Archive: m_a, SWAL, WWOMB - pretty much anybody who wants it can keep it.
Author's Webpage: http://digitalmidnight.simplenet.com/garden/index.html
Category: Angst, H/C, Song-fic, Crossover (SW/VC), Challenge (whew!)
Disclaimer: George and Anne are the gods who own everything...I'm just messing around. The music belongs to Melissa Etheridge and Island Records.
Feedback: YES! It keeps my plot bunnies fed and healthy. Though after this you might want to starve them to make them shut up...
Notes: Note on how this came about: AH!!! Get the plot bunny off! Get it off!!...So there I was, blissfully typing along on the next part of JAOA. And on the other side of my computer screen I was writing away on a VampChron spec. Then I remembered that m_a challenge about vampires and Jedis...and the plot bunnies started to gather with evil glints in their beady little red eyes. And then this song came on and the lyrics clicked and I've totally lost my sanity! It's not VtM - I write VC, but hey, VtM was based on VC so it kinda counts...Don't worry, no prior knowledge of anything vamp related is required. ;P
[This is telepathy] and these are thoughts.
Pairing: Q/O, O/m
Rating: NC-17
Summary: What if the Children of Darkness existed on Coruscant...?
Warnings: AU AU AU AU AU AU AU and I don't mean like jaoa AU! Really REALLY out there AU! Oh yeah, and a nice big warning for violence, because it just sort of comes with the territory.

You've heard it on the street
Craving the affection
Your blood is full of heat
They don't listen to your reasons
As original as sin
Deny all that you feel
And they will bring you home again

And as you pray in your darkness
For wings to set you free
You are bound to your silent legacy

Rain sluiced down between the tall towers in endless waterfalls, gathering on balcony and platform in pools and drips until what might have been a light shower at the highest level drained into a cold, heavy downpour in the shadows of the lower regions. It sent the denizens scurrying to their dim dwellings and bolt holes as the bone chilling water cascaded down, splashing in grease rimmed puddles and falling away into drains that lead to even lower, darker levels.

The puddles splashed beneath his boots as he walked, ripples skating out across their surface to merge with the ripples of raindrops in iridescent waves. He kept his head down, hood pulled forward to shield his face from the rain. The running lights of a passing shuttle struck the water slick walkway but he resolutely turned his eyes away from the enticing glitter of it, closing them until the shuttle had passed to block out the hypnotic dance of light streams.

When the darkness returned he sighed, slowly opening his eyes again. The rain had seeped beneath the edge of his cloak, trickling cold and wet down his back. A shake of his head tossed back the hood, letting the rain run free across the planes of upturned face and throat. It was cold, but no colder than the chill which gnawed, hungrily, at his frozen bones. Reaching up, he slicked back the sharp spikes of his hair, wringing water from the longer queue at the nape of his neck.

Around him the lower levels had fallen nearly silent, still and quiet beneath the heavy hand of the falling rain. It was always dim, sunlight trickling only feebly past the long shadows of the towers even on the brightest of days. Now, in the evening hours, the darkness that engulfed the lower levels was thick and absolute, an enclosing night that stretched its velvet fingers over everything within reach. The lights that broke it, glowing fitfully along the walkways and platforms, sizzled sullenly as water splashed down on them.

Still and silent...but if he opened his mind the whole of the level, the whole of all of wet and darkened Coruscant for leagues in any direction across its entertwined surface, would resound with the whispered voices of a million beings. The soft, incessant breath of countless thoughts, pressing against his own, a tidal wave of individual drops merged into a fearsome tsunami that drove down upon him with numbing force.

And even if he did not, if he raised every shield and barrier, locked them safe and seamless around himself...even then, the city spoke with a thousand voices.

A thousand million lives, given voice in the wet, lush beat of countless hearts; a rhythm that thrummed and throbbed through the air around him, beckoning with sweet promises of warmth and comfort.

He moaned softly, arms crossed tight across his chest. The empty ache inside coiled like sharp splintered knives in his guts, slashing and rending in agonizing slow motion. Swallowing, he pressed the tip of his tongue tight to the closed barrier of his teeth. The night is early, the ache cried, hunger drawing at his flesh and bone.

"The night is long," he whispered to himself. His voice bounced off the surrounding walls, a sharp and staccato sound that made him flinch and half raise his hands to his ears. Pressing his lips firmly together, he hugged himself tighter and shivered. The nights were long, and the hunger that gnawed at him only made them a thousand times longer. "Strength," he breathed, the sound too soft to echo.

Another shuttle passed, lights flaring in the darkness. He jerked, blinded - lights danced on the puddles, on the splash and play of water, refracted in each falling drop. Light all around him, dancing and weaving, rainbow prisms of beautiful brilliance that stole the very breath from his lungs.

Darkness reclaimed the walkway as the shuttle continued on, but he never noticed.

It wasn't until the spoon was forcibly taken from his hand and a large palm connected, none too gently, with his cheek that Qui-Gon recovered enough of himself to slowly blink eyes gone dry from staring.

Mace Windu's face swam partially into focus, a concerned frown creasing the Jedi Master's forehead as he leaned over the other man. His hand was raised to strike again but Qui-Gon sluggishly shook his head, holding up his own arm to forestall the action. His eyes felt as though they were covered in a layer of glue, his temples throbbing as the ache at the center of his skull took shape, another smaller ache centered over his jaw attesting to Windu's strength.

Senses came back slowly, a checklist that he went down and catalogued. Touch and sight - sound, the muted flow of conversation in the dining hall; taste, the dry feel of his tongue and a hint of coppery sharpness where he had bitten the inside of his cheek. The smell of foods, warm bread and a fish based stew, pungent and subtly sweet; reminding him that he hadn't had more than a bite at the same time that it provoked a stomach churning nausea.

Windu gripped his shoulder, giving him a rough shake. "Qui-Gon?"

"I'm here," he muttered, the words coming out slurred. Swallowing painfully, he tried again. "I'm here, Mace."

The other Master relaxed, dropping down to the seat beside Qui-Gon. Rubbing at his eyes, Qui-Gon leaned one elbow against the edge of the table as the room wavered around him dizzily. Windu's hand was at his back instantly, a solid point of reality. [FOCUS.] The command echoed through his already pounding head and Qui-Gon winced, glaring muzzily at the other man.

"You were out for ten minutes or more," Windu told him by way of apology. Startled, Qui-Gon glanced around the room. The table immediately around them had been cleared but the people closest at the surrounding tables were making a studious effort to be engaged in conversation, their eyes turned away. Qui-Gon breathed a sigh, thankful for small blessings, and rubbed ruefully at the ache in his cheek.

"I'd only just sat down," he recalled haltingly, frowning in an effort to recall the previous moments. "I was starting to eat when..." He shook his head, spreading his hands to indicate his helplessness in the face of the sudden assault.

Windu nodded slightly, sighing. "What was it this time?"

Qui-Gon winced, pinching the bridge of his nose where the ache had settled in and throbbed with the tempo of his pulse. "Lights," he said slowly, gingerly calling forth the image that had blotted out all else. "Rainbows in light...spectrums of colors, more than I knew I could see. A web of them, dancing and rippling in different patterns."

The other Jedi Master frowned, tipping his head back in thought. "Rainbows...Crystals? A prism would produce a spectrum..."

Qui-Gon heard his voice continue dimly, as though from a distance. Above it, drowning it out, was a deep steady throbbing. Rhythmic, it pulsed with a regular beat, each one almost a physical thing that swept across his skin and vibrated through the bones of his body. How could Windu keep talking as though he heard nothing? Why did no one else react to the sound? Qui-Gon opened his mouth, started to speak - and stopped, cold, as his eyes fell on Windu.

There, in the long lines of the Jedi Master's throat, the pulse fluttered beneath his dark skin in exactly the same rhythm as the throbbing.

Qui-Gon tried to swallow and found that he couldn't. Closing his eyes tightly he tried again, hearing the distant rush in his ears as the blood dropped away from his head, lurid red splashes streaking across the inside of his eyelids. "Mace." His voice was a thready whisper, but it cut the other Master short in mid sentence. "Mace, I'm going to be ill."

