Floating World

by Jane St Clair

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: bitty ones for ANH

Codes: Q/O pre-slash, pre-TPM

Archive: M_A, otherwise only with permission

Feedback: makes me do the happy dance (3jane@chickmail.com)

Summary: Qui-Gon wanders off. Obi-Wan gets lonely. Qui-Gon comes back. Obi-Wan is mindful of the future. First in a possible series.

Disclaimer: How not to be sued: Lesson one. As you can see, Ms St Clair has carefully concealed herself behind this statement that all things Star Wars belong to George Lucas and Lucasfilm, and that no infringement is intended. However, she has forgotten to mention that Mr. Lucas is God, and has therefore left herself vulnerable. <sound of dynamite plunger> <big boom> Argh!!!! In the next lesson, we'll show you how not to be sued while standing in a bog.

Sex Disclaimer: I swear to God that wasn't me in the Classical Lit section of the library, though I will attest that the study tables are more comfortable than they look. Oh, and there's no sex in this, but if I keep writing I may get to it eventually.

Notes: I've always been wary of sequels, so I'm nervous about promising a series. However, if you think the set-up's adequately promising, demands that I continue will eventually guilt me into writing more.

Many thanks to Regan and Calysta Rose for the betas!

*If you love me and think only of me
lift your robe and ford the river Chen*

catch 'the floating world'
8.52 from Chicago

lift your skirt
through customs,
kiss me in the parking lot

-- from "Rock Bottom"
by Michael Ondaatje

When he'd been very small, he'd been relentlessly insomniac. So much so that for years he hadn't believed he slept at all. He only laid in the dark for hours at a time, listening to the breathing of everyone else in the creche. And he'd become familiar with the details of the night: the hiss of sheets slipping over each other, the hum of the heating registers, adult feet moving through the hallways outside. Very occasionally, someone soft-footing through the children's sleep-rooms would brush a hand over him and realize that he was still awake. Of all the initiates, only he knew that the creche-Masters checked on the little ones three or four times a night. The silence in the Force of a Master's movement wouldn't have disturbed even a warrior, let alone a sound-asleep four-year-old.

Fingers resting on top of his head. "Why are you awake, Obi-Wan?"

And a very small shrug from him, because he didn't know why.

He remembered being lifted and held in adult arms, cradled across a soft-robed lap in a rocking chair. He remembered his head against a big shoulder, he didn't know male or female, and being rocked, sometimes for hours. Sometimes a voice talking to him, telling him a story. Not something for him to pay attention to and learn from, only words to calm him and make him drift, a voice pushing him towards sleep with long, air-thin touches of the Force.

As a working Padawan, he didn't have the luxury of that drifting, and he had more than enough mental discipline to make himself sleep almost instantly when he chose. In the field, if he was going to be any kind of partner for his Master, he had to be rested, even if all he got were catnaps in the midst of a flight.

In the Temple, he slept in Qui-Gon's quarters, usually, tucked on the pallet across from his Master's bed. He had quarters of his own, but he'd never used them for anything more than storage. His whole experience of the Temple was sleeping in shared space. Privacy was infinitely less important to him than the contact between Jedi. But in seven years, he had managed to fool his Master only a handful of times on any subject, and his ability to counterfeit sleep was not one he cared to match against Qui-Gon's perceptive powers. So it was only a few times a year, when his Master was out and he slept in their bedroom alone, that he was able to drift to sleep naturally, slipping around the edge of consciousness for hours and listening to the quiet Temple sounds that lasted long into the night.

He'd never asked where Qui-Gon went when he was gone all night. As an adolescent, he'd assumed that his Master was working, or dealing with the Council. As an adult, he understood that his own presence in Qui-Gon's bedroom meant that his Master had gone elsewhere to meet his lover, or lovers. Obi-Wan had never asked who, when, how many.

