Master Apprentice 
Archive
Theme and Timbre - Sfumato
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Characters-Rating: Q/O - PG
Category: Romance, Angst
Summary: As fuel on the fire, as smoke in the wind.
Spoilers: Yeah, kinda
Series: Theme and Timbre Series
Ambiance: Bruckner - Symphony #3
Archive: M_A, RavenD's page - anybody else just ask.
Feedback: Yes please! It keeps my plot bunnies fat & happy.
Disclaimer: The Boyz belong to George, not me.
Notes & Acknowledgements: Thank you to RavenD for giving this a once-over and letting me play in her sandbox. Thank you to Mark for friendship & reality-checks, Layna and Ruth for enthusiasm and encouragement, and the San Francisco Symphony for aural inspiration.
Sfumato: Very lightly, like a vanishing smoke wreath.
I watch him - am with him - but from a distance,
always.
I watch, but may not touch.
We cannot touch.
(Heat-haze on the desert. Smoke on the wind.)
I am with him when his heart cries out, when his dreams are
black with need and fire and pain. When his memories and
meditations are dazzling or desolate, warm or cold or numb.
When he remembers to remember beauty and peace, when he holds
to hope and light and love.
I am with him, always. Sometimes, he knows that. Sometimes
the Force wills that he may hear, or see, or otherwise
perceive my presence. Always at need, never at something so
ephemeral as desire.
But not to touch.
The Force is universal, not personal, not in this, this
blind, a-personal imperative for balance, for equilibrium,
against an utterly personal devouring darkness. Instruments
of the Will of the Force, in service to the Light, we are, we
were, and more than matter or spirit.
We may have served the Force, the universe, the Light, but
oh, I fear we did not serve ourselves. Matter and spirit may
both know pain and loss and weariness in the face of blinding
light.
I was blind, and now I am smoke, vapour, memory and will. I
do not feel like a being of light. I know he all too often
does not. And yet we both hold fast to belief. Hope.
Love.
Sometimes it seems a punishment, not a boon, that I may be
with, but not with, see and hear but not speak or show. That
he may be with, but not with, believe but not know, reach but
not hold. I, who would touch, teach, move, uphold and
comfort, must but intangibly witness. He, who preferred to
think things out thoroughly, must act without
assurance.
But he speaks to me sometimes, believing I can hear, will
hear, even when we cannot touch.
He waits for a hope to grow, And I wait, sustained by hope,
shielding sparks against the darkness. Holding fast to hopes
and beliefs and loves long unvoiced, but not unknown, long
tucked away, but never abandoned.
(Oh, his spirit is still quick, unbowed, alive to irony and
humor and perspective. In this, too, he is a far wiser man
than I. I see too much the pain, the terror, the greed and
desolation the hands of Darkness have unleashed, the
betrayals I fear I would not have had the strength to endure,
as he did, in flesh and presence. In spirit was difficult
enough. But I would not leave him. I could not. Not alone
with only the impersonal, the imperative Force, however
light.)
He has tempered himself on the forge of Light, spending his
substance in the fire of need. Burnt away youth and strength
and all illusion in the crucible of unforgiving necessity. It
grieves me that he is yet younger than I was when the pyre
took me from him, and his flesh seems far older. Oh, not
bent, not broken, but an age of experience that weighs on
him.
The currents of change are come. Smoke knows the wind.
Soon. Soon we will both be free - released from waiting,
unbound by need and will and obligation. Other hands, other
spirits are coming into their own, bourne on the winds of
hope, born in the fires of love. Soon we will be free to
touch, to twine and join as we will.
The sparks have been shielded, the light will soon burst
forth.
But until then, as smoke wreathes fire, I am with him. I
watch over him, and turn his dreams from blood and darkness
as I may.
Invisible fingers brush against a visible cheek. Lightly, so
lightly. "Soon, beloved. Soon."
In his sleep he moves, and sighs. Hands reach and close.
"Soon."
In waiting, hope. In loving, love. This is not darkness but
the dim, grey hour before the dawn. Intangible but not
untouched, I am with him, and he with me.
Far over the brightening hills there is a plume of smoke.