All immediately recognizable and totally meaningless.

 

She sat - legs splayed, feet bare and toes twitching in time to some internal cadence - near the 'fresher door, huge, almost black eyes fixed on a tiny creature that periodically leapt into the air, only to land in almost exactly the same location from which it had started - a delicate little insect, green and violet-splotched, with diaphanous, stubby wings, and more legs - segmented and incredibly angular - than one could easily count. The insect gathered itself again, as the young man approached, holding his breath, afraid to learn if what he saw was real, or if his mind had finally snapped and gifted him with that which he most desired: the physical presence of another being.

 

He stopped, hands clenched against his sides, and the little girl - surely no more than two cycles old - looked up and laughed and said, "Bug!"

 

To his amazement, he felt tears rise in his eyes and overflow, running swiftly down his cheeks, as he knelt beside the child and reached out with trembling fingers to stroke through a riot of dark curls, incredibly soft and gleaming like silk. "Bug," he agreed, and hastily suppressed a sob. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her with his hysterics.

 

Her smile was breathtaking; he realized abruptly that he had no basis for comparison, as his memories remained stubbornly silent, but he could not imagine that he had ever seen a more beautiful child.

 

She glanced once more toward the 'bug' that she had previously found so fascinating, and promptly abandoned it by choosing to get to her feet - a task that was clearly easier said (or thought) than done. It took a couple of attempts, and a certain amount of determination to overcome her unsteadiness, but she finally accomplished her goal by placing both hands flat on the floor, lifting her plump little bottom high in the air, and pushing herself erect with a grin of pure triumph.

 

She then toddled across the space that separated her from her new acquaintance, paused only long enough to look up into the expression of wonder on his face, and then wrapped lovely, dimpled arms around his throat, climbed up on his lap, touched her forehead to his chin, and spoke a single word. "Poppie."

 

His laugh was broken, with ragged breath. "No, Little One. I'm not your Poppie, but I am very glad to see you."

 

She regarded him solemnly, giving him a chance to note the exquisite, almost poreless quality of her skin, the intensity of eyes so dark that it was impossible to determine where iris ended and pupil began, beneath delicate winged brows, and fringed by spiky lashes, thick and lush and midnight black; bee-stung lips that formed a perfect little bow, all set amid a heart-shaped face with rose-dewed cheeks that dimpled delightfully when she smiled, to match the tiny crease in a very determined little chin.

 

"Poppie," she repeated, bracing her hands on his cheeks, and favoring him with a coy glance from beneath lowered lashes.

 

Then she laughed, and he laughed with her, unable to resist.

 

This, he knew, was not a good idea; somewhere, something or someone or some group of someones watched - and waited - and sought an advantage. He would never be sure of how he knew that, but he did know it. The certainty clung to him, lingering in the very air he breathed, and in the heaviness of the silence that had surrounded him for so long. He had writhed constantly for most of the duration of his imprisonment under the sensation of being watched, and by virtue of his reaction to this child, he had just granted an advantage to anyone waiting to use it.

 

Still, he didn't even try to suppress his delight when she turned and settled into his lap, holding his arms tight around her sturdy little body, nestling her head back against his chest. "Tah-té," she said softly.

 

"Tah-té?" he echoed.

 

Carefully, deliberately, she took his hand and laid it against her cheek. "Tah-té."

 

He would come to wonder, as time unwound from its endless spool, if he had been fond of children in his former life; he was beginning to believe that his questions about what he might once have been would remain just that - questions, without answers.

 

But it hardly mattered here. Some small scrap of his mind acknowledged that when a single being encompassed all of existence, it was impossible not to devote one's entire heart to that being - especially when said being was as enchanting, as incredibly sweet, as achingly lovely as Tah-té. He acknowledged that there was no way of knowing if the syllables she had murmured to him actually constituted her name, but quickly realized that it mattered little anyway. When he called her by that name, she answered, in her own barely-past babyhood manner.

