Master
Apprentice  Archive
On Time
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Obi-Wan Kenobi awoke crushed against the side of the bunk bed aboard the transport, eyes prised open by an insistent bright yellow glare streaming in through the porthole in the opposite wall. He blinked, trying to find his bearings, then sighed in warm relief and snuggled back into the tight space.
The yellow glare was that of the tiny but potent Bewenaathipu sun, around whose fourth planet they were currently in low orbit, waiting to disembark in daylight. And the one doing the crushing was his Master, as usual taking up more than his share of the bed in a heavy, warm and untidy sprawl that so belied the calm exterior Qui-Gon Jinn was famous for in at least three dozen galaxies.
Trapped between the sheets crumpled into a heap on one side of the bed and the delicious weight of his Master, Obi-Wan surveyed the scene.
Naturally Qui-Gon had managed to rid himself of all and sundry bedclothes once again, and lay dozing naked as on the day he was born, head buried in the crook of one arm, straggly silver-brown hair all over the place, the other arm flung possessively across Obi-Wan's waist, a welcome warm weight. The keen yellow light streamed over his skin, giving it an unfamiliar bronze tone and making the grey hairs on Qui-Gon's forearm shimmer like gold.
Slowly, taking care not to wake his sleeping Master, Obi-Wan levered himself up on one elbow and let his gaze rake over the long frame, legs spread wide, one of them decidedly in Obi-Wan's space, the gentle curve of the man's strong back utterly relaxed now. To see Qui-Gon in such a state of utter peace, such vulnerable lassitude, was indeed a rare treat, and one only available to those who had the chance to see him early in the morning, Obi-Wan mused. As the state of their sheets testified, Jinn was a violent sleeper, and on some of the tenser nights Obi-Wan had wondered if the Master wore himself out into exhaustion by all this tossing and turning, just to get some sleep at all.
Then again, there was not a lot that Qui-Gon Jinn did _not _ do with abandon. Especially not in bed.
Obi-Wan let his gaze travel downwards from the mussed hair over the elegant neck, relishing the purple passion mark there, a slight blemish on the Jinn-shaped perfection sprawled across the sheets, from the broad back to the slender waist and the mounds of the older man's buttocks, muscles kept deliciously firm by decades of relentless training, skin thinned and softened with maturity. A blissful sigh as the memories of last night swamped Obi-Wan's mind and body with an urgent warm glow. How soft and sensitive that skin had felt to his lips, his questing tongue... how earthy and downright horny it had tasted, drawing him inexorably down to where it darkened to a deep tan at the crease and then a seductive dark rosewood at the little puckered ring of muscle, an alien delicacy, a fruit that moaned.
Oh, Qui-Gon had writhed under him, arching into the teasing touch of his tongue, begging for more with those delicious breathy whimpers that brought Obi-Wan close to the edge every time, so close that he had had to resort to gagging his Master with his own eager flesh, and some good that had done him. The man sucked like a dream, and it had taken all the remaining shreds of his control not to ram home into that warm tight throat and spurt his hot dripping soul out there and then... the cool air of the cabin had helped, just a little, and Obi-Wan shuddered in delight as his mind replayed for him the moment he'd slowly, slowly pushed his thick throbbing cock where Qui-Gon wanted it most. Oh, the insistent greedy rocking of Jinn's hips, drawing him in inch by inch, and the ragged blissful moans as he felt himself being filled, taken, fucked by his lover... Obi-Wan was fully aware now that he was rubbing a flaming morning hardness against his Master's thigh, and he was getting close, damn close, yes...
What he wasn't aware of were Qui-Gon's eyes on him, little crinkles of amusement turning the calm blue orbs into grinning suns.
"Good morning, Padawan...", a languid stretch, "don't you think it a bit rude to start without me?"
The answer was not so much a startled cry as a laugh, drowning in a contented moan as Obi-Wan came, clutching his Master's arm and bathing his thigh in urgent hot seed. Seconds later, a blushing Padawan nuzzled kisses all over Qui-Gon's face, murmuring into his stubbly skin, "Sorry, M'ster. Welcome to our last mission as separate entities."
