by Renee Ahdieh
Awareness precedes consciousness. The warmth is luxuriated in and drawn upon before the mind is cognizant of doing so. Next comes the illusion of linear time. Only then does a sense of individuality arise, a remembrance of what was and what is, a knowledge of one’s self as separate from the Force. It provides a vantage point for experiencing the physical world in its complexity and ecstasy, but the pain of that separation is endurable only because unity will come again, and soon.
That fracture from the all, that memory of temporal existence, is most easily summed up with the word the fracture was once called by. The name.
“Qui-Gon.”
The name is spoken by another. Qui-Gon has been summoned. He draws upon his memories of himself and takes shape, reassembling the form he last had in life. It seems to him that he feels flesh wrap around bones, hair and skin over flesh, robes over skin—and then, as naturally to him as though he had done so yesterday, he pulls down the hood of his Jedi cloak and looks upon his Padawan.
“Obi-Wan.” It is worth the travail of individual existence just to say that name again. So he says the other name, too. “Ben.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s hair has turned white. Lines have etched their traces along his forehead, around his blue eyes. He wears Jedi robes so worn and ragged as to be indistinguishable from the garb of the impoverished hermit he pretends to be. Most would walk past this man without a second glance. Yet while Qui-Gon perceives the physical realities of Obi-Wan’s appearance, he is not limited to human sight any longer. He also sees the confident general of the Clone Wars, the strong young Padawan who followed his master into battle, even the rebellious little boy at the Temple that no Master was in any hurry to train. They are all equally part of Obi-Wan, each stage of his existence vivid in this moment.
“You are afraid,” Qui-Gon says. He knows why; the events taking place around them are clearer to him than they are to Obi-Wan. “You seek your center. You need balance.”
The living find it difficult not to tell the dead that which they already know. Obi-Wan doesn’t even try. “There may be Imperial stormtroopers waiting for Luke at the Lars farm. If so—”
“Then you will rescue him.” Qui-Gon smiles. “Or he may rescue himself. Or the sister will find the brother instead.”
Obi-Wan cannot be so easily comforted. “Or he could be killed. Cut down while still hardly more than a boy.”
To Qui-Gon, all human lives now seem impossibly brief. Years are irrelevant. It is journeys through the Force that matter. Some must struggle for that knowledge through many decades; others are very nearly born with it. Most never begin the journey at all, no matter how long they live.
But Luke Skywalker…
“Luke has a great journey yet to go,” Qui-Gon says. “It does not end here.”
“You’ve seen this?”
Qui-Gon nods. This relieves Obi-Wan more than it should, because he cannot guess the shape that journey will take.
Their surroundings in the physical world become clearer—the endless dunes of Tatooine stretching out in every direction, a smoldering sandcrawler a hulk behind them, a dozen tiny Jawas dead. The memory of their fear and helplessness lances Qui-Gon’s consciousness, as does the meaninglessness of their deaths. Although Obi-Wan has been tending to the bodies, for the moment the Jawas are seen to only by two droids. The droids comfort Qui-Gon somewhat, because they are familiar; the Force has even seen fit to bring these two back to the place where it all began.
Time is a circle. The beginning is the end.
Obi-Wan murmurs, “Bail Organa sent Leia herself to summon me. When I saw her—saw Padmé in her so strongly, and even a little of Anakin, too—I knew my exile was nearly at an end. Would you believe I find it difficult to let it go?”
“You’ve adapted. You’ve had to. No wonder that the desert feels like home to you now, or that being a Jedi Knight has become foreign. But that can change, and faster than you might dream possible.” It will in fact be almost instantaneous, a transformation begun and completed the first time immediate danger beckons again. Qui-Gon looks forward to witnessing it.
“I’ve waited for this day for a very long time,” Obi-Wan says. “So long it feels as though I’ve waited for it my entire life. To have it endangered—now, just as the great work begins—so many factors are in play. The future is difficult to know, even more so than before.”
“Do you truly think your work has only just begun, my Padawan?” They have begun using that title between them again, in recognition of how much more Obi-Wan has yet to learn. It is strange, still, to think of death as only the beginning of wisdom.