 

Her vocabulary was limited, and he knew that he probably misunderstood much of what she tried to tell him, but, fortunately, she didn't seem to mind too much, displaying a marvelous adaptability and a disposition more inclined to laughter and soft affection than brooding.

 

She demanded little, less than he would have given her, for he quickly came to know that, if he'd had access to the greatest treasures of the galaxy, he would have laid it all at her feet, had she desired it.

 

But mostly, she didn't; she asked only that he laugh with her, and respond gently to her nonsense ramblings; that he pick her up when her center of gravity betrayed her and deposited her on her well-cushioned little rump; that he hold her when she grew weary and allow her to cuddle against him; that he accept and return enthusiastic, usually very moist kisses and hugs; that he feed her from the tray that still appeared every day, but now included a wider variety of victuals, suitable for a small child's digestion; and that he sing to her when drowsiness enveloped her.

 

He remembered no lyrics, no lullabies, no songs at all, suitable for a baby or not, but he learned to improvise, making up silly little limericks and scraps of verse and realized quickly that it mattered not in the least what he sang to her; it was the sound of his voice she craved.

 

He had no memory of love, but he somehow knew it when it happened.

 

Tah-té, without conscious effort, without his own consent, quickly became the center of his world, filled his heart and his life and almost - almost - succeeded in making him forget the circumstances of their existence.

 

Except for one thing.

 

Every day, when his internal time sense insisted that the day was done, Tah'té would nestle against him, her face pressed against the side of his throat, and they would fall asleep with a swiftness that he knew was simply too immediate to be entirely natural.

 

And when he wakened, she would be gone.

 

During those first days, panic seized him; he had been alone too long. He could not go back to that sterile emptiness. He had not realized what loneliness was, until she had come to him to defeat it.

 

So he would lie there, curling up in a fetal ball and feeling the great emptiness, and ask himself how he would survive it, or if he even wished to survive it.

 

Eventually, after an hour or two, or so he thought for he had no means of knowing for sure, she would come racing out of the 'fresher, her laughter bright and fresh as a new morning, and leap into his arms, and squeal his name. "Poppie."

 

He no longer tried to correct her.

 

Days became weeks; time lost all meaning, and the love between the two grew. In the beginning, he had tried to question her about what happened when she was taken away from him, but she either did not understand his meaning, or - more likely - something blocked her access to the answers he sought, just as something still blocked his own memories.

 

Eventually, he did the only thing he could do; he began to accept the inevitability of each day flowing into the next. Within himself, confined in his own thoughts, he would have succumbed to the enticing lure of despair, but Tah'té kept him sane, kept him anchored. Gave him purpose. Gave him hope.

 

He realized, after a time, that he could not have loved her more had she been his own flesh and blood.

 

And, in the endless night surrounding the bright incandescence focused on two souls, something smiled and savored the taste of success.

 

And the dreams began.

 

************* ************** ****************

 

 

It was just as painfully bright as it always was, just as livid and piercing, but there was a difference; a sensation of strobing glare, barely noticeable against the actinic brilliance, but definitely real.

 

And there was something more; there was a sound to it - shrill, rising and falling, creating a shiver in the spine and a recoil in the mind - like claws scrabbling on slate.

 

He turned, panic-stricken, trying to find Tah-té, desperate to keep her safe, to tuck her away from any threat, any harm.

 

But he couldn't find her.

 

Limbs pumping, he tried to sprint toward the sound, but the quality of the light thickened somehow, and wrapped him in bands of cohesive liquid, refusing to release him.

 

The sound swelled, and he was suddenly drenched in cold sweat as the synapses in his brain suddenly made the necessary connections and allowed him to identify the ear-splitting shrillness.

 

Someone was screaming. Ahead of him, in a mist that couldn't possible exist in this sterile, empty, antiseptic place, a shadow twisted and leapt and cried out, begging for release, begging for solace, but without actual words.

 

He wakened with lungs fighting for breath, mind gripped with tendrils of ice, with the bitter taste of fear lodged deep in his throat.

