CATEGORY: Darkfic, AU, PWP (sorta. According to my opinion, it
has a plot. Others say it doesn't. Just making happy you, folks
)
RATING: Ummm, PG 13, perhaps. Is there a rating that goes for
darkness?
WARNINGS: AU. Very AU. Introduction of a philosophy
that, to me, makes more sense than the old Dark / Light thing.
They never explained how exactly Anakin was suppose to bring
"Balance" to the Force. Being a 'good boy', he'd have tipped it
to the advantage of the Light Side. As Darth Vader, he clearly
advantaged the Dark Side. Explain that to me, George, or am I
not making any sense at all? I hope my theory comes out right
in the story...
Also, this story must be read carefully, as I have rapidly
changing scenery and jumps in time.
There is very little conversation.
There is no hot sex. It didn't't seem it would belong in here.
SUMMARY: When dark and light collide...and begin to mingle.
SPOILERS: past TPM, and Qui Gon survived it. You should have
seen the film, or at least be familiar with the concept of
Force philosophy.
DISCLAIMER: Hi George, in another life, we were married...nah,
just joking. Or was that 'hoping' ? The Jedi belong to
Lucasfilm. The idea is mine. And I really hope it makes
sense.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to Tilt for beat'ing the first version
bows , and to Sheila for making me rewrite this bastard
several times bows again. Without Tilt, parts of this
story would be so full of faults, it'd make me wonder
where all my education went. Without Sheila's comments, this
here wouldn't make sense, not even to me. Thanks to all who
bear with me.
FEEDBACK: If I were a dog and had a tail, I'd be wagging it
like crazy right now.
APOLOGY: I hereby officially apologize to LILITH SEDAI. I wrote
feedback to one of her stories, and even though I didn't
write any flames, she says I did. Perhaps there is a
misunderstanding. Whatever I have done, Lilith, I hereby
apologize, and I grovel at thy feet. It doesn't mean I have
changed my mind about your story, and I don't really think that
my saying this here makes you feel any better...but hey, you
can't blame a girl for trying.
LAST NOTES: I hereby officially declare SHEILA co-author of
this story. You made me rewrite this thing. You deal with the
consequences. Stay you you. 'ta, Morty.
# PROLOGUE #
Coruscant, though they don't call it that anymore, is still an
impressive city. Layer over layer of buildings, each new
forgetting the old and the creatures it was built upon. Rotting
at the core, like a cake with metallic frosting; impenetrable,
breathtaking from the outside. A ruin on the inside. It didn't
take much to make a dent in the frosting, so the rot could
crawl out of its cave and gnaw on the ragged skin, the face of
paradise.
They call the city 'Hellhole' now, all those who survived its
fall.
Inside to outside, the greatest of all cities has collapsed
into itself like a house of cards. Nobody knows how many died,
and nobody knows how many are still down there, in those
rotting, bleeding guts. Caught within that shattered skeleton
that housed an uncounted number of beings but never had a life
of its own... but then, people say it did. The city that is now
called 'Hellhole' fed on its inhabitants like a lazy cat
sitting on a throne of living mice. Food and entertainment only
a paw's length away. Nobody knows how many vanished in those
corridors over the centuries of the city's steady growth.
Nobody knows how many bones are in those endless, damp, dark,
forgotten tunnels and chambers. If anything lives down there,
it has long since ceased to remember what the light of day
looks like.
They tried to forget about it, those who were lucky enough to
live close to the humming sky that was never empty of insectile
transports. They tried to overlook that underneath their marble
floors and golden walls, a cancer was growing, darker and
stronger than anything these above had ever seen or heard
about. One day, this cancer might have matured. One day, this
cancer might have rebelled against its glorified shell.
As it turned out, it didn't have to. An old man with a snake's
smile took care of that. He was the cancer amidst them, and
his growth occupied their minds more than the
blistering, breaking bones they had built their dreams upon.
Peace. Serenity. This city has both now, at least when it is
night, when the sun has gone down, when those poor beings
trapped in cavities and intact buildings don't dare to scream
because they fear to attract scavengers. Still, the rats and
other, nastier, bigger rodents lead lazy lives. Their bellies
are never empty these days, and their fur, or skin, or shells
have taken on a healthy, red glow.
Wealth. Culture. In the end, it wasn't enough to stand against
destruction and craving for power. In the end, when the dust
had settled down and the fires didn't shine quite so bright,
wealth and culture had ceased to exist.
#NOW#
Something moves. Someone who doesn't fear the night, no, but
craves it, for it provides shelter. Two cloaked figures, one
taller than the other, slowly move across dust and debris and
bones, bending here and there, listening, frozen in time, and
maybe they are frozen, maybe they are relics, last of their
kind...
They reach a spot where bent metal plates have piled up like
crumpled paper, and listen again. If they had been here
earlier, a week perhaps, they would have heard the fading
screams of a young boy, who had yet to learn of the great
potential that slumbered in him. This potential, had he known
how to use it, might have saved him.