Windu was on his feet at once, hands cupping the other man's head. The Force rolled over Qui-Gon in a wave, warm and soothing, beating back the nausea that threatened. In one moment of perfect clarity Qui-Gon heard Windu's call for a Healer, heard the commotion of the room around them. In the next the dark well caught him, dropping sight and sound away too fast for him to grasp, and he knew nothing more.

It was the wet, at last, that drew him from the maze of lights. Seeping under his cloak and into his clothes, plastering trousers and tunic to chilled skin, it eventually became unpleasant enough to notice. Shaking his head slowly to clear it of the lingering visions, he glanced out at the walkways. He had no idea how long he had stood there, entranced by the flickering raindrops. Long enough to be soaked through, cold and wet.

The hunger beat in him, fiercer than ever. He whimpered softly, pressing his elbows tight against his ribs as though he might capture the hunger there and somehow contain it.

The rain was letting up, the drops smaller and fewer between then they had been. Farther along the walkway, just short of the junction to the next, was the flickering light of a tavern of some sort. The door opened, and even from where he stood he could smell the sharp scents of alcohol and bodies, feel the warmth of the interior drifting out to tantalize him.

Two beings emerged out onto the walkway. One chirruped in outrage as raindrops hit its feathered crest, shaking its head and ducking back beneath the awning to rearrange its wrappings. The other humanoid laughed softly, a sound laced with the fumes of cheap brandy.

The man shivered harder, pressing back into the shadows of the walkway. The pair walked by, never glancing at him. He followed them with his eyes, biting his lip until he tasted the sharp tang of his own blood, using the taste and pain to distract himself from the scents and sounds of the two.

The walkway seemed all the colder and darker for their passage, the very surface of the walls beating with the pulse that tormented him. He hesitated, then sucked in a sharp breath and walked with quick steps towards the tavern. It was light and warmth, sounds other than his own voice and a chance to be dry. It was reckless and foolish, but it beckoned with a familiar hand and he no longer felt capable of denying it.

Qui-Gon rolled his head back against the pillow, working the tension from the base of his neck. "I'm sorry," he said again, knowing it was foolish but unable to help himself.

Windu shook his head but the ghost of a smile hovered on his lips. "There's nothing to be sorry for," he assured the Jedi Master. The smile peeked into existance, shared between the two friends. "Though it was quite a sight. It's not every day a Master falls like a felled tree in the middle of the dining hall. I'm sure you've supplied the initiates with gossip for the next few weeks."

Qui-Gon sighed and Windu laughed softly. The laughter dropped away as he put a hand on his friend's shoulder, squeezing softly. "The Healers couldn't find anything..."

"Again," Qui-Gon finished, the word bitten off sharply.

"Again," Windu allowed with a sigh. "The only defining factor is that it began after..." He trailed off awkwardly and Qui-Gon winced, closing his eyes.

"Say it," he said harshly, tensing as though against a blow.

Windu's hand pressed comfortingly against his shoulder. "After Kenobi died," the other Master finished softly. Qui-Gon flinched, letting his breath out in a slow hiss.

"You felt his death," Windu continued gently.

"Too late," Qui-Gon snarled, struggling up. Windu's hands tightened, pressing him back against the sleeping couch.

"You felt it," Windu repeated, eyeing him steadily. Qui-Gon relented, falling back to the couch but turning his gaze away from the other Master's, the loosened strands of his greying hair falling forward across his eyes. "You felt it and you followed it, Qui-Gon. We thought we might lose you, you had passed so far into the Force. The Healers think you damaged something, doing that." Dry fingertips passed lightly across the other man's brow, brushing back the loose hair. "Your shields are fine...here. But on some level they have fallen. The things you see are real, but distorted. Where you're getting them from - whether something is projecting or you are tapping into something unconsciously - the Healers don't know."

Qui-Gon clasped his hands across his chest, his gaze turned resolutely towards the ceiling. "Then the flaw is in me," he said flatly.

"Injury, not flaw," Windu chided. "The Healers can't pinpoint it, so the diagnosis isn't exact. It may heal on its own, given time."

"Or it may not," Qui-Gon finished dryly. Exhaling, he closed his eyes. "Does it matter?"

There was silence for a moment, then Windu sighed heavily. "You're a good man, Qui-Gon Jinn," he said evenly. "But you've a stubborn streak to rival the greed in a Hutt." Iron fingers gripped Qui-Gon's chin, turning his head around and forcing him to look at the other Master. "It was not your fault. There was nothing you could have done."

"Maybe," Qui-Gon allowed. "Maybe not. How can we judge? We don't know what happened."

Windu regarded him for a moment, then let go. Qui-Gon turned his face away again, arms crossed tight over his chest. "He was in pain, Mace," he said fiercely, his deep voice cracking. "He died in pain and fear. At the last, it felt as though liquid fire were poured through our bond. He was my Padawan, and he died alone. How is this not my fault?"

At a loss, Windu did not respond. The grief of the man on the couch was palpable, a heaviness that darkened the shadows of the room. Qui-Gon shook his head, glancing up. There was a bitterness in his dark eyes to match the pain worn lines carved deep around mouth and forehead. "I know," he said flatly. "I know what you're thinking. 'There is no death, there is the Force'. But reality is different, isn't it? There is no death, but there is loss. And there is failure." He sighed, closing his eyes again. "Go, Mace. Let me rest."

Windu hesitated. A hand brushed Qui-Gon's shoulder again, silent comfort, and then he heard the soft steps and sharp hiss of the door as the big man retreated, leaving him alone in the dim light of the sleeping chamber.

The suite was too quiet. The silence, what once would have been softened by the quiet noises of another occupant in the adjoining room, was oppressive in its stillness now. Qui-Gon raked a hand through his hair, twisting the strands around his fist until it pulled painfuly, a sharp pain to match the one that still throbbed behind his eye.

Damaged shields and strange, debilitating visions. It didn't seem nearly enough of a price to pay for the magnitude of his failure. The pain of it haunted him behind his closed eyes, lurked in the shadows of the room to prey upon his dreams. He could feel the memory of it vibrate across his nerves, the call that had jerked him weeks before from a fitfull sleep into a waking nightmare.

[MASTER!]

Searing pain through every vein and cell, and knowing that it was only a pale phantom of what Obi-Wan had felt in those last moments. And then the moment when it had stopped, cut like a string, leaving him with only the dark silence. Alone.

The worst was that no one knew how, or why. Obi-Wan had left their shared quarters in the evening with a smile in his grey eyes and an impudent laugh, taking advantage of a rare day of rest to leave the Temple and explore some of Coruscant's attractions. Qui-Gon had watched the young man go with a smile of his own, assured that, all teasing aside, his apprentice was in search of nothing more exotic than something more indulgent to the palate then the dining hall usually provided.

It had been the last time any of them had seen him. Qui-Gon had sought his own bed at an early hour, determined to take advantage of the chance to rest. The cry had come in the earliest hours of the morning. What had happened between one point and the other was unknown. Even Master Yoda, eyes downcast and small face troubled, could say no more than that he had felt the point when Obi-Wan had been cut from the living Force.

Cut from it. It was the one turn of phrase that troubled Qui-Gon. Cut from it, not passed into it. Cut from it cleanly, like a knife slicing through flesh. Yoda would say nothing else on the subject, but Qui-Gon had called it vividly to mind the first time the visions struck.

They came without warning, a thunderclap that struck through his shields as though they were non-existant, ringing through his mind and leaving him dazed in its wake. The first had come as he tried to meditate, seeking a peace for an aching spirit that nothing could soothe. Sound, all encompassing and complex, had enveloped him. It brought a peace that no amount of meditation had achieved, a child-like wonder and delight. He had listened, caught up in the natural pattern of the noise, soothed by its flow. It had seemed only a moment, a brief respite, but when he had opened his eyes it was to find that most of the hours of the day had passed, his body grown cold and stiff upon the floor.

The second had caught him as he sat with several other Masters, only half listening to their conversation but needing the reassurance of others around him. From them he had learned how the visions took him externally - open eyed and staring, motionless, unmoving and unmoved by anything around him. The second had been sensation, the caress of a thousand feathery fingers against skin and face, countless soft touches that lifted his hair and brushed his cheeks. With it, dimly, had been the sound, muted now, but no less captivating.

As strange as the visions were, the two together allowed Qui-Gon to puzzle out the substance of them. The sound and feeling were nothing more than wind, the brush of it on an upturned face, but magnified to such a degree that it became alien, a thing so different it was as though he had never felt it before.