 

And found that, on this morning, something was different. Tah-té was not missing. Instead, she lay cradled against him, tiny fingers clutched against his skin, burrowing closer to escape the ever-present chill of their environment. She was clean and freshly-dressed, as she always was when she was returned to him, but her garments were slightly thread-bare and less sturdy than was the norm, with a scrap of a shirt which did not quite cover her torso, riding up to reveal livid marks - cruel bruises - across her back.

 

A towering rage swelled within him, as he reached out, forcing himself to control himself, to be gentle, and traced the marks with trembling fingers.

 

"Poppie?" she murmured, nuzzling against him, eyelids lifting slowly to reveal tears spilling over sooty lashes. "Hurts, Poppie."

 

He gathered her to him, whispering endearments, hands stoking her spine with aching gentleness. What he did, he did instinctively and never even realized what he was doing, but the bruises - ugly, blood-filled, obscene against the sweet pallor of her skin - faded gradually, more so with every stroke, until they were only lavender shadows, barely discernible.

 

He held her close all that day, and she allowed him to do so, which was remarkable in its own way. Ordinarily, even in their sterile, mind-numbingly bland environment, she was eager to explore, to ramble, to look for variety and when it was not forthcoming (which it never was) to create it on her own. But not that day. That day she clung to him, content to be held in his arms, content to be sung to and talked to and cradled. Content, he thought, though he wasn't sure how he knew it, to allow him to shelter her from the shadows rising around them.

 

That night, he dreamed again.

 

And every night after that, and the dreams grew more graphic; more frightening; more menacing.

 

And they expanded, to include a new cast; voices and faces that he did not recognize, but felt he should know. The dreams would find him in a thick cloud mist, struggling to find his way through, to fight his way toward the dim figure that begged for his help, and the words would form around him - sharp and harsh - like bright, hungry blades that nicked at him and struck deep and quick to draw his blood.

 

"Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden."

 

In the beginning, those phrases were simply repeated, and repeated, growing louder and more strident, battering him with their force, but having little connection to the rest of the dream.

 

But then the script evolved, growing more detailed, and he was able to partially free himself from the force that gripped him and peer through the obstructing haze to watch a little girl - so familiar, so beautiful, so lost - cower before a towering shadow that laughed at her pleas as it struck its blows, and the words grew ever louder, and were laden beneath other words, other demands, other meaning.

 

"Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. You must not love; you must destroy, or she will destroy you and all that you are sworn to honor."

 

And every morning he wakened to find her beside him - bruised or battered or wounded.

 

And the young man began to experience fear such as he had never known, although he didn't know how he could know that. There was anger within him, as well, an anger that he could not express, could not release, as there was no target for it. Each day, he soothed away the hurt, the pain, the marks of the wounds; each day, he wiped her tears, and held her and watched as the bright-eyed, mischievous, open-hearted child he had come to love changed and began to withdraw into herself. He couldn't understand how anyone could do such terrible things, how could anyone inflict pain and injury on such exquisite innocence.

 

How and why?

 

But he found that he didn't want to think about the why; he found that the prospect of learning that answer was almost more than he could bear.

 

Every hour of every day was now spent in trying to console a child now consumed with fear and heartbreak and trying to understand how things could have deteriorated to such a hopeless desolation and trying to believe that it couldn't possibly get any worse.

 

A fool's errand, of course, for it certainly could.

 

And did, and it was at that point that the young man finally knew the truth; that there were depths of hell that few had ever explored, and there were places where nothing could be any worse.

 

He must protect her, defend her from the horrors that sought to take her from him, for that, he knew, was the ultimate goal. They would take her away, and he would never know if she lived or died, and he would be alone, and his mind would insist on forming terrible images of what they had tone to her.

 

He could not endure that; better to die here, better for them both . . .

 

Abruptly, he halted his mad rush, impaled by the bleak horror of that thought. No. Better for him to die here, but she must . . . she must . . . He tried to shrink away from the images, tried to refuse the dream. If he would not be lead into the twisted path of nightmare, how would it proceed? How could it exist, if he refused to see it.

