Talk Of An End

Qui-Gon left a holorecorded message for his Padawan just before his death--a recording that Obi-Wan had found but couldn't bring himself to play. Twenty years later, in exile, the spectral Master draws attention to this one piece of the past that shouldn't have been buried--but perhaps it's not his Padawan who needs to hear it now.Or: "What makes one heroic?—Going out to meet at the same time one’s highest suffering and one’s highest hope.”

Talk Of An End

**Author's Note:**

> Strongly-suggested soundtrack: Helen Jane Long's ["Talk Of An End"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSwAr8pxn_g). > > This ended up going weirdly. I don't know. I've always wondered why Qui-Gon doesn't retreat back through the forcefields rather than try to take on Maul alone. And then there's this line from the _Revenge of the Sith_ novelization where the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin is, at least in part, about "all the ways they've hurt each other"--and those two thoughts collided. > > And I wanted to turn the tables, just a bit. > > The "Or" comes from Friedrich Nietzsche's _The Gay Science_ , aphorism 268, translated by Walter Kaufmann. > > Thoughts and comments are ever and always welcome. I do hope you enjoy. <3

_< Did you ever find the holorecording I left for you?>_

The question fills the silence cast by the shadows of a hard day, promising that the night ahead will be welcome distraction. Obi-Wan has shaken himself from agonized sleep, seeking solace in meditation, trusting in the Force to whisper to his body that such a trance is as good as sleep—if not better—for at least then he can control his mind . . .

And so the night began, really, in the afternoon, while the suns had burned away in rage and the heat fought to swallow everything. Now it’s near dusk, and the suns’ battle ends in a bloodshot sky, and Obi-Wan finds that still he cannot speak, so thoroughly have the nightmares snared his tongue. Qui-Gon, Force-clad form of the man that once he was, has dropped the question into the current between them—but formulating such an answer is no easier.

_Mustafar. He’d dreamed of Mustafar. Padme had not come. Vader lay burning on the shoreline of the hellish river, and Obi-Wan had cradled him, gently as a child, reaching out through the Force, through the bond that in this nightmare wasn’t broken, wasn’t sullied, severed—whispering words of love and sorrow to that tortured mind—taking away the pain—_

_And had stepped into the lava._

_Yes. The end. Together._

_He should have fallen with Qui-Gon, but failing that—failing his own Padawan in turn—failing in his promise—_

_Together._

Wearily Obi-Wan rubs at his eyes, sweat-sticky, encrusted still with sleep. There’s a headache gathering at his temples, and he lets himself feel the pounding waves of pain, the pressure, the beginnings of nausea, rather than entrusting his healing to the Force. He wishes, not for the first time, that Mos Eisley was closer—what he wouldn’t give to be able to lose himself in the shadows of the cantina. Or, far better yet, to sit at Dex’s diner, with glass after glass of _ardees_ refilled cheerfully by FLO—

A ripple, a frown, from his Master snaps into his melancholic reverie; no longer is his voice borne through his mind, as sure as his own thoughts, but given edge and steel by sound and strung decibels.

“It’s not that you couldn’t purge the alcohol from your system, Obi-Wan; I have no fear of you winding up a drunk—but a drink won’t end your nightmares. You won't really forget.”

It’s not _just_ that, he wants to say—it’s . . . something, anything, to draw his mind away from itself, to slip into the latticework of the living Force. Far better to lose himself that way than to dwell on dreams wherein his fate was fire and agony, shared by the Padawan he’d failed—a fate, true enough, where he would be transformed into the Force, but a fate also where Luke would have no protector—where he might not even live—

A Jedi does not wish for death. Not that he gives his own demise serious consideration—but there was a savage simplicity to the hellish thought—

“Obi-Wan.”

Qui-Gon’s visage swims into focus, pale in the light of Tatooine’s daily-dying suns, dazzling behind his eyes.

“Master.”

His tongue is thick, his mouth dry; slowly he rises to his feet, finds the canteen with the water he’s managed to coax from the desert. It’s warm, but it loosens the vice cast round him—by dehydration or the dream, he neither knows nor cares.

“I would not lose myself, Master. It was just a nightmare.” A pause, a shuddered breath, and words are not enough. _< Please, if you are worried, I . . . it was just a nightmare. My thoughts do not carry me to such a place; it is no wish of mine, nor to dwell on . . . ah . . . what might have been.>_

A heavy furrow burrows creases at his Master’s brow, those deep blue eyes shadowed and unreadable; Qui-Gon’s lips are pulled into a frown. “You have not answered my question, Padawan.” The admonition is gently-laid. He is no youngling in need of correction, although at times he still seems so—