FicWad

Additional Author's Note: My description of the Council Chamber is deliberately not entirely consistent with canon or EU. I'm aware of the fact that there isn't really a round table up there: I have seen the films. In this instance, I have willfully altered a canonical detail because the structure of that room, as portrayed in film, frankly feels just a wee bit off kilter, to me. So please keep in mind that this is an AU, after all . . .






Leave it to Master Yoda to immediately draw his lightsabers against two Force spirits and two Jedi who have just done the impossible and broken a Force-shield of the High Council as if it were no more than a soap bubble. Even Mace Windu has sense enough to be nonplused by what has just happened and, thus, to simply sit there, staring at them in shock, even though the Korun Master is the only one of the ten Council Masters who had actually felt anger at the sight of their linked hands when the doors abruptly flew open and the four of them entered into the room, an odd feeling of betrayal and hurt kindling with shocking swiftness to a rage that had easily burned away most of the violet in his shield. After all, Mace had just rather vehemently sworn to his nine colleagues on the Council that Obi-Wan Kenobi most assuredly does not indulge in sexual or romantic antics, and the fact that he is so unselfconsciously holding hands with both Anakin and Qui-Gon Jinn seems a blatant contradiction to what the Korun Master has just affirmed is the truth. Yoda, instead of bothering with things like hurt or anger - or even more sensible things, like logically thinking everything through before acting - simply goes for broke, drawing and igniting his lightsaber in one swift, sure, practiced motion even as he gathers himself to leap out at the four Jedi, who have not advanced further than the one step necessary to breach the shield thrown around them.

Dooku snarls, filled with a righteous fury, holding up his hand - his left, the one not filled with Qui-Gon's left hand - in time with an odd sense of flexing within the Force, and then Master Yoda's lightsaber is sailing into Dooku's outstretched hand, landing squarely in it just exactly as if it has simply been called to its own master's hand, though without the solid sound of its handle firmly impacting flesh. "How /dare you? How dare you! We save your Temple from ravishment by the clones, we save your Jedi from being cut down as traitors, and we save the Galactic Republic from being transformed into a new Sith Empire by destroying the last remaining Dark Lord of the Sith - whose true identity the Jedi Order has never even suspected and whom the people of the Republic carelessly allowed first to worm his way into an ultimate position of power over them as their own Supreme Chancellor and then foolishly permitted to remain there, manipulating events to accrue more and more power to himself - and your response is to treat us as if we are a threat to you? Are you truly so frightened of change, of the thought of purposefully disrupting the status quo and losing some of your old familiar powers, your comfortable false certainties, that you would repay such deeds with treachery? You renounce your oaths to the Order, as Jedi, with such actions. You prove yourselves unfit to retain your status as Jedi Masters and members of the High Council with such behavior. You place yourselves above the will of the Force and separate yourselves willingly from its domain with such behavior, such actions!"/ Dooku's pronouncement thunders across the room, washing over Yoda and the other Council Masters like a toll of doom. The ten Council Masters, utterly stunned over how easily the greatest of them has been disarmed - especially Yoda, himself - simply stare in shock, dumbfounded.

Qui-Gon is trembling with hurt and rage. "I trusted you. I trusted you all! I gave you my heart, my soul, my body - everything that was me, everything that was within me, I sacrificed to you, for you. I would have died for this Order - almost did die, hundreds upon hundreds of times - and you /used /me as a means to an end. You /used me! You sent me and my Padawan learner and my young charge out to die simply to stopper my mouth and silence my tongue, which only desired to give warning to you regarding the great wrong being done to the Force, the darkness besieging it. You sent us out there, /knowingly, to die!/ You sent us, knowing but refusing to acknowledge the fact that there was at least one Sith behind the tragic tangle of events on Naboo who would stop at nothing to see us all slain! All you had to do was ask! All you had to do was trust. But in the final analysis, you simply couldn't bring yourselves to do that. You wouldn't do it. It was easier to sacrifice our lives out of some vain and foolish hope that the darkness would not come if we were not here to herald its rising and turn back its tide." His voice is trembling with sorrow, with pain, with wrath. "There is no explanation that you can give to justify what you have knowingly done! For myself, I would not protest, but what you have done to Obi-Wan, what you have done to Anakin, who came to you as children and trusted you all, loved you and trusted /you to treat them with honor, with respect, as comrades in arms, as friends of the heart and kin of the soul, nurtured and molded to be a part of this Order, a part of the Jedi legacy, a part of this /family /- !" Qui-Gon's voice hardens to implacability. "A family couldn't have done this. True Jedi, true servants of the Force, could /never have done this. I regret that I must renounce my oaths to the Jedi Order. There is no trust left in my heart or in my mind for you, after so many displays of such self-serving, blatant treachery. I would have willingly given you everything that I was . . . but instead you chose to take something that no one should have ever been compelled to give. I have tried to find it in my heart to forgive you for your arrogance, your hubris, your fear and anger and hatred, but I find that I cannot overlook such darkness so easily. I concede the fact that you have been right all along. I was never truly fit to be a member of this Order."/

"And I regret that I must allow the earlier renouncement of my oath to this Order to stand," Dooku quietly adds.

"I, too, no longer believe," Obi-Wan agrees, his voice surprisingly calm. "True Jedi - true light-wielders, obedient to the will of the Force and protectors of life, of growth - could not have done these things. I willingly sever all ties to the Jedi and I renounce my oath to this Order. I no longer recognize the sovereignty of this Order. The Jedi are Jedi no longer. The Jedi Order no longer exists. From its ashes shall spring a new family of Force-adepts, in balance with the Force, accepting of all its many faces, loving and supportive of each other and protectors of life and light. The Jedi and the Sith are no more: the feud ends, here and now, forever. The Chosen One is the catalyst for balance. I do no more than my duty in this. I am a vessel of the Force; I am an instrument of its will. That balance demands a reckoning for all of the damage that you have wrought and you will pay. You will submit yourselves to the will of the Force. You will learn to bend your stubborn, proud necks . . . or else the Force will break you."

