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Only The Force, They Said
by afrai

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"Ow, that stung," said Gabri.

Then he realised he was staring at the back of Master Kenobi's head. Master Kenobi's. When he'd been. On the ground. Facing the front of Master Kenobi's head, only now it was the back of his head, and and and didn't you have to come from at least the Outer Rim to be able to do that?

Jedi do not panic. This is why Gabri was not panicking.

"Oh, Force, I'm dead!"

HOW PERCEPTIVE, said a voice like the crashing of mountains behind him.

Gabri screamed. He whirled around, saw a figure in a robe, and screamed. He looked up into twin pools of blue light. Just for the heck of it, he screamed again.

The blue lights peered at him. Sunlight gleamed off ivory. Gabri tried another "aaargh!" on for size.

Oddly enough, the gleaming skull seemed . . . perturbed.

I THOUGHT JEDI WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SERENE, it observed. It sounded puzzled.

"Aaargh!" said Gabri. He managed to pull himself together, and added defensively,

"They are! I'm just not very good at it yet. I'm only a padawan."

He stared at his sprawled former body. Some of the gravity of the situation was beginning to sink into him.

"I guess I'll never get to be anything more than that," he said gloomily. He tucked his hands into the sleeves of his robes, which he hadn't been wearing when he died. It made him feel a little better.

It made him feel a lot better to think that his master wasn't around to see the way he'd conducted himself upon discovering his death. At least, thought Gabri with a certain grim satisfaction, there was no way she could make him do katas to cultivate Jedi poise now. He was beyond the steely eyes of his master. There was that to be said about being dead.

Serenity. Calm. Talk to the tall skeleton. Right.

"Er. Who are you?" said Gabri.

The skeleton looked at him with glowing eye-sockets. It seemed taken aback.

It was not a question Death had often encountered on his job. Usually, upon realising that they were dead and seeing a black-robed skeleton with a scythe, most people managed to make the correct inference. They considered the evidence, and made deductions. There wasn't a lot of things a skeleton with a scythe and black robes that popped up when you were dead could be, after all.

I AM DEATH, Death said carefully. THE GRIM REAPER. I . . . ASSIST PEOPLE IN THEIR JOURNEY FROM THE REALM OF THE LIVING. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF ME?

He held up the scythe helpfully.

"There is no death," said Gabri mechanically, as if reciting something learnt by rote, "there is only the Force."

Death pondered.

SORRY. NO, he said. CAN'T SAY I'VE EVER MET HIM.

There was a touch of distrust in the blue pools of light.

LOOK HERE, YOU AREN'T GOING TO RUN AWAY, ARE YOU? Death said. THE LAST JEDI I PICKED UP SAID HE DID NOT FEEL LIKE BECOMING ONE WITH THE FORCE JUST YET, AND LEFT. I CAN'T BE HAVING WITH THAT.

Gabri was staring at the amassed ranks of droids. He didn't seem to be listening.

"This really doesn't look good," he said. "What's Count Dooku on, anyway? I thought he was one of the good guys. He trained Master Jinn and everything. I mean, he's legendary."

JINN. YES, THAT WAS THE NAME, Death continued. HE TALKED ABOUT BLUE GHOSTS. I HAVE NOT SEEN HIM SINCE. IT WAS MOST IRREGULAR.

"I dunno, what can you trust, if you can't trust the most respected Jedi?" Gabri muttered. "And they said there's no death, only the Force. Only I've just met you, and I haven't seen a trace of the Force."

I HAD NOT SEVERED SUCH A WAYWARD SOUL SINCE IPSLORE THE RED, said Death. I HOPE YOU DO NOT MEAN TO REPEAT THE PERFORMANCE.

Gabri wasn't. His shade was beginning to fade, a woebegone expression on its face.

"I mean, what's the point of anything, really, when you come to think of it?" he was saying. "You live, and then you die. It's a joke." He gazed at his former comrades, surrounded by enemies.

"Anyway, I'm well out of that," he said. "Even if they win miraculously -- that won't be the end of it. You can tell. There's something wrong with the Republic. It's not like it used to be."

He was as transparent as mist now. He looked down at himself, seeming to just realise that he was fading.

"I have a very bad feeling about this," he said.

Then he was gone.

Death mounted Binky. He was rather relieved that the Jedi had not made any trouble. It looked like Jinn had been a unique case.

A deus ex machina thundered out of the sky, and lasers began to fly. Death's face was, as always, fixed in a bony grin, but now there was something rather sad about it.

He was going to have a lot of work in this universe, he could tell.

Death left. Not for long.

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