JEDI DREAMING

by: ardavenport

- - - Part 1 - - -

Obi-Wan Kenobi walked in darkness. Without light, the gloom weighted down the interior of the vast Jedi Temple. Not even the huge open hall around him could contain so much darkness. Unlike space, which was crisp and black, this sooty emptiness smothered light and sound. His boots hardly made a sound on the patterned floor.

Obi-Wan had no idea where the light had gone. Perhaps the power was down. Perhaps the lights had been buried. He did not feel any darkness in the Force. No anger, no fear, no rage. They might have been buried, too. But the Force was there, thick as the air.

He kept walking through the darkness and through the Force.

Ahead of him, his Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, sat cross-legged on a meditation platform. Somewhere around them in the murky shadows was a great, columned hall, but they were alone amidst all that darkness.

Eyes closed, Qui-Gon serenely meditated, his long brown hair falling down on the shoulders of his dark robe. Obi-Wan noted the small flecks of gray in his hair and beard. The Force was strong around Qui-Gon like a halo of invisible light that instead of pushing back the darkness, melded into it.

Obi-Wan wondered if he should sit, under his Master's feet at the base of the pedestal, and join him. He timidly stepped forward and found it more and more difficult to move, as if the air were becoming more and more solid.

Was Qui-Gon so still and quiet because he couldn't move?

Suddenly alarmed, Obi-Wan pushed his hand forward.

Qui-Gon's eyes opened. They were dead.

The deep blue eyes that stared at nothing had sunken back, whatever spark of life should have been there had fled. The pale skin had gone bloodless and grayish. A slight breeze stirred the corpse's dry hair.

Obi-Wan started awake.

His heart pounding, he looked around at the dim shapes in his darkened room. The usual tiny lights on the wall com on the far wall shone steadily. Only starlight over Coruscant from his holo-window illuminated the room's sparse furnishings.

Obi-Wan sat up and activated the lights from the panel by the stand at the head of his sleep couch. Calming his breathing and his rapidly beating heart, he closed his eyes. He had felt it, the Force in the dream, which meant that this night terror had not been just a dream at all.

His initial shock melted into dread. In the Force, all visions had meaning. The trick was in discerning what that was. Even the wisest Jedi Master would not say what. Obi-Wan had always been taught that visions were to be accepted with contemplation and meditation only. Every Master, including Qui-Gon, always warned against the temptation of acting on them. This was not considered dark, but foolish and possibly dangerous, since the meaning of any vision, large or small, shifted with any action inspired by it. At most one waited for the moment of the vision to come before doing anything. If it ever came.

Up until now, Obi-Wan had never been seriously tempted to stray from this sage advice. No matter how personal, he had always followed his elders' instructions and with time, he had seen that letting a Force-related dream-vision pass worked best. He had never understood why the warnings were so dire, as if Padawans were going to panic from the first hint of death, injury or worse. But now, Obi-Wan could not separate himself from what he felt any more than he could if Qui-Gon were in mortal peril right in front of him.

Obi-Wan did not know where Qui-Gon was.

His Master was on a secret mission for the Jedi Council. He had been gone for several days and just that evening Master Yoda had told him that the mission was being extended. When Obi-Wan had asked how Qui-Gon was, Yoda had only replied that the mission was going well.

Obi-Wan stood and paced on the bare floor by his sleep couch. He could not simply sit and meditate over this. As a Jedi, he was also supposed to follow the will of the Force as Qui-Gon phrased it, but where was it going?

He had sensed no violence, no evil, no malevolence, only death. In one eye-blink he had known what Qui-Gon being dead would feel like. That solid, welcome presence would be gone into the Force, the flesh would be cold, an empty reminder of what had been.

Coming to a decision, Obi-Wan hastily dressed, minimally only in boots, pants, tunic and robe. He left his room. He hurried through the dimly lit corridor to the lift tubes. Even the earliest risers were still asleep. Leaving the residence area, he headed through the darkened halls and long corridors of the Temple to Mission Ops room under the Jedi Council Spire. Someone was always on duty there.

He passed through the outer rooms with their vacant data terminals and blank screens to the main Mission Ops area. A few blue-metal droids clicked and swivelled their heads at their com stations.

"Yes?" The older woman at a large terminal looked at him inquiringly. Her lined face was crimson, her long bluish-brown hair hung down behind her from where it was tied on the top of her head. Obi-Wan bowed.

"Master," he began. He did not know her name, but it was always safe for a Padawan to address any adult Jedi as 'Master' no matter what their actual rank. "I wish to inquire about the status of my Master, who has been sent on a mission by the Council. I was told that the mission has been extended and I wished to confirm that he was well. And send a message, if I am allowed."

She tilted her head, her expression curious, but she apparently found no fault in his request.

"Your Master's name?"

"Qui-Gon Jinn."

She sat back, clearly recognizing it. She kept her eyes on him as she tapped out commands at her terminal. Her eyes flicked to the screen before she cleared it. Obi-Wan kept his eyes forward, his arms respectfully hidden before him in the sleeves of his robe.

"You were told that this mission was very sensitive to the Council?" she inquired.

"Yes, but I was concerned . . ."

The older Jedi slowly shook her head at him and his words trailed off.

"I cannot send any message whatsoever without the Council's approval. And I must report your request to them."

Obi-Wan lowered his eyes, wishing that he at least knew what she had seen at her terminal, but his view was blocked.

"You were concerned about your Master, at this hour of the morning?" she asked. He lifted his head and nodded. Her pale blue eyes looked at him carefully. Obi-Wan felt a slight, tenuous pressure on his cheeks, his forehead; she looked deeply at with the Force.

"You may leave now."

With nothing else he could do, Obi-Wan bowed and turned away.