When he'd first acknowledged that his Master had a life beyond their quarters and training grounds, he'd had to find a place for that knowledge in his own world-arrangement. The first emotional wave-shock had been a child's jealousy, wordless resentment of any time that Qui-Gon did not spend with him, and it had been the easiest to release. The second had a kind of relief that the sexuality he'd sometimes seen as an imperfection in himself was comfortably, if quietly, practised by others in the Order.

The third had been complete shock that the person at the centre of his world could be a sexual being as well as an object of worship.

Shock because it made him think back through his own conduct, and what he saw in himself was more disturbing. Like most Jedi- raised children, he had no memory of his parents; he'd been hand- raised by the creche-Masters, then by a legion of teachers and counsellors who had eventually given him over to Qui-Gon Jinn. And from any of them, he had been able to demand the casual touches and petting that a small boy could expect to receive from his family. Hands on his shoulder, fingers ruffling his hair, the right to settle in someone's lap and be held -- something that he had only given up when his pre-adolescent dignity had given him a little reserve. But even then, he had still practically begged for attention, and shivered with quiet happiness whenever someone hugged him spontaneously. The most pure thing he could remember from childhood was nighttime in the Initiates' dormitory, with a roomful of children curled up together in a heap on two or three beds, talking quietly. How the Force ran through their body contact like an electric breath.

His expanding reserve had long since curtailed those kinds of displays in any kind of a social setting, but he hadn't outgrown his need for physical contact at the same rate. That need meant that he arched into any touch of his Master's. That he rested casually against the larger man when they were in quarters. It wasn't unusual for him to study in the evenings while maintaining some level of body contact, ankle touching ankle, or a head on his Master's shoulder if it was convenient and adequately clear that he was welcome.

And he remembered waking once in the night, when his Master had been out late, to find one big hand resting beside his shoulder and the other just touching his face. He'd pushed up into that hand and rubbed his face against it like a cat. It wasn't something he would have done if he'd been fully awake, but at the time he only knew that he'd missed Qui-Gon's presence and wanted to reaffirm it somehow. There hadn't been any smell on his Master that night that Obi-Wan had since managed to identify as sex, but in retrospect he was shocked at his own conduct. He was far too old for that kind of need, and his expression of it must have bordered on salacious.

It had been that conclusion that locked the final stage of his reserve into place. He didn't afterwards reject the casual, or the deliberately affectionate, touches that Qui-Gon offered, but he stopped demanding them, and he locked himself into an independent posture kept him a little more apart. At the time he'd only been embarrassed. Grateful when more and more often Qui-Gon only smelled like smoke and faint alcohol, and not body- scent when he came in late. And Obi-Wan was deliberately not- jealous, because he was an adult, and knew that all the forms of Qui-Gon Jinn's love were not his by right.

He'd never realized, though, how much he depended on the parts of the man that were his until he was temporarily without them. Not even Qui-Gon's ability as a teacher could completely replace the structures of the Temple, and Obi-Wan had genuinely needed to work within those structures, at least for a while. As a result, he'd been left behind to study the last time that his Master was sent into the field. He'd buried himself in his studies, and looked forward to the often almost daily transmissions from the older man. Qui-Gon's diplomatic work kept him close to comm systems, and even when exhaustion showed at the edges of his face, he wanted to know how his apprentice had spent the day. Not even checking up on him, really -- at twenty, Obi-Wan had long since graduated from that kind of close supervision -- just keeping the lines of communication between them open.

He'd let himself be comforted by those conversations, even when all he had to report was a day spent in meditation and housekeeping. And while he missed his Master, the feeling of absence had settled in the last weeks into a simple fact that he could accept and move past.

In the small hours of the morning, though, he woke with the covers kicked off and his arms wrapped around himself. He realized gradually that he'd been stroking his own arm, and that in his vague dream it had been Qui-Gon's hand on him. There was nothing terribly disturbing in the thought, but when he tried to merge it with his own self-knowledge, something else rose. Outside of combat practice, no one had touched him in the three months his Master had been absent, and even the touches he'd received had only been an instructor's tap to correct the position of his elbows or knees. In the Temple, he had casual friends, but no close ones, and few people took notice of him as he moved between classes. He spent most of his time alone.

