Penumbra

by Kass (kassxf@aol.com)

Disclaimers: not mine, not for profit

Categories: Angst, POV, Q/O

Warning: Angst

Summary: This is a mirror written for Kate's wonderful and heartbreaking 'eclipse' at her instigation.

//Your shoulders are straight, I can see it in the eerie half light of the eclipse with whatever passes for vision in my current state. Your head is unbowed. But I can feel the defeat, the pain, the grief and bitterness that assail you.

Tatooine, where once I wagered and won on a child slave.

Tatooine, where it all began, although we did not know it.

We go blindly toward destiny, don't we, thinking ourselves wise. I should have been wise, I was your teacher.//

turn around

//I say it, I think it, I shout it mentally.

But you ignore me, even though I know that you hear me. I can feel it, can hear your senses come alive, and your obdurate refusal to heed me.

I try again, aching in a body I no longer possess, wanting nothing more but to make you stop walking, to give you a moment in time where you can let your shoulders slump, your head bow.//

turn around

//At last you speak, your voice not much more than a whisper in this false darkness. //

"Nothing is rarer than the simultaneous eclipse of twin suns. The odds against such an occurrence are staggering, and yet, darkness is falling on the sands of Tatooine. Deathly still the desert has become and the daytime beasts quiver fearfully as nocturnal creatures lie confused and restless beneath a false, eerie night. It is in such darkness as this, I now hear your voice."

//The self-loathing in your voice hurts, but not as much as the rage and bitterness I feel directed outward, at me. So many things I would have done differently. Death often brings greater wisdom than we can encompass in life, and what I have learned makes me wonder if the Council was always right, that I was defiant and reckless. But there's destiny again, that curious thing that balances between free will and fate.

Young and still barely ready yourself, you accepted the burden I unwisely thrust upon you, my final act of selfishness compounding itself again and again and again, like multiple mirror images.

Until the mirror finally shattered, damaging both of you, destroying the world that you and I once shared.//

turn around

"And so you have finally come, Qui-Gon. How good of you to join me in my walk across these wastes, Master. I would love to obey your command, but I am no longer capable of looking backwards. There are too many demons clinging to the hem of the my cloak, each one hoping to pull my last bit of strength away and I don't want to encourage them any more than I already have. You understand, I'm sure."

//I understand more than you know, Obi-Wan. I understand now what I have done, what I did to you, what I did to Anakin. Prophecy makes men reckless, and I was so sure....so sure.

Do you consider me a demon, I wonder, is the memory of me just one more burden weighting each of your footsteps? Perhaps I am.//

"But one doesn't need to see in order to speak, do they Master? In fact, one doesn't need to see to do anything, or so I have been taught. In fact, I could stare straight into this eclipse and allow it to blind me, effectively plucking my eyes from my head as so many fallen warriors of myth have done throughout the centuries. Physical blindness becomes men like myself, as we were already blinded from the start. Blinded by pride ... by noble ambition ... then by the mortifying discovery that everything we've spent our lives striving for, in reality, meant nothing at all."

//Oh, that bitterness, how it burns, I long for a more corporeal form, to touch you, to offer comfort, or even to strike you, to bring you out of this state of mind, self-pity compounded with self-loathing. I've done that before, do you remember?

Did it mean nothing at all? Is noble ambition worthless, is that what you are telling me? Far better to strive and lose than to do nothing, a helpless victim of events, in my opinion.

As for being blinded by pride, perhaps. I was proud of you.//

"I must admit I'm more than a little surprised to hear from you, Master. For twenty years you've denied me the sound of your voice and it's been a silent room I've occupied -- dark and cramped, without windows or even a locked door to give me the slightest hope that any other world could possibly exist. The walls were rounded and it almost drove me mad, my desperate search for the concrete corners of my prison as I paraded in endless circles, waiting ... praying for the voice that never came. You realize too, that if you had visited me once in all that time, even if only to say, "Obi-Wan, I love you not," the now-frozen parts of my soul might have survived. I might even have flourished beneath the pressure to win back the approval of my dead Master, forcing the Wheel of Fate to spin backward by sheer will alone. But, of course, that was not to be."

