Summary: How Ben and Kee first met and became Master and
Apprentice.
Feedback: One can never get enough of a good thing.
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.
With apologies to Dumbo....
"I Think I Can!"
A Mystics Universe Story
by Tilt (tilt@vol.com)
Ben --
The first time I ever saw him, Master Yoda was whapping him on
the leg with his walking stick.
The blazing-star Knight of the Jedi, Master Yoda's sixth
Padawan, the swordsman reputed able to parry faster than
thought...was yelping in surprise as Master Yoda's walking
stick cracked him across the shin.
Not without reason, I might add.
The great Knight, Qui-Gon Jinn, "Kee" to his friends, had been
avoiding coming home to confess to a monumental stupidity on
some backwater planet somewhere. Avoiding the Temple for almost
two years. Avoiding his beloved Master, who, incidentally,
loves his sixth Padawan with all the strength of the Force he
can command. And Yoda commands (and is commanded by in turn)
more of the Force than any living being.
Normally indulgent and loving, Master Yoda was having a grand
old time whacking the hell out of Kee's leg.
I was nine. Kee was...let me think. Twenty-seven. He was
twenty-seven. He'd been confirmed seven years. I had been
brought to the Temple around about the time he'd made that
monumental mistake.
He kept his hair longer then. It was down to his waist that day
I first saw him. A thick mahogany fall without a trace of the
silver. No, the silver came later. I think I put it there,
actually. And he didn't have the beard yet either. That came
later, when a wild sl'konkaleth slashed him across the jaw
during a mission involving Master Koon's people, the
Vaikerians. The things are tamed for riding, but how can you
truly tame a vaguely humanoid-shaped killing machine with
razor-sharp claws easily twenty centimeters long? So the scar
was soon hidden under the neat short beard. Which soon enough
also became streaked with silver.
Anyway. I slipped inside Master Yoda's rooms as quietly as I
could. I couldn't sense if my old Master was in our rooms so I
always came in as silent as I could so I wouldn't alert him to
my presence if he was there. A silly notion, I know, but when
you're nine you think you can fool those who are at least a
hundred times your age. I needn't have worried that day. My
predecessor in Yoda's affections and training had finally come
home to take his lumps, literally.
I peeked through the bead curtains in the entryway and saw a
very tall man sitting on the floor in front of my Master,
absently rubbing his knee and cursing in some language I didn't
know. Yoda's ears were up and quivering and he was pacing.
"Tahkra, a Vaikerian, he is! Taller, stronger, than you,
Qui-Gon!"
"But not faster, Master--"
--WHAP!--
"Ow! Damnit, Master, that hurt!"
"Pride your downfall will be, Qui-Gon! No place does pride have
in a Jedi!" Yoda humphed contemptuously. " 'Faster' you say.
Not fast enough!" The old one whirled around to give Kee a look
that would have frozen plasma fire. "A Jedi, peace he brings!
Harmony he brings! Fighting is always defensive! The Force is
never to be used to attack!"
So this was Qui-Gon Jinn, I thought to myself. This is the one
I had been fighting for the last two years, albeit a silent and
covert fight.
Another boy from Tatooine had come to take up the place the
great Qui-Gon Jinn had vacated seven years before at his
confirmation. Another sandwalker's child taken in by Yoda's
kindness.
Yet how could I ever compete with this...this...god?
For he was a god to me then. Tall as a mountain, strong
as a wild bantha, he moved like a sandstorm.
A sandstorm that was rubbing his knee and cursing.
"A bad influence you will be!" One of Yoda's ears jerked behind
him in tacit indication. I realized I'd been marked then.
"Obi-Wan!"
I crept out of the bead curtains and stood just inside the
room.
And the Jedi god smiled lopsidedly at me.
Kee --
I sensed him before he even came in the door of my old Master's
rooms.
And, just as quickly, realized he could not sense me.
He was nearly psi-null back then, at least telepathically. Yoda
showed me his brainwave scans later, confirmed what I had
guessed. With time and diligent training Ben would have at
least some short-range telepathy. His Lifting power was far,
far stronger, on a level with many Knights. And this was the
source of his bouts of temper. He felt left out of things,
excluded, talked about rather than talked to. His friends would
be merrily chattering away in Sending, but Ben couldn't hear
them. He got treated to a lot of empty silence back then. Then
to have a Lifting talent so strong that he couldn't resist
showing off now and again...well. It made for some rather
spectacular temper tantrums.
But I didn't know that then. All I saw was a scrawny little boy
hiding in the entryway, peeking out at me with big wide eyes.
