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He was well-behaved, but he was always well-behaved. His objections to
Qui-Gon's behaviour toward the council had been routine, and he had been
routinely scolded for them. *I will do what I must, Obi-Wan.* All his
obedience had surfaced, then, and he'd used it as a shield for the rest
of the day and into the night. After he left his Master, he found
Anakin and took the boy to bed, settling him in one of the child-rooms
left vacant and ready for visitors to the Temple. He spent almost an
hour there in the near-darkness, telling the boy a story and rocking him
to sleep, then enveloping the tiny body in as many extra blankets as he
could gather without notice. Anakin shivered all the time. Obi-Wan had
some memory of what it was like to be small and alone in the hugeness of
the Temple, and he was reluctant to leave until he was certain that the
child was securely asleep.
It occurred to him that stressed children, like certain kinds of
animals, bonded with whomever showed them the slightest kindness, but he
didn't expect Anakin to develop any kind of affection for him. Whatever
love the boy had belonged to Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan was simply a warm body
generating some kind of security in a shockingly sterile maze of parquet
halls and plexisteel views.
Even after he could feel Anakin vividly dreaming, Obi-Wan stayed seated
on the floor of the darkened room. He'd never been able to sleep with
that kind of security; even as a tiny boy he'd been restlessly
insomniac. When he'd meditated on his earliest memories, the sensations
that rose were of lying in the dark, listening to a dozen or more other
children breathe in the dim night-light of the Academy creche. As a
child, it had taken him so long to fall asleep that he'd been deeply
certain that he didn't sleep at all. He was one to both drift and wake
very gradually. Mediation had helped, but only the experience of being
startled out of dreams had finally confirmed for him that he had human
circadian rhythms.
Meditation didn't come, only the nagging understanding that his presence
was doing nothing further for the boy. Obi-Wan gathered himself and
left, paced back to his own rooms by the Temple's peripheral halls. The
wall-lights were at a traditional half-burn that indicated deep night in
the unnatural Coruscant environment. There were huge treatises in the
Academy library on the inappropriateness of the city-planet as a home
for the Jedi. Obi-Wan supposed that the continued existence of the
central hall in this place was a rare gesture of political expediency on
the order's part.
He had quarters of his own, though from the earliest time of his
apprenticeship he was more accustomed to sleeping in Qui-Gon's. Obi-Wan
used his private room largely for storage, neither wishing to add
clutter to his Master's Spartan existence nor quite willing yet to throw
his childhood away.
There was dust on everything. By running his hand over a given surface,
he could feel the tiny remnants of the Force that clung to the
microscopic fragments of skin and hair. They had flashes of lives
attached, but too fleeting for him to reconstruct anything meaningful
from them.
He found what he was looking for in the clothes-chest tucked between the
corner and the first of two slightly curving windows. The robe unfolded
slowly, pooling on the ground at Obi-Wan's feet even as he held the hood
and shoulders folded over his arm. The fabric was meaningless and the
smell long gone, but the living signature was there. Half a decade
before, the robe had been Qui-Gon's, given to Obi-Wan in the last hours
of a particularly wretched mission. He'd been freezing cold and wet,
standing with his Master on a landing pad on a planet that hadn't
welcomed them and which shortly after demanded that they leave. He'd
been so amazingly tired. Qui-Gon had caught him just out of the corner
of his eye as he began to rock with exhaustion, and shifted without
breaking the flow of his conversation to strip off his outermost garment
and wrap his trembling student in it. Obi-Wan remembered sleeping and
waking, still wrapped in the coat with his head pillowed on his Master's
legs while they both sat on the floor of the ship that was taking them
home. Qui-Gon had never asked for the robe back, and Obi-Wan hadn't
offered it.
It was what he wanted at the moment. Obi-Wan stripped absently and
wrapped himself in the almost-black folds of the garment. His bed,
which he hadn't slept in more that three times in the past five years,
was in the corner, and he found it instinctively. The position he
folded himself into was semi-fetal, letting the cloth gather in the
creases of his legs and clutching the excess against his chest.
Qui-Gon was going to give him up. At that hour of the night, he was
beyond all logical understanding of his Master's reasons, and even
beyond his belief that he could take the trials and become a knight.
His shivering misery was of a sort that he hadn't experienced in over a
decade, when he'd been a child that no one wanted on any terms. He
hadn't realized the extent to which Qui-Gon had become the force he
balanced himself against. Lying in the dark, he wasn't at all sure that
he was capable of functioning without it.