 

But, in the end, it would not be denied, and it knew what he could not resist. This time, there was no ambiguity; this time, he heard Tah-té screaming his name. This time, there was no mist.

 

He ran and felt a strange joy that he was unencumbered; nothing rose to impede his journey. She was waiting; she was crying for him.

 

A curtain of mist rose swiftly before him and then swirled and dissipated, and he felt his heart seize up within him as he froze in place, unable to move further as his eyes were drawn inexorably to the tableau laid out before him.

 

"Please, Poppie," she sobbed, as she knelt, bound and helpless, at the feet of the figure who turned to stare at him with cold, implacable eyes.

 

"Possession is forbidden," said the towering individual. "Attachment is forbidden."

 

The young man gaped and knew somehow that the face looking back at him had once been the center of his world, a noble face, defined by a spray of silver/chestnut hair and a neatly-trimmed beard, centered with hooded, cerulean eyes that were filled with a frigid coldness that struck terror into the heart of the subject of his scrutiny.

 

"Who are you?" The words were like acid, scalding the young man's lips.

 

The tall man, dressed in brown and cream, smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Don't be silly, Padawan. You know who I am, and you know you are sworn to obey me." He looked down then at the whimpering child, and contempt flared in his face as he lifted his gaze once more.

 

"Attachment is forbidden," said the man, very deliberately, and the young man felt something flare within him, something dark and ancient and beyond resisting.

 

"Do your duty, Padawn," said the man. "Do it now."

 

"Poppie!" It was a whisper, only a sliver of sound, but it drew the young man forward, his heart twisting within him.

 

"It hurts, Poppie. Make it stop."

 

"Do your duty, Padawan." Like thunder, filled with compulsion.

 

"Make it stop, Poppie."

 

"Attachment is forbidden. Do your duty!"

 

"Poppie . . . . I . . love . . ."

 

He watched as his hands reached out, watched as they found what they sought, watched as if they belonged to someone else, and felt . . . nothing.

 

His wakening was not so swift this time; for there was no hurry this time. He felt the fragile weight of her body against him, and felt the difference.

 

Somehow he knew it; somehow, he thought, he had always known it.

 

************** ******************* ****************

 

Darth Sidious, supreme Lord of the Sith, and, incidentally, Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, sat in the massive throne room that had just been completed within his mountain fortress, according to his exacting specifications. Soon, a duplicate would be constructed in his stronghold on Coruscant, as soon, that is, as he had succeeded in disposing of the blasted Jedi and their pathetic minions.

 

And today, praise the Dark Force, today had been a significant stopover on the road to that ultimate success.

 

He stretched out with every ounce of his Force ability, an ability of incredible power, completely concealed beneath his placid, public demeanor, and savored the emotions exploding within the consciousness of young Kenobi; he had known - had caused - much pain during his long life, but this? This was beyond description, almost beyond withstanding - so pure, so intense, so filled with soul-ripping agony; it was a feast for Dark senses that was almost sufficient to drive one mad with an overwhelming orgasmic ecstacy.

 

Beyond the incredible sweetness of the sensation, there was the additional heady fragrance of victory.

 

At last, at last, at long, long last, Obi-Wan Kenobi was open to him, stripped bare of all allegiance to the Jedi, or to anything else - empty, aching in the void, eager and ready to be filled.

 

The Sith could barely contain his excitement and his satisfaction; today he would begin to savor his revenge against the Jedi. Today he would taste the first sweet rewards of his infinite patience. Today, he would claim his lovely prize, precious in its own right, but even more precious for being wrested from its previous owner.

 

He smiled; he didn't know yet how he was going to manage to catch a glimpse of Qui-Gon Jinn's face when the Master learned of the final disposition of his discarded apprentice; perhaps young Skywalker would prove useful again, though it would soon be necessary to cut himself free from that tiresome young braggart; the prize he gained today would more than compensate for the loss of a boy who wore his hubris like a cloak and resisted instruction in the belief that he was too gifted to require it.