Ben Kenobi has never been anything but adorable. Let no one
tell you different. Wait, let me rephrase that. He was adorable
back then. Now, he can break a woman's heart with a single
smoldering look from those crystalline eyes. Or turn his
lifemates into a puddle of gibbering goo. Yep, Theri and I will
freely admit it. He turns us both into brainless glop.
And there I was, getting my shins full of bruises from Master's
walking stick. Great. The boy would never respect me now. I'd
probably be finding rock-spiders in my belt-pouches now. Unless
he decided to hate me.
What I didn't know then was that Ben Kenobi wasn't made to
hate. The emotion was totally foreign to him and always will
be. Oh he may have said the word once or twice in a fit of
temper, but he'd never truly feel the emotion.
He was nine. I was twenty-seven. I'd just gotten back in that
morning from the Justice and two years of planet hopping. I was
afraid to come home. The first mission I'd taken two years
previously had been to investigate rumors of a Sith stronghold
on Noshara Prime.
Alone. Thinking I could handle whatever I came across.
Silly me. Darth Tahkra almost took my head from my neck. Two
weeks in a bacta tank and another with a regen unit reparing
never damage. It taught me a great deal. Most notably, "Never
ever try to impress your girlfriend by walking into a Sith
stronghold without back-up." Bravado and a confident swagger
make very poor shields.
Needless to say, Sachella wasn't impressed at all. In fact she
was downright disapproving. And to a young and randy Jedi
Knight, this is a Very Bad Thing.
We'd made up eventually, of course. We'd been field-partners
for almost a year at that point, lovers for six months.
It would be only six years later she would be killed freeing a
shipful of children from the hands of a slave dealer.
Ben --
"Boshuda won-shal," I managed to say softly.
I still remember Kee's surprised look at the Tusken words.
Those who manage to escape Tatooine generally can't wait to
abandon their Tusken along with their sandcloaks and
water-sense. More fools they.
It became a bond between us. That hellhole desert planet with
the double suns and nothing but sand and Hutts. Our homeworld.
Tatooine.
"Boshuda whan-sheth," Kee answered with a nod.
I think Master Yoda knew then what was meant to be, at least in
some small part. But Kee and I did not.
As it was, it would be six years before we would know
ourselves.
Kee --
Yoda likes to say I spoiled him.
The truth? Yes, I spoiled him.
Whenever I came home I would head straight for my old Master's
rooms, scoop him up, toss him over my shoulder while he laughed
his fool head off, and carry him away. Toss him into the big
round half-sphere of gelfoam I used for a chair in my old room
in the Knight's levels and catch up on what he'd been up to
while I unpacked and called Resupply for new uniforms or boots
or whatever. I remember a lot of the things I brought him, toys
of all sorts. A crawler droid from Korolis, a prototype.
Technical readouts of mechanoids. A big chunk of Alderaanian
amethyst.
I remember the time I got the Priority 1 urgent recall message
while I was disentangling the royal family of Menmeleth from
the kidnappers who had stolen the Crown Prince. Priority 1
didn't mean the Sith were invading the Temple, but it came damn
close. Hard on the message came Windu in a Senate courier ship,
and I was in hyperspace for Coruscant within the hour. Ben had
fallen from the rock-climbing wall in the Soritsu-ji practice
area. He'd been almost at the top, some fifty feet off the
ground. Bad luck had made him fall in such a way that he landed
on his head and right shoulder. He'd also fallen just on the
edge of the thick padding at the bottom, slid off and ...well.
He was in a coma for four days while the medidroids worked to
save his life. He'd broken his neck.
Yoda didn't even try to pry me away. I didn't leave the Temple
again for six months after he was released from the Healers'
care.
I think about that time now and I still shudder. There's still
a thin white scar that runs from the back of his head down his
neck to his shoulderblade.
But he lived.
Ben --
I remember Sachella was such a nice person. A prickly
person, but nice, y'know? Intense, dynamic, high-strung, almost
crackling with energy. Passionately committed to the path of
Light. Back then she and Kee often went on covert operations,
infiltrating slave rings or revolutionary groups, posing as a
mated couple. They all but were a mated couple back
then.
I heard the full story from Master Yoda years later. Kee and
Sachella were working undercover, tracing the connections in a
slaver ring that specialized in children for organ harvesting
and sexual slavery. They were discovered, one of the slavers
had an ex-Psi-Corps telepath working for him and Kee and
Sachella must have been Sending in his range. The slavers set
up a situation too tempting to resist, thirty children ready
for transport, penned up in the shielded hold of a freighter.