Obi-Wan considers. “There were other great endeavors. Other challenges. But the Clone Wars were long ago. For nearly two decades, I have been little more than a shadow waiting to become a Jedi Knight again.”
Qui-Gon shakes his head. Already his physical self feels natural enough to him that he can express thought and emotion through gestures. “Battles and wars aren’t the measure of a Jedi. Anyone can fight, given a weapon and an enemy. Anyone can use a lightsaber, given due training or even good luck. But to stand and wait—to have so much patience and fortitude—that, Obi-Wan, is a greater achievement than you can know. Few could have accomplished it.”
Fewer still could have done so without turning to darkness. Sometimes, when Qui-Gon considers it, he is awed by his student’s steadfastness. Every person Obi-Wan ever truly loved—Anakin, Satine, Padmé, and Qui-Gon himself—came to a terrible end. Three of them died before his eyes; the other fell to a fate so bleak that death would’ve been a gift. The Jedi Order that provided the entire framework for Obi-Wan’s life was consumed by betrayal and slaughter. Every step of this long, unfulfilling journey is one Obi-Wan had to take alone…and yet he never faltered. As the rest of the galaxy burned, his path remained true. It is the kind of victory that most people never recognize and yet the bedrock all goodness is built upon.
Even Obi-Wan doesn’t see it. “You see me in a kinder light than most would, old friend.”
“I owe you that. After all, I’m the one who failed you.”
“Failed me?”
They have never spoken of this, not once in all Qui-Gon’s journeys into the mortal realm to commune with him. This is primarily because Qui-Gon thought his mistakes so wretched, so obvious, that Obi-Wan had wanted to spare him any discussion of it. Yet here, too, he has failed to do his Padawan justice.
“You weren’t ready to be a Jedi Master,” Qui-Gon admits. “You hadn’t even been knighted when I forced you to promise to train Anakin. Teaching a student so powerful, so old, so unused to our ways…that might’ve been beyond the reach of the greatest of us. To lay that burden at your feet when you were hardly more than a boy—”
“Anakin became a Jedi Knight,” Obi-Wan interjects, a thread of steel in his voice. “He served valiantly in the Clone Wars. His fall to darkness was more his choice than anyone else’s failure. Yes, I bear some responsibility—and perhaps you do, too—but Anakin had the training and the wisdom to choose a better path. He did not.”
All true. None of it any absolution for Qui-Gon’s own mistakes. But it is Obi-Wan who needs guidance now. These things can be discussed another time, when they’re beyond crude human language.
Soon—very soon.
The droids have begun cremating the Jawa bodies. Qui-Gon is substantial enough now to smell the ash. But he is of the Force, and so he feels Luke’s pain and horror as truly as his own. The sight of the burned bodies of Owen and Beru Lars is as vivid as Obi-Wan standing only centimeters in front of him. Owen and Beru knew the risks when they took the child, and they took him anyway. Took him, protected him, loved him. It is as pure a heroism as Qui-Gon has ever known.
Obi-Wan senses it, too, Qui-Gon can tell, though at a greater remove, handicapped as he is by his physical form. His face falls, his fear replaced by sorrow. Determination swiftly follows.
“I didn’t tell Luke the whole truth about Anakin,” Obi-Wan says. “Someday h
e’ll have to know.”
“You’ve only just become acquainted with the boy. Had you tried to tell him the whole story today, that would’ve been a greater mistake than anything else you could’ve done. It would have planted seeds of…doubt, confusion, even anger, which could have led him down his father’s path.”
With a touch of his old rakish humor, Obi-Wan adds, “Or he would’ve decided I was every bit as crazy as Owen always told him I was, and run along back home.”
Qui-Gon knows that to have been a very real possibility, and the end to which that would’ve led. Luke would now be lying alongside the Larses. “When he’s ready—stable, steady, strong in the Force—then there will be time.”
Obi-Wan nods, enough reassured to focus fully on Qui-Gon. “You’re very nearly corporeal. I’ve never seen you appear like this.”
