Summary: JAOA tweener. Hope from the heart of darkness.
(lighting incense on the alter of Lucas) George Lucas is God of
a galaxy far far away... but this one is even farther away, so
I doubt he'd want to commute.
NOTE: [This is telepathy] and /these are thoughts/.
The lightsaber met his hand squarely, the grip smacking solidly
into his palm even as he thumbed the controls, bringing the
blade to viciously humming life as he spun and brought it
around.
Anger and rage and fear drove the blow, gave it a strength that
even the Force could not. There was a different feel, cutting
through flesh; a subtle difference in the resistance than there
was when one cut through inorganic droids. As different as the
lightsaber in his hands, almost perfectly matched to his own
but not - the grip worn at different points beneath his
fingertips, the controls spaced for a larger hand, the weight
and shape just strange enough that his hands must compensate
for the difference.
But not enough to stop that final blow. Nothing could stop
that. All the dark wailing shades of his rage fueled it, a
strength he welcomed and grasped hold of eagerly. It flowed
through him like cool oil in a towering wave, strong and
unstoppable. The blade hissed and cracked as it sliced through
flesh, humming triumphantly as it ripped free. Red eyes met
his, frozen and fading as the life was leeched from them to add
heat to the burning anger within his heart.
The body tumbled down and away and it wasn't enough, it wasn't
nearly enough to quench the fires of anger. It shrieked inside
of him, demanding vengeance, rending, tearing, ripping to find
an outlet for the storm that raged within. He trembled at the
edge of the abyss, feeling it gape open beneath his soul in
terrible majesty, inexorable as the force of a gravity well.
It was the sound that drew him back. A small sound, more felt
than heard, the wet, choked sound of a whispered breath. It
tugged him from the edge, quieted the rage - and in its place
the sound unleashed the howling fear.
He thumbed the blade off, silencing its eager hum. The hilt hit
the ground, clattering, as he turned away from the melting pit
towards that small noise. The floor was smooth beneath his
feet, hard beneath his knees but he hardly felt the jarring
shock as the strength drained from him and tumbled him down,
boneless, beside the still body.
The echo of breath still moved the broad chest, as Obi-Wan
lifted his Master's head into his lap. His fingers moved
fitfully over the planes of the face and through the tumbled
fall of greying hair. Within the lines of the throat beat a
thready pulse, slow and shallow beneath his searching hand.
"Master..." He was crying and not crying, the sobs too tight in
his chest to let the tears flow.
Blue eyes, gone nearly black with pain and shock, focused only
slowly on his face. Qui-Gon's breath was a thin gasp, drawn in
reflex and expelled in choked words. "Too late..."
The fear yammered in hysteric fits, pouring burning cold acid
through his veins. "No."
"It's too late," Qui-Gon breathed softly, insistent. The light
in his eyes was fading with each breath, slipping away before
Obi-Wan's despairing gaze. One large hand stirred, reaching up
with a trembling touch to brush his cheek as it had so many
countless times before. "Promise me, Obi-Wan..."
"No." Soft at first, and then a defiant cry that howled in
sheer denial. "NO!"
His hands stripped away the charred layers of tunic to bare the
chest beneath. A gaping hole nearly the size of his palm,
blackened and seared, cauterized straight through. He could see
the ragged twitch of muscles with each breath, blood welling
wetly from the red flesh of the heart itself, every pulse a
spasm visible to the naked eye.
Dark and cool and smothering it came to his call, born of
desperation and violent need. Born of fear and grief that tore
through him with needle sharp claws, driving him to reach for
the source of it. A flame kindled of the unquenched anger and
rage, sparked with fear, it flared at his touch and poured its
cold strength freely into him until he burned with the fire of
a thousand stars within the icy cold of space.
His hands touched the empty space where tissue and muscle had
been, felt the shuddering jerk of the flesh that remained. He
held that failing pulse cupped against the palm of his hand,
feeling it skip raggedly over its rhythm, every movement a
beacon of pure life.