"I have never truly been one of you. You never really accepted me. You took me in out of fear alone and for over thirteen years you have treated me with nothing but disdain, thinly masked fear, and badly disguised anger; yet, you never once, in all that time, ever shrank from using me, using my powers, as a means to further your own interests. You drove me headlong into Sidious' trap by leaving me none to trust with my own fears, my own interests, but Palpatine - the one man none of us should have ever trusted - and Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose love and loyalty you have continually tried to strip from him and break him of and steal away from me forever. I have run blindly into the Sith Lord's snares because of your hypocrisy and your interference. You would have separated us, taken Obi-Wan from my side, in my greatest hour of need, and I would have tumbled headfirst into Sidious' clutches. The Jedi Order would have been broken, its allies and its trainees and its Jedi slaughtered like sheep in response to the command to execute Order Sixty-Six; the Republic would have first been proclaimed Palpatine's Empire before gradually revealing itself as Sidious' dark Empire; and trillions of innocents would have lost their lives, all because of you and your refusal to acknowledge your own darkness, your own capacity for evil. The greatest threat always arises from within, and yet you have all willfully refused to see this. Consider, if you will, the following: how could you have ever convinced yourselves that what you were doing to your own - to those who loved and trusted you implicitly, had unwavering faith in your wisdom and your goodness and been taught to obey your wishes since childhood - could in any way ever possibly be something right and decreed necessary by the Force? Truly, it is not the Sith who have destroyed you, though they would have exterminated your Order entirely. It is your own willingness to be blind, your own hypocrisy, that has undone you." It is little more than a statement of fact coming from Anakin's mouth, but the ten Council Masters all recoil as if they are the ones who are being dealt betrayal in repayment for their devotion. "I, too, sever all ties to the Jedi. I publically renounce my oath to the Order. The Sith'ari is the agent by which the Sith are raised to ultimate power over the Jedi and the galaxy before being destroyed. Darth Sidious - the man you have all known as Palpatine - the last remaining Dark Lord of the Sith, is now no more. I have done no more than my duty in this. I, too, am a vessel of the Force and an instrument of its will, and I will not hesitate to do my duty in this. My heart, my soul, belongs to the Chosen One, and I will stand with him forever. The Sith and the Jedi are no more. The New Jedi Bendu Order will be open to all Force-sensitives and Force-adepts, regardless of age or any fear caused by uncertainty. Our Order will be as a family, a true family, anchored by bonds of love, and if you will not willingly learn, then the Force will teach you in the only way that you leave open to it, by casting you forth entirely from its embrace."

"Be still you will! Respect you must have! Jedi we all are and the Jedi Temple this is! No right have you to speak in such a manner! Ridiculous this is! Outrageous your behavior, your claims, are! No right have you to question our honor! The Jedi High Council we are, the Jedi Order we represent: to us you have pledged loyalty and obedience! Not lightly disregarded are such oaths for true Jedi!" Master Yoda only snaps, ears twitching violently with affronted pride, not even bothering to hide the rage simmering just beneath the surface, a roiling boil threatening to erupt into yet another precipitous attack.

"We have /every right,"/ is Dooku's immediate answer.

"The Force /itself has given us the right,"/ Qui-Gon replies.

"You forfeited any right you had to our respect years ago, when you failed in your duties and sought to sacrifice innocent lives to secure your own power," Obi-Wan adds.

"And in any case, respect must be earned/," Anakin snaps. "It is far too dangerous a power to be accorded blindly. You would /know this, had you been true."

The ten Council Masters are all on their feet at this point, almost identical expressions of affront and anger twisting their countenances out of shape. But before any of them could speak any more foolish words or make any further attempts to attack, Obi-Wan quietly orders, "Dooku, Qui-Gon, hold them. Allow them to feel and see the Force but do not permit them to touch it. They require /proof/," he spits, mouth narrowing to a hard, thin, displeased slash, "of our words, and so they will receive it in plenty. Anakin?"

"Gladly, love," Anakin smiles, his eyes on Obi-Wan's face almost a tangible caress.

A moment later Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's hands part as Dooku calmly clips Master Yoda's confiscated lightsaber to his belt. There is a second and even more powerful flex in the Force, and then Dooku is calmly adding Agen Kolar and Saesee Tiin's lightsabers to his belt while Qui-Gon serenely clips Mace Windu and Kit Fisto's lightsabers to his belt. While the Council Masters are still gaping, Dooku and Qui-Gon advance upon them, shoulder to shoulder, hands upraised before them, palms outward, until they are looming over the circle of Masters and the enormous round (but hollowed out and open at the edge closest to the doors, so as to allow anyone who might be summoned into the High Council's presence the rather dubious honor of being ushered into the center of the room and then gazed upon from all angles by the usually quite stern and forbidding countenances of the Masters) table. The light of the Force that blasts out from those upheld hands is a wave of uniform gold so pale that is almost white, and it surrounds the ten Masters utterly, in some seemingly impossible manner netting even Masters Stass Allie, Shaak Ti, Plo Koon, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and Coleman Kcaj - who are not truly physically present in the room - in its web, immobilizing their bodies and sealing them away behind a whisper-thin barrier that allows all of their Force-senses to remain functional while still separating them from the flow of the Force itself, negating their abilities to actually draw on and use the Force. Dooku and Qui-Gon nod then, pleased, and hold their places, waiting patiently.

Anakin and Obi-Wan, meanwhile, settle themselves into the floor in the center of that ring within a ring, in full sight of the ten incredulously watching Council Masters, cross-legged and close enough that their knees are pressing firmly up against each other, the same position they had taken earlier that night, in Obi-Wan's suite, while waiting on each other. Only this time, their hands join, palm to palm, and then their fingers enlace tightly as Anakin leans forward and brushes a gentle, lingering kiss across Obi-Wan's mouth, smiling and explaining, "For luck, love. I know this will be hard, but I will be with you. Forever."

"And I with you. Always," Obi-Wan promises, returning the smile and discounting their captive audience. "The taint on the Force has been denied its most potent source of energy, but we must separate it from the Force entirely if we want to be rid of it. The Force is eager to be free of this evil, and it will guide us in this, Anakin. You must not try to push. Only hold on to me and surrender yourself to the flow of Force. It will feel like too much power to handle. It will feel as if you are about to be washed way, snuffed out, swallowed whole. But that will not happen. It will hurt, love, but only because we will be stretching ourselves so far, using abilities that we have not yet had the time to become aware of or to thoroughly explore. But we can do this and we are the only ones left who can, Anakin. I promise you that all will be well. I can see that all will be well."

"I know, Obi-Wan. I trust you. And I am with you, in this as in everything," Anakin quietly swears, hands briefly tightening in a comforting squeeze.

"On three, then, so that they will know what they are seeing. Exhale and let go."

"Yes," Anakin simply nods in agreement.

"One." The smile the two share is blindingly bright. "Two." Hands tighten as they lean in towards each other until their foreheads meet, touching gently and then pressing together tightly. "Three."

