"Yes, Qui-Gon. I can do it. I will do it."
He knows it is wrong. He must stop it.
But he can't fight this power. He sees the
broken circle. The circle that brings
the past to the future, yet does not meet. He
must make the circle meet. He must...
Qui-Gon Jinn woke with a start. As always,
he knew exactly where he was as soon
as he awakened. Dreams never hung on
him, clouding his mind.
Even a nightmare had only served to
sharpen his senses. The room was dark, but he
could make out the edges of the window
in the darkness. Dawn was near. He could
hear Obi-Wan Kenobi's quiet breathing
on the sleep-couch next to him.
They were quartered in the guest chamber
of the Bandomeer governor's official
residence. He had come to the planet
on a routine mission that had suddenly turned
non-routine, all because of a single
line written on a piece of paper.
The message had brought the nightmare.
He'd had the same one for three nights
running.
Qui-Gon's hand fell on his lightsaber,
placed so that is was in easy reach in case of
intruders. Within the blink of an eye,
he would be standing, ready to fight.
But how could one fight a dream?
K-7, Core 5. What could the words and
numbers mean? K-7 could be a charted but
uninhabited planet, or a star system.
But why did he have such a sensation of being
trapped? Who had said, "I can do it"?
And why did he rage against the words, why
did he feel helpless despair as he
heard them?
The only thing that was familiar to
him was the image of the broken circle. It filled him
with dread.
He thought it was in his past. All of
it. Then, upon his arrival on Bandomeer, he was
handed a note. It welcomed him to the
planet, and it was signed Xanatos.
Jedi are taught to value dreams, but
not to trust them. Dreams can confuse as well
as illuminate. A Jedi should test a
dream much as he tests unstable ground. Only
when he's sure of his footing should
he move on. Dreams can be random energy,
nothing more. Some Jedi see things
in dreams, and others do not.
Qui-Gon rarely had the gift and preferred
not to dwell on dreams. He managed to
push dreams away in the daylight. But
at night, it was harder. If only he could ban his
nightmares, and memories. Then they
would not be able to haunt him so.
He had been all over the galaxy, from
the Galactic Core to the Outer Rim Territories.
He had seen many things that pained
him, and many things he wished he could
forget.
Now his worst pain, his worst regret, had caught up with him at last.