The slavers had left the transport with only a half-dozen
guards. Kee was wary of it, Sachella wasn't. But Sachella
ranked him and overrode his objections. At the last moment Kee
decided to guard her back while she lifted off with the
freighter full of children. He stayed behind. Forty-five
seconds into flight, as the ion engines were warming up past
fifty percent, the ship exploded. It was a liquid explosive
inside the fusion plant. Nothing bigger than walnut-sized
pieces hit the ground.
I was the only thing Kee would give half a damn about for the
next twelve years.
But by then I was a step away from being sent to Cyrinx as
untrainable.
Kee --
I remember that Qualara wouldn't let him practice with anyone
his own age and certainly none of his yearmates.
The Force must have a twisted sense of humor to have brought
Ben Kenobi and Torin Ghanbari together. Ben, by turns a deadly
ice storm and a raging explosion of anger; Torin, manic and
nervous and the child of Ramosian gangsters who'd seen more
death before his ninth birthday than any child has a right to.
I remember walking into the beginning lightsaber area once to
find Ben locked inside one saber cube and Torin inside another,
both screaming at each other with language no Jedi apprentice
should have learned. Windu stood back and let them scream at
each other, the cube controller in one hand and his comlink in
the other. He'd been on the point of calling Master Yoda to
come yank Ben back to some sort of sense. My arrival calmed him
somewhat but it was another half-hour before Windu could get
Torin to stop pacing long enough to calm down to some sort of
coherent thought. You do not want a Ramosian to hold a
grudge against you. They originated the phrase, "Revenge is a
dish best served cold."
Ben's anomalous status and continuing telepathic weakness were
wearing on him with each passing year. He was Master Yoda's
apprentice but not his Padawan. His Lifting power was
sufficient to throw a starship or juggle feathers in mid-air,
yet his mind was closed to almost all telepathic contact. He
was three levels ahead of his yearmates in Soritsu-ji and
wasn't allowed to practice with them, only with Knights or
Masters. He didn't seem to fit in with anyone or anything. I
think he picked fights just to have someone to talk to, even if
they were yelling at each other.
Not a good situation. Then I come home with a soul ripped in
half. And Yoda drops the other shoe and sends us home to
Tatooine for six months in the hopes that we'll be good for
each other.
We came back to the Temple as Master and Padawan.
Ben --
I freely admit I was a damned difficult child. Part of my anger
back then was desperation that I would indeed be sent off to
Cyrinx, to the Jedi retreat colony there. I suppose I wouldn't
be required to adhere to the vows of silence but a life of
contemplation and isolation was not something I'd ever wanted.
Truth to be told, the idea scared me witless. I did try to get
along with others. I did try to control my temper. But the
silence around me was just too much to bear sometimes. Or
worse, the laughter that had no cause. Paranoia began to seep
in at some point. Were they all laughing at me? I was angry at
missing the jokes and angrier that I might be the subject of
those jokes.
And at sixteen, I was becoming a dangerous problem.
But then, thank the Force, Yoda sent us off to Tatooine. Home.
I could be myself again. I could go visit my parents, my
brother. I could roll around in the sand and howl at the moon
all night if I wanted. Freedom from the voices I couldn't hear,
and sharing that freedom with the one person who was my only
true consolation.
Funny that in the silence of my desert I learned to Hear.
Kee --
Ben helped me build my house on Tatooine. He asked his father
how to build with sand-brick adobe and we set out over the Dune
Sea to find the land. We found a source of artesian water near
the mountains in the northeast corner of the Dune Sea, a huge
jumble of rocks with a tiny steep-walled valley inside, worn
away by the winds and sandstorms. Ben's Lifting power swept it
down to bare rock. Tons of sand flying out of the rocks,
blasted by the power of a sixteen-year-old's mind. The memory
shakes me to this day.
Why couldn't he Send just as easily?
Days of making bricks, covered in mud, filling the molds and
turning them out to dry in the scorching heat of the day.
Laughing at each other, throwing mud at each other. Climbing up
into the rocks above the house to set up the solar arrays and
the shield generators and the comm array, hidden well in the
rocks save for the flat black planes of the solar cells.
Setting a laser drill to bore down to the water source below
and running the piping. Mixing plascrete for the foundations,
slowly building the walls one by one, sandbricks mortarred with
mud and covered with the plascrete, reflecting the heat and
glare of the day.
Activity calmed him. Always has. Creating things, building
things. I think he'd felt he'd been spinning his wheels far too
long. With building the house he could feel and see he was
making progress. It was tangible and no one could dispute it.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he needed to feel he was building his
mindvoice. Maybe he didn't know where to start. Had it never
occurred to anyone he didn't know how?