The quiet susurration of two exquisitely timed soft exhales is the final warning before all hell seems to break loose.

***

The Force lies at the heart of creation, of growth, of life itself. The Force is everywhere, even in the seemingly empty stretches of space where no life flourishes, though its infinite and unimaginably powerful flows are, necessarily, more heavily saturated in certain places, more heavily concentrated around physical locations where much life flourishes or many Force-users congregate. The taint upon the Force is a seething corruption, a maleficent darkness surrounding and, in some places, penetrating the omnipresent and naturally increasingly powerful energy field of the Force in such a way that it disrupts and even, in some cases, entirely displaces the natural flows of the Force. However, the dark shroud is not of the Force itself. Instead, it is a malevolent byproduct of the improper, wildly out of balance use of the Force, clinging to the Force as if attempting to smother it, rather like a malignant cancerous growth, the nature of which is almost impossible to combat since it naturally acts as a growing obstruction between the Force and those who might otherwise, by calling upon and using the Force according to its will, be able to combat and even disperse the spreading evil. It is like a hardened skin that has formed over the surface of a liquid, a poisonous barrier that both restricts and taints the access of Force-sensitives and Force-adepts to the Force's power.

If one were to direct the power of that pure energy field away from the overlying taint, though, channeling it in such a manner as to strain it, separating it entirely from that barrier . . .

Obi-Wan Kenobi simultaneously breathes out and surrenders himself to the will of the Force, reaching for power as prompted but not yet seizing it, hanging on the brink instead, feeling as if his entire being is plastered up against that taint, bombarded with its corruption, wanting to howl with agony as the poison leeches into him, what feels like flickering flames seeming to broil him even while shrieking winds blast particles of frozen sand across his skin. The sensation of being simultaneously burned and frozen, scourged by fire and ice alike, lasts only for a moment, though it seems as if he endures the pain for hours. When the Force finally does flood into him, seemingly redirecting its path willingly through the wasteland of that clinging corruption so that it blasts straight into him, plunging itself and its leechlike companion into the waiting and willing vessel that is Obi-Wan Kenobi, all molten fury and icy tumbling and indescribable foulness, he cannot control even so much a hair-thin thread of it. Nor does he try to. Obi-Wan can see the befouled Force flowing from him straight into Anakin, pouring along the open channel of their bond. To feel all that seething through him, feel the many treacherous tides and shifting grounds that could easily destroy him in a heartbeat, to feel the raging fire and tearing cold and the grease-silk vileness of the taint, to feel also the pure touch of the Force itself filling every particle of his being with a terrible, gentle warmth - warmth like the touch of the sun, the radiance of the sun, building, bursting, the awful radiance of light, of the Light - to feel all of that without being able to fight it or to control it is an agony in itself.

Alongside and beneath and above - in truth, all around - and shot all throughout the painful turmoil of the contamination, like golden specks of purest light scattered within some unimaginably foul and deadly dark poisonous body, the Force is as a pure and tranquil river of energy, flowing smoothly and surely, though because of the corruption there are hidden dangers, conflicting currents and swirling whirlpools just beneath the serene surface, strong and shifting fluxes lying in wait to sweep the unsuspecting under until they become so inextricably mired in corruption that they drown and are swept away into eternity. Surrendering to that power, refusing to fight its currents, is the only way to remain safely afloat. Since the Jedi will not do this, as they will not suffer what they believe to be the taint of the Dark Side, their powers have steadily and rapidly dwindled as access to the Force has grown more difficult and more limited, especially within the past hundred or so standard years. Because of this, the taint has flourished, and so working fully with the Force despite the barrier of the taint requires the gentlest of touches, the lightest and deftest of guidance, so that the immense strength of that purity will begin to come together and, as if naturally, of its own accord, to take on strangely organic convolutions and spirals, like some exotic blossoming flower, flowing away from the corruption so that enough of it will eventually gather together to fulfill the task that is required of it. The purity of the Force cannot and will not truly mix with the corruption of the taint. By drawing the Force directly down into and through himself and Anakin and then pouring its energies back out of them, forming an unblemished conduit of the Force able to draw all of the immense power of the Force down into and through itself, away from the taint entirely, it will separate the two utterly.

And the ten Council Masters have no choice but to watch as the Force sweeps down into and through Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in torrents undreamed of. The two shine with it as if their bodies are little more than gateways opening onto an endless eruption of light, more blindingly bright than the sun, more brilliantly blazing than all the suns of all the worlds of the galaxy. All the other Jedi of the Temple combined could have wielded only the tiniest fraction of that seemingly infinite surging body of energy. All the other Jedi of the Temple combined with all the Force-adepts and Force-sensitives in the galaxy quite possibly would not have been able to handle a hundredth, or even a thousandth, as much unadulterated power at once. It seems entirely possible that the rapture, the sheer joy, of even trying it, of attempting to commune so deeply and so directly with the Force as to allowed to hold so much of its power, could easily drive a being mad. It is terrifying and humbling and glorious beyond reason to even be allowed to look upon so much of the Force's power at once. To hold so much, even the millionth part of so much, would be unimaginable ecstasy . . . and would doubtlessly risk burning out even the greatest of Jedi Masters, the insignificant light of the life of one being easily subsumed and swallowed whole within such a conflagration of power.

The pain in simply permitting so much power to pass into, though, and out of him again, without flinching away or fighting to force its flow, is incredible, a twisting torture, erupting everywhere at once, like the lick of fire in the marrow of his bones, like the touch of ice within his very soul. It explodes through Obi-Wan's mind, shattering all thought before it, plunging him into a timeless place of ripping, unending agony. Even the cold sears him, even it burns like the lick of lightning or a howling inferno of flame. Heat fills him, the blazing heat of the touched core of a white-hot star. Terrible heat. Crackling heat. The terrible heat of the Light. Light fills him, burns through his mind till only the barest corner is left for him, for all that makes him who and what he is, and so Obi-Wan tucks himself away within it, wrapping the quiet void that comes with acceptance, that is the hallmark of total surrender of self to the will of the Force, around that nook, sheltering within its calm emptiness. Obi-Wan shakes with the Light that suffuses him. His mind will not work; light and heat blinds it, wrapping it about in a coruscating shower of blinding candescence. The Light/. Even in the midst of the void, the Light blinds his mind, stuns him with awe. He struggles to hold on, to keep himself centered within the calmness of that one little nook, to preserve the integrity of that void of self that is complete surrender, the acceptance that will keep the Force flowing down into him and out through that flowering sieve of power, that conduit of pure energy that drains more and more of the Force away from the filth of the taint. Obi-Wan /has to do this. He has to hold on. Even if he must chase after the void, the calm emptiness of total surrender, because of the insidious menace of the taint, he will find a way to hold on to it.

