Archive: Yes to M_A and my site (www.slashcity.net/~fukurou)
only
Categories: Angst, POV, PWP
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Spoilers: For the end of TPM, I guess--also slight references
to the JA chronology
Summary: Obi-Wan has trouble sleeping.
Feedback: Yes, please! To e-mail addy above.
Author's note: Yes, I know, the header's going to be longer
than the fic! Just wanted to publically thank ADM and
GreenThing (coombie!) for their lovely feedback, and the
fantabulous Dee for her exhaustive beta. Also to point out the
irony of this being my first fic post to M_A, since it's two
things my ficwriting almost never is--short, and angsty.
This came to my mind one night during a bout of insomnia. Write
what you know. :P
I lie on the narrow platform that serves as my bed, listening
to the rhythmic throbbing of the ship as it makes its way
through the night-black shroud of space. I gaze blankly towards
the opposite wall, grateful that it doesn't have a viewport,
grateful that I do not have to look at the cold spill of
distant stars, or the gauzy blackness between. They would only
serve to strengthen my loneliness.
It does not matter that another sleeps on the bunk above me. It
does not matter that I can feel his drowsing presence in a
corner of my mind. I cannot call on it, for I've just barely
become his Master, and it would shake his faith in me to see
this moment of weakness.
I am alone.
It does not matter that there is a crew of a hundred on this
ship, their spirits like small muddy beacons in the Force--a
third of them awake, working.
I am alone.
I have felt this before, when I was the Padawan on the upper
bunk and you, my Master, slept below as we passed between
systems on one mission or another. I would lay there,
sometimes, sleepless, mind thrumming like the ship's engines as
all the activities and achievements--and mistakes--of the day
replayed themselves. The things I had done well were few; the
things I could have done better--many.
I could not bring myself to turn to you in those dark, still
hours, because I was so tenuously your Padawan, and it would
have shaken your faith in me, to see this moment of weakness.
After Melida/Daan, after Xanatos....
Sometimes, though, the darkness and my thoughts would become so
stifling that I felt if I didn't find a fleeting sense of
connection with someone, anyone, I would choke on the
emptiness.
At those moments, I would open myself up, just a little, and
roll over to look down at you, a large shadow in the half-light
of the ship's nighttime.
And every time, to my relief and surprise, your eyes would be
open, your presence filling the aching hollows of my heart.
I don't even remember all, or even most, of what you murmured
during those dark moments; it was enough to feel the gentle
reverberations of your voice. It was enough just that you were
there, and that you understood. I was always able to sleep
afterwards; and if that slumber was Force-encouraged, you did
it so skillfully I never sensed it.
Over time, these nocturnal bouts of panic diminished, finally
ceasing once I'd been your Padawan for several years. I had a
better, if still incomplete, understanding of my place in the
universe; I had accepted both my accomplishments and the fact
that I had a great deal more to learn.
Above and beyond this half-step to serenity, however, was the
simple knowledge that you were there beside me, always. Even in
the middle of a disagreement, a single flash of pain across our
bond would bring you flying to my aid, just as a pulse of
unnamable sorrow in the dead of night had brought you awake to
comfort me.
No matter the heights to which I aspired or from which I fell,
you were always there, to encourage or to catch me. I finally
began to understand completeness within the shelter of your
robe and the circle of your arms.
But now...now you are gone. There is no one I can turn to in
the still of night. There is no warm voice to thaw the freezing
band of anxiety around my chest. It is my place to provide the
shelter and the guidance, with no one to shelter or guide me.
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