Weep Not For the Memories
by Carol E. Meacham aka Tilt (tilt@vol.com)
Archive: Yes, M/A
Categories: AU Angst Drama POV
Rating: NC17 for Maul being his usual self
Warnings: Maul is a pretty rough piece of work. Implied violent
sex, graphic animal mutilation (fish). Also Ben gets pretty
bummed out.
Spoilers: TPM
Summary: AU in "The Way of the Mystics" Universe (see
http://earth.vol.com/~tilt/index.htm). Probably won't make
sense to anyone here, but it was something that occured to me
when I discovered songfic. Moments that were forgotten and hope
came home to stay.
Feedback: Yes, please, to tilt@vol.com
Disclaimer: All hail the Great Prophet Lucas, may the blessings
of the Old Republic be upon his graying head. Many thanks be
heaped upon him as the Great Giver of Qui-Gon and Ben, which
belong to him evermore! Unfortunately. However, allow this poor
writer to fill in the blanks you left, and I ask no payment
save feedback and Diet Coke.
Notes: Brackets [ ] indicate telepathy. "Kee" is Qui-Gon...go
to my website and read the explanation, it's a long story.
Suffice to say I'm a Hooked-On-Phonics dropout.
"I Will Remember You" by Sarah McLachlan
"I will remember you...
Will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by...
Weep not for the memories."
"Again."
Theri bel Kaitryn resettled her ankles over her thighs in the
lotus position, closed her eyes, and touched the humming pulse
of the Force, listening with her inner ears.... "Third.
Quarter. Tenth. Two-credit. Third. Five-credit. Half."
"Quite so, quite so. See here," Therasslen said, and Theri
opened her eyes with a smile, looking down at the coins her
Master had lined up on the floor between them. She'd gotten the
order exactly right.
"I think I'm getting the trick of it now," Theri said softly,
gathering up the coins. "Just that I don't always manage to
catch the whisper of it."
"But you are learning," Therasslen said, patting her hands as
she handed the coins back to him. "You are learning to quiet
your mind, and so you can hear better what the Force is telling
you." The old man nodded solemnly. "The Force is never wrong,
youngling. All things move by it's will and with it's power.
And thus, since the Force is in everything, you can see it
moving in everything. So everything can be your teacher, even
after I am gone."
Theri felt a chill at his words. "There is no one in this
galaxy who could be my teacher after you, Master. I will not
allow it. There is only one Master for me, and that is you."
Therasslen looked up at her, the ice-like eyes solemn.
"Theriyah. You know that is not true. I am only the container.
Your true teacher is the Force." He smiled a little then and
dropped the handful of coins back in the cloth bag, beginning
to toss them about to mix them up. "Now then. Again."
"Remember the good times that we had? I let them slip away from
us when things got bad... How clearly I first saw you smilin'
in the sun... Wanna feel your warmth upon me, I wanna be the
one."
"So he said--get this--" Ben broke off, bursting into laughter
anew, his head down on the lunchroom table, one hand weakly
pounding on the tabletop, trying to breathe. "He said--'No,
milord, I wasn't aware the young lady in question was your
daughter, but I'm sure---I'm sure we can--' " Ben stopped
again, laughing so hard he couldn't breathe, and the rest of
the joke was unintelligible amidst a stream of breathless
Tusken.
Theri rolled her eyes and shook her head at Torin and Serala
who sat across from her, put out a hand to rub Ben's back as he
continued to laugh helplessly. [Is that any kind of story to be
telling about your own Master?] Theri Sent to Ben as the
laughter seemed to subside a bit, her mindvoice faintly
reproving.
[That's the only kind there is,] Ben Sent back. [He's such a
lecherous old man, even before we found you. Good thing you're
Thretkethan or he'd be bored to tears.]
Theri didn't know if she should be complimented or insulted by
that.
"I'm so tired but I can't sleep....
Standin' on the edge of something much too deep....
It's funny how we feel so much but we cannot say a word..
We are screaming inside, but we can't be heard."
Theri awoke to pain and shattering cold in every limb, her
teeth chattering so hard she worried they'd explode into
shrapnel and lacerate the inside of her mouth.
Her skin was white with cold, white as the underbelly of a
fish, a thin sheen of ice crackling off of her when she moved
painfully from the ball she'd curled up in. Half-healed
lightsaber burns and huge purple-black bruises mottled her
skin, shocking color amidst the deadened white expanses of her
naked skin. Her hair was stiff with frozen mud and the bloody
scabs from the head wound. She couldn't help crying out in pain
as she levered herself up from the freezing barren rocky
ground.
Snow on the stone around her, gray lunar-like rock, a tiny
canyon cut by the stream that flowed so swiftly over the rocks.
Gritty ashen sand shifted underneath her, clung to her body in
maddening roughness, as she struggled to sit up.
