Drift Obi-Wan's meditations after the events of TPM. Explains the difference between Qui-Gon's deathscene in TPM and Obi-Wan's in ANH.
by A Gentleman of VirtueNote: I'm discontented with Lucas's attribution of age to characters. I fail to see the point in casting a thirty year old (be he ever so HOT) to play an eighteen year old. So for my purposes, characters are the same age as the actors who portray them. Obi-Wan is thirty and Qui-Gon is fifty-whatever.
First, know your own heart. That is the foundation stone of all Jedi morality: to look inwards with an unrelenting eye, to know truly the desires of one's own heart, and to judge honestly one's own motives - that is how a Jedi lives straight and true, unclouded by pettiness or deceit.
Know your own heart.
Obi-Wan bent his head, his shoulders, his body, sliding forward from his kneeling position till he was prostrate on the black mirror floor. His arms stretched out on either side of his body and his face pressed hard against the glass surface beneath him.
Help me, he whispered desperately.
There was no answer, and never could be. Qui-Gon's low lilting voice didn't sound inside Obi-Wan's head, and although Obi-Wan lifted his face till the tendons of his neck burned in protest, no vision of Qui-Gon's long lean form materialized in front of the black stone pillars.
Obi-Wan dropped his face again, ignoring the bang of his cheekbone against the hard surface of the floor. He closed his eyes, breathing carefully around the jagged pain filling his chest, and for the thousandth time lost himself in the unfolding memories of Qui-Gon's deathbattle.
The Sith, black and graceful, moving with fluid ease: rolling lazily through the air above the blade of his own lightsaber, his gloved hand elegantly extended as a counterbalance. The stealthy precision with which he placed his feet, the arrogant tilt of his inhuman head, the swirl and baffle of the black skirts of his robe around his thighs.
Qui-Gon's powerful frame, moving with humbler more economical grace. His long hair and Jedi robe swinging loose, but his body and stance and expression all solid and unassailable. The simple unadorned sweeps of his blade, and the calm composure of his rough features. The veil of crackling color that the forcefield gate put between Obi-Wan and the two fighting men. The silent slip of the Sith's blade into Qui-Gon's body.
Obi-Wan, face down on the cold glass floor, stifled the small sound which was the body memory of his own instinctive cry of denial at the sight of the deathblow. But the body is not the life. He knew this well; he could never have reached the rank of a Padawan Knight-in-Waiting without at least that much understanding of the nature of the Force. Even as the Sith had turned from the fallen Jedi and directed his attention to his second adversary, Obi-Wan had put his grief from him.
Obi-Wan shivered against the hard surface under him, remembering the nervous energy that had made him jump and jitter like an eager prizefighter while he waited for the forcefield gate to turn again and set him free. On the other side, the Sith had prowled back and forth like a hungry predator.
The gate opened. Obi-Wan surged forwards, feet and hands and blade all carried swiftly on a current of the Force. The Sith's movements were quicker than thought and beautiful beyond belief. Obi-Wan attacked with unsophisticated but effective strength and speed. He felt as though he had broken some code of space and timing that informed the motions of his enemy, so that his blade was always effortlessly in place to meet the Sith's attack.
They parried back and forth, perfectly matched. The Sith, having dispatched the Jedi Master by a simple trick, had not intended to waste much time on the Padawan. The fight was taking too long, the Padawan had a solid mastery of the basic saber skills, but he should be dead already.
Obi-Wan sensed the ripple in the Sith's composure, a vibration of anger and frustration trembling across the surface of the Sith's combat calm. Obi-Wan felt the answering tremor of emotion in his own tranquility: excitement, a leaping hope that he could win. He tried to put the thought, all thought, from him. The way to victory was to stay in the here and now, focussed only on the present motion of the blade. But before he could close his focus back down to the snap and sear of their two sabers clashing he saw from the corner of his eye -
- what should not, must not, be. The fallen form of Qui-Gon, still solid and real inside his bloodstained robes.
Obi-Wan faltered, lost his rhythm. Every step was a misstep, every movement of his blade mistimed. He was barely meeting the rain of blows from the other man's saber. He struggled to regain his concentration, but the effort was all wrong and wrongly applied. He felt the sudden stab of panic, and his grip on the Force was gone, wheeling away into the air along with his lightsaber.
Obi-Wan flinched, flexing his lean frame against the floor, as if its solidity could counteract the sickening memory of a freefall into nothingness. His shoulders lifted and his fingers clawed at the cold smooth surface as he replayed the twisting arch and desperate grab that had saved him. He exhaled hard, his breath clouding the glass beneath his face as he remembered how it had felt.
I'm dead, he told himself. His hands and wrists screamed with the pain of sustaining his entire weight from such a small handhold. His body felt incredibly heavy, as if yearning towards the void below. Master and Padawan, killed by a Sith. Someone else will have to come and stop him - Yoda or Windu, someone really powerful.
He flexed his body, trying to renew his grip on the sharp stone boss. Damn them, he thought, there isn't anyone stronger than my Master is. Was.