There had been endless session with the Healers and the Council, but through it all the visions continued - now sight, now sound, now touch, one alone or several together; each one of a different thing, some recognizable, some not. He never said it, but in truth he almost welcomed them. The time spent lost in a vision was time spent free of the pain of loss, time submerged in the simple pleasure of sensation without thought or memory. There were times, lost within that state, when he could forget the ragged empty silence of the bond he had shared with his apprentice, when he could almost imagine he felt the familiar presence once again. It was nothing more than an illusion of the mind, but it brought a comfort nothing else could and sometimes, aching for that comfort, he wondered at a turn of phrase and tried to find a non-existant glimmer of hope for the impossible. It remained impossible, but the delusion was a momentary comfort.

Throwing back the covers of the sleeping couch, Qui-Gon reached to dim the room lights. Illumination spilled coolly through the window, bright and sparkling from the lights of the city. Padding on bare feet to the center of the chamber, Qui-Gon slid easily to the floor, legs curled beneath him. Letting his body relax as it would, he closed his eyes, calling up the memory of the lights that had danced in his mind, trying vainly to call up the unthinking peace that accompanied them.

Words could not have described it. There were colors no human eye had ever seen, bright and sparkling, shimmering in the patterns. And there were patterns, there beneath the random splashes of light. Rippling patterns, waving outward in concentric circles that met and joined, overlapping in waves. He played them out against the theater of his mind's eye, trying to find a sense or familiarity to the sight.

Waves of concentric circles, journeying ever outward from the heart of the splashes of iridescent light. Windu had suggested crytals, the refraction of a spectrum through a prism. It had been nothing that structured, too fluid and flowing.

Opening his eyes slowly, Qui-Gon looked out to the distant city lights. The sky had cleared, giving a breathtaking view down. Earlier in the evening a storm had passed, boiling darkly through the caverns of the towers, its fury cracking down with rumbles of lightning upon the lower levels. "Water," Qui-Gon whispered softly, wonderingly. "Raindrops in water puddles."

Your body is alive
But no one told you what you'd feel
The empty aching hours
Trying to conceal
The natural progression
Is the coming of your age
But they cover it with shame
And turn it into rage

And as you pray in your darkness
For wings to set you free
You are bound to your silent legacy

The tavern had become a haven and a hell. Each night he went to it, drawn to the sounds of voices, the laughter and yells and music. To the warmth and press of other bodies, reminding him of the familiar interaction of people. Letting him forget, for a time, that he no longer belonged. He could lose himself for hours in the music alone, sitting quiet against one dark corner, swaying softly to the sound as he closed his eyes and forgot. It was a painless way to pass the long hours of the nights.

But it was also a hell that enclosed and trapped him, pressing tight around him. He used to, he thought dimly, enjoy teasing. Friendly and innocent, a play of words and thought that did no harm. But there were degrees, the point at which teasing became temptation, temptation became longing, longing became desire and desire became madness. He had, he knew, passed beyond the point of madness long before. Each night only deepened it and if ever he had wondered what it felt like to be chained to the addiction of a drug, now he knew. It coursed through him like fire, making his hands shake, his thoughts hazy. It ate in his guts, a desire so strong that it hurt, a physical pain that made him hunch in his seat, hands clasped around his chest, rocking with the waves of the pain as he rode it out.

The people in the tavern asked no questions of newcomers if they were asked no questions in turn. Lower level workers, they were used to pale faces and the rough, loud sort that sought a night's entertainment in the bottom of a cup or a willing body. He sought neither, but so long as he purchased drinks he could do with them as he would - the waiter would collect the untouched cups at regular intervals and bring back fresh ones. It made no difference to them. Pressed into his favored corner, the man watched listlessly as one cup of bitter smelling orange liquid was changed for another on the small table before him. Glancing up briefly at the humanoid who was serving, he wondered idylly what she saw when she looked at him.

No, better not to wonder. He knew. Sickly pale face that the flesh had melted away from, framed beneath dirt covered hair. His hands, on the table before, him, were skeletal - he had punctured a new hole in his belt, over four finger widths from where the last hole had fallen, in order to hold them on the bare bones of his hips that evening. His clothes were stained more grey than any other color. He hated it, but neither was there anything to be done about it. He had never been overly vain but he knew that now he looked one step away from death - the thought made him laugh quietly to himself.

The waiter said nothing about either his appearance or his laughter - she took the credit bit he put on the table and left, leaving him in peace for another measured bit of time. Sighing, he pressed his trembling fingers to the worn surface of the table. The pain of the hunger had become such a constant pulse within him that he could almost ignore it - lose himself in the notes of the music, pretending that the trembling physical shell on the seat belonged to someone else. It was like a form of meditation to drift on the sounds, lost in a complexity of tones that his ear alone could hear.

But even that was denied to him when a man, dressed in the motley of clothes that seemed to pass as fashion for the lower levels, dropped down into the seat across from him. The stranger's smile was inviting in the same way a predator's toothy grin might be as it contemplated its next meal - the man shivered to see it and deliberately looking away.

Undeterred, the stranger put his elbows on the table and leaned in, voice a smooth ripple between them that dragged the man's attention unwillingly away from the music. "What are you looking for?"

Vaguely irritated, the man glanced back at him and sighed. "Nothing. Go away, please."

The stranger grinned, shaking his head. "Now don't be like that - I'm being friendly." His measuring look took in the thin and unsteady hands, the haggard face. "You obviously need something bad. The others pass by and you never even nod their way, so it must be something special." He spread his hands, inviting. "Name it. Spice to XT - I have it. Or I can get it. Anything for the right price." His smile, the man decided, was oily - it made his long face entirely too rat-like, and the man had seen more of the pale eyed rats of the lower levels in the last weeks then he had ever wanted to.

"You don't have what I need," the man said firmly. It was a bald faced lie, a quiet portion of his mind whispered, but he shrugged it away. Far far better the guilt of a lie to the horror of the truth.

"Now how do you know without asking?" the stranger asked reasonably. "Give it a try. What's the worst I can do besides say no?"

Pointless to argue with such a one track mind. The stranger was leaning forward, nose flared as though he could almost smell a profit. The man tried for the truth, one which the rat-faced stranger might understand. "I can't afford it." Not in a millennia, not in all the years since time began. He could never afford the price of the demon that dragged at his veins.

"Ah." Mocking regret in that tone. The eyes traveled over him once more, and then the stranger cocked his head. "We maybe could work something out. A fair deal."

Would the fool not take 'no' for an answer? Frowning, the man glanced back, a sharp retort on his lips - and in the moment when their eyes met he knew. Heard it as clearly as if the stranger had spoken, the thoughts ringing crystal clear in his ears. Young...he'd clean up. Get him on a regular fix and he'd flesh out some. Good bones, and there were those that liked them thin and pale. Radun might give him a fair commission for the boy...and if not, one more addict wouldn't be missed.

The rage caught him unprepared, like so many things did now. Emotions teetering on an uneasy edge tipped and spilled forth, giving a rushing strength to the ache inside. Peace. Peace... But something cold sank its talons into his soul, a cool burning anger that licked and crackled inside, and a singularly unpleasant smile spread itself across his lips. "What sort of deal?"

There had been a time, the man thought dimly, when the subtle pressure of his own question would have spilled forth every sordid detail of the man's plan, every scrap of information the man might care to hear. It still might, sometimes, though he'd no control over it any longer - but their eyes had slipped away from one another and the man knew the moment was past. Instead, the stranger was too blind to see that he no longer held the position of predator. Smiling ingratiatingly, he jerked his chin towards the door. "Care to discuss it outside of other ears?"

A pause, a heartbeat - not his own but the stranger's, heavy and dark, promising secrets and whispered fantasies. The man let the tip of his tongue lick out across his lips, tasting the rich scent that hung in the air. "Of course," he agreed mildly, as the demons howled in triumph. "Lead the way."

When the door to his suite opened without a knock Qui-Gon did not bother to look up. If Windu's presence hadn't announced itself through the Force, his distinctive resonance rippling across the edges of the other Master's thoughts, Qui-Gon still would have known the identity simply through the manner of entrance. Only Windu still walked in unasked, just as he had when they were initiates.