In the middle of the stream, crouched gargoyle-like on one of
the rocks that split the flow of the water into white foam,
Darth Maul watched the water with the intensity of a starving
panther. The wiry body was naked, black-skinned, the myriad
scars quite visible in Syharath's weak sunlight, the long line
of his spine delineated by the small spikes that ran from his
head to his tailbone. He hunched motionless, his whole being
focussed on the water in front of him, silent...then with one
blindingly fast sweep of his arm he snatched a struggling fish
out of the water bare-handed with a growl of triumph. He leaped
off the rock to the stony shore, landed in the same hunched
huddle, dug the claws on his fingers into the body of the
flapping fish and tore it in two. The look of elemental hunger
on his face made something twist inside her despite the cold
that begged she lay back down and sink into the warm oblivion
of sleep. The Dark thrummed through the air around them,
through them, twining together the lust she felt with the
struggle and pain of the fish as it was torn apart and the
animal glee as Maul began greedily gnawing at the flesh. Then
he looked up at her, hands full of fish parts, eyes feverish
with feral delight, and the raging need was building again
between them in a heartbeat.
This is the Dark, Theri thought woozily. I came here and gave
myself to it so I could learn. But at what cost to my soul?
The last thought was ripped away as Maul's body pressed hers
back to the stone beneath her, and the feverish warmth of his
flesh was the only way she had to survive.
"I'm so afraid to love you, but more afraid to lose...
Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose...
Once there was a darkness, deep and endless night...
You gave me everything you had, oh you gave me light."
"I will not marry you, Kee," Theri said, looking up into
sapphire eyes she loved more than life. "I will not take that
chance. I cannot take that chance."
Kee held her to him desperately, cursing the words he'd just
said, cursing the damned Master Clans that had destroyed any
hope of trust in the future for Thretketh, but knowing he had
to go on. "What are you truly afraid of, beloved?" Kee asked
softly, sliding his hands up to capture the masses of ebony
hair, brought her close and kissed her just below the ear, a
spot that always gave her the shivers and sent a bolt of pure
unmixed lust from her brain to her toes. "Is it just the clan
memory? Or is it truly your own fear? If it is the clan memory
I can do nothing to heal it as it happened long ago and far
away. If it's your own fear, why do you not conquer it?"
"You are Jedi," Theri said simply. "Your life is not your own.
I can't trust you'll always be there because you won't be."
Kee nodded, running his hands through her hair gently.
"Likewise, I cannot trust that you'll always be there either.
With your penchant for running off into dangerous situations at
the drop of a hat I have more than a little cause to believe
you'll die before me no matter what I do. " Kee looked down at
her startled expression and nodded solemnly. "Don't you
remember, back home on Tatooine, when we touched souls that
first time? I was terrified. I knew you'd be the centerpoint of
my life even then and the only center I wanted in my life was
my own. Then we lifemated and the choice was taken away from
us. I know you feel marriage is not only unneccessary but
pointless. For Thretkethans I daresay it is, even now that the
Master Clans have been gone these many years. But it is not
pointless to me." He turned, slipped off the stone edge of the
water-pool and knelt in front of her in true knightly fashion.
"Please, Theriyah bel Kaitryn, marry me. Let me be your husband
and your lifemate for all the worlds of the galaxy to see."
"And I will remember you...
Will you remember me?
Don't let your life pass you by...
Weep not for the memories...."
Luke sat stunned, his tears streaking unheeded down his face,
reading the last paragraphs of the journals of General Obi-Wan
Kenobi, Jedi Knight, the man who had started the whole coil of
his own life, the crazy old man that everyone he'd known
growing up thought to be nothing more than some crazy old
wizard.
He'd never known, never guessed, what had gone before. He'd
never truly wondered about Ben's life before any of the madness
of the Empire began. Oh, sure, wished and wondered for the
glory of the Old Republic, but never thought about Ben Kenobi
the man, Ben Kenobi the Jedi.
And, truthfully, never thought Jedi were anything like normal
people.
He scrubbed the tears from his face and kept reading.
"They live in my heart forever as they were then: bright and
glorious as a cloudless dawn, undimmed by pain or fear or
regret. Torin, grinning like a maniac or quietly content at his
mech's controls. Serala, happy just to keep everyone on track
and heading in the right direction. Uloa, Shosin-ka, Master
Windu, Master Koon, I still hear their voices and see them in
my dreams. But when Maul stabbed his lightsaber through my
Master's chest he killed not only Theri and Master Kee but me
as well. Though I lived on and kept my word to Master Kee, I
was never truly alive in any sense of the word. A living death,
numb, unable to feel anything past the constant pain of the
emptiness of my soul. I suspected, I knew, afterwards why Theri
and Kee had refused to lifemate with me. They must have known,
must have Seen, what would happen.
