Feedback: you know i want it, you know you wanna give it. so
come on, at saraid@wf.net
Summary: qui-gon learns two things.
Warnings: first person.
Notes: it seems that writer's block can be broken with large
doses of darvoset... actually, i blew my ankle out today, and
chipped a little bone in my foot, and i'm halfway stoned on
painkillers, and this is what came to me. personally, i wa
simpressed, i htought it was kinda a neat idea, so i wrote it
down. now, it may be that i'm just out of it and it really
sucks. feel free to tell me so, i'm going to be sitting here
and taking these things for at least a week... but no amount of
drugs, legal or otherwise, would make me forget my pumpkin, and
that i love her. a shout-out to dallas <g> and all my
writing partners and irc buddies. oh, drugs are a nice thing,
aren't they? <g>
I fell down today.
I am Qui-Gon Jinn, and I fell down today.
The largest training room in the Temple is room four. It has no
other designation, there is no pet name for it. It is simply
room four, one of the many rooms set aside for training,
classes and exercise. Soaring sixty plus feet to the ceiling,
it has other features that make it special, including the most
complicated series of suspended rings, which hangs at about
forty-five feet, and several anti-gravity rings that project
from the walls around twenty feet up. These challenges are
reached by means of a narrow catwalk that spirals the sides,
cutting diagonally at the corners, away from the walls.
Eventually the catwalk itself becomes the main point of
interest for most Jedi, padawans and knights alike. Even
Masters come to room four to brush up their skills, and to play
on the catwalk.
Yes, play. Twenty feet below the domed ceiling, the catwalk
narrowed further, to a standard width of four inches, and
divides into a careening array of looping, climbing, crossing
and twisting railed that cover the space from wall to wall to
wall to wall. the same standardized grey as the walls, the
rails are barely visible from the pedestrian grounds below,
where mid-level padawans train and hope to get good enough to
climb to those heights.
Being invited to room four's catwalk is practically an
announcement that a padawan is soon to be recommended for the
trials.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, my padawan, had been playing on the catwalks
since the age of eighteen. Far too young to become a knight,
and yet not the youngest ever to test himself on those
deceptively treacherous duraplas rails. NOw he has played here
many times, and become one of the best at this game.
The youngest apprentice to ever set foot on the catwalk was
only seventeen, and barely that. And he had been far less aware
of the honor of that, and far more anxious about his
performance that Obi-Wan had.
I should know. I was that padawan. When my Master gestured to
me that I should go higher, past the anti-gravs and the rings,
with everyone in the enormous room staring at me, I felt my
heart rise to my throat. Still gangly, it took what seemed like
forever to grow into my height, I didn't fill out completely
until my late twenties - I was certain that I would slip, my
feet three times the width of those rails, and shame my Master.
To shame Master Yoda would be the most terrible of fates.
The trepidation stayed with me until my third step. I remember
that clearly. I took that third step, and I looked down for the
first time. The wall was suddenly out of reach. My saber was in
my hand, unlit. I had thought, perhaps, to use it for balance.
But I looked down, and I saw the others below me, looking so
small, and I saw the air around me, alive with the Force, and
when I opened myself to it, as was my gift, it rushed in and I
knew what it was to fly. Whirling, thrusting, leaping, swinging
- I was unfettered by common gravity and became a part of that
intricate maze.
The catwalk was merely a pale likeness of the web the Force
wove.
Ever since that first time, I have loved it. Whenever time and
circumstance allows, I go to room four, and I climb the
spiralling ramp, until it becomes the catwalk. Climb it with
the dignity and serenity of my position, the way a Master
should.
I was Qui-Gon Jinn, and I would become one of the greatest
warriors of the Jedi knights. The catwalk did not frighten me.
The designation as great was not one that I bestowed upon
myself. It was something I became aware of slowly, over many
years, as more and more of my order murmured it among
themselves, and enemies began using it as a sneer. To be the
greatest was not what i sought, but I know that I achieved it,
at some point.
The greatest warrior of the Jedi. The most respected saber
duelist, the most feared opponent.
I was not proud of this, beyond the honest pride of having
earned it through hard work and dedication. There were few
perks involved with the unofficial title.
But one of them was mastery over the catwalk.
Today I step out upon it, and I am that young man again,
treading there for the first time. That boy; alive, and free,
untouched by the vagrances of time, unchanged by the sorrows of
soul.
If anyone else is there, we will spar. It is a given, an
unwritten rule; the catwalk cannot be occupied by more than one
at a time, individual or team.
Today, Obi-Wan got to room four before I did. We had just
returned from a mentally grueling but physically unsatisfying
mission negotiating a complex and time-consuming treaty for two
important inner planets, and the effort had left us both
craving physical exertion. When we woke, after getting in late,
he had left immediately for his classes and I had gone to the
Council Chamber, to go over the details, once and then again.
It did nothing to sooth my restless spirit and eager body.
