Before - Legends Childhood's End -- Obi-Wan, OC, Qui-Gon, 11 years pre-TPM, angst/adventure, one-shot

Title: Childhood?s End
Author: ophelia
Rating: PG for language, violence, mature themes
Timeframe: 20% ?present day,? shortly before RotS, 80% recounted events, set 11 years before TPM
Characters: OC Waqkemé Noori, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn cameo appearances
Genre: Angst, adventure, Jedi philosophy, some humor
Summary: There are dark corners even in the light side of the Force. In an attempt to illuminate one of them, Obi-Wan?s Padawan sister recounts how he survived the Jedi?s most horror-filled rite of passage.
Notes: Yes, this is another image challenge story that got out of control. The picture below looks somewhat like my OC, Waqkemé Noori, as a young woman. Or at least like my idea of her. She?s been written by both DarthIshtar and BrightFeather, however, and since I write open-source fanfic, their interpretations are also valid. Oh?and the gun is named after bi0nic, because he knew what it was, and I didn?t.
Other Notes: The story is narrated by Kemé, but adult Obi-Wan is acting as her editor and anchoring her to reality. Text in bold red are Obi-Wan's "editorial insertions."

Oh--this is also set in my "alternate EU." There is no connection between it and Obi-Wan's official backstory.

[image=http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/3894/gungirl9xr.gif]

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They say the mirror doesn?t lie. They say the same thing about holocams and droids--and Jedi Knights too, for that matter. This belief must be very dear to most people, since they demand a justice system that balances their safety and freedom against such ?truths.?

Yet what good is an honest mirror, if the eye lies? What good is the sound on a faithful holorecording, if the ear deceives the listener? And what good is a Jedi Knight at all, since six senses can be just as mistaken as five? No amount of sincerity can change the fact that even the best among us is like the wise blind man, who smiles and nods as he says, ?I see.?

I still remember the first being who was imprisoned on little more than my testimony?how he slumped in the accused?s box, his normally-green cheeks ashen. More than that, I recall the hopelessness that both he and his rumpled little attorney radiated at the sight of a full Jedi Knight on the witness stand. With my Padawan braid gone, I had done more than cross the threshold between youth and womanhood, or even between student and professional. Instead, my status had shifted from that of a living being to that of a machine. I no longer gave ?eyewitness? testimony, which is close to worthless in a court of law. Rather, my words were held in the same esteem as the recording of a holocam, or the reflection of a mirror. The special powers and relentless discipline of the Jedi grant us a legal credibility not shared by any other organic thing.

The responsibility weighed heavily on me at the time, and I felt more than compassion for the being in the box?I felt a kind of kinship. He was walled into his tiny space by virtue of what he had done; I was walled into an even smaller one by what I was expected to do. The difference between us was that he could redeem himself through repentance and rehabilitation, while I could do nothing to raise my station or expand the invisible walls containing me. When perfection is assumed, the only direction one can go is down.

One gets used to these things, of course, and while I remember that first shackled being, I was stunned when I recently checked my Temple records and found that I had testified in over 300 trials in twenty-some years of knighthood. They all tend to run together after a while, and this living holocam must rely on her notes and such other evidence as is available to jog her infallible memory when asked about many of them.

My time as a field agent was short, too?I spent most of my time in the Diplomatic Corps. Why in Force?s name have I spent so much time in court?

Kemé, I don?

 

Oh loved the play going back and forth between them.

I loved her constant talk of "Father" and "brother"

I was trying to imagine a family where sisters and brothers talk about weapons as if they were talking about sports, and it was a lucky thing with your brilliant writing or I would have thought such a thing was impossible.


Wonderful, Ophelia!

 

Thank you . . . and thank you for reading such a long and strange story in the middle of the night. I ought to have broken it up into pieces, really, but it's not the kind of thing that lends itself well to cliffhangers, etc.

Kemé is a wee bit out of her mind, so letting her narrate was a risk--that's why I put Obi-Wan in there to keep her semi-on-track.

And she is unusual in the familial connections she feels among the Jedi. I had her join late, so her view of personal relationships is a little closer to Anakin's than, say, Mace Windu's.

I expect the comfort level with weapons would be very high among the Jedi, given that we saw 4-year-old younglings with training sabers in AOTC. They're just another tool for the job, you know?

Thanks once again for taking a chance on the . . . peculiar.