His Master's voice was calling to him from beyond the rushing,
ongoing cry within his own heart. [Obi-Wan, please... listen to
me...]
"No." The tears were falling from his eyes in brilliant
shards of helpless light. Love and hate, grief and desperate
determination - fire and ice, they both answered his call,
mixing within him with a hiss and rush that streamed agony
through his flesh but it didn't matter... he had that faltering
heart in his hand and the Force that seared through him
cushioned each beat, vibrated with it, coaxed forth another.
His own heart pounded in his chest, pulse echoing the other,
and he willed that strong beat to pulse through the flesh
beneath his hand.
[NO.] Stronger, more insistent, the voice that echoed through
him gave him hope even as it pushed to turn aside the strength
he poured into it. [Don't, love. Let go. Listen...]
"Be quiet," he gasped, the words wailing forth like the
cry of a newborn. At once brittle and stone hard, he wrapped
his will around the Force linking them, sinking it deeper,
keeping it from being shoved away. [Let me... I can't loose
you... I can do this... I will do this...]
Memory in those words, the birth of all memories, and before
the weight of them Qui-Gon's defenses crumbled with a ragged
cry. Obi-Wan furiously willed the strength of his own body into
the one he held, feeling the crushing weight against his chest
as rope after rope of Force bound them together until his heart
beat for them both, his lungs drawing air for two bodies in
desperation. Pain knifed through him, forcing a cry from his
throat, but nothing mattered beyond the pounding throb of his
heart and the next breath drawn into burning lungs that would
sustain the body cradeled in his arms. Pulse and breath in,
pulse and breath out, and endless repetition that became the
central heart and outer limit of his entire world until even
the conscious knowledge of that faded away.
Yoda found him in the medical bay, the diminutive Jedi Master's
stick tapping a heavy counterpoint upon the floor. Obi-Wan did
not turn, eyes fixed unblinking upon the clear surface of the
bacta tank that dominated the room.
Yoda settled himself beside Obi-Wan on the low bench with a
heavy sigh. The Jedi Master eyed the tank in contemplation for
a time, then nodded slowly. "Live, he will," he said at last.
Obi-Wan closed his eyes briefly, letting the words sink into
him like a soothing balm. He had known it already, knew it with
every beat of his own heart that still echoed, faintly, with
the steady throb in that other chest. Still, it was hope and
life to hear it given voice in physical words.
Within the tank, Qui-Gon's body seemed smaller, frailer.
Wrapped round with sensors and life support, drifting gently in
the heavy bacta, the Jedi Master seemed unreal, distant and
dim, an illusion that Obi-Wan clung to desperately, unwilling
to tear his eyes away less they play him false.
But there were other things, and he focused upon them
reluctantly. "Has the Council met?"
Yoda's ears lowered slightly, small dark eyes focusing intently
on the human beside him. "Decided, we have."
"Ah." Obi-Wan tried to feel some of the emotions those words
should have sparked within him, but it had all drained away,
exhausted past caring. To sit on the bench at all was more than
the medics had wanted to allow him, but he had demanded with
stubborn insistence until they had deemed it easier and more
restful to simply allow him to do so. Each second played out
into an eternity, each one hoarded preciously as the steady
report of the tank lifemonitor continued to pan out before his
eyes. Only the shift of the Jedi Master beside him brought his
thoughts once again to the rest of the world. "What was
decided?"
He had given his report from a medical bed during one of the
periods of lucid thought that came between exhausted sleep. The
words had spilled forth, brutally honest, too tired to think of
leaving anything out or cushioning the impact of them. The
Masters had listened, faces grave and silent, until the words
had died away and sleep had claimed him once more between one
breath and the next. Yet even in sleep he listened to his own
heartbeat, his own breath, trying in vain to send the strength
of them to the other life he loved far more than his.
But he had known, on waking, what it was that he had done.
Could still feel the memory echo of it, the cold fire that had
given him the strength needed. Icy and dark, untamed, it had
come to the beckoning of his rage like moths to the flame. He
needed no one to tell him what it was, and though he shivered
at the memory of it he acknowledged it all the same and was
grateful for it. Had related it to the Council without
judgement, placing the transgression within their hands without
regret. They would decide as they would. For himself... he
could not regret the outcome, no matter the means.