Sighing, Qui-Gon thumbed off the data pad and tossed it onto the table beside a long cold cup of tea. He hadn't been reading it - couldn't even recall how many pages he had scrolled through without seeing a single printed word or what the subject had been. It had been an idyll occupation only - something for his hands to do, a familiar gesture that let him keep some attachment to his body even as his mind ranged far away.

Windu pulled out another chair from the table, seating himself. His fingers flicked out towards the pad, gesturing. "Anything?"

"Whispers." Qui-Gon pulled his cloak tighter about his shoulders. He had taken to wearing it even in his own chambers, reassurance against a chill that would not leave even when he had warmed himself to the point of sweating. "Hints, glimpses, and then it's gone."

Windu sat back, nodding softly to himself. The visions in the last week had tapered away from encompassing trances to quiet day dreams and then to naught but shadows, easily brushed away. The Healers had pronounced themselves pleased, saying that Qui-Gon's natural defenses against what was, essentially, an attack were rebuilding themselves. Qui-Gon himself had been the only one displeased, though he had held his tongue before the Council. Only to Windu, in private, when they ceased to be Jedi Master and Council Member, had he voiced his concern.

"I'm no different," he had said, agitated. "Whatever is sending them to me has changed. It's growing weaker."

Windu had raised the hairless ridge of one brow. "It still works to your advantage."

"No," Qui-Gon had protested. Sighing, he had tried to find words that would convince without discrediting what he said. "It's not malicious. It's...sharing. All of the visions are something the sender is taking pleasure in, something it finds fascinating. Nothing harmful or negative. Only simple things - the feel of the wind, the look of light on water, the sound of instruments."

Frowning, Windu had considered. "You think it's a communication?" he had asked at last.

"It might be," Qui-Gon had admitted. "But whatever is sending it is growing weaker."

Windu had looked understandably reluctant. "What do you want to do?"

Qui-Gon had raised his hands placatingly. "Listen for it. Nothing more. Just cease shielding against it."

It had taken more than one conversation but in the end Windu had agreed. And, more importantly, agreed not to bring it before the Council. So Qui-Gon had begun to listen, and even to cast his mind forth, seeking the touch of the vision. The loss of it disturbed him on a personal level, though he said nothing of that to anyone. The visions had been a comfort, and to lose them now only reminded him all the more painfully of all else he had lost. Fixing upon them, seeking them out, was avoidance of a great many things that churned inside of him - but if it was, he convinced himself that perhaps he had earned some small respite, in whatever form.

"Music," Qui-Gon mused softly, more to himself than to Windu. "It's usually music, instruments of some sort. Sound."

Windu nodded again, not answering. He tacitly looked the other way on Qui-Gon's 'research', acknowledging it without encouraging. "I came to fetch you for evening meal," he said instead, changing the subject. "The Healers seem to think you aren't eating enough."

"I ate," Qui-Gon replied automatically. When Windu's expression invited elaboration, he paused, thinking. There had been the meal at mid-day...no, he hadn't actually eaten anything on that plate, finding that it made his stomach roil uncomfortably. Morning meal, then...no. Qui-Gon frowned absently, finding himself trying to recall the last time he had taken anything but endless cups of tea and juice. His stomach clenched, reminding him that it was quite hungry, his throat reminding him that he was parched, and a perfectly good cup of tea had been allowed to grow cold. Picking it up, he drank it down anyways. It did nothing for the thirst, but it felt good against his throat. "All right," he heard his voice agreeing. Windu stood, offering him a hand up which he took.

It was an hour and more before he managed to clear enough of a plate of food to satisfy Windu and be allowed, like a recalcitrant initiate, to return to the quiet of his suite. Palming the rarely used lock on the door as he leaned against the frame, he took a deep breath through closed teeth. It didn't help. Gathering his hair up as he went, he walked with long hurried steps to the facilities in the dressing chamber. He had just enough time to shed the cloak into a brown puddle on the tiled floor and brush his sleeves back, hair caught tight against the nape of his neck in one hand, before his will lost the battle with his body and the wracking heaves caught him.

Kneeling on the cool tiles afterwards, he sighed. His throat and chest burned, his eyes watering. Forcing himself to his feet, he leaned over the sink and washed the taste from his mouth, splashing water across his face. Gathering the cloak up, he walked back through the darkened rooms to his sleeping couch. He had enough energy left to pull his boots off before collapsing back on the couch, arms flung up over his face to block out even the cool lights from the window.

The silence descended on him as it always did but now there were no intrusions, no visions to transport him from the creeping shadows. Nothing to distract him from the emptiness. Shivering with the chill that had settled into his bones, Qui-Gon pressed his face into the folds of his sleeves, blotting the silent tears that escaped into the darkness.

There was a narrow side walkway to the back of the tavern, dimly lit and quiet. The two men entered it, moving away from the brighter lights of the main walk.

The man could feel himself as though at a great distance, his focus at once intensely sharp and blunted as though from the warm glow of the alcohol he hadn't touched. He could feel each step, feel the easy graceful slide of a body he hadn't felt comfortable in for some time, but it was as though someone else directed the movement. It wasn't him, some part of his mind whispered, but it no longer mattered.

It was desire and it was madness and the demons, once released, would not be contained again. The abyss gaped before him but the throbbing rhythm would not let him go.

The drug seller was turning towards him and he let the boneless grace flow through him, licking slowly across the beckoning smile that curved his lips. Letting the throat of the loose tunic fall slightly away, baring pale skin. "What sort of deal did you have in mind?" he asked softly, his voice throbbing on the low tones. All the while his steps took him closer, one casual step at a time.

Run! the small, thinking portion of his brain urged. Runrunrunrunrunrun... But then the other man met his eyes and he knew they were both lost.

The desire poured out of him. Caught by the fire in a dark grey gaze, the drug seller could only smile, glassy eyed, reaching out to run his fingers over the edge of the tunic opening. "Well now...Wasn't quite like this, but we maybe could renegotiate..."

"Of course we could," the man whispered. His breath caught in his throat as he reached out, warming the chill of his fingers against the flesh of a flushed cheek. Soft, so incredibly soft, and beneath it he could feel the rushing pulse.

The seller had his hands around the curve of a thin waist, descending to grope across buttock and thigh. The man allowed it, taking the one final step that would bring their bodies together. Reaching up, he twined his arms around the other man's neck, working his hands beneath the other's tunic and pressing his palms to the warmth of skin. Everywhere the pulse throbbed, humming through his very bones. In the flesh beneath his palms, in the hands on his body, in the chest pressed to his and the swelling erection against his thigh. The rhythm of it made him moan, closing his eyes, awash on a wave of bittersweet pulsing promise.

Close enough to touch, to smell and taste. He pushed the other man back easily, thrusting him back against the wall. He heard the startled gasp, felt the spell of the desire slipping. The seller stiffened in his grasp but it didn't matter any longer. None of it did.

There was no trembling in his hands now; only tight, tense strength that curled around the other man's dark hair and drew his head back. The scent was all over him, rich and sweet, the scent of every good thing he had ever tasted, beckoning to a hunger that would no longer be denied. With a last soft cry, he let the abyss take him.

The moment the blood flooded his mouth and washed across his tongue all thought ceased entirely, washed away in the precious warm glow of life.

There were lips beneath his own, soft and warm. Qui-Gon licked slowly across them, teasing, rewarded with a faint husky moan. Fingers tangled in his hair, plucking at the tie and freeing it, threading through the strands.

Clothes had melted away and the body beneath his was silk over the rippling cord of muscle, heat and warmth. His fingers trailed across the strong curve of thigh, into the hollow of the hip and up, over the smooth dip of muscles at the waist to the even ridges of ribs slicked with sweat. Blunt fingernails dragged slowly down his back, making him gasp and arch. A low chuckle, rich and soft, breathed across his ear. Growling, he reached back to grasp the wandering hands and draw them forward, pinning them to the pillow.

Grey eyes smiled into his, darkened to steel with desire. "Qui-Gon..." his name was syrup on that tongue and he was helplessly caught, watching the pink tip lick out and over the flushed lips.

Hard thighs slipped around his waist and with a twisting flip their positions were reversed. He let himself sink back into the cushions, arching up to bring their groins together. His lover moaned again, hips moving against his in a hard, unsteady rhythm.

