Summary: Qui-Gon thinks of things that he can't change.
Disclaimer: Belong not to me. To Lucas you should look.
When You Are Old and Gray
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a cloud of stars.
-W.B. Yeats-
I am an old man.
I can admit that, if to no one but myself. The mirror shows me
as an old man, with graying hair and a lined face, belying my
mind's eye that still sees me only as I was when I was young.
But regardless of what I want to believe, I -am- old and I will
grow older still. So you must understand why it is, on
occasion, that I resent you. When I look at you with your
youthful body that obeys your every command perfectly, without
a single ache or a joint groaning in complaint. There are times
when I watch you and, for just a moment, I hunger for that
again.
I will freely admit that I never wanted you. Freely admit it to
anyone but you. I never wanted you to come into my life and
turn it to shambles. I never wanted you to love me. And I
never, never, wanted to fall in love with you. Never.
So I held myself away from you. I let you remain in awe of me,
remained distant and aloof in my dignity and watched you watch
me with wonder in your eyes.
Never let it be said that I do not have my pride.
But I still wanted what you possessed and what I had lost. I
wanted you and so when you came to me, shyly offering your
love, I'm afraid I leapt on you with all the decorum of a
starving man faced with a feast.
But truly, what else should I have done? Turned you away?
Refused the sweetness of your kisses, never to learn you by
touch and taste? Turned the hope in your eyes to ashes, dulled
your brightness with hurt and yet another rejection from me?
Perhaps that would have been wiser. Perhaps. But I'm afraid I
am far too selfish for that.
Instead, I immersed myself in your youth, which I had long
since lost, and your beauty, which I had never possessed and at
that moment I could not say that I loved you as much as I
needed you. I * used * you to taste youth again through your
senses and it would have been worth any price to me to see
myself as I appeared through your eyes.
I could feel how thrilling it was to you that I, Qui-Gon Jinn,
your master, was touching you and was naked against you, moving
inside you. Briefly, I could feel everything that you were, the
burn of newly stretched muscles as I thrust inside your virgin
passage, pain yes, but your head was swimming with a dizzy
mixture of ecstasy as well and you were looking at me, at -me-,
but what you saw was not me. It terrified me because what you
saw, what I saw, was a god.
And I cannot be a god. Not even for you.
As I am, as this, I am beyond unworthy of such a beautiful
creature as you, my Padawan, if ever I was worthy. And I wonder
how I will ever find the strength to let you go when you
finally see me for what I truly am.
I'm not certain that I can bear watching the awe and love in
your eyes fade into reality. And when I am no longer a god, you
will no longer worship me and I will lose the one thing that I
never wanted but that is beyond precious to me because of a
simple fact that I cannot change, no matter how much and how
long I wish it to be so.
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