Archive: SWAL, m_a, WWOMB and JAOA
The lightsaber met his hand squarely, the grip smacking solidly into his
palm even as he thumbed the controls, bringing the blade to visciously
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 lose 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 insistance 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 acheing 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...]
JAOA Webpage: http://digitalmidnight.simplenet.com/garden/jaoa.html
Category: AU, Angst
Disclaimer:
Feedback: Yes yes yes... always appreciated, frequently
begged for.
Notes: [this is telepathy] and these are thoughts
Pairing: Q/O
Rating: PG
Series: JAOA
Spoilers: Minor JA and heavy TPM spoilers
Summary: From darkness comes hope.