Chest and stomach and groin, pushing him down into the cushions with a firm weight that made him shudder, gasping. A wet tongue traced the line of his throat, making him tilt his head back, wordlessly asking for more. Teeth nipped, gently marking, but it was the long, slow suction against his pulse that nearly undid him, drawing forth an inarticulate moan from deep in his chest.

The mouth drew away, teeth nipping at his ear. "Look at me." Husky delicious voice, low and ragged with desire, so utterly loved. He forced his eyes open, meeting a gaze of grey so bright it seemed to glow, captivating. His lover met his eyes, hard and implacable, command in that voice. "Look at me."

And he did. Watched as that head bent, felt the lips brush his throat. Felt the gentle touch of a tongue and then the brief pain. Felt the suction start, the draw on vein and heart, all rushing wetly towards that one throbbing point.

Felt the heated pleasure rush through him from groin to throat and heard his own cry dim in his ears, his lover's name screamed in voice and mind as orgasm swept over him.

It thrust him from sleep in a gruesome parody of another cry, dragging him from dream to waking in a dizzying wrench. His heart and breath were racing, body trembling in the aftershocks of pleasure. Gasping, he curled on the sleeping couch, covers fisted beneath his hand.

Dream. It had only been a dream.

But somewhere deep inside he felt the echo of it, the warm echo of fulfillment, of a bond he had reached out to countless times over the weeks only to draw back in pain at the emptiness of it. An echo, still warm to the touch of his grasping mind, real and almost tangible, slipping away only as he tried to hold it.

Real.

REAL.

His breath caught, choking. Closing his eyes, he pressed his forehead to his trembling hands.

[Obi-Wan...]

You are digging for the answers
Until your fingers bleed
To satisfy the hunger
To satiate the need

He woke with the coming of the dusk, an instantaneous change of state from nightmare ridden sleep to fully awake. His own gasps were loud in the oppressive darkness of the tiny bolthole, ringing wetly from the damp walls. Shivering, he drew his knees up against his chest, hugging them tight. Dusk, and a night of waking nightmares in place of the sleeping ones.

Pressing his forehead to his knees, he listened to the echoes of his breathing, consciously willing himself to become lost in it. Anything, if it would only erase the memories and the dreams. If it would banish the present and the future.

A scrabbling sound in the darkness drew him out. The scratch of claws on bare floor - a sound he'd grown to loathe, even as he listened for it. The rat, body easily the length of his forearm, sleek and slim, was easy to catch. It hissed and chattered at him angrily, tail lashing, pale luminous eyes baleful in the darkness.

A simple twist broke the neck, the eyes dimming in limp death. The thick pelt of fur had given him pause at first, before the chilling hunger had overcome lingering scruples. The blood was thick and heavy - he had learned to drain the things quickly, before they congealed. Hunting, he had told himself firmly. It's no different then when you've hunted for your dinner.

Cold, wet, forsaken planets, food cooked across fires and a bed on the hard earth. He had always hated those assignments. The laughter bubbled up, tinged with hysteria. Sitting in the cold, damp darkness, the body of the rat cooling at his feet, he clasped his hands around his knees and rocked back and forth, laughing until the tears ran hot down his chilled cheeks. Laughed louder, until the sound bounced jaggedly from the walls, filling the small room. Laughed until the noise hurt, stinging his ears and falling roughly from his throat.

When the laughter died away it was the very absence of sound which caught him. The soft, whispered sound of his breaths, sliding through the silence. Smiling madly, he let the silence take him, listening to the heaviness of it as all else faded away.

Qui-Gon stepped to the side of the walkway, letting a group of beings pass him. They contined on, heads bent in conversation, not looking up as they brushed by. Pedestrian traffic was heavier at the lower levels, fewer beings waiting at the taxi shuttle platforms.

He forced his hands to stay loose at his sides, not reaching up to check the plait of the braid at his neck or tug at the lines of the blue tunic he wore. The clothes felt constricting, tight and heavy in a way Jedi robes never were, and his fingers kept straying to the bare place on his belt where his lightsaber should have hung. But it was no Jedi Master who walked the corridors of the lower levels and if the clothing did make the man then he had remade himself, a tall, lean faced man who walked without notice among people who would not look twice at him.

He had felt incredibly garish, looking at himself in the tiny mirror of his chambers, but the more he had looked about him in the lower levels the more he had realized that he was, if anything, very drabbly dressed. Bright, multi-colored and layered ensembles surrounded the walkways, the colors apparently picked at random rather than for any overall effect. It gave a bright, floral effect to the otherwise dark grey of the corridors and shadowed walkways, which seemed as sound a reason for the clothing choices as any.

Dim and cool, heavy and quiet - the more one descended into the depths of Coruscant the more it felt as though one had stepped into another world.

Qui-Gon shook his head slightly, wishing his coat were heavier. The chill that had settled into his bones would not leave, and the crisp evening air had set his back teeth to clenching to keep the shivering chatter from his jaw. No amount of warmth or layers would banish it, and he could not push it away or control it. His hands, tucked deep into the relative warmth of his pockets, were so chilled that he could feel them like ice against his body even through the layers of cloth.

The cold was beyond his control, the city around him out of his normal range or ken. He felt dropped into a dream, unprepared and unknowning, the world around him shifting while he stood still.

Another man brushed by him from behind, forcing him momentarily against the rail of the walkway. Qui-Gon paused, sucking in a deep breath and releasing it slowly. His thoughts were slipping through him like flashes of random light, seen and then lost, his attention to the world around him disjointed and unreal.

Dreams to drag him out to these darkened walkways, echoes to guide his steps. In the stark light of morning it had not gone unthought by him that the dreams of the night might be only dreams...but the acheing ragged edges of his grief clutched to the dream as the last hope of a drowning man. Dreams, at least, offered the ability to lose oneself in them.

He passed a hand across his face, rubbing at eyes and temples, then stepped away from the railing. His focus was scattered to the winds that whispered through the deep chasms of the lower levels, even as that soft sound drew him on like the sweet promise of a mirage in the distance.

It sang to him softly, the breath of distorted memory, of a sound that had been so much more than just one sensory image. He felt as though he could put his hand out across the railing, hold it over the depths below and somehow catch that fleeting echo. Clasp it to his chest, hold it tight, a tangible line to lead him on.

The jolt, when the even that ghost of a sound vanished, rang through him like a great, bone jarring reverberation. It made his breath catch in his lungs, his hand grasping nervelessly for the railing.

He knew the touch of the vision as it swept across him, knew it and could not hold to it or push it away. Helpless in the grasp of it, Qui-Gon felt the silence descend across his mind like the heavy folds of a muffling cloak, still and encompassing, endless in its nothingness.

It was the last thing he felt as the world dropped from under him and he felt himself falling.

Pain jerked him from the silence like the shocking jab of a blade through his ribs, choking a cry from his dry throat. The world rushed back upon him, darkness and the rasping sound of his own breath solidifying about him where he knelt.

He moaned, leaning down to press his forehead to the chill surface of the smooth floor. The pain throbbed in his ribs, arcing down his arm to pulse in his wrist. He whimpered softly, cradeling it across his knees.

Nothing. Nothing in the tiny room, no one to touch him, nothing to cause it. He licked his lips slowly, forcing his protesting muscles to flex the fingers of his hand. He knew what a break felt like, could feel it shatter in the bones of his wrist, but nothing was broken.

He drew in a long breath, shuddering. Phantom pain, echoing in flesh and bone. Pushing himself, he stretched the limb out, flinching as his fingers came into contact with cold, still fur.

Death, and the smell of death, and the touch of it. It drove him as no will of his own could have, forcing him to his feet to stumble away from the limp rodent body. His hand trembled against the wall but determination moved him away from it, thrust him towards the door of the bolthole and through it.

The walkway beyond was dark and deserted, the lights along its path long gone. The towers of Coruscant arched overhead, dizzying in their sweep, gigantic spikes of blackness that blotted out all hint of stars but glittered with their own lights far above. He leaned his shoulder against the closed door behind him, still cradeling his arm against his chest.

The pain would not fade, no matter how he twisted wrist and fingers and felt them to be whole. It spiked through it all, regardless of movement or careful stillness. Nothing he did would relieve it.

