Master Apprentice
Archive
Standing Stones
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DISCLAIMER: I own them not.
RATING: G
SUMMARY: Who is Qui-Gon Jinn?
"I have many names, buried in the depths of oceans and beneath the living rock of many worlds."
He blinked, shading his eyes. All was light, burning around him without heat, dazzling borealis waves of colour, deep and enveloping. They moved on unseen currents, always blending at last to the nimbus that spoke in the distance.
He was too startled by the sound of his native language, long-buried under so many years of Standard to stop his mouth from assuming the syllables, rusty but never forgotten.
"Where am I?"
"That is for you to divine, Qui-Gon Jinn. Rise, come. There is rest and refreshment awaiting."
For just a moment, he paused, then rolled to his feet and let his senses reach out, probing the light, the earth beneath him. His knees buckled and he fell with a sharp cry, the Force overwhelming him, a ravishment in the blink of an eye.
A cup was held to his lips. "Drink, Jedi. You are home."
He drank, the water an ice-burn like the old aqua vitae he remembered in a flash, the first taste to ever pass his newborn lips, before his mother's milk, before even his first breath had tingled on his tongue.
His head felt light, as if it might burst into a shower of shining crystal. Then his sight cleared and he looked down into the cup.
Within its silver and gold rim, he saw, as if on a holoscreen, his Padawan, cradling him, weeping and clutching at what was now but dust. He looked up, oddly detached and curious.
"So that is what happened. Poor Obi-Wan."
"Poor Obi-Wan indeed." Her voice was gentle and amused, a caressing alto in either tongue.
"Will you not speak in the old way, lady?" He sat back on his heels, seeing her clearly for the first time as she set the cup beside her on a low table.
"So soon?" Her angular face crinkled into a smile that struck him uncannily of Obi-Wan's when up to his neck in mischief or delivering one of his dry non sequiturs, though she resembled him not at all. She was tall and rather rawboned, neither thick nor thin, and reminded him of countless women he'd seen on numberless worlds, worn from work in open air.
"I am dead, am I not? What will happen? What of the boy?" He clamped his lips shut, embarrassed to act like an undisciplined crecheling.
She laughed and held out a platter of apples, gleaming ruby and leaf-green in the light of the fire pit.
"Your task there is done, Qui-Gon, and perhaps not to your liking. But it is not ours to choose our tasks. We simply do them, whether we will or no, in that world. Eat. "
Cautiously, he reached out again for the Force and found it, wild and untamable, in his grasp, but not as it used to centre, in his belly, just under the breastbone. Now, it flailed and thrashed against his heart, in his loins, the soles of his feet and the top of his head. He abandoned the effort for the moment.
"It will come in its own time." She had risen and moved soundlessly about the room, stirring the fire and swinging a kettle over it. The sleeves of her gown whispered as she handed him a plain cup and sat down on a stool by the fire, staring into it with an enigmatic smile.
It seemed perfectly natural for him to rise and sit opposite her, pulling at the rough blue robe almost by habit.
She watched, from the corner of one grey eye and burst into a peal of laughter.
"You haven't changed one bit!"
"I take you at your word on that, lady. I'm at a disadvantage for it is clear that you know me, but I do not know you."
She only laughed again, and again, he was struck by how like it was to Obi-Wan's laugh.
"Eat that apple before you crush it. You hold it like a world in those big fingers."
His eyes narrowed. Each word she spoke was laden with unsaid meaning, that he sensed without effort. Conscious reaching for the Force was overwhelming but, if he did not consider it, it seemed to flow through him like a river.
He considered the apple, so small in his massive hand. It looked fragile, the skin still dewed and thin. There was a bruise on its side, small but purpled. He looked up to see her watching him intently.
"You won't know unless you taste the fruit, will you?"
For a moment, he had the distinct impression of being two people at once, the Jedi, fighting still for his connection to his world, and someone else. Someone far older.