//Obi-Wan, visiting you would have only kept you tied to me, and it was time for you to let go. But you never really did, did you? My fault, binding you with an oath as hollow and prideful as anything else I've ever done. I should have died before the words left my mouth, that would have been better, died immediately when the Sith apprentice impaled me with the white heat of a laser blade. Perhaps, despite my pride in you, we should both have died, you free and myself untarnished by the sin of hubris.

If I had said I loved you not, I would have lied, and that clever distinction between truth and untruth is denied me here. I speak as I must, as I believe, no clever Jedi diplomacy to guard my tongue.//

"Now, where to begin, my Master. I have many stories to tell, if you are so inclined to hear them. I can sing to you the dirges of a young man's grief and loneliness and it will no doubt astound you that I still know the words and dark music by heart. You see, this young man lost the love, the light, of his soul with the single plunge of a saber and he never quite recovered from it. This man's dying love wrung a promise from him, one that his pride insisted he fulfill without a single moment of regret. That might have been the biggest mistake of all."

//Not yours, Obi-Wan. But mine. My mistake. Eternal existence tainted by the knowledge that I was wrong, surely that's meet, considering your own bitterness, is it not? How could I come to you, knowing what I had set in motion. Would you have believed this shadow of who I was if I had once said, turn back, let the promise lie broken; even dead, I'm not omniscient. I wanted to believe that matters could be changed.

Are you bitter because you think I left you willingly? Gladly? That I failed to return because you mattered so little to me? Let me clarify, then, Obi-Wan. Never in my life has anyone mattered to me as much as you did. As you do. I was twice your age, then, I had other loves, other intimacies shared with lovers. None of them touched my heart or soul the way you did, my Obi-Wan. In different ways at different times--I knew you were destined to be far greater than you know, but I never realized that you would doubt yourself.

That you would loathe yourself, and me.

I try again.//

turn around

"No, I cannot do that Qui-Gon. The path lies straight ahead and to turn away now would damn me in ways I dare not contemplate. But there is more to tell, if you'd like to hear it. It turns out the boy _was_ the Chosen One, oh Master mine. He's balanced the Force out wonderfully, just as you prophesied he would. Too bad we'd forgotten on which side the scale had been tipped in favor of for the last three thousand years. The depth of his evil, his cruelty, would astonish even you, Master. The entire Order fell beneath his mindless rage and Coruscant, that proud world, is now nothing but ash and shapeless stones, without even the tiniest of living creatures left to scurry amongst the rubble. I watched the destruction of my friends, my fellows and all that I'd ever held sacred or dear by the boy I'd spent the better part of my life training. And, as his reward to me, his dear Master and friend ...I was allowed to live. As I said, the depth of his cruelty is astonishing."

//What more can you want of me? It's far too late for me to mend things, I'm not guiltless, but neither of us is. We tried. You are not responsible for what formed Anakin before we found him, nor am I. If your trying did not hold the balance, how can you blame yourself for him? He was the child of the prophecy; but the warning itself was lost.

You did your best. Or is it some kind of dark pride that you think you are responsible for his fall? You were once a brighter student than that, Obi-Wan.//

"Now, since that day, I nearly fell to the Dark Side, once, twice, perhaps a dozen times ... I've lost count. I always pull back and occasionally wonder if I don't allow myself to stumble into its grasp for the mere sport of it. Adding a bit of a thrill to an otherwise pointless existence. It's rather pathetic, I'm sure, but what is there left for a crazy old wizard to do?"

//Self-pity again. If I hear it again in your voice, I think I will go mad. I wonder if one can go mad after death, in this eternal, pointless existence. I had hoped for something different, I confess. Perhaps I was hoping for you.

