Warnings: Um. It's depressing. Disturbing imagery. No actual
violence, but post-violence scenes. Very, very dark. (Also sex
with BlueGhost!Qui-Gon, on the off chance someone thinks that's
necrophilia.)
Spoilers: TPM and the original trilogry.
Summary: After the destruction of the Temple, an encounter
with Qui-Gon gives Obi-Wan the strength to go on.
Feedback: Always, anywhere, any kind, any time.
Disclaimers: Not mine, Lucas', etc, ad nauseum.
They were all dead. He could feel it, even from outside the
Temple: the twisted, blackened Force aura told him as much.
There was nothing but death inside.
All dead, all dead, all dead... he clamped down on that train
of thought as it sing-songed through his head. That way lay
madness.
He had to go in.
He mounted the steps, felt the marble slippery beneath his
feet. He looked down. Blood splashed over the stairs,
waterfalling in a little river, trickling out to the
ledge-gutter where it mingled with the rainwater. Far away, he
could hear shouting and cheering.
He went up the stairs, and into the Temple.
There were bodies everywhere. Many were in pieces, severed by
a lightsaber, their faces blank in the rictus of death. Some of
them looked almost peaceful.
Obi-Wan hoped they were.
Most of them had apparently died quickly, the painless death
of a lightsaber blow to the heart or the throat. But some...
some had bones broken, or lacerations. Some had died slowly.
Some had died slowly.
Obi-Wan walked on, through the silent halls. His boots echoed
sometimes on the hard floors, and the sound went on through the
empty Temple, echoing before and behind him. More than once he
turned, to see if he was being followed.
He noticed, after a while, that the bodies all had their
lightsabers with them, but that none of the padawans had their
braids. A gruesome collection, he thought, but then...
But then Anakin had got his braid by a pyre's side.
Perhaps it was fitting.
None of the Council members were there, but there were piles
of clothing, abandoned. Perhaps they had vanished in the
ancient fashion, to prevent misuse of their bodies by cloners.
He didn't find Yoda's small robes, though. Perhaps, though he
feared to dream it, Yoda had escaped.
Obi-Wan wasn't sure where he was going until he got to his
quarters--Qui-Gon's old quarters, the ones he had shared with
his padawan Anakin before Anakin was knighted. There was a
small blessing, then, that Qui-Gon had died so long ago, that
he woudn't see his body now. Pain had washed through him and
away, burning everything in its path like acid, and he knew
that not even the sight of his Master and lover could have
drawn any feeling out of him.
He palmed open the lock, and found the room untouched. Only
the distant stink of blood and decay gave any hint of the
problem. And the cheering, of course. The cheering of the
crowds for their new Emperor, who would wash them clean of the
corruption and tyranny of the Jedi.
Obi-Wan shivered, curled into a small ball in the middle of
the bed. He drew the blankets around him in a nest, and lay
back, and stared at the ceiling. And listened, to the silence
of the Temple and the distant roaring the crowds, swollen with
satisfied blood-lust, thick and full of pride for having killed
their peaceful protectors.
Of course it's cold in here, he thought. The Dark has come,
and it blocks the sun.
He slept.
He dreamed, not of the bodies, but of Qui-Gon's death. He
dreamed of silvering hair and blue eyes, and in his dream those
blue eyes grew and grew until they filled the world, and
suddenly he realized that he was being held, muffled in the
folds of a translucent blue robe.
"Hush," said a familiar voice. "Hush."
The strength flew from him, like a bird uncaged. He slumped in
his Master's grasp, let himself be held, boneless. And then he
tensed, and pushed himself away.
"I'm dreaming," he said. He licked his lips, tasted blood, as
if he'd chewed them raw. "I'm dreaming."
"Obi-Wan," said Qui-Gon.
"No," Obi-Wan interrupted. "No. It will only hurt more, when I
wake up."
"This isn't a dream," said Qui-Gon. "I'm here."
"Oh?" asked Obi-Wan. He was suddenly angry, unaccountably
angry, and giddy besides, and oh, his head hurt, and his chest
hurt: an ache he'd thought himself long over. An ache he'd
thought anesthized by time. Now it opened again, and bled
afresh. "Oh? You're here, are you? Now that it's over?" He took
a breath. "Where the hell were you before? When I needed you?"