Qui-Gon sneezed, then picked up the end of Obi-Wan's braid in a surprisingly delicate two-finger grip and removed it from his face, managing to raise one eyebrow indignantly without grinning at his sprite of a Padawan.
Of course Obi-Wan broke the silence by bursting into giggles, looking to all the world like an overgrown child and not like the marvellous Jedi Knight he would be, in just a few tens, as soon as this reconnaissance mission would be over. The Council had nodded silent agreement, and the trials Qui-Gon was planning for his third Padawan, his brightest jewel, would prove no obstacle, of that he was certain.
"And then you'll be rid of this blasted braid, and I can sleep in peace and quiet."
Obi-Wan's mocking laugh rose to new heights. "Sleep? With _me _ as your bondmate? You won't have peace and quiet for the rest of your _life _, old man!"
Qui-Gon was sure Obi-Wan would have punctuated his argument with a thrown pillow if there had been one available.
"All right, no sleep then. Can't say I'm not looking forward to _that _ concept," he placed a gentle bearded kiss on Obi-Wan's still-laughing mouth and swung his legs over the side of the bed, ready to start another day.
Obi-Wan pouted.
"Padawan, it may have slipped your mind, but we _are _ actually on a mission. And I doubt Knight Ba'aig enjoys having her breakfast alone _every _ morning... thanks to your patient efforts we both need a shower now, so chances are we'll be late again. Off you go - close your eyes and think of Coruscant."
Knight Ba'aig had actually finished her morning meal already and was leaning back in her chair, feet propped up on a neighbouring one, typing away on a datapad, when the other two thirds of the Jedi delegation arrived, freshly showered and glowing with a warmth that even a less empathic being than Knight Ba'aig would have picked up on immediately.
Still, she had volunteered at once when the Council had asked for an unpaired Knight to join the Jinn/Kenobi team on the reconnaissance mission to Bewenaathipu Delta, and the twelve had been highly impressed. Not that it was difficult being cooped up in a ship with the Temple's most famous pair of warrior-diplomats _and _ rumoured lovebirds - the two were wit and politeness incarnate, and they had offered her a cabin all to herself on the first night already. She chuckled at the memory, then put aside her pad and poured her two companions tea.
"Writing novels, Vi?"
She snorted a laugh, brushing the tail of long white black-tipped hair over her shoulder. "Just sorting my thoughts. I can't seem to get my head round the idea that all this mission entails is to find the sentient race inhabiting this rock and _asking _ them if it's true they want to join the Galactic Republic..."
Qui-Gon sipped his tea, made a face, then nodded gravely. "That's all it is, on the surface. The operative word being 'find' here, I believe..."
"The rationale being," Obi-Wan interjected while manfully battling a slice of toast piled with qualla berries, "that if even a mixed Jedi team can't find them it would be pretty pointless to put them in the Senate and expect anyone to notice their presence... whissh- sorry," Obi-Wan swallowed noisily, "which is why we're here. A Master, a Knight, and a Padawan, two men and a woman, in their standard fifties, thirties, and twenties, a diplomat, a warrior, and a scientist... friendsh."
Vi Ba'aig grinned. "The perfect team, I agree." She had studied rhetoric under Master Jinn and, in her youth, had had the redoubtable pleasure of overseeing young Kenobi's education as crèche-duty Padawan, making her one of the few individuals in the Temple who could be said to know both Jinn and Kenobi in equal measure. "What irks me is that they had to send out three of us just to go out there and navigate this planet and find sentients... I keep thinking there is a catch to this, you know?"
"There is," Qui-Gon replied, now recovered from the shock of scalding hot, and more importantly, oversweetened cha, "we don't actually know where they are. Or when they are, in their diction. The map we have been given, and which I'm sure you're familiar with, Vi, is based on coordinates of _time _, not space. Effectively, the Bewenaathipu people have given us a potted history of their planet in two-dimensional form, because to them that is the reference system they live in. Bewenaathipu time is what space is to us... so even though we may have an idea where we are in terms of space coordinates, we are quite at a loss as to when we are, in their time landscape, and which way to go to find them."
"Which is why they sent three of us?" Obi-Wan enquired, genuinely confused.
