Bookends I - Before

by Tem-ve H'syan

Title: Bookends I - Before
Author: Tem-ve H'syan tem-ve@gmx.de
Pairing: Q/O pre-slash
Rating: PG-13 for irresponsible but unvoiced thoughts about a teenager
Summary: Qui-Gon contemplates his sleeping Padawan.

Notes: Originally published in the MA Fundraiser zine, so thanks to Lori for releasing this early. This piece and its companion piece, Bookends II - After, are very short and contemplative and also very very mushy by my standards. Apologies to Plato for nicking one of his ideas in this one :)

Warnings: Uh. mush? :)

BOOKENDS I: Before

Level with the clouds

Your face as you lie sleeping

Three small upward curves

It is almost enough to make me a poet; only when you are not looking, of course, my earnest, eager, copper-edged apprentice. Copper-edged, that is what your eyes are, even more so when they are closed, two rows of thick and improbably long lashes forming a small relaxed curve.

Ah, the ability of youth to fall asleep just about anywhere.

I should be joining you, of course, in sleep at least if not in the co-pilot seat where you drifted off pretty much the minute we had engaged the engines and lifted off this blasted planet. The auto-pilot took over minutes ago, and by rights I should know there is nothing left for me to do, not when the thick acidic cloud layer shrouds the ship in soft featureless grey. Human eyes are useless for navigation from this point onwards.

But I am not looking at the clouds. I am looking at you, my Obi-Wan.

I should be doing the responsible Master thing and pick you up in my arms, my apprentice of fourteen months, and carry you to the bunk at the back of the ship that is yours only by dint of being slightly shorter. You don't yet fill it as I would with my embarrassingly long limbs, though you have been making a creditable effort at matching my height recently; that is why I am reluctant to carry you. I would almost certainly wake you with that hard-won grunt of effort, and that is simply not worth it.

You have never been one to complain about hard beds, or aches and pains in the morning.

Maybe you just don't get aches and pains. Maybe I am just getting old. Not that you would have any of that, not when you are awake with those steel-grey eyes fixed on me with a stare that plainly says 'don't be ridiculous, Master'. You are hard on me, Obi-Wan, hard. Not because you question my wisdom or strike out at me with your hands when I tell you to; you would not be an apprentice of mine if you did not do so. Not even because with every passing day you remind me of what a fool I was to even entertain thoughts of renouncing you.

But you are hard on me. Because I am having to keep myself from getting hard for you.

I am keeping myself from doing that, of course; anything else would be unimaginable at your tender age, with our tender bond still new and strained from the wild ride that was our first mission. If there is one thing I am certain of, it is that it's not your intention to arouse those feelings in me, and as such they will have to be reined in - until such time as you are old enough to maybe have such intentions.

An old man may dream, may he not?

Sleep, my Padawan. Sleep, with your lashes closed and your lips small and soft, a third gentle curve in your young unlined face. You sleep with your mouth slightly open when you are agitated, as if you can't draw enough breath to fuel your dreams. Now, your lips are closed, the small furrow between your brows vanished, and almost all traces of injury disappeared save for a faint cloud of faded bruises above your right eye.

The Teltde, denizens of the inhospitable world we have just left behind, had been responsible for those, and for the deep gash across your forehead that has faded to a thin scar, pale amid the shades of blue and yellow. They claimed it had been an accident, and you could not honestly prove them wrong. You bore it well, with all the grace of a Jedi, standing there, returned to me, with the blood trickling down your face like tears.

Something in me broke open then, and I remembered.

It had been they, the wary and violent Teltde, who had attempted an explanation for what it was that is now keeping me spellbound staring at your face. People, so they taught their children, had once been whole and happy, powerful creatures with eyes surveying all around them and arms encompassing the whole world - before the wrath of some jealous deity had cut them down to their present size, splitting them down the middle, leaving the world populated with helpless, bumbling half-people smarting from their separation.

We have two eyes and two arms as a result of that, and the pain we feel in our middle now and then is the scar from the cut that made us into mere humans.

I could hear your amused irreverent laughter, Obi-Wan, if you were awake now, but you are not, and I feel a little less embarrassed as I find myself touching my forehead in search of the matching scar.

You will be a great Jedi one day, my apprentice, and a whole and powerful man even without me, a man who needs fear no mythology.

But for now, while you are with me, allow me to watch over you.

---END---