"I couldn't, Obi-Wan. It isn't allowed."
"Do you know what I've been through? Do you? Do you know what
it's like to have to throw your own apprentice in a pit of
molten metal? Do you know what it's like to watch everything
around you turn dark? Do you know what it's like to see
everyone--everyone, Qui-Gon, Bant and Nyss and Kauba and
Dreen--dead?"
"I have seen it and done it all. Through your eyes."
"Oh, surely, surely. And now you reveal yourself, and it's
supposed to make it all better. You abandoned me fifteen years
ago in a Council chambers, and I heard nothing from you since."
He could hear his voice, bile-bitter, but he didn't care,
didn't care.
"I never abandoned you. I was always with you."
Obi-Wan was silent, looked away, away from the familiar face.
"There is still a chance. If you can be strong." Qui-Gon's
voice was gentle, soft as summer.
"I've been strong. I'm tired of being strong." And suddenly he
was weak again, and warm, and Qui-Gon came to him and held him.
And he was too weak to resist. And after a while, he didn't
want to anymore.
Qui-Gon kissed his face, gently, and then his throat. It felt
good; it felt better than good. He didn't even stop to wonder
how a ghost could feel so solid, because it felt just like it
had those many years ago, when he'd been Qui-Gon's padawan and
Qui-Gon's lover.
His clothes were removed, gently; he was turned onto his
stomach, on the bed. He wasn't sure how Qui-Gon lost his,
because at that point Qui-Gon was tracing a line along
Obi-Wan's spine with his tongue, and the warmth and the wetness
and the heat made Obi-Wan squirm. He was hard already, and he
ground his aching length into the spread on the bed, and gasped
aloud. Qui-Gon laughed, a rich, earthy sound, and he stilled
Obi-Wan with a hand on his hip.
"Be still," he said.
"Stop stalling and do it, Master," Obi-Wan panted.
Qui-Gon hesitated.
"Are you sure? It's been so.. so long."
"It's been too long," said Obi-Wan, and even he could hear the
tears in his voice.
And then he was being filled, slowly, slowly. The burn was
there, and the ache, and his hands fisted in the spread on the
bed. He spread his legs wider, made an impatient sound, and
jerked his hips up.
It was uncomfortable, at first: a hot, burning pain. But he
heard Qui-Gon gasp, and he writhed, and soon the hardness
inside him was touching that spot. He moaned, and
writhed, and felt as though he was burning up slowly. The heat
grew from the length buring inside him, like a firebrand, that
sent sparks and flames flickering through his veins and over
his nerves. He as burning up from the heat within him, turning
him slowly to flame and ash, cleansing him....
He cried out as he came, muffling it into the spread. He heard
Qui-Gon jerk and spasm within him, and then it was over.
Qui-Gon kissed the back of his neck, told him he loved him,
told him he would never be alone. And then Obi-Wan slept.
He woke alone, with only the evidence of his orgasm to tell
him it had been anything more than a dream. He dressed slowly,
as if in a dream, and listened to the silence.
Fire. A cleansing.
He left his rooms, descended, deep into the heart of the
Temple. The generator was on the lowest level that was not
catacomb.
The Temple needed cleansing, and honest pyre for the dead, and
there was not enough wood in all of Kashyyk to cleanse it. But
there was the generator.
It took only a very little manipulation, feeding the
chaos-energies of the Force into the mechanism. And then he
ran, Force-assisted speed carrying him clear of the Temple
steps before it blew.
The Temple exploded: the bottm first, red-gold waves and
ripples and gusts blowing out windows, warping metal, all the
way up, as the fire and heat spread through the pipes and
conduits. Soon the fireball calmed into flames and greasy
smoke: a great torch on the Coruscant horizon.
A cleansing.
I can be strong now, he said, to the presence of Qui-Gon he
could not feel but knew was there. I can be strong now.
I can go to Tatooine, twin-sun world, hotter than the deepest
hell. I can go, and I can survive, even if it be forever.
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