Feedback: Please!
Archive: Yes to Amber at http//www.templevoices.com, QJEB archive, the Temple Library, OKEBFFA
Rating: G
Spoilers: If you haven't seen TPM yet, this is going to be DARN confusing
Disclaimer: It's all yours, Georgie baby! Don't sue me, I have nothing!
Summary: As Qui-Gon lays dying, he remembers some of his time with Obi-Wan, and has only one regret.
Notes: First off, get that mind out of the gutter! Second, I would like to say that true immortality lays within the hearts of those who remember and share. Here is to the eternal memory of Sir Alec.
Even with my eyes closed, I imagine I can see your face as you pace behind the last barrier. I sigh, but the burning pain in my middle turns it into a strangled moan. I try to ignore our enemy's surge of dark pleasure over my suffering, to reach out for you, and offer words of encouragement, but for the first time in over a decade, I cannot reach you.
My world has been reduced to two things: touch and sound. All I can feel is my wound, which I already know to be mortal, and even that is slowly fading into a comforting kind of numbness. So this is what death is like, a part of my brain notes. It reminds me vaguely of a broken training bond; first, a searing pain that I could only wish would kill me, followed by a numb hollow where my soul should be. I had never thought I would have felt that again, not since that time long ago when our bond finally formed. We had a rocky start, you and I, but one that soon settled into the easy, rare friendship that I have always been glad of.
I hear the hum of the laser walls, like a distant echo of lightsabers. I remember when you built your first real lightsaber, leaving behind the simple training saber of an Initiate. You spent evening after evening, measuring and re-aligning each part until it met your own standards of perfection. Even now, I can see your young head bent over the work table, the pink end of your tongue poking out the corner of your mouth as you funnel every ounce of concentration into that lightsaber. But you had made every moment of work worthwhile when that blue beam of light appeared the very first time you thumbed the switch on.
As I remember that moment, I hear the laser walls deactivate, and the hum and crackle of meeting lightsabers fills the air. I can smell the ozone as it is released by the clashing beams of electricity. I remember how you used to run to my bed when an electrical storm raged outside. I would let you under the covers, holding your shivering body until you slept. As you had gotten older, I came to miss moments like those.
I feel your fear, anger, and despair as you fight our enemy. I have not the energy to urge you to release those emotions, so I can only lay on the floor as these negative emotions leak through the barrier you have erected to keep my dying from distracting you. I can feel your determined thoughts as you try tactic after tactic against our dark foe. You have always been your most dangerous when dealing with those who harm your own. I can only hope that it is a weakness that one day you will be able to correct.
The clash and hum seems to go on for hours, yet growing distant within my hearing. I find myself thinking on the Force, and of the afterlife, if there is any. Many Jedi believe that once we die, we become one with the Force, our life energies merely blending in with the hundreds of thousands before us. Others believe that there is a land of reward and punishment awaiting those who pass the threshold between life and death. I have always thought that it did not matter to me what lay in wait for me on the next step of my journey; to me, true afterlife is with those who are left behind to remember.
I wonder how you will remember me; will you remember the tough master who made you practice katas for hours on end until you perfected them? Will you remember the man who helped you with Quantum Physics every night for a standard month, until you knew almost as much as your teacher? Or will you remember the friend whose side you have fought at for more than half your life?
I only know that I will not be remembered in the one way I truly wish. That you will not know the truth that I was ordered to keep from you until your knighting.
You have won the battle! My dying heart swells with pride as you dispatch our enemy, and then run to my side. I can see in your eyes that you are ready to call for help, to have the medics work on this lost cause of my mortal coil. I try to calm you by telling you it is already too late, but your tears fall all the more quickly.
I want to tell you the truth now, but can't. Instead, I ask you to swear to train Anakin. Through your tears, you nod and promise me, and I know you will die before breaking your word.
I reach to your face, to touch you one last time, to thank you without words for your understanding and friendship.
Finally, my soul is freed from my body, and I say the three words I could not say only moments ago.
Goodbye my son.
<fin>