Never mind the fact that every nerve in Obi-Wan's body feels exposed and held sizzling within a core of flame. Never mind that his eyes might burst, that his ears might rupture, that his heart might explode, with the swelling agony. Never mind that it seems as if his very soul is being ripped away from him, as if life is being sucked clean out of him like marrow out of a bone and replaced with the utter black coldness not of the calm void but rather of true nothingness. And never mind that he cannot even physically see Anakin any longer. Obi-Wan can no longer see anything, sense anything, except for the Force, the conduit he and Anakin have created from that power, and the taint flowing upon it. He swims in surging seas of molten lava, scrambles across collapsing mountains of rotten glacial ice. The taint flows like an ocean rip tide, trying to sweep him away. If he were to lose control for even the barest fraction of an instant, it would strip away everything that is him and sweep it away, carry it all down the conduit, too. Worse, though, is the fact that, despite the increasing tide of Force flooding down through that oddly organic flowering sieve and emerging from it pure, the actual taint, the filth flowing down into him and Anakin with the Force, seems no less. It is like oil floating on water in a coating so thin that it isn't even noticeable until one tries to touch the surface; yet, because it covers so much of the vastness of the Force, it is an ocean in and of itself. In spite of all of their efforts, nothing they are doing seems to be accomplishing anything, and Obi-Wan knows that Anakin is suffering as much as he is. The certainty of Anakin's pain, more than anything else, hurts him. Obi-Wan knows what he must do and why. He has to hold on. He must hold on. But how long? How long can Obi-Wan continue to hold on when he knows how much it is hurting Anakin? Because he fears for Anakin, he honestly does not know, and the uncertainty, the doubt, weakens him, pains him, makes him more vulnerable both to the agony of the taint and the scorching purity of the Force.

Soon, the power of the light pouring from Obi-Wan and Anakin is so overwhelming that it can no longer be safely looked upon with physical eyes. In the end, the ten Council Masters must all turn bodily aside - even the five Jedi who are not physically present in the room - sheltering behind their chairs and shielding their vulnerable eyes from that consuming blaze with the bulk of their bodies. However, they cannot entirely turn away from the spectacle unfolding before them. Their purposefully held open and functional Force-senses will not permit them to turn away completely or to not understand what it is that is happening, no matter how terrifying the knowledge is. So those ten Council Masters all feel how the shroud upon the Force, the evil taint of darkness, is being stripped away from the Force, sense it as it compresses into a heaving cloud of absolute darkness. Black cannot even truly describe it, being light in comparison to this abomination. There are no words for this, for the evil and the darkness of it. Intangible, yes, but gathering itself here, centering itself here, around the Order, like a miasma, as it gradually gathers itself up into half a ball, its intangible but all too perceptible darkness encompassing the Temple structure and much of the surrounding area, engulfing and permeating buildings and inhabitants alike, rearing like a mountainous beast kilometers into the sky.

The closest writhing boundary of this evil morass just penetrates part of the Council Spire, its edge bulging up into the Council Chamber. A thick layer of shadow seems to pulse around it, as though it were somehow actively sucking the light out of the air, intangible and imperceptible by any senses other than those Force-amplified, though it makes its presence known in other ways to non-Force-sensitives - ways that involve sudden panic attacks and crushing bouts of paralyzing depression and unreasoning fear. Strangely, though, the Council Masters feel no fear. They are beyond feeling afraid. That - that monstrously evil thing might grow until it envelopes the whole world, or perhaps even shatter the world entirely, and there is no safe place, no sheltering spot, in which to hide. Indeed, the world beyond the confines of its fluctuating boundary already appears to be bending inwards, towards that pulsing, writhing, heaving cloud of evil. And although they are powerful, although they are wise, although they are Jedi of enormous cunning and skill, there is absolutely nothing that any of these ten members of the Jedi High Council could possibly do to prevent it if that were to happen. So they do the only things that they can do. They wait, and they continue to watch.

Inside his head, Obi-Wan is screaming. He is sure that he is screaming and that Anakin is screaming, too, but he cannot hear either voice above the roaring. The foul ocean of the taint is flooding through him, howling with its speed. Tidal waves of vileness crash over him. Raging gales of filth - corruption worse than the most foul midden heap in the grips of the greatest heat of summer - rip at him, tear into him. The only reason he knows that he still holds the Force, is still acting as a channel for the Force, is the taint. Power could be shifting, flaring, about to lash out and kill him, and Obi-Wan would never know. The putrid flood overwhelms everything else, and he hangs on by his fingernails to keep from being swept away on it and within it. The taint is moving. That is all that matters, now. He has to hold on! He will hold on. Together with Anakin, he is doing the one thing that he is meant to do, causing the one thing that they have always been meant to bring about, the one thing that Force has so desperately needed to have done, for so long now. So he must hold on and he will. And that is all there is to it.

With that acceptance, with that unyielding determination and utter yielding to the will of the Force and what must be, there comes a sudden sense of peace, of calm, into the midst of the maelstrom of pain. The overpowering filth of the taint has not lessened, nor has the movement of that malignity away from the Force as the Force pours down through the linked and open channel that is Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker - Chosen One and Sith'ari and the mates of one another's souls - emerging from within them cleansed of the darkness that has been clinging to it for so long, has not ceased, or even diminished. Yet, the pain from channeling that much power, from existing as a sieve to separate out the purity of the Force from the foulness of the taint, has, nevertheless, definitely decreased, to the point where Obi-Wan finds that he can think clearly once more. Trusting that it is the same with his beloved, he seizes the opportunity to concentrate on the feelings that are whirling throughout his body. The deluge of pain is apparently coalescing within him, leaving his physical extremities to travel to the core of him, compacting into a dense and wildly swirling whirlpool of blazing agony within. Knowing what he must do and accepting the pain as a part of it, as a measure of his task, Obi-Wan forces his mind to concentrate on that fiery whirling core at the center of his very being, where all the scorching power of the energy that is the unrefined, undiluted strength of the Force and all the scouring fire of the agony that is the darkness of the taint being directed through him and at him is now enclosed. This, he instinctively recognizes, is the final trial, the last challenge of this task. If he can only finish this, deal with this, then the test will be over and the task will be complete.