"Decided, we have," Yoda repeated, and Obi-Wan nodded dimmly.
/"Obi-Wan is ready..."/ Qui-Gon had said, words that seemed far
distant, words that belonged to another life. /I'm sorry,
Master/ he thought tiredly, but even that did not have the
power to call forth emotion. None of it mattered, nothing but
the continued life before him.
"Confer upon you the rank of Jedi Knight, the Council does,"
Yoda continued firmly. And that, at last, brought Obi-Wan's
attention solidly back to the world around him.
Blinking eyes long since gone dry, he turned slowly towards the
Jedi Master. "What?"
"Jedi Knight, you are, young Kenobi," Yoda said, his stick
tapping the floor for emphasis. "Decided, the Council did."
Obi-Wan blinked again, almost painfully. The syllables
richochetted through his tired mind, searching in vain for
something to connect to, for some way to make sense of them.
"But... Master Yoda, I told you what happened."
"Power you used that you should not have," Yoda agreed mildly.
Dark eyes half closed, expression turned inward. "Gave in to
your emotions. Defeated a Sith, you did. Saved your Master, you
did." The eyes opened, regarding him piercingly. "You will be
needed. We have seen it."
The words wrapped around him, sending a shiver through his
spine. He forced a faded, humorless smile upon his lips,
feeling muscles too tired to sustain the expression tremble
slightly. "Despite my flaws?"
"Or because of them." Yoda's expression communicated nothing,
still and serene. "Young, you are. Desperate, you were.
Overcome and outgrow this, you will."
A second chance, handed him freely. A new hope. Obi-Wan sighed
softly, feeling a tension he hadn't known was there drain from
him. "I am honored."
Yoda nodded slightly. "Agreed, the Council did," he began
again. "Train the boy, you will."
For one brief moment of exhausted hilarity Obi-Wan wondered if
the entire conversation wasn't, perhaps, a dream within his
aching mind. If the Jedi Council and the entire galaxy had not
gone mad, and he the only sane one left. Yoda continued on.
"The Sith you killed, but two there always are. One remains.
Strong, the boy is. Too dangerous to leave untrained."
Ah, then that made a cautious sort of sense. Anakin, set adrift
by the Jedi, would be a jewel left out where the Sith might
pluck him forth. Better, then, by far, to train him. But why...
"Know what you have done, you do," Yoda answered the thought
sharply. "Frightens you, it does. Good. Cautious, you will be.
Good for you and the boy, it is."
Irrefutable logic, simple and clean. He knew what the dark side
of the Force felt like. He would carry it forever, stark in his
memories, terrible and magnificent. Seeing it in others, he
would know it for what it was - know it not as a hypothesis, a
distant threat, but as an intimate part of his own memory that
he could never set aside. A mirror, to remind himself always of
where that path lead.
"Then I will train Anakin," he said simply, accepting. His eyes
were drawn back to the bacta tank and the still form within it.
"Master Qui-Gon..."
"Will live," Yoda completed, firmly. The Jedi Master glanced at
the tank, expression unreadable. Shaking his head slightly, he
slid from the bench. One small hand touched Obi-Wan's knee in
passing, a reassuring comfort. "Well, you did," he said softly,
and then the tap of his stick echoed as he moved away.
Obi-Wan, left with the quiet steady beep of the lifemonitor and
the gentle, comforting silence of the medical bay, forced
himself slowly to his faltering feet. There were only a few
paces between the bench and the tank, a distance he nearly fell
crossing. Hand pressed to the cool transparent surface, he
lowered himself cautiously to the floor, his side resting
against the tank. Sighing, he bowed his forehead against the
surface. "Together," he breathed, letting his aching body
relax. His thoughts reached out, twined indelibly with his
lover's. [Together...]
The answer came, the whisper of an echo, faint and distant but
all the hope he would ever need. [Always...]
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