The two will never know, and there is only dead silence
tonight, stretched thin enough to allow echoes to escape. A
steady dripping of water. A creaking of stone and metal.
Without having to look, the two know that the water might as
well be red.
The taller one blames himself, as does his companion. They
should have known. They should have seen through the old man's
thin disguise, smelled it, tasted it, anything. They
have been taught that the Force is in everything; nothing is
left untouched by its radiant light. They have been taught that
there is a dark side, a vortex, a sucking, sensuous mouth
feeding you kisses of velvet poison. They go together, dark and
light, but not hand in hand. Alongside each other, maybe,
sparks flying where they touch. There is no Light without
Darkness.
In the city that was never really dark, how could they not have
seen it, this vortex in the form of a smiling old man?
Qui Gon Jinn asks the Force again, as he has asked this
question a thousand times before and, as always, there is no
answer. He knows only one thing: he couldn't save the boy. He
couldn't save any of them. In the end, they were all dead, and
he still thinks he can hear their screams, a terrified choir of
myriad voices, when he sleeps.
Qui Gon shakes himself, willing the rising emotions back into
the dark recesses of his mind. Later, if there is a 'later',
he'll have enough time regretting false decisions. Qui Gon
lives in the moment, and now he is needed, his arms are needed,
and he opens them willingly to provide the only person that now
still matters to him with shelter and warmth.
"So many," Obi Wan mumbles into the stained fabric of Qui
Gon's tunic.
"There will be more," Qui Gon answers, brushing his lips over
the young man's brow. "I can hear the rats moving."
"Let us go home,", Obi Wan says, eyes frighteningly bright in
all this gloomy play of shadows. "There isn't anything left for
us to do."
And he is right. There isn't. At least not here.
They have found 'home' in the ruins of the Jedi Temple. Yoda's
walking stick lies in a corner with all the other, useless
things they have found; they keep them as reminders. No. Qui
Gon keeps them. Obi Wan hates them, he secretly thinks they are
watching him, accusing him, and he wants Qui Gon to throw them
away. He doesn't understand how one so anchored in the 'now'
can stand all this useless junk from the past.
But he doesn't't tell Qui Gon to get rid of that junk. His
Master and lover has lost everything he ever believed in,
starting with his hopes for Anakin Skywalker, ending with the
friends buried beneath their feet. Sometimes, the young man
fears Qui Gon has also lost his sanity.
"I should have stayed," Qui Gon murmurs, staring at the dancing
orange fire. Moths flutter close and die, 1-2-3-4-5-6 and so
on. He thinks of the Jedi, and of the Light.
"You'd be dead now, too," Obi Wan says. "You'd be dead, I'd be
dead, and we wouldn't have the chance for revenge."
Revenge. Obi Wan knows a Jedi shouldn't feel any hate, but he
doesn't care anymore. They have talked about this so often he
doesn't count it anymore, ever since they returned from
Isterin, a planet on the far side of the galaxy. He is glad the
Council sent them on that last mission. They are alive.
Qui Gon lifts an eyebrow and says "Jedi do not take revenge."
But there is little conviction in his brittle voice. He is
watching the moths, moths with the faces of friends, dance into
the flames. Obi Wan places a hand over his own heart and says,
"There is a place within me that is beginning to turn grey."
"You speak in riddles, Padawan."
"Can't you feel it? It's the Force. The light is grey." Though
Obi Wan's words are more cryptic than anything else Qui Gon has
ever heard from his straightforward apprentice, he draws inward
and centers himself, calming his thoughts. When he opens his
eyes again, he nods. He knows.
"You're right," he says. Obi Wan crawls into his arms.
They make love, first tender, then passionate, then with a
hunger bordering on ravage. For now, they can forget. Anakin's
death doesn't matter. The Jedi's fall doesn't matter. This
hungry, old man, whose hounds hold the worlds in their claws,
doesn't matter. There is only this moment, this frozen time,
this glide and slide of skin over skin, like snakes slithering
over hot stones in summer.
And when they are done, they put out the fire, moths and all,
and crawl into the darkness, into the void, back into the
shadows where they came from. Only there, they find rest. Only
there, they can dream.
And there, their darkness and their light are slowly,
imperceptibly coalescing into an anthracite shade of grey.
#THREE YEARS LATER#
The men and women they have found are a grim, rough group. Paid
killers, assassins, scum of the worlds.
Allies.
Although they don't believe in what the two Jedi are telling
them about the need to kill the old man, they follow willingly.
Obi Wan has promised them riches beyond their imagination. Each
takes what he or she finds. The Jedi want none of it.
They want only one thing, and that is an old man's head.