And so slowly, then, carefully and meticulously, Obi-Wan uses the one thing - the pure power of the Force - to block out the other one - the scourging pain - to force it back away from him (and, by extension, Anakin) and prison it within shields that he then increases in number and strength with steady and agonizing slowness. Each layer he adds lessens the overall pain, causing it to drain away from his body, from his hands and his feet, first, and then his limbs, his trunk, and finally even his head, until the pain is at last reduced to nothing more than a tiny pinpoint of dark fire, a shadowy memory of a fiery negative embrace. One more bright layer, passed to him from Anakin to be wrapped about that pinprick darkness, and that infinitesimally compacted and infinitely dense mass of agony and despair disappears entirely, in one final blazing pulse of light. Together, then, they grasp the power within him and push it out against that pulsing, blazing, light-shrouded and shielded heart of darkness, expelling it swiftly and mercilessly, driving it out and away from them and the Force forever, severing it from the source of its strength and thereby defeating and destroying it, once and for all.

To the eyes of the ten dumbfounded and watching Council Masters, something seems to suddenly writhe up from the dark smooth surface of the miasmic mass that is the coalescing taint, something like a flame if flames were blacker than black, and then another, and another, until the half-dome of the forming sphere boils with stygian fire, a thousand eruptions of negative light, crawling all over its surface like forking tongues of lightning. As soon as the entire dark mass writhes with the discharge of that negative fire, the whole of creation abruptly seems to collapse in upon that darkness, on this one place, in this one moment in time. The darkness that is beyond black bulges ominously, tiny arcs of lightning flickering out from it about the room, the negative energies jittering around the chamber, slithering all across the surface of its walls, floor, ceiling, and even all of its furnishings. Something pulses at the center, a leading edge of a storm of black fire and dark thunderheads that suddenly gapes open and explodes, filling the room with blinding radiance, punishing light.

At that moment, when the darkness explodes and is expelled forever from the Force, from the power that has been feeding it (however unwillingly), Obi-Wan and Anakin's hearts both momentarily pause in their rhythms as something unimaginably vast and powerful moves through them. Neither one can quite tell if the feeling this movement brings is agony or ecstacy: the feeling is too inhuman, too crystalline sharp and strangely pure, to name.

Then a concussion rips through the air, threatening to strip flesh from bone, the roar of ten hundred thousand thunders making the ten Council Masters clap their hands over their ears and shriek, soundlessly in that resounding crash, and the bulging half-sphere of the dome collapses in on itself in the space of a heartbeat, sucked in on itself to a pinpoint, to nothing. It is wind that howls then, rushing towards the void at the heart of that vanished darkness, dragging them all along with it regardless of how desperately they claw for purchase, tumbling their chairs and their holoprojectors and lifting them into the air so that they tumble helplessly together - five bodies, the means by which five images are present within the room, and the five strangely static images themselves - pulled violently along and thrown against each other no matter how furiously they strive to remain grounded. Master Yoda has just enough time to cry out, once, in shocked protest. Mace Windu has just enough time to wonder whether or not he will ever be able to feel fear again, if he survives this.

Then the world is rent apart in a detonation of such fury that the whole tower bucks madly beneath them while the entire interconnected structure of the Temple jerks wildly and the level of Coruscant itself in which its lowest foundations are sunk trembles, ripples flowing downwards, shaking down throughout the further levels until at last the bedrock of the planet itself tolls like a struck gong. Obi-Wan's perceptions leap swiftly forward, until he can feel the wavefront of the concussion's explosion tearing out towards him, a tidal wave of energy that, unchecked, would easily impact and utterly annihilate everything in its path before passing on, scarcely slowed, out of the walls to rain debris down on the innocents below.

We cannot allow that to happen!

I see it! Upwards. Send it up! Anakin cries out to him along the bond, sounding very sure.

Sinking his consciousness into Anakin's awareness, Obi-Wan feels the path of safety and Anakin's power like the constricting arms of a Titan. Then the violent energy of the implosion and its backwash crashes into their combined might. For an instant, Obi-Wan cannot push past that flaying, blasting, unforgiving energy. He can feel Anakin waver, almost afraid to succeed, afraid to truly face the implications of his monstrous, overgrown talent. Anakin, beloved, this is no time for doubt! Obi-Wan thinks, and feels the warning eddy in the maelstrom like a smudge of oil on a stormy sea. Then the blast rockets outward only to be caught, violently halted just at Obi-Wan and Anakin's knees and turned, streaming upwards.

The roof of the Council Chamber and the Council Spire bursts apart with an animal-like roar. Girders shriek and bend before shearing apart and for a moment Obi-Wan is so closely tied to the explosion, bound up with it so tightly - so that none of that enormous amount of highly volatile energy can deviate from the safe course they have set it on - that he feels rather as if he were flying apart with them, shattering and scattering like the materials of the breached roof.

"You are precisely where you are meant to be. You are doing exactly what you are meant to do in this moment. Be at peace. Be glad." Qui-Gon's quietly murmured words are meant more for Anakin than they are for Obi-Wan, but the young Master hears them and is, nevertheless, strongly comforted.

Peace in the center of the storm. No matter what anyone may say, we are still Jedi.

As the heat and power and rushing wind all slacken, broken tiles and spear-like chunks of metal fall down around them. The ten Council Masters are all a tangled mass of wind-whipped and energy-seared robes and limbs and weirdly overlapping visages where the holoimages of some have tumbled together with their physically present counterparts. They have been pulled entirely away from the table, back to the farthest end of the room away from the double doors. Qui-Gon and Dooku stand over them protectively, easily deflecting the rain of debris. Obi-Wan and Anakin are half dazed, falling against each other as they gain their feet, reeling with the implications of what they have just accomplished. The wreckage of the Council Chamber is now open to the sky, light pouring down into the room from above.

"Force!" Anakin cries, tears of joy standing in his eyes. "We did it! /We did it/, Obi-Wan!"

Laughing, Obi-Wan allows himself to picked up and whirled in a joyous circle around Anakin. Slipping back down again in Anakin's embrace so that they are chest to chest, Obi-Wan slides his hands up behind Anakin's head and then tugs, pulling him down into a victorious kiss.

As their embrace tightens and their kiss deepens, Dooku smiles and flicks aside a mound of roof insulation, one eye latching onto the disheveled form of Master Yoda as he worms his way to the top of the pile. "I believe that you were given a choice earlier: bend or break. Which will it be, Council Masters?"

