Category: AU ("The Way of the Mystics" Universe) drama
Rating: G
Warnings: Just plain weird
Spoilers: None
Summary: A strange encounter in a dream. Qui-Gon ("Kee") meets
the father he never knew. Response to the Sean
Connery/Qui-Gon's Family challenge.
Feedback: yes, please, any comments welcome.
Disclaimer: George, you taught me more of about life and hope
than my family ever did. It was your fault I became a writer.
Allow me to play with Qui-Gon and Ben and Yoda just a little, I
won't hurt them, I'll make them eat their veggies and I won't
even muss up Ben's braid. I do this for love. Taking money for
this would be obscene.
Note: "Kee" is Qui-Gon Jinn. For more in the "Mystics"
universe, see http://earth.vol.com/~tilt/index.htm
It wasn't often that Kee had significant dreams, but when he
did they were all the more unsettling for their very
infrequency.
He'd had several in the fifteen months since he and Theri had
lifemated, most likely due to his mind and brain adjusting to
the lifebond's neural demands. Not his usual nightmares that
he'd had for the twenty-six years since Thretketh, nightmares
he usually forgot before waking now. Now, his dreams seemed
like veritable doorways into other worlds, other times.
...sand. Tatooine. Home. He was home again. The smells, the
sounds of slithering sand, the feel of it beneath his boots.
The baking heat. The glaring light of Tatoo 1 and 2. The
ever-present wind sending a wash of positive ions skirling
through his hair, drying his skin, setting his mind on edge.
Home. He was home again.
Then it was night, cold, the wind drawing bell-like tones from
the rocks of the mesas, lonely whistles. The blaze of the
galaxy above him, the aurora shimmering. He was still walking
in the sand, steadily, endlessly, in the dunes.
"Drel-eth? Son?"
Kee whirled, caught by the voice. Deep, full, rich. Much like
his own.
"My name is Qui-Gon Jinn," he answered the figure standing on
the dune-ridge behind him. "I am a Jedi."
The figure came forward to stand in front of him, and the
moonlight picked out the silver in the dark hair, illuminated a
smiling face wreathed by a scruffy graying beard, roguish
dancing ice-blue eyes. A sandwalker's sandcloak wrapped the
rangy body, but the man was as tall as Kee was, looked him
squarely in the eye. "You are Drel-eth Korsel, second son of
Kael-den Korsel and Shaini his wife. And Kael-den is me," the
man said with a twinkle of laughter in his eyes. "If you're a
Jedi it's entirely your own fault because your mother and I
were little better than the sandpeople."
Kee blinked at this, shifted his weight. "I--don't understand.
I never knew my parents. I was left in a sandwalker's shelter,
abandoned. I was found by a Jedi who'd come to Tatooine on
retreat. I was barely two years old when he found me. How can
this be a memory dream? I never knew my parents."
Kael-den grinned at his confusion. "You think this is only a
memory, son? Just some mental artifact from a past you can't
remember?" He lifted a hand to indicate the blaze of the galaxy
above them. "All those stars, all those worlds, and you can't
believe in just a little magic?"
The rebuke was gentle, teasingly delivered, but it jerked Kee's
mind sideways. "I'm dreamwalking, then?"
"If you want to call it that," Kael-den said airily, dropping
down to sit on the dune's crest, looking out over the
star-washed expanse of the Dune Sea around them.
"Biological father?" Kael-den repeated. "Now that sounds a cold
thing to say, son. Who do you consider to be your father?"
"My Master, Yoda. He named me. He raised me from the age of
six. " Kee dropped down to sit on the dune-crest as well, his
hands fidgetting in his lap, wishing he had his Jedi cloak on.
Instead he wore a sandcloak, the thin krim-silk wrap and hood,
the jala scarf tied loosely around his neck. "He named me
Qui-Gon Jinn."
"And so you think of yourself," the deep voice said, but there
was laughter beneath the words. "This Yoda--he's a good man?"
"He's a Jedi Master," Kee said. "The leader of the Jedi Order.
Over eight hundred years old. The wisest being in the galaxy."
Kael-den swung around to give him a very direct, knowing look.
"Can't be human, then, if he's over eight hundred."
"No. I don't know what species he is, he never said. Humanoid,
but not human." Kee shrugged a little. "It never much mattered
to me. He's simply Yoda."
"He's wise, you say?" Kael-den asked.
"Yes." Kee fiddled with the fringe on the ends of the jala
scarf. Why was he nervous like this? It was only a dream....
"Well, I guess that'll have to do, then. Though I would have
preferred 'loving' and 'supportive' and 'funny' to 'wise'. But
I'm not one to talk. I was the one left you in that
sandwalker's shelter at the Rel-ten-kor oasis, so I guess I
can't have any real stake in your life or upbringing."
"Yoda is funny and supportive and loving," Kee said in a
small voice. He shook his head, annoyed with himself. "Damnit,
I'm a Jedi Master, I've fought Sith and stopped conflicts and
saved lives, why am I turning into a child just because I'm
having a wierd dream?!"
The laugh was rich and genuine. "Because even though you're a
Jedi you're not prepared to accept that the universe has things
in it you can't explain. That there might be forces in the
universe you know nothing of and that operate with rules you
can't imagine." The ice-like blue eyes were silvery in the
starlight, the long gray-streaked hair blowing in the sighing
wind. "You can't accept that your parents might be alive
somewhere on the other side of whatever you call real."
"Are you dead then?" Kee asked. If he was speaking to a ghost
he'd accept that and go on, since Jedi often saw ghosts and
spirits when there was need.
"What is 'dead'? Merely a change from one state to another, one
place to another, one shell to another," came the maddening
answer. "I wouldn't call us dead. More like out to lunch."
Kee shook his head and tried to rub his eyes as he often did
when under stress. "May I ask why?"
"Why what, son?" Kael-den asked, arranging his sandcloak around
his boots, digging up a handful of sand and flinging it into
the wind. "There are as many worlds in this universe than there
are grains of sand in the Dune Sea. Not all of them require a
person to die before going there."
"Why have you come to me this way?" Kee asked. "Why now?"
Kael-den turned to look at him and the twinkle in the eyes slid
up into mischief. "Why not now?"
"Indeed," Kee said in a mumble. "What do you want me to do,
then?"
Kael-den smiled, threw another bit of sand up to scatter on the
wind. "I want you find those other doorways into the other
worlds and explore, son. That's all I ask. Just see what's out
there. One of these days you'll find your way back to us.
That's the way the universe works, what goes around comes
around."
"The will of the Force," Kee said softly. "Circles within
circles without end."
"For a fact, my son," Kael-den said briskly, getting to his
feet. "One clue, son. Neutrino stars." He turned and started
walking back across the dune-crest back the way he'd come and
it took Kee a moment to register he was leaving before the Jedi
Master moved to catch up.
"Father, what are you talking--"
A rippling shimmer appeared in the air in front of Kael-den,
and he walked straight into it, the portal rippling around him
then collapsing into a singularity that glowed white-hot in the
darkness of the night, then flickered out and died.
And Qui-Gon Jinn was left alone with his thoughts again on a
moonless Tatooine night, the smells and sounds of his homeworld
wrapping him in lonely silence.
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