The juice was unbearably sweet and tart and burned, then soothed its way down his throat, dribbling into his beard. His arm moved automatically to wipe it away, stopped mid-swipe. He stared at the sleeve of his robe, swallowed.
"How long will it take?"
She smiled, her head cocked to one side, bird-like. A raven with glass-clear eyes danced behind her gaze.
"This time? It grows worse, but that is the nature of things. Like ripples in water, ever- expanding, men will always go their way to doom and rise again. We but aid the process when we are called," she shrugged.
Qui-Gon thought of his Padawan, of Obi-Wan, then of the child, Anakin. Something deep inside of him seemed to flick on, like a switch setting some mighty craft arumble. "Is he the One? Or another?"
Again, she shrugged, warming her hands over the embers. "Does it matter? Even if they were to eradicate a thousand million worlds, it never stops Her will. She goes on."
His features were stony, but one eyebrow twitched and she chuckled softly.
"Now who wears the Raven's face?"
He blinked, then smiled. "I wish I could truly feel that. But so much death, so much misery. I cannot stand by and watch it without acting."
Her eyes seemed suddenly dark as pitch. "And does your meddling always help?"
His jaw set. "I cannot simply watch." He had a faint recall of something, something just on the edge of memory and gazed thoughtfully at the half-eaten apple. He had gnawed it from the very bottom where tiny feathered remnants of the blossom still clung, to its center, a near-perfect half moon, the seeds' five points stark against creamy flesh.
"You hold Her star itself in your hand and still you listen to that human heart." Her voice was soft and rather exasperated.
His eyes met hers, piercing. "I hold by that heart everything that makes life dear and good! I believe in that...in men..."
"Though their ways always drive you back to us?" She interrupted sharply. "Time after time you give them the keys and see them dragged to mud and ruin. It is well I made sure of the cup."
He bit into the fruit and chewed thoughtfully. "I am still sure of Anakin. He is the One. He must be. It is all there, the parthenogenesis, the power."
"I know. But he is not. I do wish you would let that life go and be sensible."
Her face seemed to waver before his eyes, and she was Obi-Wan, then Anakin, then the boy's mother, then the girl. It faded and her eyes were once again, clear grey.
His mind raced, piecing together the puzzle. The great drama, yes, that was it. Anakin would save them from encroaching darkness, the pure Power flowing through him to bring salvation and lasting peace to a weary universe. His lids fluttered.
"And if he is the other side of the blade?"
Darkness and terror, destruction of unparalleled cruelty, unimaginable scope. Qui-Gon gasped.
"He is the Sword. Tatooine is the Stone. And your poor apprentice is doomed to play your part until the One is ready to fix the mess for another few of their mortal centuries."
"No."
She harrumphed like an old women, her face suddenly sharp and flinty. "The Scabbard is already there and waiting." Her grin was witchlike. "And it was you who put them together."
"Padme. The Queen."
"The Royal Woman. What else would the Scabbard incarnate as? A milkmaid?" Her cackle was grating, then slid imperceptibly to her warm, low laugh.
His brow knotted. "Anakin will turn?"
"And turn and turn again. He is the Sword, you half-mortal bungler. Excalibur incarnate. The blade knows not how it cuts, it merely reflects the one who wields it. Your precious humans drained away the Sacred Marsh and found both Sword and Scabbard long ago. When the Jedi discovered their magic, they knew only how to transfer the spells, not to understand them."
He bit his lip, then finished the apple and tossed the core into the fire. It flamed briefly, sizzling.
"Half-mortal bungler? That does seem a bit harsh."
She smiled indulgently. "Not nearly harsh enough. The One will come, that is certain. Put Sword and Scabbard together and what do you think will happen?"
"Uther and Igraine all over again?"
She reached out for the platter and threw another apple at him.