The Dark Side. We were wrong, you know, we Jedi, in our teaching, in our unassailable Code. The Dark Side is as necessary as the Light. It is not in banishing it that we find strength, but in subsuming it into wholeness. Without the Dark, Light has no strength, only a weak virtue. Without the Dark, Light has no purpose.

You, at least have purpose, which is more than I can say. I was the player who opened the stage for destiny, opened it and died, blind and unknowing.//

"Do you wish to hear more, Qui-Gon? Or am I simply recapping events that you've been a silent witness to for all these years? If so, please tell me. I'd hate to bore you needlessly"

//Obi-Wan, no longer Padawan-learner, no longer one knight among many, turn to me, look at me, for the love of whatever you once held sacred, listen to me.//

turn around

"No, no ... I cannot turn around, Master. My home ... my Fate, lies just over that dune, only a few steps further on. Weren't you the one who always insisted that I stay focused upon the tasks at hand? To be mindful of the past, mindful of the future, but concentrate always on the present? Forgive me Master, but the Present insists that I walk on. But I have a few more tales to tell you."

//Your pain radiates like heat, I never could bear to see you hurting, no matter how angry I was. There, I've proven it to myself, I cannot touch you, although you hesitate, just half a step, when the insubstantial shape of my hand touches your hair. There is silver in it now, you are no longer the boy I taught and loved, too much has changed externally, while I remain frozen in time. We are of an age now, you and I, and can surely stand face to face as equals, Obi-Wan Turn around, I beg of you.//

"It is rumored that one night a year, on Ootlak, they set out a dinner plate for the dead, leave the door wide open and await their arrival. 'We must be ready,' they chant, until the food is grown cold and the night has rotted away. I never knew if any deceased actually make it to these strange suppers, but in my desperation, I confess, I've given it a try. Placing a goodly portion of my life aside, leaving the door to my soul open and inviting you to come in and feast on it, come what may. Night after night I did this, even if I was forced to starve so that you might come and partake of what was left of my existence. So how ironic it is that you show up on this of all days, Qui-Gon. The very day I stopped setting a place at the table for you."

//Obi-Wan, my beloved, my love, my heart, did you think death allows for private tete a tetes? Did you think it is permitted to go where and when one wishes? The Force controls me, that's all I am, a shadow, a phantom, taken shape out of Force because of my overwhelming need.

My need to comfort. To protect. He didn't let you live out of cruelty. He let you live out of fear. He hasn't forgotten me.//

turn around

"No, no, I will not. See how close I am? A new prison awaits me Master, one with walls I can touch, with windows and a door that I may never use, but can clearly see. Noble Obi-Wan no more, it is in this dry cell that I will become the wily sorcerer Benjamin: a man who will lie, deceive, beguile, betray, delude and defraud without conscience. Doing anything and everything short of cold-blooded murder to make sure that Anakin's son follows the path his father refused. You will not recognize this man, Master, so it is better that you do not begin to try."

//The paths are already laid out, Obi-Wan, do not lock yourself once again into a prison that is, however indirectly, of my making. You can choose differently, you know, you can come with me, we can be together again, I can tell you a thousand truths that you will not and would not accept in the flesh, I can show you things that heal your anger and grief...//

turn around

"No, I cannot, Master. For the darkness of the twin eclipse is receding and I am standing at the threshold of my final prison, where the desert heat will slowly burn away any of the cold comforts I once held so dear. There will be no more glances back, no more dirges or regrets, no more suppers of life for the dead ... nothing except the one infant hope of mine that lives just over that far ridge. Growing tall and strong in the living Force, far from the shadow of his Father's image. No, I will not turn around for anything now, Master. As much as I love you still."

//You will not hear me, you will not see me, as stubborn in defeat as you were in grief. If I had flesh, I would strike you, as I never did but once in life. No longer obedient, no longer Padawan, no longer knight, you nonetheless hold to your honour.

Have a care you do not choke on it.

But very well. As I love you still, we will wait together, whether you will hear me or not. You think the decades without me were difficult, you will come to wish me scattered on the solar winds of a hundred systems.//

turn around

fini