#essentially qui gon signs dooku's death warrant when he takes anakin years later

[legobiwan]

Whumptober #4

“buried alive”

Notes: This one does get a little existential, so TW for contemplation of death. Also, I guess this is my attempt at a ghost story? Kind of???

General Whumptober tag

Whumptober 2020 #1

Whumptober 2020 #2

Whumptober 2020 #3

~~~~~~

There was once a young girl. Now, there have been many young girls in the history of the galaxy - some good, some bad. Some extraordinary, others quite ordinary. You may ask, what about this girl? What was her moral character? What accomplishments did she bring to this galaxy? Was she a princess or a servant? Was she kind to loth cats, did she listen to her parents, do well in school?

We do not know.

And so this girl’s existence should seem of no particular import.

One day, this young girl was walking with her mother by the long grey sea, which watched with infinite eyes, its wet vision stretched long beyond the horizon until it seemed to curve back up again, threatening to swallow the girl whole.

The girl shivered and pulled her silken, brown robe closer to her shoulders.

“What seems to be wrong, dear?” Her mother asked, laying a bony, frail hand on her shoulder.

“I’m cold, mother,” she whimpered, hugging her small arms around her waist.

“Then take my cloak,” her mother answered, wrapping the young girl in a wooly, brown fabric that seemed to eat up her from head to toe. “And let us go to the city where it is warmer.”

And so the young girl and her mother traveled to the city, skyscrapers rising high into the faraway, busy latticework of speeders and hovertrains, their shadows cast long and dark on the pavement below.

The girl held a hand to her chest, panting. The wooly cloak tightening its embrace of her small body.

“What seems to be wrong, dear?” Her mother asked, face half-shrouded in dirty shadow.

“Mother, I cannot breathe,” she gasped, feeling as if the buildings themselves were leaning forward, looming high in the night sky, suffocating the stars and the moon, the light poles and illumination banks. They tilted with silent malice, meaning to trod over the girl’s stomach, her legs, her chest.

“Then let us stop at the store and buy satchel of healing plant,” her mother answered sweetly, unbothered by the malignant angle of the Galactic Bank, or sinister void staring from the unlit windows of the planetary library, her dark-veined hand rubbing against the girl’s back.

And so the girl and her mother traveled to the store, tall, skinny silhouettes of metal and duracrete trailing their every step.

As the girl munched on the sticky, wet leaves of a yurma healing plant, she wrinkled her nose.

“What seems to be wrong, dear?” Her mother asked, head turned towards the long line of empty vendors, their wicker baskets boasting air and shadow and absence, tables empty but for the folded, wrinkled signs written in messy Aurebesh. “Nothing for sale. One hundred credits, O.B.O.”

“Mother, this block smells of decay and rot.”

The girl’s mother spoke, her head still turned towards the empty alley. “Then let us find something to eat, so your tongue may overwhelm your nose.”

And so the girl and her mother traveled to the diner, windows thick with greasy curlicues which seemed to bend on forever.

“Mother, this food tastes of dirt and slime!” the girl exclaimed, her fork clattering on the surface of the table, her vegetables, a pile of sickly brown and green misshapen lumps, forgotten.

“Then let us go to the park and listen to the band, so your ears may settle your tongue,” her mother answered from behind, her shadow stretching long and dark over the girl so she could not see small, pearly maggots burrowing their way through the stretched skin of her broccoli, mouths wet and hungry.

And so the girl and her mother traveled to the park, laying on the damp, cool grass as the band raised their instruments, the conductor’s hammer coming down with a thud as metal bows screeched against metal strings, as flutes of bone and sinew pierced the veil of the night, as drums stitched from the skins of a hundred species beat out a heartbeat long since stopped.

The girl covered her ears with her hands.

“Mother, I cannot hear the band!”

But there was no answer from mother, no words of comfort to be heard over the roar inside the girl’s head.

“Mother, I cannot see you, I cannot see anything!”

For there was only the darkness, the crushing weight of shadow and earth and moisture leaking into her bones and silvery worms crawling up her nose burrowing into her mouth and she reached out her hand to grasp at her mother’s - at Death’s black heart, a thousand cerulean eyes staring back at her, long-fingered veins reaching forward -

“That’s, at least, how the story was relayed to me, Jenza, by the people of Nodoari,” Dooku explained to the phantom of his sister. “You might find it amusing - or perhaps morbid - that they bury their dead, but not quite at the moment of death. Rather, they inter their elderly, their sick, their injured at the brink of existence and non-existence.”

Dooku tried to give a tight smile, his chest heaving in rapid undulations, tongue wrapped around dirt and moss and decay. It wouldn’t be long now, he knew. “The thinking goes,” he continued after a moment’s pause, “at least as I understood it, that the being will experience their best memories - or worst memories - revisit their loved ones and enemies as per their actions in life until death’s shadow greets them from the soil, their final moment preordained in its endless sight.”

Reality began to wrap inside Dooku’s mind, a flurry of bright lightsabers arcing in every direction against the imposing backdrop of Serenno’s snow-crested mountains. Soon, he thought. Dooku did not believe in an afterlife, had never wholly believed in the Order’s teachings that they, as Jedi, would become one with the Force.

No, the darkness he experienced now would be his eternity.

Alone as ever.

And yet…

“I would hope now, Jenza, stuck beneath the earth as I am, that you would be the hand to pull me into the next realm of existence, if there were such a thing, that I would not suffer here alone - “

But the thought was left unfinished as light breached the tomb, a violent invasion of life, of existence tethered at the end of a familiar hand.