***
He woke to the sensation of a hand on his back, rubbing in long, uneven
circles. His face was rigid with what he gradually realized was dried
salt. He'd cried himself to sleep; that he remembered. They hadn't
been the tears he wanted, the wild, despairing ones, but he'd been sure
that if he let go to that extent, he wouldn't be able to reconstruct
himself. All he'd achieved was quiet misery, crying into his pillow and
the folds of the robe.
"Shhh. Are you all right?" Qui-Gon's voice.
"Master." *Mahstah.* His own accent too thick with his exhaustion. He
pulled himself upright, automatically pulling the folds close enough
around him that only his face and hands, and the tips of his feet were
visible.
"You frightened me, Obi-Wan. You didn't come back to our quarters after
you left Anakin. I was hours trying to imagine where you might be."
He knew where Qui-Gon was, his Master was a shimmering body within the
Force, but it took a long time for him to focus his eyes on the shape
kneeling beside the bed. The hand on his back had fallen away when he
sat up, but it rested by his hip, very still on the undisturbed blanket.
"Obi-Wan, what are you doing here?"
He was too tired to put any kind of armour on his words. "You're going
to give me up." Once he'd said it, a part of him wanted to scream all
his rage out. He'd been very, very good for as much of his life as he
could remember. He had obeyed and innovated and listened and learned
and negotiated and all of it was ultimately worthless because Qui-Gon
was going to give him up without any warning and take Anakin to train,
keep the boy and rock him and comfort him, and Obi-Wan would have to get
used again to sleeping in a room this silent. For a score of his
twenty-five years, he hadn't gotten really angry. *There is no emotion;
there is peace. There is no passion; there is serenity.*
The scream building inside him had to be twisting the Force it was so
powerful. //I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG!//
He couldn't remember the last time Qui-Gon had rocked him, but suddenly
Obi-Wan was in his Master's lap, gathered up into a tight ball of flesh
and clothing, and the older man was whispering into his hair. Very
softly, "No, no Obi-Wan. You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't.
You didn't. I still love you. It's all right. I'm so sorry, Padawan."
The scream never emerged, but he was crying harder than he had since
early childhood. He sobbed until he was sure he was going to be sick,
ripping out all the anxiety in himself that he could reach and shrieking
it into Qui-Gon's chest. It was the least dignified he had been in his
adult life. Qui-Gon was very still against him, almost silent and
shifting his hands only a little to keep his apprentice from falling or
hitting himself. Gradually, Obi-Wan cried himself out. He stayed
curled against his Master's body, too humiliated to raise his face. The
older man raised a hand to the bent neck and stroked it, waiting.
So softly he could barely hear it, "Obi-Wan."
"M-Master?"
"Is this mine?"
He realized that Qui-Gon's fingers were tangled in the robe. Of course
he would recognize it as his own; his signature was ingrained in the
cross-weave of it. He wondered if the Master had yet discovered that
his Padawan was naked underneath the stolen garment.
"Yes." His own voice was only a shivering choke.
"How long had you been crying?"
"I don't know. A while."
"In my robe."
"Yes."
Fingers stroked down his neck and slid beneath the robe at the point
where his shoulders widened. He could feel his Master's touch stiffen
suddenly as he realized the bareness of the man in his arms. It was
going to ruin him in a minute, that touch, but he could feel it all
along his spine, too good to give up. It didn't leave, though, and
after a moment it softened, and the back rub continued on the robe's
exterior. Qui-Gon's other hand braced his shoulder and shook him a
little.
"Listen to me, Padawan. I have no intention of sending you away. I
meant only that I believed you to be an adult and a warrior, and that
you were my equal. I am sorry I did not speak with you before I spoke
to the council."
Obi-Wan looked at him with a child's misery, curling even his
extremities protectively under the almost-black cloth. He wanted badly
to be alone to nurse his misery and quiet lust until morning. Even
after what was likely several hours' sleep, he was still so tired his
teeth chattered, and he was shaking with humiliation. In a few moments,
his body was going to betray him and he would have no excuses at all.
It would have made him very happy to disappear.
"Obi-Wan, look at me."
He looked. Qui-Gon's hands clamped around his jaw and he found himself
staring into flaming blue eyes, so close he could smell the day's
signatures of smoke and sweat in his Master's hair.