"Dust-storms, mist, really! You're so predictable. "
He rose, stretching his long legs and walked the perimeter of the circular chamber, gathering the cloak around his shoulders. He stopped at the table, staring down into the plain, ash-hewn cup. The water within it glistened, green and brown as a hillside brook, then red as blood, then clear, icy blue.
"So Arthur will come. That's a relief, since I clearly will not have the pleasure of seeing it this time."
"You cause enough trouble."
"Poor Padawan."
"You already said that. He will manage. It's taken two mortal lives for you to do all your meddling this time."
"I don't understand. If he is to play my part, how then can I be here? It makes no sense."
"Love does the most senseless things, does it not?" Her eyes twinkled like the sun on grey waters' horizon.
His brow furrowed again and he gazed once more into the cup, now glowing like fine alabaster lit from within. He saw once more those corridors, the red beams of the dark apprentice's blades, the brighter orange streaks of the containment chambers. They throbbed and Obi-Wan's opened first, leaving him trapped behind the barrier. His eyes widened as he watched his apprentice fling himself into battle with the black devil, the sabre's lights whirling until the slender body stiffened, the red beam blazing through it. He saw the beloved face go set and still.
He looked back at her. "No!"
"It did not happen. You made sure of it and then passed on the part." She shook her head. "No doubt a good thing. He's what you now call `Jedi' enough for it."
He hardly heard her, thinking back to those last breathless moments, the sum total of his prayers before the screen had opened and he had thrown himself towards certain death. Spare Obi-Wan. Let him live. Only to burden his new-blossomed life with the part of wandering madman? The sorrow welled in him.
"So cruel a fate."
"There are worse. He, too, was chosen."
"The Jedi...they are..."
"Part of us." Her face screwed into a pixie's grin. " A small `..part that broke into a thousand tiny fragments and went skipping around...' "
"I suppose that's my fault, too."
"You've provided enough by-blows over time." She smiled. "And there are the others. We are their Devi, another race born from the elements of that world among others. Every now and then, one of us does manage to mate successfully with them. Have you really forgotten all this?"
He sighed and sat back down by the fire, glowering at the small flames dancing in their iron circlet.
"I suppose I need to be reminded. I was so sure."
"You were so lost in Jedi mumbling you forgot our tongue. You hear it but your heart always follows them. It is your nature."
"What now?"
"Are you so very anxious?" Her face had become stern, then a smile tugged at her lips. "Why ask me?"
She rose, and her skirts swirled into the mist, welling around his ankles and stealing up the tapestried walls, obscuring heroes and dragons, bards and all the fantastic imagery of a world known and never completely forgotten. Gold and silver threads, bloody crimson and tenderest azures all greyed and faded in hoarfrost.
The air was bitter, sharp in his nose, pale blades that cut his sinuses with unbearable clarity. He found himself unsurprised to be standing atop a hill, rounded and worn by age, an island in a sea of fog that rolled in waves around the monumental stones that stabbed an ice-blue sky.
"Turn and greet the darkness." Her voice was muffled as those around him, hidden in the mist with chimes and soft melody, high as a screaming hawk, caressing as a sigh.
The clouds rolled, leaving a midnight sky split across the horizon with moulton light, ruby and topaz streaks through a russet sun as it seemed to pause over the mid stone and hover there. His eyes fixed, opened wide as a flash of darkness seemed to well within the flaming orb, shoot over the stone and pierced him, as surely as the Sith's blade.
He focused, his eyes trained on a lone raven sailing on the fog past the sunset and he knew himself.
"Cead mile failte. Welcome home, welcome home." The voices rose around him with the mist, illuminated by the burning light coasting like banners, rippling on the wind.
The world was forgotten, another of many. The boy, the wars, all faded into the mists. Only one face remained in all those memories, a face with eyes like the fog itself under brows of rosegold light. That he would remember always.
"Welcome home, Merlin."
He smiled, encasing the beloved face deep within that human heart, turned and fell in step with her, from the Tor, past the Chalice Well, deep into the winter sanctuaries of Avalon.
FIN