The image of Qui-Gon's fallen body cut through him. Obi-Wan tried to hold onto the certainty that, if he could see the spot now, there would be nothing there but empty robes. But doubt was burning him more painfully than the acid strain of his arms and shoulders. He had to know. He had to.
That single need swept everything else before it. No fear, no grief, no hate, just an unstoppable need to see that place on the floor. Qui-Gon's lightsaber, fallen a little distance behind the Sith, seemed as light and mobile as a dust mote. Obi-Wan's intent was a wind, stirring it, lifting it effortlessly. The Force was no longer a flowing current, it was a ripping gale, tearing upwards through the shaft. Obi-Wan felt its power explode through him, every nerve and muscle alight. He flung himself upward into the storm, arching, diving, he seemed to have infinite time to execute the movement. Qui-Gon's saber slapped solidly into his open palm, his fingers closed around it and the blade sprang to life.
He hit the ground, whirled, slashed. The Sith stared at him, appalled, and fell. Obi-Wan was already gone, lunging to where Qui-Gon lay.
The body is not the life. We are beings of pure light, free to roam without this heavy flesh, if we know how to separate ourselves from our material form. A Jedi Master has this power: at the very instant that his body receives its deathblow, he steps away from this material plane into the realm of light, leaving behind only his robes and his fallen lightsaber.
Obi-Wan moaned very quietly, the sound muffled by the glass surface pressed against his lips. He squeezed his eyes closed tightly; reliving the agony of scrambling onto his knees by Qui-Gon's fallen body and clawing the limp form into his arms.
"It's too late," Qui-Gon said calmly.
"NO!" Obi-Wan protested, though he knew it was true. To someone else, it would have seemed that Qui-Gon was announcing that his injuries were fatal. But Obi-Wan was struggling against a far more horrifying prospect than the death of his Master's physical body. Qui-Gon was telling him that the moment had passed when he, Qui-Gon, could step away from his material form, releasing his true radiant form into the realm of light. Qui-Gon was trapped now in his material form, bound to the dying flesh that Obi-Wan clutched in his arms.
Obi-Wan hovered over his Master in an agony of grief. He palmed the strands of long hair back from Qui-Gon's face, trying desperately to fix the image into his memory, to brand it there so that it would never fade, never be lost. Qui-Gon was speaking with low urgent insistence, and Obi-Wan soothed him, agreeing, promising, not caring what responsibilities or difficulties he was shouldering.
And then he was gone. The strong swift cord of power that had bound them together for close on twenty-five years broke. Obi-Wan was alone and adrift, with only the low tidal wash of the Force, faint and indifferent, flowing around him. He shuddered, racked by dry sobs as he clutched at the dead thing in his arms. He clenched up fistfuls of its long brindled hair, smeared his fingers over its strong rough features, trying to find his beloved Master. But Qui-Gon wasn't there anymore.
Obi-Wan stretched out, consciously releasing the tension in his body, allowing himself to lie slack against the unyielding glass floor. Carefully he put the memories away. It's alright, he told himself gently. Qui-Gon Jinn never did anything carelessly or thoughtlessly. He was headstrong and determined, but not rash or foolish. If he chose to stay with his dying body -
Obi-Wan flinched at the sudden stab of pain that image caused.
If he chose to stay, Obi-Wan repeated to himself carefully, he did it for a reason, and the reason was good, even if I don't understand it.
First, know your own heart.
Calmly Obi-Wan noted in himself the shortcomings of false humility and self-deceit. The reason for Qui-Gon's decision was completely clear to him. To chasten himself, he spoke it aloud to himself, slowly and carefully.
"When a Jedi Master steps away from his material form and becomes a being of pure radiant light, he cannot at once make himself manifest in this physical realm. For a while - some days or weeks as we experience time here - he must remain in the realm of light until he becomes accustomed to his new perspective on the Force. If Master Qui-Gon had chosen to leave this plane at the moment the Sith struck, he could not have come back straight away. He would not have known for days or weeks whether I had defeated the Sith, or if I had fallen.
He couldn't die without knowing what happened to me."
And I couldn't die without knowing what had happened to him, Obi-Wan added silently. But Obi-Wan had never deceived himself about his love for Qui-Gon, so there was no need to speak of that. It was Qui-Gon's love for his Padawan that Obi-Wan had always willfully minimized to himself. He spoke the words clearly, as if teaching himself:
"Qui-Gon chose to give up the life of spirit so that he would know if I lived or died. I have lost my Master, lost all the years that he would have been a spirit guide to me. But I was not abandoned. He stayed with me, in a way that no one could ever have expected or asked.
I was loved."
Obi-Wan pressed himself against the floor, caressing the coldness slightly with the tips of his fingers, leaning his beating heart against the hardness under him. Gradually his body loosened, his face smoothed, and his breathing slowed.
A member of the palace guard, coming silently to the threshold of the little used room, stopped when he saw the form stretched out on the floor. The young Knight lay facedown, eyes closed, his arms extended out on either side of him like a man ready to be tortured. He was as still and indifferent as the dead.
Sadly the guard turned away, retracing his steps. He thought regretfully that, when the young queen asked after the welfare of the two Jedi, he would have tell her that while the little Padawan did well enough, the young Knight was still in terrible grief, drifting.
End.
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