 

Foolish boy, thought the Sith. Only through pain and sacrifice and suffering could one come to true power, a lesson young Kenobi had already begun to learn and young Skywalker never would.

 

He made his way quickly through his dark fortress, pausing only to retrieve a bundle of clothing, as he descended into the most secure area of the keep, coming to a stop before what appeared to be a blank wall.

 

Appearances, of course, were almost always deceiving.

 

Regretfully, but mindful of who he was dealing with and of the strength in the Force that had always shown so brightly around his young captive, he took a moment to cloak himself in a veil of obscurity. There was virtually no chance that any scrap of Obi-Wan Kenobi - Jedi - had survived the ordeal he had endured, but the Sith never took chances.

 

When he activated a concealed control, and an opening dilated before him, he reached out through the Dark Force to adjust the intensity of the lighting in the chamber before him, to enable him to drink in the details of the scene. For the first time since the young man's arrival in this place, almost four full lunar cycles before, the brilliant glare softened to a pale, warm glow, and Darth Sidious felt his delight swell within him like a living thing.

 

The young man knelt in one corner of the large chamber, his eyes unfocused, open but unseeing, motionless, almost unbreathing. Although the sound of the Sith's footsteps were loud within the hard-surfaced cube, he did not react at all, seemed not to notice.

 

His arms were wrapped around the body of the child, cradling her against his chest, one hand cupped around her cheek, the other loosely clasped around the tiny arm that lay across her abdomen.

 

He was not crying; he was not seeing.

 

And Sidious felt his first twinge of alarm.

 

Quickly - throwing caution to the wind - he dropped to his knees and reached out to place his hands on young shoulders that seemed to be bowed beneath a weight too great to imagine.

 

"Poor child," said Sidious, projecting any scrap of warmth and sympathy he could muster, which, being a Sith, wasn't very much, but it would have to do. "Poor child, what have they made you do?"

 

The silence was deafening, within the chamber and within the Force.

 

He tried again. "She loved you so much, young Kenobi. She had no one else."

 

Nothing. Not even a spark of interest in hearing a name applied to himself.

 

The Sith examined the young face, lowered his head to peer into eyes the color of tropical, sunlit seas as he reached out through his Force senses to delve into the consciousness beyond them, and found . . .

 

In horror and growing rage, Sidious leapt to his feet, and backed away from the tableau before him: two beings - one breathing, one not - but both no longer living.

 

He wanted to scream, to howl his frustration and strike out at the object of his fury. A blood-red laser blade flared in his hands, and he raised it over his head, wishing only to slice the two into slabs of raw meat.

 

And he almost did; he almost did, but Lord Sidious was not one to squander opportunity, and he realized, even as the blade started its descent, that indulging his rage would gain him nothing; his prize was lost. He had miscalculated.

 

Breathing heavily, he disengaged his blade, and went to one knee, to regain his calm and to study the frozen face before him.

 

At least, in the course of this debacle, he had learned something, though he couldn't think how the knowledge would ever prove useful. But the Sith, in this one way not unlike the Jedi, never discarded knowledge, even if it appeared to have no practical application. One never knew.

 

He had been taught, under the stern, vicious hands of his own master, that a heart or a soul shattered in the midst of a great, thundering tempest, its owner shrieking his defiance and his grief, cursing the callous cruelty of fate.

 

Only now did he know the truth.

 

A heart broke; a soul shattered finally, completely, without hope of repair, in silence - alone, unmourned and unremarked.

 

This particular heart and soul had been pushed beyond its ability to endure, to a point where there were only two alternatives; to embrace the darkness and exact revenge for injustice suffered or to relinquish the connection to a reality too cruel to be borne.

 

The Sith recognized his mistake, just that much too late. He had meant to break the young man's bonds to the Jedi and the Light; instead, he had broken his belief in himself. Obi-Wan Kenobi might have lived to seek revenge for his betrayal by the Jedi; he could not live with what he perceived as his own betrayal of innocence.