Most telepaths use their Sending instinctively. It's as much a
part of us as our physical voices and we learn to Send in much
the same fashion, first with only the babble of pre-verbal
sounds and unfocussed emotions, progressing to words and images
as we grow. And there are some people like Ben who miss all
that, the mind doesn't make the connection neccessary to access
the power. "A" is not connected to "B" and there's no automatic
knowledge that will make them connect. With the physical voice,
it's obvious. A baby's parents begin equating certain patterns
of sound with objects and people almost immediately. But
without that vital perceptual connection, Ben's mind was
screening the telepathic "noise" out. He wasn't Hearing because
he didn't know he was supposed to hear anything. Like being
able to distinguish one voice speaking in your own native
language in a room full of chattering people. He only heard the
language he had made the connection to hear, the physical
voice.
For almost three months I was stumped for a way to make him
Hear.
Ben --
Just for your information, Jedi are quite capable of lying when
it suits their purposes.
Case in point: We'd been working on building the house for
about six weeks when Kee suddenly remembers he has a sphere of
"gyrlanium" in his pack. Supposedly a rare metal that
strengthens and enhances telepathic ability.
It was a large ball bearing from the maglev motor of a
cloudhopper, about three centimeters in diameter. The slightest
brush of a mindtrick and I believed every word he said and
didn't question the flimsy story, just asked him why it had
taken so long to remember he had it.
[Can you hear me now, Ben?]
That first mindtouch was almost a religious experience.
Suddenly I knew, I felt, that connection that should have been
so obvious. I felt so stupid for not realizing something
so natural and right and basic. I clutched tight onto that ball
bearing and tried to form words, trying so hard to project my
thoughts as I had so many times before.
[Gently, Ben, gently! Not so loud!]
My eyes popped open to see Kee's face wincing in pain ..but
smiling in triumph too.
I'm not ashamed to say it. I burst out crying.
Kee --
He soldered a loop onto that ball bearing and strung it on a
strip of bantha leather so he could wear it around his neck.
If I hadn't been so relieved the trick worked, I'd have burst
out laughing.
Every morning when we woke he very carefully put the
"gyrlanium" pendant on and tucked it into his shirt. Every
night when he settled into his sleepbag to rest he just as
carefully took it off and twined the string in his hand so it
would be there instantly if he needed it during the night.
He was a boy transformed.
Within a week he was Sending in words. Within two, in images.
Within three, we realized his range was still quite short, only
within about fifty feet. He didn't seem to care. All he cared
for was that he could Hear and Send and never again would he be
left out. Never again would he be uncertain of others' true
intentions or thoughts. Now, he could Hear.
Ben --
I know why he did it, but that doesn't mean he didn't scare the
hell out of me.
I'd been wearing the "gyrlanium" sphere for about a month and
we were almost done with the house, just finishing off the
interior work and getting the hydroponics room settled into
it's cycles. I woke up that morning to find the sphere gone.
I felt my whole body go cold and numb with fear.
When I could move, I ran into his room screaming at him to give
it back, screaming that he was a cruel heartless bastard and
damnit where was it and damnit GIVE IT BACK!
Kee just gave me his best "inscrutable Master" look, swung out
of bed, and pulled me out the front door to the cave we were
using as a workshop.
He opened the cargo compartment of our old landspeeder, took
out what looked like some sort of motor, thunked it down on the
workbench, took a magwrench, and took it apart.
Nine spheres identical to the one I'd worn for the last month
tumbled out onto the workbench, slimy with grease.
"Then -- then how did I --"
[Because you believed, Ben.]
Kee --
Paradoxically, it was the moment he called me a cruel heartless
bastard that I finally realized what Yoda had intended.
I think I'd said that exact phrase more than once to my old
Master Yoda. It's only those you love the most who can call you
such and it actually means something.
Sachella had called me that when I said the ship full of
children ready to go was a set-up.
I trusted my instincts then as I did with Ben. Both gambles had
paid off, in some sort of twisted way. I lived. And here was
this gangly sixteen-year-old who didn't fit into anyone's
plans, who was about to be sent away as untrainable, calling me
a heartless bastard because I'd found a way for him to connect
the dots in his head. It's a mad universe.
But maybe it takes the mad to live there.
Ben --
"Do what you think you cannot do."
He asked me two days before we left to come back to the Temple.
And I said yes.
No longer the rival for Yoda's affections and training. No
longer the brilliant Jedi god. Calling him Master was the most
natural thing in the galaxy. Older, more experienced, but
...human. I'd seen him cry when I woke up from my coma when I
broke my neck. I'd seen the broken shell he was when Sachella
died. I'd seen Yoda whack him on the leg and yell at him.
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