Laughter welled in his throat again like black oil, pouring forth in small fits and starts that were nearly sobs. His teeth bit down into his lip, a pain he knew and could pinpoint, blood spilling across his tongue. He spit it out savagely, pulling in a breath through clenched teeth that chilled his mouth and burned his lungs.

Spectral pain, insubstantial but all too real to the ache in his flesh. He cursed through the laughter, knowing his reason was slipping away and laughing all the more. The hunger still gnawed at him, vying with the throb of arm and ribs for his attention.

One had nothing to do with the other...as far as he knew. He could readily admit that he knew nothing, and the rising hysterics were threatening to drop him to his knees, the laughter echoing crazily back from the empty walkways and caverns of the levels below. He struggled to swallow it, to breath it in and quell it, but his body was no longer his own to control.

Pain to anger, anger to laughter, laughter to tears. The emotions dipped and swerved through him crazily, a blind drop through darkness that had no bottom and no direction. Shaking, he clutched his arms tight around his chest, trying to draw in even breaths.

He dashed the tears away angrily, unable to bear them. The breaths were uneven, shakey, but he drew them in and pushed them out with single minded intensity. It centered him, gave him a point to concentrate upon. The pain was lessening slowly, leaving his body trembling but undamaged. He flexed his wrist again, almost savagely, feeling the pain shoot up his arm with renewed vigor as his mind dwelt on it.

Wordless, frustrated, the cry trembled on his lips. His fist sank into the metal of the wall behind him, the blow ringing fiercely through the quiet, echoes thundering dimly below. He slammed it down again, feeling the metal buckle beneath his knuckles. There was no pain in it, no more then he might have once felt for throwing his fist into a wall, and the imprint of his hand was plain in the heavy steel. And still the unknown pain pulsed in his bones, without source or meaning.

Interior pain. He snarled, swore, turning to rest his head against the cold wall. His fingers crept into the loosened hair at the nape of his neck, pulling on the strands.

It hurt to turn inside, to close his eyes and shift his thoughts inward to the realms of his own mind, where once he had lived and known and been. There was only emptiness there now and the hunger that throbbed through his body and defined his being. Whispers of countless pulses and other people's thoughts, no room at all for his own. No warmth, no life, no ability to reach out - only the frightening descent into the blackness within.

The pain gave him a focus, a point to start from. He grabbed at it, fleeting and insubstantial, trying to find a cause. The ability slipped away from him, sliding through his grasping fingers, a fitfully weak ghost before the jaws of the hunger, a phantom of something long dead. Sobbing, he let his fingers dig deep into his scalp, let the flesh part and blood well up beneath his nails as though he might physically tear the ability forth from his unwilling mind.

It was deep, deeper then he wanted to go, and it had a resonance to it that he shied from, hating to feel. It felt like reaching his hand into fire, the flames licking at him, to push himself after that feeling and track its source. The pain in rib and arm throbbed anew, biting and jagged, phantom breaks that he could all but feel crack through the bones.

Not his bones, he knew of a sudden. Not his pain.

A moan slid from his throat, choking him. Not his. Nothing to do with him. It surged through him in waves, born on a tie he had tried to bury, to push away and break from. It vibrated in his mind and soul, relentlessly tugging at him, though he tried to force it down.

Both fists pounded against the steel, nails raking ragged furrows in it. He cried aloud, an inarticulate sound that gave voice to the layers of pain. Bowing his head, he did not dare to breath sound into the word that formed on his lips. "...Master..."

Qui-Gon had found a scratch in the wall - a tiny hairline imperfection, trailing like the tributaries of a microscopic river across the smooth surface. He had focused on it, mapped it, until he could look away and, looking back, find it easily. It had provided an excuse to turn his face to the wall, one he stubbornly clung to as Windu's voice droned on.

"...you'll be allowed up in three days. But, Qui-Gon, you must understand - the Healers don't want to let you leave these rooms. And right now, the Council must agree with them." Windu paused for breath, and a reaction. Finding none in the still figure on the couch, he sighed. "If you could explain - anything - this would be easier."

Qui-Gon pressed his lips tight across his teeth, tracing a subsidiary crack along the length of the scratch. The set of his jaw said that it was possibly one of the most engrossing things he had ever done.

Windu drew in a slow breath. Qui-Gon could hear him shift in his chair, could picture in his mind's eye the exasperated set of his friend's face.

"Qui-Gon," Windu began again, then sighed. His deep voice held a regretful tone that the prone Jedi Master found he resented. "My friend, you are not helping your own position."

The crack diverged into two paths and Qui-Gon let his eyes follow the one leading down to the right. It intersected a band of late afternoon sun that streamed in from the window, the light warming the surface of the wall to a golden glow. Squinting, he found that the tiny reflections of light from the imperfections of the crack sparkled before his eyes.

"Why don't you feel you can speak of what troubles you?" Windu was asking. "The Healers are there to help you - we all are. But if you won't talk of it..."

"Close the window," Qui-Gon breathed quietly.

There was a pause. When he could not hear Windu's movement, Qui-Gon repeated the words. "Close the window." Another pause, until he sighed and added, "The light hurts."

That provoked a response. Windu rose, wordlessly, and crossed to the window, dimming the surface. Qui-Gon watched the light fade from golden to a deep honey glow. "More," he said quietly, and the honey faded to a dim brown. The other Jedi Master quietly resumed his seat.

The dim light still picked out stars of highlights along the edge of the crack, but the shine no longer made him squint. His eyes traced back along the path of the tiny thing, as though by memorizing its shape he might find within it the secrets to all questions.

After a time Windu tried once more. "Will you say nothing at all?" he asked quietly. "Or would you prefer to let us think the worst?"

"And what is that?" It took too much effort to raise his voice above that whisper, but he knew, as the words fell into the silence of the room, that Windu could hear him. "That I have gone insane?"

"I didn't say that," Windu replied sharply.

"You don't need to," Qui-Gon answered. There was no feeling in the words - no defense, no explanation. They left his lips and it was as though in that moment he could forget that they had been said at all, so distant from them and their implication that it did not matter in the slightest.

"You're a stubborn man," Windu said quietly. "But I don't think you're insane."

Qui-Gon did not reply. He could feel Windu's eyes upon him, but eventually the man sighed. There was the sound of the chair upon the floor as the Jedi Master rose to his feet. A hand brushed Qui-Gon's shoulder briefly, making him flinch, and then footsteps trailed away and the door hissed shut, leaving the room in perfect silence.

He wasn't supposed to leave the couch but they hadn't actively restrained him to it yet either. Apparently they still trusted him that far, Qui-Gon reflected bitterly. More fool they. He sat up slowly, supporting himself on his good arm, moving to keep from jarring his ribs. A flare of pain in the room monitors would bring a Healer faster than Qui-Gon cared for.

Swinging his legs carefully to the floor, he silently appologized for every uncharitable thought he had entertained about the other Master as he reached for the chair which Windu had left beside the couch. Using the arm of it for leverage, he rose unsteadily to his feet. The room swayed around him for a moment, forcing him to close his eyes until it steadied.

The ache in his ribs kept him from drawing enough breath in. He made himself breath slowly, timing each inhale and exhale with a step across the floor of the room.

His good hand was trembling by the time he reached for the window controls, but the relief of the artificially illuminated darkness when he dialed them all the way down was more than worth the tiny warning flashes his body was bombarding him with. Sighing softly, he caught himself against the edge of the window, leaning against it.

It took twice as much strength to return to the couch as it had to leave it, the heavy leaden feeling of his limbs making each step a tiny eternity. He had lowered himself to the edge of the couch when the rising ache in his bones gave him away - a man in the tunic of a Healer entered the room unannounced, took one look at him and shook his head.

"Master Jinn," the man sighed, coming to his side and pressing him firmly but gently back down to the couch. "If you need to get up you have only to call one of us. Do you need something for the pain? Something to make you sleep?"

Qui-Gon shook his head, letting the man settle him back on the couch, ribs and arm cradeled carefully. "I'll sleep," he whispered hoarsely. The Healer hovered for a bit more, but when the Jedi Master firmly closed his eyes and turned away the man quietly left again, dimming the lights on his way out. The darkness gave the lethargy in his body the edge that it needed to pull him towards true sleep, turning the evasion into truth.