He didn't know what shimmer of the Force pushed him to do it, but he
leaned forward and kissed Qui-Gon hard on the mouth. It was closer to
the smell and feeling of his Master than he'd ever been in his life, and
his need to stay there effectively repressed all the screaming
rationality of his brain. Qui-Gon's beard was soft against his own
clean-shaven face, and he could feel the narrow lines of the older man's
lips against his mouth. For a split second, the man's mouth softened
and almost opened; he could feel the flare of lust which wasn't entirely
his own run down the length of his spine.
Then he was forcefully back, held away by heavy arms and an almost-
visible shield. The blue eyes staring at him held a great deal of
something he couldn't read. At any other time Obi-Wan might have
flinched, but he was far beyond humiliation, and all he could register
was the desire and the need for contact shrieking up and down his body.
"I think, Padawan, that you are not quite awake."
"Master," (*Mahstah* again, his mouth was so numb from that contact), "I
--"
"Come, Obi-Wan." Qui-Gon thrust himself upright and away. Halfway
across the room, he stooped and gathered up Obi-Wan's discarded
clothing. "I think you will sleep better in our quarters. You can come
as you are."
There wasn't anything he could say to that. He followed his Master
barefoot through corridors that contained only a very few people, none
of whom spared them more than a tired glance. The walk shook the last
tiredness out of his mind; the climate-controlled chill of the small
hours of the dark cycle slipped under the robe and reminded Obi-Wan both
of his near-nakedness and of the lines of his own body. By the time
they had completed the perimeter walk and risen the two necessary
levels, the shivering self-pity had evaporated and he was very close to
being angry again.
He'd forgotten the length of the nights on Coruscant. The pre-dawn
period in which the Jedi traditionally rose was still hours away. The
off-set day disoriented him: he hadn't been on Coruscant for any length
of time since his childhood, and the periods he spent there with his
Master had tended to be made of up snatched sleep and frantic
organization for the next mission. More often than not, his training
had taken place in the emptier parts of their assignment worlds, where
his existence with the living Force was less a matter of effort and more
one of existence within a dense biome. It was the only thing of peace
he'd been given -- those moments of stillness within a natural place,
psychically cradled by his Master while he pushed his limits outward.
In contrast, the city-planet made him restless and oddly rigid. When
Qui-Gon palmed open the door to their -- his -- quarters, Obi-Wan
stepped past him and stood so awkwardly that even his own reflection in
the darkened windows startled him. His face was raw and too open; he
could see his own resentment in the glass.
"Sit down, Obi-Wan. Talk to me." Qui-Gon had settled soundlessly,
folding his huge self into a position of such serenity that Obi-Wan
stared at him a little.
"Mas--"
"You can tell me anything you like. I want you to speak for a while."
The pallet in the corner had been his since he was a narrow-bodied
adolescent, and he settled onto it with the force of old habit. It
would have been customary for him to kneel, or sit cross-legged, but his
body's reaction was to pull close together, and he found himself with
his knees pulled up to his chest. He started talking with his face
almost buried in his robe-covered knees; Qui-Gon was totally hidden from
his line of sight.
"When I was fifteen, we went on a diplomatic mission to Tofino, and
afterwards you took me away to the seacoast there to train. We stayed
in a hostel, it was huge and so stark it felt like an institution. I
remember thinking that the owner must have had Jedi training, because it
looked so much like the Temple, the rooms just a bed, a chair, and a
wash stand, not even a writing table or a desk. You took me running
along the beach. It was remarkable -- volcanic, I think -- there were
hollows in the rocks that filled with water at low tide, and there were
so many small creatures in them.
"The beaches had the finest sand I'd ever encountered, and it got in
everything. All my clothes were full of it, and it was in my hair and
the hollows of my ears. The rooms didn't have private bath facilities,
there were only bathing rooms on every floor. The one on our floor had
three bathtubs, I think, all free-standing, and its plumbing was
exposed. I was bathing there, late in the afternoon, when you came in.
I must have looked like a drowned rat to you -- I had been immersing my
head to rinse the sand away. You didn't bathe, just stripped to the
waist and washed down, and then came over and knelt beside me. I still
don't know if you knew I was watching you; you never give anything away.
"You rested one hand on the back of my neck and just rubbed me until I
felt every muscle in my back unclench. I was almost liquid under your
fingers when you let me go and started washing my hair. It felt so
good, your fingers and the warm water and very bright sunlight coming in
through the high windows. When you'd rinsed me, you took a cloth and
dried my face off, and you cupped my cheek and looked at me until I
couldn't remember to breathe. And then you dressed and left.