 

He had not, of course, actually strangled the child; that duty had fallen to some faceless cretin who had probably relished the task. She had already been dead when placed back in his bed.

 

But there was no way he could know that; no way for him to be sure.

 

He had only the dream, projected into his mind by Sith machinations, to tell him what really happened.

 

His body endured, for now, but it was empty; awareness had drained out of him, leaving only a broken vessel.

 

The Jedi taught their initiates that there was no death.

 

The Sith paused in the doorway of the chamber in which he had imprisoned his young prize and rediscovered a reason to smile.

 

They were about to learn differently.

 

************ *************** *******************

 

(Qui-Gon's perspective)

 

I tried to swallow my annoyance; it seemed to be my most frequent response to any action initiated by the Council these days.

 

I knew - as well as anyone, and better than most - that the situation within the Republic, and the growing unrest among systems demanding reform and threatening separation if it were not forthcoming, had taxed the Jedi almost beyond coping. There were simply too few of us, and too many crises on too many worlds.

 

Which was one reason I was so annoyed.

 

I did not like being summoned to Coruscant; although Anakin's existence and training, and the conspiratorial manner in which it had been accomplished, had recently been revealed to the upper echelons of the Senate, I was still uneasy in the vicinity of the capitol, remembering all too well the dire warnings and heavy foreboding which had arisen at the time of his discovery.

 

The cost for keeping him safe, for guaranteeing an opportunity to complete his apprenticeship, had simply been too great to risk failure now.

 

I didn't allow myself to focus on that thought or its deeper meaning.

 

Our missions, which had deteriorated of late into emergency calls to extinguish outbreaks of rebellion or revolution in outer rim worlds, had been put on hold, dire though any need might have been, to demand our presence here - on Coruscant - and my demand for an explanation had been flatly denied.

 

To say that I was annoyed when my apprentice and I were escorted into the Council Chamber is a gross understatement; I was a whisker away from being furious, and Master Yoda, of course, knew it immediately.

 

He simply stared at me, uncowed, unintimidated, until I managed to get myself under control; after all those years, you would think I'd have known better than to try to go head-to-head against the little troll.

 

Finally, I managed a bare semblance of a bow, which I noticed, with some dismay, my apprentice duplicated exactly.

 

"My Masters," I said firmly, when none of them chose to speak, "we have come at your insistence, leaving much still to be done on Helska. What is it that could not wait, that . . ."

 

Yoda stood abruptly and stared at me in a way that caused my mouth to go dry suddenly, as if I had swallowed sand.

 

"A shuttle awaits us," he said sharply. "Come, you will."

 

"But . . ."

 

He silenced me with a simple gesture, as Mace Windu rose, and moved to join us, and I looked to my old age-mate for clarification.

 

Mace stared for a moment at Anakin, who had turned to accompany us. "Your padawan will remain here," he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "You have been summoned, Master Qui-Gon. You, alone."

 

"Now wait a minute," I began, alarm growing within me. "I don't like this. I don't like leaving him . . ."

 

Yoda spun quickly and looked up at me, and something within me wanted to cringe away from the look on his face. "Safe here, he will be. Other debts we must pay today."

 

I saw the petulance and rebellion flare in my padawan's eyes and knew it would require many hours or days or weeks of mollification to soothe his wounded pride, but I couldn't worry about that just then. Something stirred then, within the Force, perhaps, or maybe beyond it. Something dark and cold; something that enclosed my heart in an icy grip.

 

"Where are we going?" I asked, as we made our way to the small shuttle waiting on the tiny landing bay just below the Council chamber.

 

"Chancellor Palpatine has requested our presence," answered Mace, his tone betraying nothing.

 

"With all due respect, Mace," I said churlishly, "I don't have time for political infighting or . . ."

 

"For this," interrupted Master Yoda, "you will make time. We will make time."

 

The flight to the Chancellor's penthouse residence was brief, and I wondered why we had been summoned to his private quarters, rather than to his offices at the Senate building.

 

Could it be that this was not an official matter? But that made no sense. What else would spur the Republic's premier leader to request a Jedi presence?