It was night when he woke. He knew it without glancing at the dimmed window, without help of the chronometer readout. He knew it in his very bones, the heavy fatigue lifted as though it had never been, infusing a cool sort of energy that diffused the pain of his flesh and roused him from sleep as though a bell, somewhere, had sounded within his mind.

It was easier to rise to his feet than it had been, easier by far to walk across the room. The sparse medical chamber held none of his things - tunic and cloak he could do without, but the cool floor beneath his feet reminded him regretfully of the lack of boots. His hair tie, as well, was missing; he shook his head, irritated at the fall of hair around his face, remembering that he had forgotten to ask Windu for it.

The door was closed, the controls placed on the other side. Passing a hand before it told him all that he needed to know - the lock was in place. No, there was only so far they would trust him.

Pressing his hand against the wall, he let the Force play through his fingers, sinking into the steel and the circuitry behind it. A silent spark arced beneath his palm, circuit connecting to circuit. The door opened with a hiss, startling the Healer who sat at the bank of monitors to the left hallway.

Qui-Gon had crossed the distance between them in three long strides, his hand outstretched and pressing hard to the man's forehead before the Healer could even rise from his chair. The Force flooded over the man, silent and implacable. [SLEEP]

The Healer slumped as though felled by a blow. Qui-Gon caught him, easing him back into the chair, his head cradeled against the monitors. Sighing softly, the Jedi Master straightened, raking back the strands of his hair from his forehead.

The quiet echo in his mind that had woken him rang softly, insistantly, tugging him on. He could not pause to question it, reaching out to it as the tie that bound his heart to hope. The Force flowed easily to his call, wrapping silence about his steps, bringing to him the soft ripples of the others in the Temple like a map sketched out upon his nerves. It was child's play to slip through the corridors and lifts that were unoccupied, a game initates played amongst each other.

It was not until he reached the true outside, until the cool night wind touched face and chest, the ground chilled beneath his feet, that some sembalance of thought returned. Shaking his head, Qui-Gon cradeled his broken wrist against his other arm, looking out across the empty platform and steps of the Temple.

Nothing. Below and beyond, the lights of Coruscant glimmered in the indigo night. And still the call tugged at him, like an itch that could not be scratched, a longing that made him shiver. He might have called it hope, but some portion of his mind wondered if it might not, after all, be insanity.

"Chasing ghosts," he whispered to himself. Closing his eyes, he drew a deep breath, shuddering; unable to help but reach out to the emptiness. [Obi-Wan...]

And there, so faint it was the phantom of a figment, hovering at the very edge of his mind, was an answer. [...master...]

His eyes snapped open, the breath leaving his lungs in a gasp. He hadn't imagined it. His mind scrabbled, clutching at the tiny echo, but it faded away like mist. Prayers and curses mixed on his tongue, the shiver catching him hard. He glanced up at the towers of the Temple, the lights that gleamed against the panorama of stars.Tightening his jaw, he turned his back to them, bare feet soundless as he descended the steps.

The wind was colder at the height of the Temple but the lower levels had a damp chill to them that sank immediately into his bones and made him regret, thrice over, the lack of tunic or boots. He walked quickly, eyes only half upon the walkways around him, following the faint echo that spurred him on. If those beings whom he passed paused to stare at the tall, bare chested man, hair a loose mane about his tight face, he did not care.

He knew when the source of the faint echo was near, could feel it throb in his bones like a counterpoint to his pulse, setting his wrist and ribs to throbbing once more. Gritting his teeth, he lengthened his stride, ignoring the jarring pain. The stab of it almost seemed to make the echo more real, as though the pain called it forth, strengthening it.

His thoughts grabbed the idea, clutched to it. He paused beneath one of the lights of the walkway, catching his breath. Considering. The echo skittered through the edges of his mind, like a small wild creature just outside the circle of light. Qui-Gon wet his lips, drawing in a deeper breath, and then very deliberately coughed it out again.

The pain stabbed through his ribs like knives, sharp and ripping from the inside. It arced across the trail of the echo, illuminating it for one brief moment in stark color within his mind, an answering pain leaping back through it to him.

He was in motion before the thought had even solidified, the surface of the walkway flying beneath his feet, every step jarring pain from his bones and sending the waves of that echoed pain out before him like a path of ripples to guide him.

Fear in those ripples, fear and pain and something very near to panic. It drove him as nothing else could, mindless and determined, racing against the nightmare that hovered, shadowed talons outstretched.

From lit walkway to shadowed corridor, leaving the evening pedestrians behind and plunging into the little used dead spaces, empty and silent. The only sound was his footsteps, the labored rasp of his breath. Darkened paths, but the ripples that lead him cared nothing for the light and he followed them blindly, trusting.

Finding.

It came at a junction, one corridor to the next, and only Force driven reflexes brought him to a halt and kept his feet beneath him.

Luminous in the darkness, the ghost gathered the tiny scraps of light to it as it rose from the shadows, gleaming and pale. Qui-Gon felt his breath give way, lungs emptied and straining. The corridor wall behind him kept him upright, the metal solid and firm beneath his flailing hand.

White and beautiful beyond belief, beyond hope or dream or prayer. A face he knew as well as his own, framed in the darkness, shining grey eyes wide. A sob tore its way through his chest, and as the pain wracked his ribs he saw those eyes wince, the movement betraying life. His voice cracked thinly in the silence, an insubstantial whisper, breathed out on what might have been his dying breath. "Obi-Wan..."

The whole being of the ghost flinched as though struck, an inarticulate cry piercing the air between them. Fear pounded at Qui-Gon, battering through mind and heart, waves of it making him gasp and fall back. In a heartbeat, blurred in the darkness, the vision of his padawan was gone.

And they feed you on the guilt
To keep you humble, keep you low
With some myth they made up a thousand year ago

And as you pray in your darkness
For wings to set you free
You are bound to your silent legacy

The corridors swept past him in a rushing blur, his feet barely touching the paving as he ran. Headlong, full out, the breath hissing in his lungs and body nearly alight in the wind of his own passage. Farther and faster, as though his life depended on it. His, or someone else's.

Idiocy, blind insane idiocy. His breath caught in his lungs, sobbing, and there across his side he could still feel the throbbing phantom pain of broken ribs. Could feel it stronger, even, than he had before. It gave speed to his flying feet, made him heedless as he caught his shoulder against one corner, slipping, nearly falling before reflex saved him and sent him pelting once more on his way.

And still the phantom ache twinged through ribs and wrist, reminding him, with every pain, of the man he ran from. Reminding him of what he had lost. Cruel beyond torture, to feel the bond it trickled through, to feel the brush of it breath life across parts of himself withered to dust. The paltry physical pain it echoed was nothing to the pain within him.

If he ran far enough, could he outrun that pain? Outrun thought, outrun memory, outrun the tears that threatened his eyes as he blinked them back?

Could he outrun that echo of pain? Could he outrun the trickling connection that was forcing its way into his mind, reawakening nerves and thoughts long dead? Outrun thought, outrun memory, outrun the tears that threatened his eyes as he blinked them back?

Blind, foolish idiocy. Self indulgent stupidity. The pain had haunted him, driven him to it. No matter how he tried, he could not entirely shut it out. It echoed through his nightmare ridden dreams and plagued his waking hours. Unwilling sharer of the other man's pain, he had found himself desperate. Desperate to see, to feel, to know the Jedi Master was well and would recover. To know what had happened. Desperate to assauge the guilt that clawed at him, to reassure himself that whatever it was would have happened whether he had been at his rightful place or no.

Padawan, at his Master's side.

"NO!" The denial ripped from him, a howl of grief and loss, lost in the rush of his passing.

It had been too much, to see the man there. As wild eyed and harried as he himself felt, dressed as though he had been pulled, will or nay, from his bed. If it hadn't been for the face tinged grey in pain he might have thought it a dream - an idyll fancy, spun from too much thought, garbed in glorious flesh to dance before his eyes. But a dream would have woven a fantasy, a Master in health, one with warmth in its blue eyes and a low voice that beckoned with husky allure. Not the nightmare vision of the man, dragged from Temple in the depths of night by a will not his own, pain pinching the corners of mouth and eyes and despair ragged in a whisper that burned over the syllables of his name.

Nightmare horror. His desperation had reached out along the same bond that echoed the pain, reached out and sunk its talons in, pulling forth the very substance of all of his despair and desire. And the man had seen, had witnessed the depths of his personel hell with his own eyes. He knew.