After that, five beings cannot regain their feet and five images cannot be righted again swiftly enough for them to all drop to the floor in the same position that Qui-Gon so recently assumed before Obi-Wan, that of the prostration required for the most highly ritualized formal apology - though without their lightsabers, since they still hang from Qui-Gon and Dooku's belts. That quickly, the decision is made and the danger passes.

The Jedi Order chooses to bend, to learn how to change and adapt, rather than be broken.

A new balance in the Force and with the Force is struck.

The New Jedi Bendu Order is born.

***

Bail Organa is attempting to ascertain whether or not Gate Master Jurokk is actually as mystified as he unabashedly appears to be regarding the mysterious return of Jedi Masters Qui-Gon Jinn and Dooku as Force spirits when reality suddenly seems to break open around him. In the time it takes him to blink, fire fills the anteroom beyond the Temple's open main gates, a solid flame. Only the flame is pure, a white light, brighter than the sun. Bail has just enough time to begin to flinch before something strikes him with tremendous force, turning him to jelly, only that jelly shakes and screams from the fire that has somehow got inside, even though its pitiless glare is still blasting the chamber, as if an unshielded star has abruptly shifted both to the center of Bail's chest and the middle of the room, and that raging conflagration is somehow also a ravening cold, as of the frozen void of empty space, a destructive, consumptive cold without end. All sense of time shatters, torn apart by the blast of that terrible white light. He is in a wasteland of agony with no beginning and no end . . . and then, just as suddenly, Bail returns to himself, coming to his senses to find that awful white light gone and his body sprawled gracelessly on the floor of the anteroom. The crumpled form of Gate Master Jurokk lies directly in his line of sight and the right hand of Raymus Antilles is grasping his shoulder with a desperate, fearful strength, turning him over gently.

"Bail! What's wrong? Are you - "

Bail never learns what Raymus Antilles might have been planning on saying next, for his much younger brother-in-law doesn't get the chance to finish the sentence. Instead, in the next instant there comes a horrific impact to the air all around and a deafening noise, as of a thousand crashing thunders of lightning striking all at once, and the floor jerks about violently beneath them, almost as if it were a living thing trying to shake them off. Raymus is thrown back from Bail several stumbling steps before he crashes down to the ground, his mouth moving to form the shape of a startled stream of oaths, although no sound emerges over the terrific dim. Only an instant later, Raymus vanishes from Bail's sight as a blinding wave of that punishing light rips through the room with a piercing, tearing shriek. The air shimmers with heat, light, and sound, that flash blasting everything to white, and then silence falls and the light dies, just as abruptly as if the source of both have been cleaved apart. Almost immediately, Bail is scrambling to his feet, eyes blinking away afterimages of dancing white specks of light, as the aftermath of the actual earthly concussion vibrates all throughout the Temple in rebounding echoes of such furious power that the bucking of the floor nearly throws him back down again. It feels almost as if the building should be rending itself apart around him, but somehow Bail knows, without having the slightest idea as to how he knows it, that the epicenter of this shockwave is high up in the Council Spire, in the Council Chamber itself, and that nothing else in the Temple has been or will be damaged, though the air is clogged with a heavy cloud of dust, shaken free all over the structure from the violence of the explosive shockwave.

The Prince doesn't stop to try to discover the source or to check the accuracy of this newfound certainty, though. In that moment, it would not have mattered to Bail that a part of what he has just experienced is the leading edge of a shockwave that is even now engulfing the entire galaxy - the phenomenon that has overtaken the whole of the Jedi Temple spreading, in a widening wave, throughout the fabric of time and space, its expanding wave-front spreading rapidly to Force-sensitives on Kashyyyk and Felucia, Mygeeto and Saleucami, New Plympto and Murkhana, Toola and Acherin and Tar Morden, Tellanroaeg and the Neimoidian purse worlds and, in actuality, every single battlefront, all of the various military installations, each and every Republic Mobile Surgical Unit and established planetary hospital and rehabilitation center, all of the many healing retreats as well as every self-medicating spaceport and RMSU cantina and, in truth, every single possible location in the galaxy, even the strange no-realm of hyperspace itself - even if he were to be made aware of it. He would not have paused even to learn that a certain young lady well beyond the boundaries of known space, parsecs into what the Galactic Republic has deemed Wild Space, starts out of a deep meditative trance - her response to another recent and wide-reaching disturbance in the Force - with the name of Obi-Wan Kenobi on her lips. Bail is far too busy to give thoughts to such things, for he is running from the moment his feet regain purchase on the heaving floor.

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are in the Council Spire, in the Council Chamber itself, giving their report to a fully convened Jedi High Council.

Bail Organa runs as if there were a pack of Sith Lords hot on his heels.

***

Under the watchful eyes of the Force spirits of Jedi Masters Dooku and Qui-Gon Jinn, the ancient and powerful Jedi Master Yoda - the acknowledged head of the Jedi High Council and unofficial leader of the Jedi Order - kneels quietly, head bowed down to the ground. He does not attempt to stir from his penitent position. He has returned to this position after being lifted up out of it once already and here he remains, silently, for a very long time, even after the other nine Jedi Masters have all been raised up and forgiven. Even after almost nine hundred years, the road to self-knowledge is still rugged enough to leave him bruised and bleeding. After a time, however, Yoda finally raises his head, though he remains kneeling. The venerable little Master's pale eyes are red and raw looking, and his wrinkled face is both washed out to a sickly grey shade and oddly swollen looking. Yoda takes a deep breath and then slowly exhales it. His mouth opens, but for a long while nothing issues forth from it. Master Yoda seems to be struggling with something inside himself, as though he were fighting desperately against the birth of some monstrous entity hatching within his chest. Within the Force, though, there is no as though/, just as there is no /seems to be. In the Force, the two patiently watching and waiting Force spirits can feel the monster inside Master Yoda, for it is a monster, a real one, too real by far, one that is eating him alive from the inside out: fear of the most unpleasant nature, the desperate, hopeless kind that shades seamlessly into despair. That, in truth, is the wound that the ancient Master has taken. That is the hurt that keeps him on his knees, too weak to stand and in too much pain to speak for fear of crying out, his eyes and face raw with crying, his very soul battered and shaking within him. A crushing tangle of black fear has unfolded deep inside Master Yoda, hatching open, spreading, and swarming throughout his brain like a nest of fever wasps, and it is killing him.

If Master Yoda does not allow them to help him drive that monstrous fear out of him, and soon, it will rip him apart and consume him utterly. The ancient little Jedi Master will die.