"I sat there until the water was colder than the room. You had bathed
me like that before, but not for years. I was far too old for it, but
the only thing that occurred to me at the time was a massive joy that
you still loved me."
Silence. He could feel Qui-Gon's eyes on him in the dark, and could see
the man's silhouette in the nighttime Coruscant brilliance that filtered
thinly through the tinted view.
"How dare you. How dare you let me love you if you were only going to
give me up."
"I never stopped loving you," Qui-Gon said. "You have been the centre
of my life for a dozen years. When you were a child, you would curl
yourself against my body and sleep there, letting your shields come down
so that I could read your dreams. I do not sleep securely until I know
where you are. I did not search the entire Temple for you on a whim."
The wall against Obi-Wan's back was cool. Not cold in the way that a
ship's bulkhead was cold, but stripped from the night air and the
extreme altitude of the Temple. It would have felt good against his
face, raw as it was. His skin ached from the time he'd spent crying.
"Come here, my Obi-Wan."
It took him a long time to straighten each of his joints and cross the
space to kneel in front of his master. It was a reflexive response to
the command. He would have preferred to stay protectively wrapped
around himself on his pallet, but years of training brought him over,
arranged him on his knees, and brought his hand out to touch his
Master's feet in the small ritual of respect he'd learned as a tiny boy.
Fingers touched the back of Obi-Wan's head and traced around to his
ears. He didn't raise his face.
"You have grown into a creature so beautiful that at times I do not
recognize you. I do see you as you are now, but I also see you as you
were. Sometimes I forget the child, and sometimes I forget the man.
For both these lapses I am sorry." The fingers had descended to his
neck, warm against the chilled edges of his skin. He leaned into the
touch, relaxing as Qui-Gon spoke. "You are going to be a magnificent
knight."
Obi-Wan's posture was naturally bent in his kneeling position, and it
was entirely simple for him to complete the bow and bury his face in his
Master's knees. The fingers against his neck held him there, and
relaxed only a little when he straightened and raised his face to look
at the older man.
"I wonder," Obi-Wan said, "does it seem so odd to you that I might love
you as much?" Qui-Gon only watched him inquisitively. "Why push me
away?"
"I have given you my reasons."
"No. You were talking about love. I'm talking about sex. I kissed
you and you pushed me. Do you love me?"
"I love you." Ripples of psychic tolerance were the only force
rendering the conversation at all comfortable. He'd grown used to this
extra communication between Jedi; he wondered if the absence of it was
what made him awkward around strangers.
"Do you want me?"
A chuckle. "I would be a fool not to. I sometimes think I was given a
houri rather than an apprentice. Strangers turn to watch you in the
streets."
"Then why?"
"I will not have you only because you are tired and needy, Padawan."
The statement was oddly fierce. His Master's honour had flared, but so
had his pride. *I will not have you for pity.*
Very slowly, very clearly. "What do you want?"
"I want you to come to me as an adult, fully cognisant of what you do
and what it means." Big hands slid from Obi-Wan's neck to his
shoulders, gently pulled him to his feet and over to the blankets. "I
will not have you in any other way. Now go to bed."
He sat, quietly, while Qui-Gon stripped and settled down to sleep.
Years of meditation had taught him to sit inhumanly still, and in the
darkness of his corner, he knew he was nearly invisible to his Master.
When the older man had quieted, Obi-Wan gathered his blankets and
shifted them the few feet necessary to put himself close against the
bed. He settled again by reflex. He hadn't slept on the pallet since
his last stay on Coruscant, but it was still very much his, and it
wrapped around him with the familiar comfort of his own bed.
Softly, "Obi-Wan, come and sleep with me." He hadn't realized that Qui-
Gon was still awake. One big hand had slipped over the edge of the bed
to touch him, tracing the line of his side from shoulder to hip.
It wasn't an offer he was going to refuse. Qui-Gon had shifted back
against the wall to make room for him, and a massive arm closed around
his waist as Obi-Wan settled against the older man's body. Warm fingers
slipped into the front of his outsized robe and rubbed his belly gently,
more intimate than the touch would have been when he was a child, but
still entirely comforting. The heat of the contact relaxed him,
finally, and he drifted, buried in his Master's smell and too tired to
generate thoughts about anything more complicated than sleep.