"Correct, Padawan. The idea being that at least one of us stays put in one place, or one time, as the geography of Bewenaathipu may well be entirely temporal, and keeps in touch with the other two, as a searcher may well get disoriented on their scouting mission. And a search party of two, in constant communication, has a larger chance of success than a single individual trying to navigate the space-time continuum with a view to getting anywhere."
"So what you're saying, Master Jinn, is that it's a case of being in the right place at the right time?" Ba'aig asked, a slight smile quirking her thin lips.
"Uh - quite."
They had agreed that Qui-Gon would play the part of the fixed observer, and for the sake of better comm access would climb to the top of a craggy bluish mountain looming over the plain where they had landed the ship. That way he would have the widest possible scope of both physical vision and electromagnetic communications. It was agreed that he should take some computer equipment as well as measuring devices with him, in Obi-Wan's words, "you might as well make yourself useful while you're up there, and draw a decent spatial map of the place." Qui-Gon himself harboured doubts as to whether that was what he would produce; then again, when had he ever had the chance to gaze over a landscape and see the future, or the past?
As soon as Obi-Wan and Vi had lost sight of Qui-Gon's brown robe among the ragged blue rocks they set off in the opposite direction. They had vaguely agreed that they would split up, but were both obviously waiting for an opportunity to do so.
That presented itself quite unexpectedly when they came to the edge of a lake. The only ways of getting around it were to either walk along the matt grey shingle beach directly above the waterline, or to veer off into the steep hills and cliffs overlooking it. Obi-Wan, ever the gentleman, offered to take the latter route, and the two parted company with a friendly hug.
"Let me know when you've found them, and don't eat anything funny, Vi."
"Obi." She sighed in mock exasperation. "I'm quite safe, I'm a chemist, you know?"
Maybe, Obi-Wan thought, he'd be able to catch a glimpse of his Master from up there. Or of the future. Preferably one with his Master in it of course.
The rocks were sharp and tightly packed, offering very little in the way of tread, and Obi-Wan had made little headway when he gazed down at the beach to where Knight Ba'aig was wandering. Only she wasn't. She was crouching down at the water's edge, ostensibly taking a sample of the opaque, primeval-looking water. Chemists, Obi-Wan thought, and had already turned his head away again when he caught something odd in the corner of his eye.
Had Vi just... changed?
Obi-Wan blinked. He was certain that her hair had been white almost all the way to the tips... or had it? Now there was almost a span of black at the ends, and it seemed somewhat shorter than he was used to...
"Vi?"
He heard the echo of his own voice carrying over the lake, but the Knight did not move.
"Vi? You all right there?"
The figure fidgeted slightly, but made no move to acknowledge Obi-Wan's shout. Now decidedly worried, Obi-Wan scrambled back downhill towards her, keeping an eye on the crouched form of his friend. She was definitely changing - her hair had gone almost entirely black now, and was continuing to crawl up her back until it was almost as short as his, then shorter still, a skullcap of natural black velvet with only a slim black appendage trailing from it... a _Padawan braid _?!
"Viiiiiiii! Get out of there! You're losing time, Vi! Vi, can you hear me? Fuck, answer me!!"
He tumbled and skidded to a halt at the foot of the cliffs. That was definitely Vi Ba'aig crouching there gathering water samples, oblivious to the world around her. That was the Vi Ba'aig he remembered from the crèche! And with every step that he came closer he could see her figure getting smaller under the robes, her face growing rounder, her braid shorter... and still she could not hear him!
Shit, time's running out, he thought frantically and leapt at her, trying to avoid stepping on the treacherous grey sand and tug her up by her robe... he had just enough presence of mind to stop himself from falling, and found himself levitating two feet above a lakeshore, face creased in concentration, and his right arm sunk to the elbow in Vi Ba'aig's back.
He'd gone right through, as if she wasn't there. And she still kept getting younger, had lost the braid now and was curling up into a child under the growing puddle of adult robes. But I can _see _ her, Obi-Wan thought desperately, why can't she hear me... why can't she feel me? Damn, Vi, don't go, here I am, hold on to me... open yourself to me, let me in!!
Biting his lip with the exertion, Obi-Wan focused all of his being into a tight white band and threw it out to the tiny human form huddled on the beach, a lifeline of mental awareness, all the strength and all the life of a Jedi woven into this one tight coil. He held on to his end desperately, hoping the other end would catch...