 

We landed on the private parking area reserved for the Chancellor's personal transports, and were ushered into the residence by a phalanx of Republican guards, and, as I stepped into the foyer, with its rich furnishings and artifacts from dozens of Republic worlds, I was touched once more with that sense of cold foreboding.

 

Whatever awaited us was at hand.

 

Chancellor Palpatine, elegant and restrained as always, awaited us in the corridor that lead to the private areas of the residence, areas ordinarily closed off to the public and the news media that were perpetually in residence in the unrestricted areas.

 

"I thought it better," he said quietly, "to keep everything as private as possible. This is not something I imagine the Order will want known to the general public."

 

The alarm inside me grew from a faint buzzing to a shriek.

 

"I want to know," I said then, coming to a halt and refusing to move again until I got an answer, "exactly what is going on here."

 

It was Yoda who provided the response, who turned to look up at me, and allowed me to read the truth in his eyes. "Found him, we have."

 

I don't remember the journey down the broad corridor, or through the sunlit chambers that led to the tiny garden terrace where I found what I was seeking. They tell me that I ran like a man demented or pursued by demons, and I have no doubt that it's true. I don't even remember what I was thinking.

 

I only remember the sight that greeted me when I burst through the terrace doors - that, and the swift, impaling stroke of hope destroyed, for I knew, immediately.

 

I knew and would have given my soul, my life, and my hope of final union with the Force to be proven wrong.

 

He didn't see me, not at first. He didn't see anything, I think.

 

He sat on a low, stone bench, a cloak of soft, expensive mreshier wool wrapped around him, dappled by sunlight dancing through the foliage of a gerial tree; he looked much the same as he had when last I saw him, slender, exquisitely muscled form, broad shoulders and flat belly with a narrow waist, long, shapely legs clad in soft boots. His hair was longer, of course, a drift of polished copper, curling around his shoulders, and he was paler than I remembered. But the face was the same - sculpted, symmetrical, with porcelain skin of pale gold stretched across perfect cheekbones, the cleft chin that always somehow emphasized the quality of bright smiles, the little mole on his cheek that seemed to stress the perfection of the balance of features.

 

And the eyes, of course; the eyes.

 

But it was there, in those incredible eyes - always so luminous, so warm, so filled with life and enthusiasm and wonder and curiosity - there that I found the difference, the difference that confirmed what my Force sense had already learned.

 

This was his body; but he was gone.

 

It was Palpatine who offered what little clarification there was, who related the story of being summoned to the entry of his summer residence on Naboo in the middle of a stormy night and of what awaited him there.

 

Obi-Wan had been found kneeling in the rain, cold, shivering, clothed only in torn, ragged leggings and clutching the body of a young girl against his chest.

 

There had been nothing to explain where he had come from or where he had been, and no one had ever been able to identify the child.

 

The Chancellor's staff had carried the young man into the house, and tended his wounds, but they had been unsuccessful in attempting to remove the girl from his arms, until the Chancellor's physician had been called in to sedate him.

 

When they had finally managed to take her from him, they had found a torn scrap of paper tucked into the bodice of her dress.

 

"Paper?" I asked, as he completed his story. "What paper?"

 

With a sigh of reluctance, he extended his hand. It was indeed just a scrap, torn from some larger document, no doubt.

 

The message was brief and to the point.

 

"The Jedi set him on this path; I simply escorted him to its end. Any soul can be opened and plundered; one only needs to find the right key."

 

I read those words aloud, and turned to look into the empty eyes of my lovely lost padawan.

 

And he looked up at me; it was extraordinary, they said. It was the first time he had reacted, to anything, since the day they had found him.

 

He looked up at me, and he began to cry.  Without a sound. Without a sob or a shudder. His tears were silent and endless.

 

When he looked away, they continued to fall, and the silence grew deeper.

 

*********** ************* ****************

 

In the end, they took him to Naboo, where lovely, tragic Amidala took him in. I never spoke to either of them again, but I have occasionally wondered if the depth of his pain might have helped her find some solace for hers.