But then, when I was all but done with it all and I took Anakin
home to Naboo not just to visit but to marry Padme at last,
when all that stood between my shattered half-life existence
and the release of suicide was Master Yoda giving his approval
for Anakin to become a Knight, something happened which
shattered in turn that steel shell of ice and loneliness that
had kept me locked up tight for ten years.
I left Anakin asleep in our room--the last night we would ever
sleep so, as he would become a Knight on the morrow and barely
an hour later would be kissing his lady as the conclusion of
their marriage--took Master Kee's saber from it's hiding place
in my pack and left our room. I stole through the Palace quiet
as a wraith and insubstantial as a ghost, finally making my way
to the hangar, retracing my steps of ten years previous. Then,
it was two who danced around Maul as he fought us; then, I had
been whole. Now, there was only the silent darkness of night. I
slipped by the final guards and put my hand to the energy plant
doorpanel, and I was walking on those bridges again across the
chasm. There, the control platform where Master Kee and I had
jumped together after Maul. There, where Maul had knocked me
over the side to fall. Like old friends, the memories. Finally
I made my way up to the bridge leading to the melting pit, and
my breath caught in my throat at the open doors before me. A
sense-memory: Master Kee's hair flying as he lunged at Maul,
running forward, running away from me, through the walls of
light and energy. Now there was no running. Just my own
footsteps echoing back to me from across ten years of time and
five lifetimes of pain.
I shuddered as I passed the beam emitters where the energy
walls had been. Stopped just before the last one.
Here it was. Here, in this spot ten years before, I had lost
everything I cared for in this life.
I stepped forward, one step, into the room, and raised eyes
streaming with helpless tears to look.
Nothing had changed. Nothing at all, save that it was night and
dark and cold.
There. I went, knelt on the floor on the spot where Master Kee
had died. Sat there, wrapped my arms around myself with Master
Kee's saber digging into my chest where I'd put it in my vest,
my whole universe nothing but blinding pain that wouldn't let
me breathe and wouldn't let me die and wouldn't let me howl my
soul to the stars. There was only one thing I had left to do
and then I would be free. My only hope was that my lifemates
would be waiting for me in whatever came after.
I dragged myself over to the side of the melting pit, sitting
on the very edge, and took Master Kee's saber from my vest. I
put the emitter assembly to my head and felt for the power
switch.
And heard a mindvoice say, [If you go through with this we'll
dump you in some sleazy dive with only a drunken Gamorean and a
constipated Dug for company.]
My eyes popped open and...they were there. Theri and Kee. Theri
on my left, Kee on my right, sitting just as I was at the very
edge of the melting pit...but both of them insubstantial as
mist and glowing blue in the darkness. As I sat there stunned
senseless, Inda appeared slowly at Theri's left, swinging his
legs over the side of the pit like a kid.
[It's not your time, Ben,] my Master said in that voice that
had always been my comfort and my goad, encouragement and
sympathy. [Trust us. We know what we're talking about here.
It's not your time to go.]
'Not my time?!' I managed to choke. 'I died with you two, my
body has been walking around without a soul for the last ten
years. I can't stand it anymore. Yoda will confirm Ani in the
morning. I'm done, I'm through with the promise I made you. I
can die now, I want to die now!'
[No, Ben,] Theri said and I felt the Force ripple around us as
she reached over to touch my hand. [You have much more to do.]
I think I howled then, I think I went mad then, I don't
remember. The pain of being separated from them and the ecstasy
of being with them, both at the same time...well, it would
drive a sane man mad, and I was far from sane at that point.
I'd spent ten years feeling nothing at all, now to feel such
extremes in one moment... But I collected what little shreds of
sanity remained to gasp out, 'I cannot live this way. Master
Yoda--he said we had an uncompleted lifebond, that there was
something there when you died that we'd never acknowledged--'
If I thought my pain was the depths of hell it was nothing to
what I felt then as Theri and Kee nodded unhappily and I felt
the touch of their minds on mine, the infinite incompleteness
and the emptiness that didn't even echo with the sounds of
their own lifebond. [Yes, Ben, that's true,] my Master said
slowly, and my heart broke to hear it. [But there is more, and
you must find the strength to endure.]
[We have always been with you,] Theri said. [As Inda was always
with me. But your own despair and guilt kept you from us.] She
reached up to caress my cheek, the cool wafting of breeze that
was insubstantial as a cloud, but the thought that it was Theri
once again broke me and I doubled over, nearly falling into the
pit with the sheer physical strain of my emotions.
[A man can't fight with one foot in the grave,] Inda said from
Theri's other side. [And a man is no good to anyone including
himself if he's lost in the past. How come you knew you had to
live in the present when you were twenty-eight but you've lived
in the past ever since?]