That is why Qui-Gon and Dooku patiently continue to wait, watching closely to see whether or not the ancient Master will find the strength to reach out to them for the help that he so desperately needs.

Finally, after what seems like forever, Yoda allows both his mouth and his eyes to fall shut for a moment before, shaking himself visibly, he opens those blood-raw eyes again and begins to speak, softly but not to himself, though his eyes stare into nothingness. "My fault, this was. My failure. Failed the Jedi, I have." In speaking to the two quietly waiting Force spirits, Yoda directs his words to the Force itself.

And the Force answers him, in the voice of a former challenging pupil and beloved friend, Dooku of Serenno. "Do not blame yourself for this, my old mentor. It is far better to learn from your mistakes and to begin again, anew, than it is to dwell forever upon the might haves and should haves and could haves of life. The Force always fosters growth, as you well know, my well loved if frustratingly stubborn old friend. Turn away from despair, Master Yoda: it is not an emotion that fosters such growth."

"Hear you I do, but change the facts your words do not. Failed the Jedi, the Order, and the Galactic Republic, I have. Too old I was," Yoda sighs sorrowfully, ears turned far down and face crumpled with pain. "Too rigid. Too arrogant to see that the old way is not the only way. These Jedi, trained them, I did, to become the Jedi who had trained me, centuries and lifetimes ago - but those ancient Jedi, of a different time they were. Changed, the galaxy has. Changed, the Order did not - because let it change, I did not."

"I will not say that what you are saying is wrong. But I will say that such change is much more easily spoken of than accomplished, my friend," the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn - yet another former challenging pupil and beloved friend - quietly sighs. "The old ways are deeply ingrained, as I very well have cause to know. It is difficult to change willingly, when the need for such change is not immediately obvious to all."

"Understand your meaning, I believe I do. An infinite mystery is the Force. Tried to tell me this before, you did." Yoda lifts his head up enough to direct his gaze - sorrowful and red-rimmed and perhaps still just the slightest bit shell-shocked, but surprisingly steady, overall - up towards the still patiently watching and waiting Force spirits. "Much to learn, there still is."

"And you will have time to learn it, my old teacher," Dooku promises.

"Infinite knowledge . . . " Yoda sighs longingly before sadly shaking his head. "Infinite time, does that require."

"With my help, you can learn to join with the Force, yet retain consciousness. You can join your light to it forever. Perhaps, in time, even your physical self, as Dooku did," Qui-Gon quietly offers.

Yoda very carefully does not move. "Eternal life . . . "

"The ultimate goal of the Sith, yet they can never achieve it; it comes only by the release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed. Love is the answer to the darkness," Dooku affirms.

"Become one with the Force, yet influence still to have . . . " Yoda muses, somehow seeming to shiver with longing even though he is still very carefully holding himself as still as possible. "A power greater than all, this is."

"It cannot be granted; it can only be taught. It is yours to learn, if you wish it," Qui-Gon once again patiently extends the offer.

Slowly, Yoda nods. "A very great Jedi Master you have become, Qui-Gon Jinn. A wise and powerful Jedi Master you always were, but too blind I was to see it." At last, the little Jedi Master rises, folding his hands before him and inclining his head deeply into the Jedi bow of respect - the bow of the student, or of the new Padawan learner, in the presence of the Master. "Apprentice to you both, I gratefully become." Then, turning slightly to one side so that he can briefly meet the far too steady dark and bright blue gazes of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, Yoda once again bends his neck, bowing down until he is nearly bent double before the two almost painfully brightly burnished and beautiful young Jedi, an arm of either one of which curls loosely and naturally - not possessively - around the other's waist. As Yoda bows down before them, the other nine Council Masters - who all went down to their knees in a line ranged out behind the ancient Master when he bowed down before the two Force spirits - bow their heads until they touch the floor. "Apprentice to you both, as well, I humbly and gratefully become. Mastership, you have more than earned, more than demonstrated, Anakin Skywalker. A permanent place on the High Council, at Master Obi-Wan's side, you shall have if do us the honor, you will, of accepting the seat. A permanent place, also, for Obi-Wan now. Five lifetime members, two of them senior; four long-term members; and three limited-term members: thus, the nature of the Council is. Many Masters we have lost, since began the Clone Wars did; many members of the Council have we lost. Rearrange our ranks, we shall, do the four of you all wish to do us the great honor of accepting seats upon the High Council. Your right, they are. Dispute that none will."

Anakin's eyes narrow until they bore into Yoda like lasers, making the small Master feel abnormally vulnerable. "The New Jedi Bendu Order is ours/, Master Yoda. It is not yours or the High Council's, and it never will be. It is not yours or the High Council's, and it never will be. It shall be organized and filled and run according to the will of the Force, and we will see to it that nothing so petty as tradition comes between the fulfilment of that will and the operation of our New Order. Whether the New Order will even have a ruling High Council or not and whether or not any of the ten of you will ever have seats upon that Council is a thing for the Force to decide, not us and most certainly not /you/. /If a Council of some kind is needed to more efficiently organize and create the New Jedi Bendu Order and to teach its members how to fulfill the will of the Force, and if you can allow yourselves to be taught how to fully submit yourselves to the will of the Force as well as to truly embrace change, and if you can truly learn how to foster growth and love among both the New Order and the New Alliance of the Republic, then there may be seats for you upon a Council, of sorts, at some point. Until we know all of these things, none of us can say whether any of you will be upon any Council of ours. And so until that time comes, Masters Qui-Gon and Dooku are the acting heads of the New Jedi Bendu Order."

If Anakin Skywalker's eyes are like lasers, Obi-Wan Kenobi's unblinking gaze is the frozen fire of twin lightsabers. "It will do you no good to try to argue against this, Master Yoda, and the point will be moot soon enough in any case. You will not survive to see the end of the coming war. The storm will be too savage and the lure of the Force will be too great. There will come a day when you surrender yourself to its bright embrace and you shall sacrifice yourself for the greater good and pass on into the Force's embrace forever. I can see no path for you from here that does not end in a blaze of Light." Obi-Wan Kenobi thoughtfully tilts his head just a little bit to one side, in a gesture that is swiftly becoming familiar to a certain select few individuals, and there is a similarly familiar expression on his face, as if half of his attention were intently focused inwards on some complex thought while the rest of him were just as intensely focused on picking out all of the details of some only partially visible object at an extremely great physical distance from him. Steadily gazing both inward and outward, Obi-Wan continues, explaining, "It is always for the greater good that you pass on, although I cannot see many of the details yet. There is much darkness in the coming years, as the threat of the Far Outsiders manifests itself within our galaxy. But there are also others who will know how to surrender yet still remain to stand united against all danger." Turning his head to the other side, he continues, quietly reeling off names, almost as if chanting, "Dooku, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Mace Windu, and - Bail Organa?!"