When it did, it nearly threw Obi-Wan off his feet. He felt aged by decades in just a split second. His mouth gone dry, his eyes watery, his bones heavy and his skin withered, his mind clung to the bond with all its strength, visualising the living form of Knight Ba'aig, willing her back to the present.
The landscape twisted and bent around him as he hauled her in by the bond, slowly feeding her his own time, watching her grow again, watching the braid snake out over her shoulder, then disappear as if it had never been, watching her hair silver and pale until it was all white again and his vision faded to a grainy black unconsciousness.
//Obi-Wan?//
His eyes flew open at the voice, and he was relieved to see the slender face of Vi Ba'aig bent over his. White-haired, a Knight in her thirties, just like she should be. Then it struck him.
She had not moved her lips.
//Obi-Wan, I'm sorry. And I'm grateful. I can't even begin to say how much... you saved my life, Obi...//
"We've...," he shuddered at the croak of his voice, //we're bonded?//
//You fed me all your time, and all your life, Obi-Wan... I couldn't even see where it came from until it filled me up and brought me back here. And then it was you. I'm sorry, Obi...//
//Don't be.// He hugged her, exhaling a deep sigh of relief and confusion into her once again white hair.
//I couldn't see...//
//You must have been on a different temporal plane... you couldn't hear me shouting, and I couldn't even touch you. You should have seen me, Vi... my arm went right through you. You were there, but you weren't.... well, I guess you weren't _then _.//
//I didn't mean to come between you and your... Master, Obi, believe me, please, I'm sorry...//
Obi-Wan grabbed her shoulder to right himself as much as to stop Vi from shaking. "Vi, it's not your fault. It's nothing you did. And I... I couldn't have done anything else even if I had wanted. And I did not want to. We are Jedi, Vi, the world needs us alive, and if I have to bond my soul to yours to keep you alive, then I'll gladly do that."
"But you'd have to... carry on living in sin with Qui-Gon..."
Obi-Wan chuckled ruefully. "Yeah, so I noticed. I'm sure there will be a way around that. It's not for nothing that my Master is known as the most stubborn negotiator in the universe. His word in Yoda's ear, and between the two of them they might just talk the Force itself round..."
Vi's cloudy face brightened a little at her friend's strained humour. Obi-Wan stroked her shoulder amiably, then gave her a little shove.
"Best get back to Temple as soon as possible. I don't see us getting anywhere with this sort of temporal anomaly lurking all over the place... and I'm not losing you again, Vi!"
She nodded, slowly. A failed mission was better than endangering her life, and that of her friend, again. "Let's go back to the ship, then." She fingered her commlink out of her belt pouch and dialled Qui-Gon's frequency.
There was no answer.
"Here, let me try - your comm's probably on the blink, seeing as it's just been through nearly three decades back and forth..." The touch of nervousness in Obi-Wan's voice wasn't entirely deniable though, and Knight Ba'aig listened nervously to the call sign beeping from her friend's device.
The call sign rang out all right. And rang, and rang. Qui-Gon did not answer.
"Right. Vi, you go back to the ship and get it ready to take off immediately. I'll go get Qui-Gon. Don't, I repeat, don't, follow me unless I ask you to." He experimentally dialled her comm frequency and was rewarded with a loud beep from her commlink. "He can't be far... let's hope he hasn't managed to get himself into a state of infancy yet - I hear he was a particularly tricky kid."
Vi Ba'aig's mouth smiled at her new bondmate's dry remark, but her eyes betrayed her anguish. //Let me know as soon as you've found him.//
//I will.// He kissed her on the cheek, a tender goodbye.
Sithspit, he thought, scrambling up towards the top of the blue mountain, cutting his hands on the sharp rocks in his haste to get to Qui-Gon. I just hope he understands... I just hope he is willing to keep me, just as Obi-Wan, no longer linked to him by a training bond, never to be linked by a lifebond. Never to be let into Qui-Gon's mind to curl up and make his home there... the thought made his heart sink. It had been all he had dreamt of, for years... the last of these years they had shared that dream, and the only reason they had held off for so long was that Qui-Gon had wanted him to be sure of his decision, and then, once he had managed to convince his Master that there would never be another for him, three months ago, only three months ago... Obi-Wan brushed a tear from his eye. He needed to keep a clear sight, damn it, on these rocks.