He was craving touch. No, more than that, he wanted to be held, hugged, cradled against some larger body, so that he could bury his face in his Master's robes and breathe the steady Qui-Gon scent, and then go on with his day knowing quietly that his Master loved him.

The blankets around him were constricting, suddenly. Obi-Wan shook himself free and stood up in the dark, reaching with the Force automatically for a sense of the room. Qui-Gon's bedroom, in the absence of the Master. He should have gone back to sleep in his own rooms, maybe, for the duration. He hadn't, though, and the chill that ran through him now from the cold air was enough to determine that he wasn't going to make that trek through the Temple in the middle of the night. Instead, he gathered up a blanket from his mussed pallet and padded out to the common room, installing himself on the couch there. The shimmer of a Coruscant night poured up through the plasteel windows and made huge pools of radiance on the ceiling. By following the modulations of light, he was able at least to meditate, and then to drift, and his place on the couch let him pretend that his Master was only delayed at a Council meeting, and that Obi-Wan was only waiting for him before going to bed.

(Light like water on the ceiling, flowing outward from the window shape into the backs of his eyes, until all of night-side Coruscant floated there. Reaching out for the Force-traces of Qui-Gon Jinn rippling through the universe so close in the unifying Force that Obi-Wan could almost feel him.)

Jinn's transport came down in the dawn shimmer of a chemical atmosphere. Obi-Wan waited in the platform's provided shelter for the ship to settle, bracing himself a little against the high-altitude winds. Metal legs opened, touched down, folded again under the craft's unspeakable weight, and he had to fight the urge to run forward and bury himself in his Master's arms as soon as he came down the ramp. No one on the platform but the handful of techs and mechanics and still he couldn't allow himself that much leeway. He only came forward to collect Qui- Gon's bags when the older man descended.

There never seemed to be enough baggage resulting from trips like this one. Obi-Wan had been trained in mission packing, and he knew that a change of clothing and a few spare lightsaber components truly were all that was needed, but his Master had been gone for months, he must have wanted other things. The teapot on the highest shelf of the kitchen, a cushion for the small of his back so that it would ache less after hours in the rigid transport seats, one or two of the hand-bound books he knew Qui-Gon collected. He should have had his padawan small comforts with him.

Jinn reached over and gripped Obi-Wan's shoulder for a moment, then swept past him into the Temple. The Council, Obi-Wan knew, was waiting, as they always were, for a report. He could remember Qui-Gon standing before them with bloodstains still on his clothes because he hadn't been given time to change before presenting himself. As though they were afraid he might forget something if he were allowed to rinse the mission dirt away first, or allowed to greet and hold his student for more than half a moment.

The Force-flickers of resentment and anger he shunted off heated the airborne chemicals almost to ignition temperature, and he had a quick flash of green within the red-tones of the morning before he went indoors with a bag over each shoulder.

He only thought of Qui-Gon again hours later, after he'd unpacked and gone through the motions of his day. In the time of his Master's absence, he'd passed the necessary exams, and since then he'd been at loose ends, eventually settling into unsupervised work in the dry gardens. Their layers of sand and rock, relieved only by tiny desert plants, pulled at something in the back of his mind, as if he'd known them before he was Jedi, but the places they touched were too vague even to be called impressions, let alone memories.

Obi-Wan meditated on the asymmetrical beauty of a dry place, and what he'd eventually come to was a wordless understanding that he wanted to share with his Master. The thought brought a quick, hollow feeling, succeeded by the shock that Qui-Gon actually was present, just out of reach in the Council chambers in the Spire. So close he could almost be touched.

His Master's proximity centred him more easily than long hours of breathing exercises could have, and Obi-Wan let himself slide into the trance again, this time letting the Force-currents guide his meditations.