Obi-Wan's head snaps around towards the Council Chamber's double doors the instant before they are thrown open and a flushed and trembling Prince of Alderaan stumbles through.

***

Jedi and Jedi trainees have fallen all over the Temple - just as they have fallen all over the galaxy, and not just those instructed within the Coruscanti Temple and various chapterhouses. In truth, Force-adepts of many different traditions and types of training, as well as beings sensitive enough to the ways of the Force that they could have flourished under one form of instruction or another, in a galaxy where the growing taint upon the Force was not present to act as blinders on or barriers against their latent Force-abilities, all react in much the same manner, though those more sensitive to the Force's flows of power feel the effects of what Obi-Wan and Anakin have accomplished much longer. It will be regarded as something of a miracle, later, that, in a galaxy being ravaged by war, such an unexpected phenomenon triggering such an utterly overwhelming (some might even say debilitating) response could occur and yet not a single one of the affected Force-sensitives would come to any harm because of his or her or its uncontrolled and utterly uncontrollable reaction. But that will be much later, indeed. And although many of the Jedi and initiates who have been overtaken within the Coruscanti Temple are already beginning to stir, identical looks of absolute shock bleeding towards an incandescent joy smeared across their dust-fogged faces, their boneless, graceless sprawls are still, more than anything else, disturbingly reminiscent of the collapsed lifeless heaps that often littered the holorecordings of the battlefields that frequently used to be shown on the HoloNet during the first year or so of the war - a fact that Bail Organa desperately tries not to dwell on this as he tears through the Temple, fearing the worst but hoping against hope as he races towards the Council Spire.

The thought of Obi-Wan and the others, Anakin and the Force spirits and the rest of the entire current body of the Jedi High Council, up in the Council Chamber, where that awesome conflagration and terrible blast originated from, fills him with a mindless panic. Adrenaline floods his system, fueling his flight and driving him to a desperate swiftness in spite of his recent injuries and the lingering weakness from his time in the bacta tank. Still, that mad dash through the labyrinthine twists and turns of the Temple passageways, nightmarish with the felled ranks of so much of the Temple population, costs him greatly, and his heart is laboring, his strength rapidly deserting him, by the time he attacks the winding steps of the Council Spire. When he finally reaches the top of that winding staircase, Bail is staggering, nearly falling, his strength almost entirely gone. The world attempts to bleed out around him, an encroaching blackness creeping across the edges of his senses, as he takes in the warped and buckled double doors that divide the Council Chamber from the rest of the Spire, partially melted and twisted upon their hinges so that they at once seem to lean inwards and to list outwards. Bail shakes his head once, violently, trying to clear his sight and instead nearly succeeding in throwing himself down, as he stumbles to and against the doors, which give only a little bit under his weight. Grimly reaching down into himself, feeling as if he is scraping himself entirely empty in this last attempt to summon up strength, Bail somehow finds the means to stave off that intruding darkness, gathering himself up for one last momentous push.

Those enormous, damaged double doors slide open with a surprising ease. The loss of their support almost throws him off of his feet as Bail falls forward into the room. But the Prince of Alderaan is far too busy staring, trying to take in and make sense of everything that is revealed to him in the room beyond those doors, to take note of his clumsiness.

The ceiling - the roof of the entire Spire - is gone. Debris litters the floor along what little remains of the actual walls, usually at the vaulting columns, much of the transparisteel that once lined the Chamber walls having been not only broken apart but actually completely pulverized in the blast, a fine rain of crystalline flakes and granules like sand blown outward and away from the tower, though a light sparkling mist still peppers some of the floor in front of where the largest sections of transparisteel have been destroyed. The High Council's enormous round table itself has apparently been lifted and flung back against the furthest section of the wall, away from the doors - a section that is, miraculously, still almost entirely intact, or else the table would have been thrown entirely free of the tower. That huge table is now turned up on its side, leaning drunkenly back against that wall.

The physical forms of Jedi Masters Mace Windu, Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin, and Kit Fisto and the blue holoimages of Plo Koon, Ki-Adi-Mundi, Coleman Kcaj, Stass Allie, and Shaak Ti are ranged in a line just beyond the limit of where that huge table would reach, if it were to slide or fall the rest of the way down to the floor. All nine of these Council Masters are calmly kneeling in the floor, seiza-style but /abeyante/, as an Alderaanian would call it, their heads bowed until their foreheads touch the ground and their hands flat to the floor to either side of their heads, palms down, their lightsabers laying on the ground before them, hilts pointing outwards as if they have been placed carefully in front of their owners by the hands of some other being. There is a hole near the center of this line, directly to Master Windu's right and to Plo Koon's left. Master Yoda is perhaps three human-normal paces in front of that hole, the hilt of his lightsaber in front of his feet, standing but bowing so deeply that he is almost doubled over. The eldritch blue-fired forms of Jedi Masters Dooku and Qui-Gon Jinn - at once strangely solid seeming yet also weirdly transparent - are perhaps five long human paces in front of Yoda and two long paces off to his left, standing close enough together that the edges of Dooku's cloak and Qui-Gon's outer robe mingle together. They are standing at an angle to the ancient little Master and the doors, so Bail can clearly see their profiles rather than merely being presented with their backs. There is no mistaking the identity of either Force spirit, even though they are both shockingly young, much younger than Bail has known either one to be in life.

There are two others in the room, two others in the robes of Jedi, standing together right about at the spot where the leading edge of the Council Chamber's round table would have been closest to the doors, if the table had still been in its normal place. They are turning towards Bail even as the doors open - and Bail is oddly sure that they were turning around even before the doors began to open - bodies rotating in towards each other as swiftly and gracefully as dancers, arms flowing away from waists as they turn, their rotation drawing those limbs up against and past each other until only their hands are touching, clinging for a moment palm to palm at the apex of their spin, and then they have resettled, their other arms rising to loop around each other's waists, and their hands fall apart, arms settling back down against their sides. Once they are settled, once they are facing him fully, Bail turns his gaze upon them entirely and . . .

. . . Bail staggers, as if from a physical blow.

***