Three months. Should that have been all the time they were allowed together? Back then it had seemed like a ridiculously short time, a time to comfortably keep the true extent of their relationship under cover from all but their closest friends... after all, Obi-Wan was due to be knighted soon, and then there would be a short and bright ceremony, and they would be One forever. One.
Now they were condemned to remain two. Two. The word tasted like cold metal, like the bluish-grey rocks.
For all he had tried to comfort Vi, Obi-Wan _felt _ in the depth of his soul that there was no way this bond could be unmade without doing grave damage to his personality, his sanity, and even his life. That's what the word lifebond means, he thought ruefully.
Oh Force, I hope Qui-Gon hasn't run from me and turned away.
He blinked away the insistent tears and focused on where the blue-grey rock met the blue-grey sky. Up there was where Qui-Gon had been going. Qui-Gon. The image seemed to fade from his mental eye, and he focused on it with all his strength. Could it be that the new bond... he pushed Vi's presence from his mind, angrily. Surely she could not erase memories, the way he felt about Qui-Gon?
He drew a deep breath, only a few feet below the summit now. No, his feelings for his Master were still intact, and burning a solid warm orange behind his closed eyelids. He sighed, revelling in the love he felt for the man, and in the remembered love he had felt from him. It warmed his face like the embers of a fire. A fire with Qui-Gon at the centre.
He took the last few scrambling steps up to the top, blindly, and opened his eyes.
The glow went on.
The orange fire was real.
The entire rear flank of the mountain had broken away in a volcanic eruption that would have torn the planet in half with earthquakes and explosions... if it had not happened millennia into the future, and happened this very minute.
The sluggish streams of lava were the cooling outposts of a future catastrophe.
Holding on to the coiling white band of the new bond, but taking care not to let any of his emotions flow along it lest he upset Vi, Obi-Wan took a few faltering steps into the temporal anomaly. The young grey rocks steamed under his boot heels, but supported his weight. The bond supported his soul, its connection to the Force as young as the rocks, as old as time. He would be safe, linked to the 'real' time of the outside world. Linked to the time as measured by Vi's heartbeat.
Carefully, he balanced onto an outcrop among the sluggish streams of black and grey, surface broken by angry cracks oozing glowing orange lava. His whole vision was filled with nightmarish swirls and crags of black, grey, blue, red, orange, and yellow, with occasional plumes of white steam ghosting over the forbidding then-world.
Steam?
It was white, yes, but it lay in place. Lay.
Obi-Wan's heart froze. This could only mean one thing.
Before his mind had even had time to think the thought, his legs had set off across the unsteady new-born ground, dancing over the scalding hot surface in a desperate bid for space. He could feel his boots giving way on the frying rocks, felt his feet go numb with shock and the heat, skidded, lost his balance, caught himself on one hand...
The searing pain of fresh lava enveloping his hand jerked him back to consciousness. Aghast, he tore himself upright, leaving flesh, leaving hope, and stumbled on. He could not bear to look at what his hand had become, fought desperately to shut his body off from the agonising pain, tried levitation but found he had not enough mind left to even feel the rest of his body, let alone lift it, and the end was near, so near...
The white object at the end of his path, just there, just one more leap across the treacherous oozing rocks, one more desperate scramble and he fell to his knees, clutching his injured hand to his chest, curled in on himself as he watched the blood seep into his tunics and felt the heat from the ground scorch its way through his leggings and boots. So this is where it ends, he thought numbly, and raised his eyes.
The white form lay sprawled on the cooling basalt, half-covered by a blanket of rough fresh rock. One leg was still visible, as was part of the torso, and one outflung arm.
Clad in Jedi whites.
Crying mindlessly in his pain, Obi-Wan reached out with his free hand to tear at the young stones, there where the burned skin disappeared under the sheet of igneous rock, red and soft like the lava itself. It did not matter any more that his hand was little more than a skeleton with pieces of torn charred flesh and hardened lava sticking to it. He saw it, and he felt it. He felt, in his soul, the singed strands of silvered brown hair. He felt the face under the rock, felt the agony and shock as the Force shield had collapsed around the man, as time and fire had closed in on him. Felt, in his soul, the sad acceptance with which Qui-Gon had faced his end.