(Shimmer of Coruscant lights, the sun angling towards the horizon, making long patches of dark in the dry gardens, expanding as he slid deeper . . .

. . . sand two suns the bottles and pots of a traditional healer on the windowsill cloth across his face to let him breathe water a precious thing tasting always of animal hide and dust . . .

. . . walking on the rim of a canyon. There was bright sun-heat against the back of his neck, and the light of a second one against his face, the two brilliances merging into a single shadow slightly in front of him and to his left. Sand on everything, in his hair, inside his clothes, but he hadn't thought anything of it for years. The Force said he was supposed to be somewhere just ahead of here, that there was something he had to do, but it hadn't specified where exactly, or what. So he kept walking, careful of the loose rocks and questing outward a little with his mind for life signs.

The laser rifle he'd been taught to use as a junior padawan was braced across his shoulders, but he wasn't going to need it. Instead, he'd strung bottles from it, smelling each beforehand to make sure its contents were what he thought they were. He'd never trained as a healer, but an armed knight drew too much attention even here on the Rim. In the past -- what? ten years? -- he'd learned enough about herbal medicine that he was useful to the desert's nomads, though too often someone died because he didn't dare use the Force deliberately enough to save them.

The bottles struck one another and echoed through the canyon as he descended. Tiny ringings in the dry light. In the shade at the bottom, there was a crashed speeder, one that must have been there for years, and a few small beings crowded around it. They looked up at him descending and he saw luminous gold eyes. Jawas, then, and one of them had burned himself on the still- charged battery cells when he'd tried to remove the power source from the wreck. Whimpering now with his arm cradled and his back against the rocks. The others ignored the injured one utterly; they were working to get the power source free, with the right tools this time. Almost immediately, they dismissed his own presence and ignored him as they ignored the injured one.

And while he was bent, smearing aloe and sala-oil on the crying little one, he wondered what stray impulse had driven him to become a healer in his old age. Certainly, he'd done enough damage to the universe to last two lifetimes, but . . . watching the flesh heal a little with the little added Force energy he dared to bring to bear. Something Qui-Gon had taught him maybe, decades ago, with the hordes of injured animals and sentients he'd adopted as a matter of course . . .

. . . sala-oil in glass, ringing just inches from his ears brilliant light just beyond this pool of shade home again to the hut where he still stored his lightsaber and his Jedi clothes and Qui . . .

(. . . the dry gardens. Night brilliance pooled on the ceiling now, coming up from below, the hundreds of levels of the city glowing in the dark.)

Of all his Jedi abilities, prescience was the one Obi-Wan would gladly have traded away. Too often, it told him nothing useful, nothing about chains of events or things that could be changed. Instead he got fragments like that one, pieces of possible future lives that haunted him for days after. He'd have to ask Master Yoda to help him focus better, so that he could draw something out of his visions besides heaps of images and seconds of absolute dread.

Fear led to anger, anger led to hate, hate led to suffering, and suffering in turn might or might not lead to the Dark. Some Jedi turned, and others simply flowed through suffering as though it were their natural element. Scattered through the Republic, there were pockets of Jedi ascetics whose tenets included suffering as part of the path to the light.

Others, suffering simply broke.

When he pushed up from his knees, he had to brush sand off every layer of his clothing. The dry gardens were like that. If you were still enough, long enough, the sand would eventually drift and coat your every surface.

Obi-Wan reached out for his Master with the Force and found him in the slightly-other headspace that meant the man was focussed inward, probably reading. He walked through the Temple towards that serenity, focussing on it and letting the fragments of his vision dissolve as he walked.

He couldn't see Qui-Gon, though, when he entered his Master's rooms. Jinn's presence was a kind of low Force-hum, powerful enough that he must be nearby, but he didn't appear, and the moment pushed Obi-Wan instead towards a box of collected trip- artifacts stored in the bottom of the closet. In a corner of that box, he found sala oil, poured it into his palms and massaged it into both his hands, raised them to his face. Sharp smell, like aloe and cinnamon. When he turned, Qui-Gon was standing in the bedroom's doorway, watching him.