"Padawan." He stopped, looking back. "The mission was extended because it was going very well. Your Master himself reported that. There were no hazards." He saw a glint of sympathy in her eyes before she turned away, back to her data screens. Grateful, Obi-Wan hurried out.

o-o /O-O-O\ o-o \-O-O-/ o-o /O-O-O\ o-o \-O-O-/ o-o /O-O-O\ o-o

"The soil here was brought from our homeworld," their barefoot guide explained. Obi-Wan Kenobi and the other Jedi he had come with had also removed their boots as a courtesy. Their four Togruta guides continued to describe the garden reception area of their embassy as the whole group strolled around the plants and over the grassy ground. Obi-Wan minded what the embassy staff told their Jedi visitors about their world and people. But he only observed and he did not ask any questions.

He could not entirely put out of his mind his thoughts on his nightmare. He had tried to recapture it in meditation, but he only touched the memory with no new insights. Seeking his elder's counsel, Obi-Wan had left a message with Master Yoda early that morning. The reply had invited him to meet, after his seminar of Coruscant embassy visits. Their group of Padawans and Jedi Knights had three more embassies and one consulate to go to before returning to the Jedi Temple.

One could spend a lifetime visiting the thousands and thousands of diplomatic missions on the Republic's capital world and still not see them all. The Jedi, the protectors of the peace in the galaxy, received invitations from many of them all the time. So, the Order combined their diplomatic training with their responses. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had been assigned to the current rounds of embassy visits before his Master had been sent on his mission.

The Assistant to the Ambassador invited them to a light meal and the elder Jedi Master in their group thanked him. They were almost always offered food and they always accepted. Obi-Wan, the only Padawan in the group not accompanied by his Master, followed the others to another room and suppressed his own unease over Qui-Gon's absence.

o-o /O-O-O\ o-o \-O-O-/ o-o /O-O-O\ o-o \-O-O-/ o-o /O-O-O\ o-o

"Grave this dream was," Yoda folded his clawed hands before him. "A vision from the Force you say it was?"

Obi-Wan swallowed and nodded. They sat on separate meditation pedestals in a private chamber lit only by the daylight that came in through the slatted shutters over the windows.

"I am sure, Master Yoda. It was very clearly the Force, not just a dream," he stated earnestly, leaning toward Yoda.

"Meditated on this you have?"

"Yes. This morning." He lowered his head, staring down at his tightly clasped hands in his lap. He relaxed them, deliberately suppressing the visible tension.

"And what conclude you it was?"

Obi-Wan hesitated.

"Think you must something, young Obi-Wan. For seek out your Master you did."

"It may. . . . be a premonition. I can't think of what else it might mean," he admitted.

"Disturbing it was for you. But no peril did you sense, you said."

"Not until I saw Qui-Gon dead."

The small green creature shook his head slowly from side to side. "Death and peril, not always the same they are. The fear you sense is your own, not Master Qui-Gon's. If join the Force he does, accept it you must, as a Jedi."

Eyes wide, Obi-Wan stared back. He swallowed again.

"But if Qui-Gon were in danger, should I not act? Should we not act?" Obi-Wan felt like he was begging. But what Yoda told him did not sound right. It felt very wrong.

Yoda nodded slowly.

"Act we should, if help we can," he agreed. Obi-Wan hoped that he could get Yoda's permission to speak to Qui-Gon himself. But the ancient Master shook his head to his request.

"Meditate you should, Padawan. Is it peril you sense for your Master? Or your own fear?"

o-o /O-O-O\ o-o \-O-O-/ o-o /O-O-O\ o-o \-O-O-/ o-o /O-O-O\ o-o

Darkness, again.

Obi-Wan knew what it was, where it came from. It was the Force, seen without eyes, heard without ears, felt without hands. There was no malevolence, no evil. He saw only the dark; he did have eyes, but there was no light for them. He felt neither warm nor cold. He heard nothing. This was where his dream-vision was.

He was not asleep. Alone in his room, he knew he sat on a floor cushion, but the meditation had taken his senses completely inward to the Force where his physical body hovered only as a presence in the back of his thoughts.

Going forward, Obi-Wan sought the Temple with its thick, murky dark, where Qui-Gon would be. But this blackness was empty and he had found no Temple when he came across Qui-Gon. His Master stood, looking about him, turning around, his hand touching, probing the darkness. Obi-Wan opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Qui-Gon hesitated and turned toward him, his expression curious, but Obi-Wan knew that he was too far away.

Qui-Gon then smiled toward him and closed his eyes. Obi-Wan tried to cry out to stop him from reaching for the Force. His yell died in his throat, choked with the darkness.

His Master's eyes snapped open.

Instantaneously, he was dead. His skin drained of color, freezing into lifelessness. His eyes paled, the pupils disappeared. Obi-Wan reached forward. Perhaps he could still be saved.

The body began to expand.

The skin of face and neck split; fingers detached; the body under tunic and robe pushed outward as the clothes began to shred. Obi-Wan drew back.

As the outer parts moved away, the insides became visible, internal organs, eyes, brain, bones. And each piece broke up into more pieces and pieces of pieces in some weird slow motion explosion. The hair drifted upward, each strand breaking into smaller and smaller lengths until it became a huge expanding cloud of brown. Droplets of flesh, blood and bone divided over and over until there was nothing left but an uneven haze, patches of red, brown, pink, white getting larger and larger.

Obi-Wan gasped and threw himself backward. He hit the floor with a solid thump and scrabbled away from the grisly remains drifting toward him.

The night view of his holo-window glowed, un-obscured by flesh or Force. Obi-Wan wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his head on them.

He had done as Master Yoda had asked. He had meditated on his dream. But now, what was he to do to understand the meditation?

- - - End Part 1 - - -