The face under the rock was serene.
The face was dead. Charred to a lump of flesh and bone, like the hand that clawed into the last visible piece of Qui-Gon's flesh, leaving desperate last bruises next to the one that mattered, the one purple mark he himself had placed there only hours ago.
Nothing mattered any more.
Stretching himself out on the scalding half-liquid ground, Obi-Wan laid his Master's arm across his waist and lay down to let the fire claim him.
Nothing mattered any more.
Calm, he watched from a distance as the end of his braid caught fire, an orange glow eating its way towards his face.
Calm, Obi-Wan watched from a distance as his heart broke open, freeing his soul as his body was consumed by the advancing lava.
He did not hear the screams.
Silence, blissful silence enveloped him in a velvet embrace, and he stretched languidly in the warmth. Was it morning already? Was it day? He blinked the sleep from his eyes, opened them, and saw blackness. Was it night? He reached up to his face to rub his eyes, and found he had no face. He had no eyes either, and no hands.
Why, then, was he still there?
And, more to the point, where was he? What was he? He scrambled for a foothold, mentally, and said his name, aloud. It echoed in his mind.
//Obi-Wan Kenobi.//
Yes, that was him. So it was all true. He... he had died, and he was still there. Did that mean that... he hardly dared believe it, and then chided himself for his lack of faith. If this was the Force, everything was possible, wasn't it?
Trembling, he focused on his deepest wish, putting all of his mind into it until there was barely any of him left.
The impact hit him like a supernova of blue light, exploding all around him, inside him and right through him, burning up his soul in a living flame, sweeping it up into a place where there was no more 'up', and higher still. He heard his mental voice scream as a pure current of Force rushed through him, electrifying him beyond his wildest dreams, pulling him closer and closer towards that pulsing bluish white light.
He opened his non-existent eyes and saw the light extend a hand, a large luminous warm hand. With long blunt fingers. A familiar hand. He reached out and clasped it tight, and slammed into what felt like pure Living Force to him.
It also felt oddly like Qui-Gon's body. Funny how his skin had not lost its memory, even though strictly speaking Obi-Wan had lost his skin.
//Oh no, it's all there, Padawan. It's all exactly as I want to see it.//
And Force, it felt exactly how Obi-Wan wanted to feel it too as he lunged at the luminous blue form of his Master and drowned himself in a very real and very hot kiss. //Oh Force, I ... I can't breathe.//
//You don't have to, Obi-Wan.// A mild chuckle from Qui-Gon.
//Hells, do you have to be the Master in everything, Qui?// Obi-Wan gasped, never letting go of Qui-Gon's still-delicious lips.
//I have been one with the Force for several minutes longer than you have, Padawan... and,// a mental sigh, //they were probably the longest minutes of my existence.//
//But... but if we're dead, what happens to Vi? We... Master, she is bonded to me... it's all a mistake, but...//
A soothing hand stroked Obi-Wan's cheek, and he was pulled closer into Qui-Gon's tight embrace. It still felt warm, and wonderful beyond description.
//Join your mind's eye with mine, and we will see.//
Dimly, and in a distance neither of them could judge, a hazy image appeared. Yes, that was Knight Ba'aig all right. To Obi-Wan's great relief, she was moving. She was alive. She was, in fact, piloting their ship, back to Coruscant, he assumed...
Obi-Wan breathed a sigh of relief.
//Can we... does she know what happened?//
//She was bonded to you, Obi-Wan, I doubt she did not notice the breaking of the new bond.//
//Oh, Master...// And yet, tears would not come for the dead Padawan to bemoan the fate of the living Knight. Too close was he to the Living Force, and too close to the warm and joyful presence of the man he loved more than anything, in life as in death.
//She'll live, Padawan. She went without a bond before, and now she'll be without one again. Lifebonds are... lifebonds are for life, Obi-Wan. This... this is forever.//
Silently and without ceremony, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn let their souls merge into One.
---The End---