They number twenty-five. Twenty-five, and two Jedi with a grim
determination burning in their eyes, so bright amidst their
surrounding darkness, so bright it scares those who have never
been afraid of anyone. There is nothing patient or serene about
those two, and the men and women have long since given up
trying to get through to them. They stay only because wherever
the Jedi go, there are people to kill and riches to find. With
the old man's wealth on the horizon of this gore-encrusted
battlefield, they are ready to conquer hell for 'their' Jedi.
Hell, as it finally turns out, is a battlestation on Vikary I,
where the old man has decided to rest his bones. It is an ice
planet, a snowball thrown by gods who seem to have forgotten to
look after their creations.
But then, maybe they never cared.
An icy wind howls just outside the thick steel walls and small
windows. Their little crowd is laughing, though they can't see
much. They have found what their greedy hearts crave.
Qui Gon and Obi Wan don't mind their shady playground. Inside
their minds, it is almost always dark, a grey, comforting
blanket that they have come to call 'their Silence'. It has
replaced the blinding light inside of them with gentler sounds
the Jedi can't explain. But the sounds feel right, they feel
good, and they guide the Jedi where they need to go. They
follow a deep pulsing, a humming much like that of a bee-hive.
And the insect they hear is old, and it can't sting them
anymore. It reigns through fear, and neither Qui Gon nor Obi
Wan feel fear anymore. The fear of losing the other has since
long been replaced with a suicide pact : You first. I'll
follow.
The old man with the snake's smile dies quickly and quietly.
There is nothing he can do against the two Jedi, whose grasp of
the Force has moved beyond 'Light' and 'Dark'. They absorb his
blackness, this vortex a thousand times darker than any shade
of paint, and he can't fight what they throw back at him. There
is Darkness, and there is Light, and in the Jedi, each side has
found a home, a place to grow. It is a Balance. A perfect shade
of grey. A sound so high and a sound so deep that neither can
be heard. The old man, unable to fight against his own
darkness, dies with only a small victory on his side of the
equation : he might not have been right in what he always
believed about the Dark Side being stronger. But then, the Jedi
had not been right, either.
Qui Gon and Obi Wan set fire to the battlestation and follow
their now very happy and very rich little crowd of murderers
back to their ship. Arm in arm, they watch the darkness burn.
#A YEAR LATER#
The Republic flowers again, freed from the old man's death grip
on its throat. From what Qui Gon and Obi Wan hear, the
surviving Jedi are returning to the Hellhole to help rebuild
and clean it. It has been announced that the planet will be
freed from all its layers of metal, and a new shining city will
be born.
It makes Qui Gon ask himself if, in a thousand years maybe,
after layer upon layer has once again been added, what has
happened four years ago will happen again. He knows that he is
lucky to never see it come.
Obi Wan and Qui Gon know they'll return to...Coruscant. They
have to. There are others who must be taught what they know is
right. They have become something other than Jedi. No. They
have become better Jedi.
"Maybe," Obi Wan sometimes says, "the Force can learn, too,
and Balance therefore is both, Light and Dark." Accepting both,
they have moved past the point of judgement and allow both
sides to flow. They know oppression always leads to rebellion.
They have tamed the Darkness by giving it room to play.
# EPILOGUE #
Twenty years have passed. Obi Wan and Qui Gon are still Jedi,
despite the fact that they have lost belief in a few
philosophies of their Order. Time and again, they have seen
things change. There is serenity, but there is also the storm.
Only through complete merging, Balance is gained.
The new Council respects them, a bit warily, but they don't
care. They have become legend, but they don't care. They are
those two who allowed darkness to grow in their souls and
mingle with the light, thereby giving a new perspective to all
things.
Qui Gon lives in the moment more than ever. Sometimes, he still
thinks of Anakin, trying to imagine if the boy would have been
equally able to accept the Silence. After all, Anakin had been
the Chosen One. Right?
It doesn't matter that much anymore, seeing how things turned
out, and even though Qui Gon isn't proud, he is glad it
happened the way it happened. It is not perfect, not at all.
Nothing ever is. There are wars, and there are those who still
choose the Dark Side. They usually don't last long, those 'Dark
Siders'. There are quarrels with the 'True Jedi'. These will
last longer, but Qui Gon has put it behind him to deal with
philosophical questions of this kind. Life, he knows, is much
better. Besides, there are diplomatic tangles to unravel,
planets to explore, children to teach, and wars to prevent.
There is this everlasting love in Obi Wan's eyes, a love Qui
Gin Jinn, Jedi Master and a perfect shade of grey, intends to
enjoy until another kind of silence comes for him.
The suicide pact between them is still binding. You first. I'll
follow.
When it is time.
Tonight, they make love, first tender, then passionate, then
with a hunger bordering on ravage. They lie under heaps of
blankets, curled into each other, talking, kissing, feeling
that the other is there. A thick white candle is casting
odd shadows across their faces, pooling around their eyes,
hollowing their cheeks. They like it, this play of light and
dark, of dancing shades.
And when they are done, they put out the candle, and crawl into
each other, into this warmth, this comforting absence of noise,
back into the Silence from whence all things came from.
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