"What is it, Obi-Wan?"

"Sala oil, Master. I had a vision in the dry gardens. Something . . . I thought it might be something about the oil."

Instructor voice, "What do you know about it?"

""It's an organic compound, originating in the heart of the sa'al plant, a moisture-absorber that grows in desert climates on several Rim worlds. The oil is useful for aromatherapy and burn treatment, and functions as a kind of herbalist's cure-all in the absence of more advanced medicine." Pause. He let his mind brush against the bottle itself, and its small wooden cork, reading its small history. "You bought this vial from a street vendor on Faiyaha'al the year before you became my Master."

"Well done, Padawan. If you think the information will assist you, you may want to research the oil further."

"Thank you, Master. Can I get you anything?"

Jinn rubbed a little at his face, and his breathing hitched as he stretched. "Much as I hate to ask it of you at this hour, tea would be wonderful."

Obi-Wan half-bowed from his kneeling position and rose. In the kitchen, he found the jar of tea leaves and boiled water, absently wiped down the tea pot and small cups. He'd been taught how to make tea on his seventh birthday, part of his initiate's training. In Master A'aren's kitchen, dimly lit, and he'd come so close to scalding with his arms when he jostled the pot. After the terror had faded, the silver-skinned Jedi had shown him how to manage the kettle safely, then how to prepare and present tea both ceremonially and in the field. He knew how to do this even in a pot over the smallest fire, when a double-handful of hot water was the only comfort available.

He rested both hands on the filled pot for a moment, then added it to the tray with the cups and carried it into the common room. Set the lot on the low table and knelt at his Master's feet, poured carefully into one ceramic, handleless cup. He bowed over it, kissed the edge, and presented it to the older man with both hands, keeping his eyes down. He could feel Qui-Gon's brief hesitation, but the man accepted the tea and touched Obi-Wan's head briefly in thanks. Instead of pouring for himself, though, Obi-Wan bent double, pressed his lips briefly into the robes pooled around the Master's feet, touched the skin beneath with one hand, then returned to an upright kneel.

Some part of him wondered why he felt the need to be so formal. The rituals of Master and Padawan interaction were virtually unchanged since the Order had been founded almost twenty thousand years before, but while the ceremonies of daily life were still taught, they had largely been abandoned in practice. He'd abased himself before his Master only a handful of times before, and those only because he's needed to make personal requests. He knew what he wanted this time, had known it for weeks, but he didn't expect he'd have the sheer nerve to ask for it.

Big fingers stroked through his hair. "What is it, Obi-Wan?"

He didn't know how to ask for this anymore. When he was little, it was enough to just hold out his arms and wait for his chosen someone to hold him. He had yet to discover what the equivalent comfort for an adult was. Didn't even know how to voice his small hurt that he hadn't been granted a hug when he met his Master's transport.

Qui-Gon inhaled sharply, and the sound made him look up. His Master had set his teacup aside and bent now to focus better on his kneeling apprentice. Luminous navy eyes. Enormous hands tilted his face up so that he couldn't avoid that gaze. A thumb brushed from his temple down to the corner of his eye, and he leaned into the caress, too blatantly, too much like begging. But Qui-Gon only lengthened the stroke so that it ran down the side of his face and ended with a hand resting on Obi-Wan's shoulder. Hard grip for a second, and then it pulled him forward, out of his kneel and up to his Master.

The beginning of the embrace was rough, but the Force-sense of the other man blanketed him immediately. Obi-Wan's clinging anxiety, that had been part of his thought process for weeks and screamingly active since his vision in the dry gardens, settled finally, and he was able to bury himself in his Master and only breathe.

"I missed you too, Padawan."

Qui-Gon settled back, pulling Obi-Wan with him, so that Obi-Wan ended the motion sitting with his legs across his Master's thighs and his head on his Master's shoulder. One big, warm hand ran up his back under his tunic and gently rubbed the bare skin. Massive fingerprints etching themselves into his flesh as he leaned into that touch.

