Archive: SWA-L, M&A, WWOMB. Elsewhere by permission only.
Category: post-TPM
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Anakin, Qui-Gon,
etc. etc. I own this story.
Notes: This is the "perfect love and perfect trust" story I mentioned
earlier. I've been working on it since before the thread came up, and
it was just so weird to have that thread surface as I was finishing
this. Slashy minds think alike, I suppose.
Thanks to Thea for coming up with the title for this one--an oddly
appropriate title, since I was writing a similar story already titled
"My Obi-Wan." How's *that* for slashy minds thinking alike? Thea, I
owe you one.
Pairing: Q/O
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: TPM & Jedi Apprentice
Summary: Obi-Wan shelters Anakin as he was once sheltered.
I stroke Anakin's hair and let him sleep a little longer. It's barely dawn, and he's had a wearing life recently. His newly-cut hair bristles against my hand, and I touch his mind, gently, and let my thoughts wander.
I've listened to the talk of people outside the Temple a lot in these past few weeks. Casual conversation on the Queen's ship, friends talking in the corridors and on the walks of Coruscant. They say there's no such thing as perfect love, or perfect trust. They are not Jedi. They think that perfection means no arguments, no disagreements--being perfectly of one mind on all things. Again, they are not Jedi. We know the universe so differently.
We know perfect love and perfect trust. We see it around us from the day we are brought to the Temple. Many of us learn it on a new level from our Masters, and teach it to our Padawans in turn. I know I learned it from my Master, as he learned it from his, and I will try to teach it to Anakin.
The day Qui-Gon took me as his Padawan--oh, that day I knew that I would be his for the rest of my life. I was not quite thirteen, and the bond which had been growing between us was like nothing I had ever experienced. When he called me "Padawan" in the mines, I was too focussed to really process it, but later...ah, later, when he told me he'd meant it, that he would not leave me behind--
Oh, my Master, I thought I would die of love in that instant.
That night was the first night I spent curled up in his arms, safe and warm against the bulk of his body. I didn't think, then, of what it meant that Padawans slept with their Masters, didn't think that Qui-Gon was giving up the pleasure of sleeping with a lover. I was too young to consider such things--I knew only that I was loved and wanted and cherished, and that I was at my Master's side. Night and day, day and night--it was five years before we were apart by choice. Five years before I willingly spent one night away from him, and that was because I had to infiltrate a smuggler camp.
I didn't sleep well, and the next night I was safe in his arms again. Perfect love and perfect trust, as only the Jedi know it.
Anakin stirs against me, and I return to stroking his hair, feeling him slip back down into dreams. One day, Anakin and I will have what my Master and I had, I am sure of it. I know that my bond with my Master began abnormally--growing between us no matter how he tried to deny it--and that this one will come more naturally, from both sides. I know that Anakin will not feel the desperate insecurity I felt at first, when I thought my Master didn't want me.
I look forward to training him.
Shortly after my thirteenth birthday, Qui-Gon and I arrived back at the Temple, and I went to see my friends while Qui-Gon went to the Council to formally register our relationship. Oh, they'd been told, and technically I had been Qui-Gon's Padawan since before my birthday, but he hadn't faced the Council and claimed me.
I found Bant first and snuck up on her. She ended up chasing me down the hallways, demanding to know what I was doing back, and I teased her and refused to tell. She knew I was a Padawan--Qui-Gon had recently cut my hair, and my braid hung to my shoulder--but she didn't know whose. We went to the evening meal together, and I fed most of my dinner to Reeft, who hadn't lost his appetite in the weeks I'd been gone. I never could figure out how he stayed so thin. It was good to be back with my friends, although I could hear Bruck and Aalto across the room. As usual, the things they had to say about me weren't very nice, and Bant touched my hand.
"Don't worry about them, Obi-Wan. They can't see your braid from here." She sat back and eyed me speculatively. "Now, Obi-Wan, my friend, who could your Master be?"
I grinned at her. "Guess."
Across the room, Bruck and Aalto went silent, and I looked up, surprised. They were rarely quiet, and when on a rant about me, they could go on for hours. Master Qui-Gon--my Master, stood over them, his arms crossed. I could feel Bruck hoping and not bothering to shield his feelings. Hoping that Qui-Gon was here to take him as Padawan.
When my Master spoke, his voice was distant, detached. "You might want to consider the impact your words have on others. A Jedi must always be aware of the consequences." He looked down at them, his eyes narrowed, and suddenly his voice was sharp and commanding. "Padawan!" He spun and headed for the door, and I had to run after him--and I stumbled.
"Oafy-Wan," Bruck muttered, and he and Aalto snickered--until they noticed that Qui-Gon had stopped, pulled me close to him, and was watching them with angry blue eyes. His arm was across my chest, and I was half-hidden in his cloak, and I had never felt so wanted and cherished in my life. He didn't need to say a word to them, just held me and stared them down.
Perfect, my Master. A trust and a love you gave and never betrayed, never withdrew, never shied from. Oh, my Master, will I be to Anakin what you have been to me?
I've kept in touch with most of my friends from the Temple. Bant became a Padawan a few months after I did, which delighted me no end. She'll be a good Jedi Knight some day. Garen Muln and Reeft, who had been inseparable since they met, were taken as pair-bonded Padawans by a bonded Knight-Master pair. Unusual, but the Council hated wasting resources, and lifebonded Jedi teams were a precious resource. If the bond formed while the teams were children, teaching the children became difficult and took up to six years longer than normal--but it was well worth it.