 

I loved the Keme narration because this is the mature person who reads bedtime stories in the Archives when she's 40 and therefore a mix of the sage and semi-psychotic. I loved her perspective, her somewhat mothering relationship with Obi-Wan, etc. etc. Loved this bit:

Obi-Wan is notorious for his dislike of blasters, but as a young teenage boy, he seemed to feel the need to know the make, model, and capabilities of anything that could produce an explosion of some sort. Honestly, I think some of his interest was a desire to conquer fear with knowledge?after all, people were shooting at him, his guardian, and his friends on a semi-regular basis. I have known Obi-Wan a long time, and he has always believed in understanding his enemy. Then again, some of his fascination was perhaps a child?s longing to handle and explore anything adult and forbidden. Jedi Padawans are taught how to handle firearms, of course, but one generally does not put a 25-millimeter TGC into the hands of a lower-secondary boy. At any rate, seeing his ?sister? pinched into a little black dress was apparently disgusting, but the blaster held real interest for him.

 

Wow. That was quite a story. You really put us inside Keme's mind. I loved it!

 

Thank you, Ish, Rogue, Leona . . . again, I appreciate your willingness to look over something long and a little . . . odd. And I don't know why I keep coming up with monster posts from these images either . . . especially when I still can't get a thing from my dare!

After "On A Dark Night" I wanted to take a break from soul-corroding angst for a while. Now I think I'll take a break from extremely strange things. Believe it or not, this silly fic took three intensive days of writing to finish, and I told myself I'd never do that sort of thing again after the final, murderous push on "Spirit Warriors."

Letting a half-crazy person narrate a story = serious rough going.

 

Truly magnificent, and I loved the use of editorial comment.

I was absorbed, entranced and thoroughly drawn in.

 

Oh, thank you so much for saying so! And I'm so glad somebody was. Posting a 20-page one-shot set in an alternate EU and narrated by a batty OC is not always considered . . . smart.

 

I too decided to take a chance on the odd (as you called it...yes, you did), and read this. And honestly, I'm at a loss for words. This...there's multiple levels going on here. You start with the most obvious, which is Keme relating events as they happened...but then, that gets turned on the proverbial ear when you see the editorial notes of Obi-Wan! Then, there's the undercover agent storyline...you're up to THREE levels at this point. That's an accomplishment in itself. Because you're making the reader think. Not just about what's going on, and what they're supposed to feel about the characters and situations...but you're asking them to consider a certain individual and their life. It's the "slice-of-life" POV one sees in literary fiction expanded. Which is an unusual approach. But extremely compelling.

 

Wow, this is a fantastic piece of writing. I really like the way you have written it. Unusual, but refreshingly different. I love the banter the two have going, with Obi's editorial comments etc.
I've also read a couple of your Obi/Qui stories, and you mentioned that you had a different history for Obi. I was just wondering if you had it written in a story, or whether you just wrote it into your stories when needed. Cause I would be quite interested in reading your take on his childhood, etc.

~Rhi

 

Oh--I was pleasantly surprised to see this pop up again! Thank you both for giving it a shot. I wasn't looking for it, and so I apologize if I was a little slow in responding.

leiamoody: You're right that there's a lot going on every-which-way in this story, which is mostly a function of letting this particular character narrate. I feared that letting her try to tell a linear story by herself would be hopeless, so that's why I sicced Obi-Wan on her. I'm glad you found it compelling . . . listening to an OC ramble isn't always everyone's favorite thing. (Actually, I was carefully aiming what she was saying, but that's the way this character talks if you let her get going.)

Even I still don't know what I think about this one . . . maybe I need some distance from it to figure out whether it went as well as it could have.

The_Lurker: I'm flattered that you'd be interested in my alternate backstory for Obi-Wan--much of which I created out of sheer boredom when I worked at a not-very-successful waterpark the summer I was 17. There are two older stories on my website (link in bio) called "A Cruel Mercy" and "The First Four Days" that expand on Obi-Wan's early life and relationship with Kemé. "A Cruel Mercy" is the story his actual rescue from Ixaca. It was written back in 1999 and it's not the kind of work I can produce now, but there it is. I've actually thought about trying to rewrite it. I don't think I could do the standard 3rd person limited perspective again, since I've done it. I was thinking of letting Kemé narrate it, since she was a young adolescent at the time and old enough to remember what happened, but I'm not sure she's a great first-person narrator. Letting Obi-Wan himself do it would be interesting--there would have to be a lot of "interviews" and "documents" in it, since he doesn't actually remember the experience, however.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read and respond to what is probably the most obscure of my stories. I very much appreciate it.