“It is a matter of learning to both claim the physical world and detach one’s self from it,” Qui-Gon says. He had not struggled toward that goal at first. Only after Anakin’s fall did he push himself to emerge fully. It was the work of very nearly a decade. This he did for Obi-Wan; at least his Padawan did not have to spend his years in the desert entirely alone. “A matter of finding center, of calming one’s soul and giving one’s self over completely to the Force. Some Jedi choose to transition between life and death in that way, though I could scarcely have imagined it when I was alive. Even after death, we continue to learn.”
“I look forward to learning the art someday,” Obi-Wan says. “Hopefully in the distant future.”
It’s another of his dry jokes, nothing more, but Qui-Gon is moved regardless. Obi-Wan has so little time left to live. To Qui-Gon, the death seems inevitable, almost neutral; he can even anticipate the reunion with his Padawan.
But after all his losses, all his sacrifice, all these endless years in the desert, Obi-Wan Kenobi still wants more life. This, too, is a kind of courage. Qui-Gon remembers the vitality of mortal existence—fondly, but distantly.
At least he has something better to offer Obi-Wan.
“Thank you, Qui-Gon,” Obi-Wan says. “As always, your wisdom sustains me.”
“As your strength always sustained me.” Qui-Gon senses the boy’s return. Before long Luke’s landspeeder will appear on the horizon. Obi-Wan needs to turn his attention elsewhere. “We shall meet again soon, my Padawan.”
“I will never hesitate to call upon you.”
That’s not the kind of meeting Qui-Gon means, but there’s no point in saying so. The truth will unfold itself in time. It always does.
Qui-Gon allows his awareness to spread outward from this place, until Obi-Wan is only part of the symphony of life around him. The snakes burrow deep beneath the dunes. Insects spin webs among the sand. Sunshine suffuses them all with warmth until Qui-Gon can let go completely, releasing his body and even his name, until he is again one with the Force.
As Obi-Wan will soon learn, the most beautiful form of mastery is the art of letting go.
It’s not as if I wasn’t expecting it. The day Ben Kenobi put that little baby in my arms was both the best and worst day of my life. Best because Owen and I couldn’t have a child of our own, and suddenly we did.
And worst because…well, I knew that happiness was never going to last.
And I was right, wasn’t I?
Look, I get it. To most people, I’m just Luke Skywalker’s aunt Beru, the old lady who’s always bustling around the kitchen, pouring everyone blue milk. I’m the one who wouldn’t stop nagging Luke’s uncle Owen to let him go to the Academy already. “He can’t stay here forever, most of his friends have gone,” I kept saying. “It means so much to him.”
It wasn’t because I wanted Luke to go. It’s because that’s what Luke wanted. And I wanted Luke to have whatever he wanted.
And, okay, there might have been a small part of me that was hoping that if he went, things might turn out all right. Maybe if Owen had listened to me, we’d both be alive today—visiting Luke wherever he is now, spoiling his kids rotten, or watching the twin suns set here on Tatooine.
But I guess we’ll never know now.
Look, I’m not complaining. My family’s been in the moisture-farming business for generations. I knew what I was getting into when I married Owen Lars…or at least I thought I did.
Do you want to know a secret? I had other options. I took a cooking class in school, and the teacher told me that my blue-milk cheese was the best he’d ever tasted—he said it was as if I’d been born to make blue-milk cheese! He said I could easily have had my own place—a café, or maybe even a little restaurant—in Anchorhead.
Could you imagine me, Beru Whitesun Lars, with my own café?
I won’t lie to you—I thought about it. Especially right before Luke came along, when Owen and I had just found out we’d never be able to have kids of our own. Our only resort was to start seeing one of those fancy fertility droids in Mos Eisley. It almost didn’t seem worth it, though, when you consider what Mos Eisley was like back in those days. Oh, my stars, the noise and the dirt and all the violence—you could get shot just stepping into a cantina, let alone trying to serve a nice blue-milk cheese to people there.
Thanks to Luke, it never came to that.
Still, there’ve been plenty of times I’ve wondered if I’d made a mistake. That day old Ben Kenobi showed up with the baby, my first instinct was to run. I may be a country girl who’s never been offplanet, but even I’m aware that when a Jedi walks up to you and says, “Here, have a baby,” it’s not going to end well. A part of me thought, “Beru, listen to your teacher. Put the baby down and go do what you were born for!”
