Archive: MA and SWAL
Archive Date: October 3, 2000
Feedback: *eeep* If you would be so kind...
Notes: Kudos to the person who can identify what CD I was
listening to while I wrote this.
Pairing: Q/O
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What if Obi-Wan had died instead of Qui-Gon?
Warnings: Darkish. An eensy bit twisted. And probably a bit
uncharacteristic.
I wait in the silent darkness by the cool stone your head rests on. I will say I dreamed of you in the darkness and the sunshine, dreamed of you in the rain and heat and snow, felt your phantom lips against mine a thousand times. Was it all a denial, my padawan?
I dreamed of you before you were born, I know it. My laughing starlit one, golden-haired in beauty, swift and strong and graceful.
So swift and strong. Overconfident.
My Obi-Wan. How foolish you were. Rushing ahead like that into death. Doubtless you would have said the same of me had I been cut down. When you fell, your eyes meeting mine in a silent agony of unspoken words, my world turned over.
And the universe took a sharp left turn, but I can't tell whether it's for the better or worse. All I can see is my own darkness, all I can remember is an old poem about the light swallowed by the sun. Does life go on as you get colder?
My hand reaches out to touch your cold one. Limp against me, willing to be moved. You always hated to be manipulated. I would think you'd rise up and declare you were perfectly able to arrange yourself on your own pyre!
I just don't want to believe you're gone. I just don't want to miss you tonight. I don't want to go back to Coruscant, take Anakin Skywalker as my padawan and move on like you never existed. I don't want to breathe another breath without you.
I press your hand to my cheek, tracing the contours of the delicate bones, the softness of the skin between every callus from practice. I honed this body to its perfection, and now it is only flesh before me and you are gone.
The world turned over when you fell. I held you as you died, as you whispered a last confession to me. "I love you," you said. Helplessly. What could I do? I made my own reply.
"And I love you," the words came out choked, glass broken against my skin. The moment of truth. "I love you." I said it time after time after time to you there, trying desperately to make up for what I meant to say and never did.
Obi-Wan! I look into your face, that cold stillness of death lying there about to be burned. Oh, please, Obi-Wan, don't leave me. My lips form the words, too late. I should have said them sometime before...in the Council room, outside the Queen's ship, just before we fought the Sith, during the fight. Anytime but now.
Too late. It seems to be my destiny. The light swallowed by the sun, the brightness you were crushed by darkness incarnate.
I lean over, and do now what I never dared in your life, I kiss you once. Gently. And the taste of you is like a star, sweat, tears, fire, and blood mixed together.
"Oh love." The thought slips unbidden into my mind, and I feel a wave of fresh air breeze through my heart.
"Will you always mourn, Master?" the voice is light behind me. And I turn to see you. Sunshine. Dearest. Obi-Wan. Holding out your hands.
"Come with me, love," you command, and what can I do but obey?
Leaving my body behind, I take to the stars with you, sparing a bare instant to see darkness and despair take over the galaxy.
I had to give up forever to touch you. And it is worth it.