Garen and Reeft were also unusual in that they were lifebonded and yet not sexually intimate--both had chosen celibacy. According to my Master, that made it easier to train them, and they could always become intimate when they became Knights. Once, when I was seventeen and being impertinent, I asked how the sleeping arrangements were handled in their situation. Qui-Gon had frowned at me and replied "To suit the needs of the situation, young Padawan. As are ours."
I'd propped my chin on my fists and said "Well, then, what do you get out of our arrangements, Master? I get to feel safe and warm, and you get to be kicked in the shins--is that it?"
"You stopped kicking me in the shins when you were fifteen, my Obi-Wan. Now behave."
My breath caught in my throat when he said that--"my Obi-Wan". Oh, my Master--yes, I am yours, always yours, any time you say the word. He knew that, of course, since he sometimes knew me better than I knew myself. He also knew something I didn't know. A lifebond was growing between us, and the older I got, the harder he found it to resist. When I was a child, he didn't need to resist--young boys held no appeal for him sexually, and he could sleep with me and just...sleep.
As I got older, however...sometimes I would cuddle close in the middle of the night and feel his erection against me. Sometimes I would wake up and find that I had twined my limbs around his. I was unconsciously reaching for him, our bodies craving the intimacy of our minds.
I hope that does not happen with Anakin. I don't want him to suffer the separation Qui-Gon and I did if something happens to me. And, frankly, I don't want another partner. Master Yoda tells me that this is normal for the surviving member of a lifebond, and that I may never want or take another partner, for sex or companionship. Anakin snuggles closer and murmurs "Mom" against my chest, and I smile down at him. A Padawan is companion enough, I think. While I have this boy, I shall not be alone.
Eventually, keeping my hands off my Master became well-nigh impossible, and I knew he was having equal trouble--and yet he refused to give in. I was his apprentice, and he was resisting with all his strength. Both of us sought sex elsewhere, trying to lose ourselves in other people.
I was eighteen when I lost my virginity, in an alleyway behind a bar, with a dark-eyed boy a year younger than myself. I'd done my research, used protection to avoid disease, prepared him carefully and tenderly, and when I came inside him I felt my Master shudder with his own release, tied to me even in this.
When I came back to our rooms, he refused to meet my eyes. I didn't bother to wash the scent of sex off of my body, the scent of the other boy, and that night he woke me a number of times with his restlessness and his arousal. Towards dawn, I turned towards him, and for the first time, I deliberately molded my body to his and held him. He was asleep, and my touch quieted him instantly. I knew then that the lifebond was there, joining us together more intimately than I had dreamed.
I also knew that he trusted me, and that he would never risk shattering that trust. And I trusted him to make the correct decision for him and for me, in this, and so it was two more years before he and I became lovers.
Oh, there was no impatience in the waiting, no feelings of loss or inadequacy or uncertainty. Simply the waiting--and I knew what he was waiting for, and respected and loved him the more for it. He wanted me to know my own sexuality inside and out, and he wanted me to be secure enough in myself to be his lover as well as his apprentice.
And so, one night when I was twenty and we were getting ready for bed, I took his face in my hands and kissed him, slipping my tongue into his mouth and pressing my body close to his. His arms moved around me, held me closer, and we stumbled to the bed together, blind to everything but each other.
I have so many pleasant memories of my Master, so many times he loved and trusted without question--so many times I loved and trusted him. That first time is the sweetest of those, the sweeter for the waiting and growing that led up to it. The sweeter for changing nothing between us outside of bed, because I was old enough and sure enough to handle the responsibility of being his lover and his Padawan; old enough and sure enough to know where all the lines were drawn.
I was angry when he said he would take Anakin as his Padawan, angry that he hadn't warned me beforehand. But the Council questioned his judgement, and I supported him, trusting him: he would never say I was ready unless I was. Not my Master. Never my Master. He'd told me some months before that I would soon be ready, and it was simply a matter of time after that.
Yes, I was startled, and angry, but I realized that Anakin was a catalyst, not a cause. Oh, and I knew then and know now that the boy is dangerous, but he will be more dangerous untrained. Both I and Qui-Gon recognized this, and so I promised without reservation to train the boy.
The trials were so easy after what I had been through. So easy, as easy as breathing. Before them, Master Yoda questioned me closely about my reaction to my Master's death. "Jealous, were you?"
"No. Why would I be jealous, Master?"
"Thought of the boy, did he."
"Master Yoda, Qui-Gon was my lifebond. He did not need to tell me anything for myself. He needed only to speak as one Jedi to another, of the mission, of the future."
Yoda narrowed his eyes. "How felt you when you killed the Sith?"
"Calm, Master. I was frightened, and I knew my Master was dying. But I also knew that there was only one way to defeat the Sith, and I gave myself to the Force."
He nodded and turned away. "Go, then, into the room. Take your trials. See you when you have finished, I will."
I went into the room and took the trials and passed. And so I am here, now, with Anakin cuddled against me as I once cuddled against Qui-Gon, a child safe in the arms of his guide and protector.
Anakin stirs and stretches, his blue eyes blinking up at me. "Master?"
"Yes, Padawan?"
"Do you really want to be my Master?"
I look down at him gravely and tug on his braid. "Yes, my Anakin. I really do."
He smiles, then, a smile so brilliant, so beautiful, it takes my breath away. A smile of perfect love, and perfect trust.
I hope I shall keep the right to that smile as well as my Master did.