But it turns out when someone puts a sweet little newborn into your arms, you can’t say no—even if that baby is your husband’s nephew by his stepbrother who’s embraced the dark side. You know things may not turn out well, but just like with blue-milk cheese, you do the best you can with it.
And it turned out to be the best decision I ever made. Luke was such a sweet, happy little boy. He was no trouble at all. Not to say he wasn’t mischievous, always getting into one scrape or another. But he didn’t have a mean bone in his body—unlike a certain someone I could mention (all right, fine. I’ll mention him: I mean his father).
When you spend almost every minute of every day with someone for nineteen years, making him finish his milk to help him grow and washing his leggings for him, you get to know that person, and like I told Owen, Luke had too much of his father in him—but I meant all the best parts…and his mother, too, from what little I knew of her. It was obvious to me from the time Luke was a baby that he was going to grow up to do something amazing, and I’m not just saying that because I was his aunt. I just knew.
And I was right.
I’m not trying to take credit for Luke’s accomplishments, either, although Owen and I did try to do our best with him. I always thought it was so sad, what happened to Luke’s parents, and his grandmother, too. I was there for her funeral. I served blue milk (and cheese) to everyone after. I think my teacher was wrong: making cheese wasn’t what I was born to do. I was born to make people feel good when everything around them seemed just awful.
Which, if you think about it, is what all good parents—and café owners—are meant to do.
After Luke came to live with us, I told Owen, “We’re going to raise this boy like he was our own. He’s never going to know a day of unhappiness, to make up for all the terrible things that happened before he was born.”
I really think I succeeded—except for Owen’s not allowing Luke to go to the Academy…
And of course what happened to Owen and me that day with the stormtroopers. I really wish Luke hadn’t seen that.
Then again, if he hadn’t, he never would have gone off with old Ben, met the princess, destroyed the Death Star, and saved the galaxy.
So I guess things did turn out all right in the end, didn’t they?
Especially now, because up until this moment, no one has ever given me
a chance to tell my story.
So thank you for that.
Now go drink your milk. And may the Force be with you.
Today would be the day. Greedo had known it last night as he’d watched the binary sunset sink along the hazy horizon of Tatooine.
After many long years, justice would finally be served upon Han Solo.
The Rodian bounty hunter sensed something ignite deep within his chest and catch flame. Some long-denied satisfaction. Today Greedo planned to put that arrogant Corellian scum back in the cesspit where he belonged.
His dark eyes narrowed against a gust of billowing sand as he trudged through the winding streets of Mos Eisley, toward a familiar cantina. A smile nearly curled up his green lips when the arched entrance came into view. As luck would have it, his quarry had been sighted just yesterday, seeking business in the very same place Greedo often transacted his own deals. Of course, the two kinds of deals in question differed wildly. The cowardly Corellian was a mere smuggler, whereas Greedo dealt in a variety of death. He’d even begun taking bounties from the greatest crime lord of the Outer Rim, and Jabba the Hutt was known to be particular when it came to his associations. Save for the cowardly Han Solo, of course.
Greedo sneered at the group of hooded Jawas crouched outside the cantina door. He would never understand what Uncelta had found so appealing in Solo all those years ago. The smuggler had always been a worthless excuse for a man, while Uncelta had been everything Greedo had cherished in a woman.
Such a waste.
Kicking aside the nearest Jawa as he passed, Greedo strode through the entrance, careful not to make eye contact with anyone present. His gaze remained fixed on the bar in the dusty center of Chalmun’s Cantina. Thankfully the band was playing a less noxious strain of music than usual. There was only so much he could stand from these particular Bith, especially without the solace of several drinks in his stomach.
Even still, it was a fitting backdrop. Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes’ tuneless strains set alongside an occasional brawl. For as long as he could remember, Mos Eisley spaceport had been a beacon for the art of the underworld. It was the same underworld of Greedo’s childhood, when he’d been brought from Rodia to live on Tatooine. As luck would have it today, his quarry had chosen to take up temporary residence on one of Greedo’s homeworlds.