'Nothing--to live for,' I gasped back. 'There is nothing
without you--'
[But there is, and always shall be, the Force,] Theri whispered
in my mind, the strength of her faith like rock beneath me,
lifting me up, pulling a drowning man from a sea of rage and
hopeless wandering. [The only thing in this galaxy that has
kept your soul from ours is your rage and pain and despair.]
'But it is all I have left of you!' I screamed.
[Oh?] my Master asked. [Who taught you to build lightsabers?
Who taught you every kata you'll ever know? Who taught you to
touch the Force?]
'You--Master,' I gasped out.
[Sweetheart, I don't want to be remembered only for the tragedy
of my death,] Theri said softly. [My life--any life--is a
triumph and an adventure and a blessing. Can't you think on the
life we had rather than our death?] Her hand again, on my
shaking shoulder. [We have never left you. We will never leave
you. We are in the Force now, and we have been holding you
every moment since we crossed into the Force together.]
'You took my soul with you,' I managed. 'All my so-called
wisdom and all my will to live went with you into the Force.'
[Then take it back again. Freely given, freely chosen, forever
together beyond time,] Theri said gently. I straightened
abruptly, remembering, oh Force remembering--
Master Kee nodded to her, and each of them took my nerveless
hands, the coolness of a spirit's touch--
--and my soul was flooded with ageless, timeless, boundless
light, the symphony of angels that was the Force of all
creation blasting through my tortured soul in a supernova of
ecstasy and joy and terror, all pain and horror swept aside on
the hurricane tide of their love for me, the love I had longed
for, kept from me while they lived, given now with all the
Force could pour into the guilt-black pit of my soul like this
bottomless hole that had swallowed Maul's severed form. That
bedrock that had formed in my soul earlier, Theri's faith and
Kee's tireless strength of will, all combined with a dancing
joy I have never tired of nor ever shall.
And we were eternal, we were beyond time, we were together
forever in the Force.
And the light would never die from my soul ever again, even in
the twenty years I have spent here in the house we shared in
this little pocket of stone in the desert of my homeworld.
Anakin turned because of my failings and my inability to let go
of the past. It wasn't until his training was complete that I
realized the magnitude of my mistakes. The grief crippled me.
But when all was said and done, my lifemates came to me with
open arms as they had not in life, and I was able to endure the
twenty years of silence I paid as penance to the balance. In
them I found redemption and the strength to go on, for they
have shared my every moment.
Today I looked out at the dawn and realized the time had come.
Young Luke shall be arriving today. I feel it on the wind. I am
in no hurry. I have regrets, but I have had my joys as well.
And soon, very soon now, I shall step across that smallest of
spaces between this world and the Force, and I will be truly
home again.
Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi. EOF."
Luke sat staring at the last lines as they blurred in his
sight, unable to stop the tears and not really wanting to.
A small sound at the door. "Luke?"
He didn't have to look. His twin sister's presence was as dear
and familiar as his own. He held out an arm in mute entreaty
and heard her cross the small room, felt her settle beside him
on the dusty comforter that covered the bed, felt her arms go
around him to comfort him. [They--Leia--did it never occur to
you what they'd lost, what they'd given up, what got ripped
away from them, all those Jedi who were killed--]
He felt Leia sigh, felt her sadness. [Before, no,] she began
slowly, haltingly. Even after all the months she'd spent trying
to use this newfound telepathic talent she still had to take
things slow. [But after we learned who we were, after I started
finding my own powers--I wondered. They all must have been so
close, as telepaths are. And almost all of them were
telepaths.]
[Ben--Ben had two lifemates,] Luke managed to send, turning
into her shoulder. [They died before he did, just after Master
Jinn found our father. Mistress Theri was pregnant at the time,
and their baby--they all died. Only Ben was left, with an
unacknowledged lifebond that drove him nearly mad.] He looked
down at the textreader again wonderingly, [Until they completed
the lifebond, that is.]
[Spirits? Completing a lifebond?] Leia asked incredulously.
Luke nodded slowly. [That's what Ben says here. Ten years after
Master Kee and Mistress Theri died.]
Leia shook her head, took the textreader from his hand and
turned it off. [Come on, back to the Falcon. You're exhausted.
You've been in here reading for hours.]
Luke nodded wearily, the grip of his teacher's words beginning
to ease in the grayness of exhaustion.
As the twins left the little house a drift of blue mist began
to coalesce in the front room of the house, swirling down like
lazy tornados into three forms: the tall, leonine, long-haired
Jedi Master; the small lithe form of a girl with long black
hair and slanted eyes; and the young, blond-haired Jedi Knight
that had been the inner soul of General Obi-Wan Kenobi.
[Weep not for the memories, Luke,] Theri whispered after the
two.
[Not all of them were bad,] Kee said, reaching out to pull
Theri close against his side.
[And the Force within us never dies,] Ben finished as he joined
his lifemates in the rainbow streamers of light at the center
of the spiral of the Force.
eof
cem/9-11-99
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