I was not in the least surprised to find him there when I
arrived. Stripped to inner tunic and leggings only, braid
flying wildly about his head, I had stepped to the center of
the room and tilted my head back, focusing on the action far
above, watching as he soundly bested a graceful slip of a girl,
Mace's second padawan, now a knight herself. Laughing between
gasps for breath, she retreated to the sides, then leapt to an
empty anti-grav ring below and collapsed to recover. This left
Obi-Wan sharing the catwalk with mace himself, and another
knight, a Drakovian whose name I couldn't place offhand, but I
knew her well as worthy opponent. Her vestigial wings, a
remnant of her ancestors' reptilian form, could be surprisingly
helpful in this game.
Yes, game. According to popular belief, Jedi are serious
people, and Jedi do not play. But, like most other living
things, we do, and we need to. Sometimes our play might not be
recognizable as such to outsiders, but we know it for what it
is.
It was an effort to restrain myself as I ascended. The urge to
throw off my cloak and rush to Obi-Wan's side was strong, but I
resisted. If ever I abandoned my personal cloak of dignity, I
feared that I would never be able to recover it. It was
sometimes very hard to wear.
Like now. Obi-Wan spotted me and laughed down at me, flipping
off a rail and momentarily hanging upside-down, by his knees,
to be sure that I saw him laughing at me. It was a bold
challenge and I took him up on it with ferocious eagerness.
I flung myself onto the rails with my usual disdain for petty
concerns like gravity and momentum. My command of the Force is
all-but unfailing, and I trusted it now as I always had. With
my saber humming and slicing the air before me, I spun, kicked,
swung, and leapt like the teenager I had been. At Obi-Wan's
side I met the attack that Mace and the other knight presented.
It was a furious skirmish, hard fought, but we were victorious,
of course.
Of course.
Since Obi-Wan has taken his place by my side as a senior
padawan, I have not lost a battle within the walls of the Jedi
Temple.
When Mace conceded defeat with a flourish of his bright blade,
and used one strong arm to swing himself to the side, where he
rested, back to the wall and arms folded across his chest, I
turned to my padawan, and was almost blindsided by the blow he
swung at me.
"Oh-Hoh!" I shout, delighted. "You think to ambush me,
Padawan?!"
"No rest for the wicked, Master!" He shouted in gleeful
response, parrying my blows with a flurry of his own. Our
blades spun too fast to be seen, blurs of color against the
dark walls and the dark sky visible above us.
Parry, jab, leap, duck, swing! I was so alive, painfully alive,
able to feel every cell in my body as I pushed myself to my
limits, pursuing him, beating him back and, finally, cornering
him on an extended rail that dead-ended over empty space.
"Surrender?" I offered, saber drawn back above my head for the
blow that would knock him clear. There was no danger, Obi-Wan
was quite skilled enough to catch himself the Force and find a
safe landing on a rail below and at the side. He shook his
head, his grin becoming a death's head as he sucked air between
widely-bared teeth. "Surrender!" I bellowed, joy bursting from
me with the word.
"NEVER!" He was laughing, desperate for air, the sound joyous
and infinitely powerful.
As my blade came around, his coming up to meet it, I saw him,
for the first time, as he truly was.
Saw his strength. His strength, and his beauty, and the sheer,
magnificent power of him.
And I saw myself, reflected in his shining eyes.
I saw my face; lined with age, my hair more silver than brown
now, sweat dripping from my brow.
Love shining in my eyes.
My blow faltered. I took a clumsy half-step to the side, and
suddenly there was no rail beneath that foot. The other was
already in the sir, lifting me for the blow that would never
fall, and I toppled as gracefully as an ancient oak, felled by
an act of sabotage.
Time divided itself for me, then. Divided cleanly into two
separate parts; before, and after.
Before I fell, I knew, to my shock and mortification, that I
was deeply, desperately in love with my padawan. With the light
that was Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Too stunned to make an effort to control my descent, my saber
falling from a numb hand, I scarcely noticed the painful path
gravity rode me on. I hit the edge of an anti-grav platform,
bounced off, and then fell directly into a cluster of immovable
rings, each impact bring sudden agony and bright new knowledge.
And then I landed, hard, on my back and shoulders, trying to
roll and disperse some of the impact, but my body was no longer
listening to me and I just hit hard.
As I lay there, gasping, tasting blood in my mouth, trying to
spit it out so that I could breathe, the pain in my chest and
side so horribly agonizing that concentration was simply not
possible, I saw the after.
I was no longer the greatest warrior of the Jedi. Perhaps five
cycles ago, perhaps even two, I had been.
But now I was only an aging Master who loved his padawan. His
completely untouchable, brilliant, shining padawan. Who was so
far out of reach as to make the angels weep. I wasn't even in
his league.
"Master, Master..." He crooned, gathering me close as Healers
arrived and laid their hands upon me. His hands stroked my
hair, wiped the blood from my mouth, his eyes encouraged me to
keep breathing, one after the other, as the pain thankfully
eased, became manageable.
Now I lay in my bed, which has not felt lonely in two decades
or more, and I find myself trying not to listen for the sound
of his breathing in the next room.
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