 

The body of the little girl - who was never identified - was entombed in a paristeel coffin, in the mausoleum reserved for Naboo royalty and protected by a stasis field that would protect her from the depredations of time, through all the long ages of the world.

 

They put Obi-Wan into a tiny cottage on the palace grounds, and established a watch among the Naboo security forces - soldiers who remembered his heroism and his bravery during the droid occupation, and who devoted themselves to seeing that he was undisturbed and left in peace to wait out the end of his life.

 

For no one doubted that it had become nothing more than a waiting game. Amidala, I was told, finally managed to get through to him sufficiently, to convince him to eat and drink and see to his basic needs, but he remained a ghost of the man he had been.

 

He never spoke again, or so I'm told, or ventured beyond the confines of the gardens surrounding his cottage.

 

Most of his time was spent within the mausoleum, and the soldiers who guarded him would often escort him back to his little dwelling, when the hour grew late and he swayed with weariness. Once or twice, one of them would report that he had been found with his face pressed against the transparent panels of the casket, making some small sound that might have been a scrap of song.

 

But nobody could say for sure.

 

It ended, of course, in the only way it could.

 

One day, a day like any other, someone turned his back at the wrong moment; someone failed to notice some small anomaly; someone blinked - and Obi-Wan was gone.

 

And thus did the rumors begin.

 

It's said that he walks in the moonlight above the great waterfalls; that he slips through the forests like a wraith in the night; that he sometimes appears in the marshlands, hand-in-hand with a small child, the light in his eyes bright with recaptured joy.

 

None of it is true.

 

Obi-Wan released his grasp on life just a few days after he disappeared from the palace grounds. I felt him die.

 

The bond that still existed between us was incredibly fragile, barely discernible against the tracery of Force connections that join all living things, but it lived still, until the moment he chose to let it go, to let everything go.

 

I felt him die and could hardly bear the pain that rose within me. But I quickly discovered that there was something worse.

 

I felt him die, but I did not feel his consciousness blend into the Force.

 

And now, I sit here, in my forced exile on this barren wasteland, as I endure the loneliness of this life and await the opportunity to fulfill the duty placed upon me by the Force and the Jedi and understand things that I never wished to know. Across the barren desert, a child grows; a child who is, perhaps, the last hope for the rebirth of all that is good and decent and just in the galaxy.

 

The Jedi are dead or dying, and I have felt them as they slipped the bonds of mortality and were welcomed into the eternity that awaits us all. They knew the sorrow of loss, of leaving a task undone, of grieving for the death of innocence, but they also knew joy - the joy of homecoming, of finding their place in the tapestry of existence.

 

I felt it in them and from them; I never felt it from Obi-Wan.

 

And I am left to contemplate a final, unbearable truth. In our hubris and our determination to force destiny to adhere to our intentions, we gave to the enemy a weapon of such destructive power that none of us could have foreseen the consequences of our actions, and the price was paid not only by the Jedi, in our terrible arrogance, but by those who should have been granted our protection - innocent souls like poor, tragic, little Padmé and those who tried to shield her, and like that nameless little girl who somehow stole my lost padawan's heart. And like my Obi-Wan, who has, I have come to understand, paid the ultimate price.

 

I will never know what happened at the end, what compelled him to choose to embrace the endless cold of non-existence, and I think perhaps that is the greatest tragedy of all. Someone should know; someone should have been there, to understand.

 

This is the truth I find myself almost unable to endure.

 

To pay with everything one has can be an acceptable exchange for a desired end, if one agrees to the price.

 

But the price paid, when all is said and done in this great conflict, will be terrible indeed, but paid, ultimately, by one who was never given a choice. He died, believing, for some reason, that he had betrayed innocence. That is the only conclusion I can come to, and he rejected the welcoming embrace of the Force as it reached for him.

 

I cannot explain to you how I know this; I just know that it is true.

 

I have no illusions left.

 

He lives now, only in my dreams.

 

 

FINI    

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