He eased away, finally, but before he could move out of reach Qui-Gon tilted his face up and kissed him. Ceremonial touch on his forehead and both cheeks, and a delicate brush against his lips that was entirely personal. When he resumed his kneeling position, he let one hand stay resting on the older man's knee.

Qui-Gon said, "Tell me what you wanted, Obi-Wan."

Long breath. "I would claim my Padawan's right." Tilt of luminous navy that demanded he elaborate. Blood slid to his cheeks' surface. What he was asking derived from a custom that had only been relevant in the first centuries of the Order, before the construction of the Temples, when Padawan-learners had simply resided -- or travelled -- with their masters, and rules had been necessary to ensure that the students were adequately cared for. "I serve you. I have learned from you and I do love you. I ask you to grant me the warmth of your bed and your body for this night."

He stayed kneeling with his head down, needing all the forms of the ritual to couch his request. He wasn't begging for protection from the cold, and he was aware that in asking he ran the risk of suggesting that Qui-Gon did not care for him adequately.

Softly, "Granted." Qui-Gon bent forward and laid yet another too-ceremonial kiss just at his hairline, then stood and pulled him up. Almost-black folds of the robe swept around him for a moment, then he was standing by himself. "When you are ready to sleep, you have only to come to me. My bed is yours." The words were delicately formal, but the crooked smile was familiar. He bowed a little in response, closing the ritual, and watched Qui- Gon disappear.

He waited half an hour, centring on a bright stillness before following. In their bedroom, his pallet was tucked away, and his Master was sitting cross-legged on the bed's loose sheets, watching him. Obi-Wan waited in the doorway, just watching, until the larger man rose. Every scar showing suddenly on the naked skin. Obi-Wan shrugged out of his own clothes and walked into the offered embrace. Long hair swept around him as ethereally as the robe had; it followed the forward dip of his Master's head as a bearded cheek was laid against his crown. The hands that had grazed his back earlier simply settled on his shoulder blades and held him, face to shoulder, genitals to belly, legs close enough that he couldn't have shifted significantly without falling.

He was, inevitably, released briefly, and when he was offered that touch again, it was from a prone position. The bed was open to him, and his Master rested on his side with an elbow on the pillow. Reflexively, Obi-Wan bent and retrieved his own from the folded pallet. For a moment he flinched, realizing he'd stepped out of the ceremony's borders for a moment, but Qui-Gon only sat up a little and reached for him. The empty hand brushed his flank and curled a little to pull him in. The other took the cushion out of his grip and settled it beside its mate.

Obi-Wan laid down on his side and pushed back a little, settling into the relaxed curve of his Master's body. Qui-Gon reached down (such an enormous reach, his arms like braches stretching across him) and caught the bedspread, pulled it up to chest level. And simply held him, letting him get used to the constant Force-flow between them, the close sense of another living body, the more immediate sensations of body hair and warm flesh against his back. Only when he relaxed and let his breathing slow, the touches started.

Fingers brushed him, following the pattern of veins in his body out from his heart to his extremities, finally grasping his hands and massaging each finger with a jeweller's care. It was part of the prescribed behaviour, intended to bring circulation back into cold-numb fingers, and though it wasn't necessary, it relaxed him. Qui-Gon stilled eventually into a series of palm-touches, so that Obi-Wan could feel his body responding as each reflex was cued. Heart, lungs, sinuses, flash of not-unwelcome sensation when the pressure focussed his prostate reflex. He was almost trembling in relaxed pleasure by the time the enormous hands wrapped around his and crossed over his chest, making a double- embrace that radiated Qui-Gon's love for him as well as ritual protection. Instead of pushing his consciousness down, Obi-Wan surfed on thin Force-ripples that spiralled out from their connection, letting his attention go.

He didn't have any intention of sleeping through this.