Pairing: Q/O
Rating: G
Series: I suppose, if anything, this is my
"Post-Viewing" series, one story written for
every time I see the movie. If so, this follows
"Landslide", and "Afterwords".
Spoilers: Yes, set in two periods during TPM.
Summary: A Master and his Apprentice discover
that there is something even more powerful than
the Force.
Warnings: I don't use betas. :( Any mistakes
are solely my fault and the fault of my *#^&@
spellcheck.
Apart from everything else that is happening, I did not expect this overwhelming silence.
I should have told him in advance, I owed him that - his eyes told me what I already knew, a second after the words left my lips. Shock, then sadness, and then - silence. Nothing. I cannot hear him above the din of all the other voices around us, and there is no time for me to take him somewhere separate and tell him what I feel. He has taken my silence as a rejection; I am to take his as an acceptance.
I don't know what I could tell him, to explain and make it better; I do not know how to tell him because I do not understand it, myself. How it is that this voice is in my mind - not like any other, not like his; but it calls to me. The boy calls to me, and no-one else has done that to me, save one: not since another young boy called out to me did I know anything of what this bond was to be. Take me as your Padawan, Master. Help me. I could not escape it then; I cannot now. Perhaps I am too old to try; perhaps I have learned too much about futility and destiny and pain to even make the attempt.
Perhaps it was a lesson that I taught him too well that separates us - to listen to the now, to the present, to the living, and not to focus too much on the future. The only thing that I could give him now is my surety about the future, and his place in it. Words mean so little between us, two people for whom the greatest communication has always come without words; it is a sacrifice that we have made without knowing - until this moment - that it was a sacrifice, and not a gift.
Perhaps I could only tell him the truth: that I knew, by waiting until we were not alone, but in the Council Chamber - where even his defiance, so like my own, would not come to the fore in the circle of his elders - to speak what I had to tell him, could be my only recourse to hide my own fear. Do I have the strength, I wonder, to tear myself down in his eyes? Does every Master ask himself this question, when his Padawan is no longer a student, and must have the soft layers of adoration and worship and tradition - and love - removed from his eyes so that he may, in turn, become the teacher?
Could I tell him the other things I have long kept silent, and fill in this deep distance between us? That I long to hear my name escape from his lips - not my title, not his submission to me, but my name, spoken to me as easily as I speak his: Obi-Wan - spoken from one who is both my equal and my better, the student who will be a greater man than I could have imagined? That I have long felt a need that I could not speak, that my hand has dropped away from his shoulder so often that I am loathe to touch him lest the flood I hold back from him would overwhelm us both, that I fear, that I - love? Could I tell him now, and would he understand?
He is so close to me, now; his back is to the wall, his arms are close around his body, he is pretending to sleep. He is very, very careful not to let me near, although I could reach out with my sleeping arms and draw him in without moving my body more than a few inches. But I will not. It would not bring us any closer; it would not banish this silence between us. There is no time, there is much to do, much to say, there are others who need us, now. It is a hard life; we live to serve, and by serving, we live.
Soon, when this battle is over, when peace is restored and the enemy has been vanquished - then I will break this silence between us. I will make him understand. I must.
Apart from everything else that is happening, I did not expect this overwhelming silence.
I cannot stop myself from carding my fingers through his hair, even though I cannot feel the touch of those coarse threads any longer. I cannot stop the tears that plash down on his face, and slide over his cheeks, as if he were mourning with me. The guards will be here soon to take him away; I cannot let him go, until then.
I cannot stop myself from calling out his name, in my mind, hoping for the response that does not come. This silence is overwhelming, it is taking my breath away. I could give in to it, I could stop my heart from beating, I know how. Every thrum mocks me, especially with my face pressed against his cooling flesh, warmed from my breath alone. I want him to tell me - something, anything. Some final lesson I have not yet learned. But this is it; this is all - he said I had nothing left to learn from him. He was wrong.
This, this is the final thing that I have to learn: how to live with this silence. I should be glad, everything in my life has been taught to me to bring me to this point, and to be glad. My Master - Qui-Gon; his name is mine to speak, now - is One with the Force. He is at rest, at peace. It is what we live for, it is what we die for. There is no emotion, there is no ignorance, there is no passion, there is no death. There is only the Force, which does not speak in any one voice, but in all of them. I know this, as sure as I know that I must make myself glad that he has achieved what he was meant to achieve, because that is what he would expect of me, not this pale mourning shroud. But not just yet. Not until the guards come.
Now, while we are alone, and I hold him in my arms, and his voice is still a faint echo in the farthest corners of my mind - not quite silenced as long as I can remember - now I can mourn not the man, but everything I did not tell him. I feared telling him of my impatience, of my jealousy, and of my want - I feared it because I always felt, in my deepest depths, that he knew of it, all of it. Especially the last - the faintest touch of his hand on my body that would make me tremble, and long, and want for what I could not have. He knew, and he did not speak, and I followed his lead in that as in everything. I always felt, somehow, there would be time, just a moment, just for us. There wasn't.
And the boy - how can I speak about the boy, now? Now that he is mine, that his future is mine to mold not because he called to me, but because of a promise given, in an attempt to stave off the fast-encroaching silence? I do not pretend to know what he knew about the boy, but I will try to learn. Perhaps - perhaps the boy can tell me what it is that I missed. Perhaps he is the one who can teach me how to break this unendurable loss that is now within me.
I know that I cannot fill in this silence alone. I speak, and speak, and speak, and still it is there, all around me. There is no-one for me to call out to, anymore. I wonder if he remembered how I called to him when I was a boy, before we were bonded? Before I knew that we would not need words, before I even knew how to do what I was doing, before I was taught that it was what we were to do - as Master, as Apprentice - I was doing it. He was always there. Now, there is only my voice - my voice, alone in this echoing chamber, and my body, and his, and this vast, limitless silence.