~~~~~~

“Come, Master,” Qui-gon rumbled, wrapping an arm around Dooku’s mud-stained waist. Dooku allowed himself to lean against his student’s shoulder, allowed himself to be guided to the nearby speeder where Qui-gon gently deposited his Master into the passenger seat.

Still breathing heavy, Dooku lolled his head to the side, regarding Qui-gon from the corner of his eye, his student’s long air flowing in the breeze and they drove back to the capital.

…and death’s shadow took me by the hand.

Qui-gon peered to the side, frowning. After a moment’s hesitation, he squeezed his hand around Dooku’s.

…as the solid grasp of fate’s long fingers, wrapped around my own

Dooku glanced down at his and Qui-gon’s conjoined hands, shuddering.

“Are you alright, Master?”

…eyes glittering with ancient constellations  

“I…” For a moment Qui-gon’s eyes multiplied, two then four then eight, until they covered his entire face, trailing down his neck, a thousand pupils staring back at him unblinking as the long veins of Qui-gon’s twisted forward.

…the immovable moment of my death writ in an invisible script of element and earth and dust and soil made human.

“I…yes, Padawan,” Dooku muttered, patting Qui-gon’s hand as he straightened his shoulders. “I’m fine.”

Qui-gon regarded his Master with open worry, eyebrows raised, his bright cerulean irises large. Dooku peered into his student’s face, searching for his epitaph etched in pigmented stroma and epithelial cells.

Dooku shook his head. No. He was master of his own fate, as his student would learn to be, as well. The future was not yet written, and Dooku’s death would be his own design.

Adjusting his soiled tunic with a series of familiar gestures that seemed to calm Qui-gon’s concern, Dooku gave a small, polite cough, breaking the tension. “Yes, Padawan,” he said, his voice regaining its usual deep authority, “I am fine, although I must thank you for the timely intervention. Now, let us return to the palace and rid ourselves of this filth. It would not do to confront the Rataraan royal family about their deception in such ragged adornments.”

Qui-gon placed a hand on Dooku’s shoulder, smiling as he steered the speeder towards the city.

As they wound their way through the countryside, through forest and hamlet, Dooku stared to the west, at the long, deep grey sea.

And death’s shadow took me by the hand…