Degrees of pain he hadn't ever imagined, mingled with shame and a loss that opened before him like an abyss with no end. It had been real. The Jedi Master knew.

You can't go back, they had whispered when he first ran. You can't ever go back... The piercing memory of their mocking laughter echoed in his ears.

The pavement disappeared beneath his feet. He ran farther, faster, always down, always deeper, to where the lights of the city so far above were the only stars. Inpersonal and shrouding, the darkness fell around him like the welcome folds of a cloak. The silence was thick, broken only by the clatter of his feet and the curses that flowed from his tongue, interspersed with broken sobs. When he slowed at last it was not with fatigue, but simply because there was no where else to go. Only more of the same, stretching ever downward to the depths of the planet itself, each one darker and colder than the next.

Silent of all, save the frantic beat of his own heart.

He moaned, his fingers finding the door to one of countless boltholes, sliding it back and slipping inside. Only when the door slid shut behind him did he allow himself to sink to the floor, arms wrapped tight around raised knees. The walls of the empty room shut around him with blessed familiarity, black and close. The whisper of the echo trailed its nails across nerves worn raw and bleeding. Shivering, he dropped his forehead to his arms, curling into the chill of the bare floor as the tears found their way free at last, spilling hot across his cheeks.

There was a timeless quality to the lower levels, a surreal absence of the laws of dawn and dusk where the light could not penetrate the depths between the towers. Within the dead spaces, empty places that grew larger with each successive level down, the dark was nearly absolute.

The bare soles of his feet were wet and numb from the chill of the damp paving. Qui-Gon had long since forsaken the use of his eyes in the darkness, letting the Force guide his steps as the fingertips of his good hand trailed along the surfaces of the walls.

The distant hum of the transport lanes had been left behind, the deeper into the interior he journeyed. The silence around him was broken now only by his own steps and the sound of his breath - the soft splashing drip of water and the scrabble of claw across metal greeted his ear at times, as his approach startled some scavenging creature. He welcomed them for the bright pinpoints of living Force that they were, briefly illuminating the emptiness around him.

He could feel the echoes within, ringing softly through the thin ragged threads of bond that fluttered at the edge of his mind. The faint connection lead him like a burning trail through the night, firm and inexorable. Ghost, dream, phantom - it meant nothing. He could barely feel the pain and fatigue of his own flesh. All that mattered were the cries he could feel, faintly, like a claxon in the stillness. They echoed back through the link, like the distantly heard cries of a child, drawing him as nothing else could.

[Obi-Wan....Padawan....] He sent it out with every step, a cry of his own in a steady rhythm, aching to hear the faint answer. Only the sobs came back to him and so he continued as swiftly as he dared, heart pounding until he could feel the pulse of it in his fingertips and beneath his hurting ribs.

There was no answer but the cries, and though he could not draw enough breath he kept moving, following them. Ghost or reality, he would not abandon those cries. Not again.

"Ghost," he whispered, his voice startlingly loud in the silence. But even a passing spirit carried some hint of the Force about it, rippling in its wake. At the end of his questing he could sense nothing at all - an absense that spoke as loudly as any presence, a cold chill within the Force that guided him, marked only by the heavy pain that drew him on.

[Obi-Wan...] But there was no answer except for the cries that made his heart contract.

He might have walked for hours and never known it. Qui-Gon let the silence fill him, permeating mind and body, letting the dull ache of his bones seep away into the silence so that his mind might listen without distraction to the path of the echo.

And then his trailing fingertips touched it, so cold that it burned flesh even through the heavy wall. Absence. Nothingness. Silence.

The cries had dimmed to muffled pain some time before, and they echoed around him still, distant and faint. Qui-Gon frowned, hesitating in his steps. He could not pinpoint the cries, could only follow them, a tracker upon a trail that lead he knew not where. But there, beneath his hand......cut from the Force... He pressed his palm to the coldness, feeling the minute lines of the door within the steel.

The Force rippled beneath his palm, triggering lock and catch, forcing the ancient mechanism to slide back.

Silence in the darkness, and he could feel nothing at all from what lay beyond the door.

The attack came without warning, no touch of the Force betraying it. It brushed past him, forced him back. Caught by surprise, the Jedi Master stumbled, falling heavily to one knee with a breathless cry of pain as his unthinking automatic defense jammed his injured arm against the attack, bone grinding against bone.

An answering cry sounded in the silence, the pain exploding across the Jedi Master's mind as the echo suddenly closed into a tight, personal sphere that amplified and rebounded. Qui-Gon tried to gasp, lungs tight and burning, body curled protectively around the blazing pain of his arm.

An eternity of just trying to draw a breath, only dimly realizing that the small droning moan came from his own throat. There was nothing but silence around him, no sense at all.

And then the hands appeared in the darkness, hesitantly, hovering without touching. He raised his face to them slowly, forcing muscles to unbend though each movement sent pain shivering through his body.

There, in the darkness, a breath matched his own small gasp.

Qui-Gon swallowed, closing his eyes as the fingertips barely brushed against his cheek. Deathly cold to the touch, smooth and hard, not flesh at all.

But solid. Real.

And the whisper, ragged and harsh, breathed on a voice he had thought never to hear against his ears again. "Master..."

The sob forced its way through the pain, his ribs spasming until the sound was more than half moan. "Obi-Wan."

The hands withdrew as though stung, vanishing into the darkness. Qui-Gon cried, reaching out, but his fingertips brushed nothing. "Obi-Wan!"

"Stop it!" The words rent the silence, ringing. Qui-Gon gasped, the sound an almost physical slap of force that set his ears throbbing. The silence resumed, the Jedi Master trying to breath slowly through clenched teeth to quiet himself. Nothing, not a whisper, not a footstep. But he could feel it, a creeping pressure against his shoulderblades and back. It was nothing of the living Force, a coldness that moved against him, circling. It raised the hair at the nape of his neck, shivers trembling through his skin.

A breath caught in the darkness, part sob. The word slipped forth before he could stop himself, a reaction as automatic as breath to the pain in that sound. "Padawan..."

A hand as cold and hard as ice fisted into the loose strands of his hair, jerking his head back with effortless strength. Qui-Gon could not suppress a cry as pain flashed through him, a cry cut short as the second hand materialized across his throat, the pressure firm and unmistakable. "Be quiet."

The Jedi Master swallowed slowly, then pressed his lips shut. His eyes could find nothing in the darkness and so he closed them, tightly, willing his body to be pliant beneath the grip of the cold hands. [Padawan]

The hand about his throat tightened and released spasmodically, making him jerk despite himself. Silence fell between them, a frozen tableau in which Qui-Gon could hear nothing but the hard beat of his own heart against his ribs, crying the lie to his stillness and steady breaths.

Something dropped agianst his face, startling him. Hot and wet, it slid slowly across the plane of his forehead. The breath that was slowly expelled brushed his closed eyes, cool and scentless. "Damn you." The voice was low, rough and broken, but he ached for the sound of it.

Another drop, and now he knew what it was. It echoed in the ragged voice, the throb of the bond between them. Tears, burning bright against his skin. Obi-Wan was crying.

Qui-Gon reached up stiffly, wrapping the fingers of his good hand around the wrist of the hand at his throat. It was like holding living stone, hard and smooth but fluid, the tendons and muscles leaping beneath his touch. "Obi-Wan," he breathed.

Slowly, the fingers slid away from his throat. He could feel the outline of where they had rested against his skin, cold and aching. "Damn you," the voice whispered again, but there was no anger in it. Only a bitter, biting pain.

He opened his eyes, and there, at last, was the sight he had longed for. It was no less beautiful than before, luminous and shining. Dark stains streaked the white cheeks, black on ivory, welling from equally dark eyes. Qui-Gon reached up, breath held tight, to brush one pale cheekbone. Heat on ice, spilling across his fingertips. The image of his padawan flinched from the touch, an inarticulate noise on his lips.

"Let me..."

"Don't"

Fear, not anger, in that voice. Qui-Gon's breath hissed through his teeth, his hand trembling. "Obi-Wan...please..."

Flesh touched to reluctant stone, but though the feel was nothing he was familiar with the shape was the same. The planes of jaw beneath his palm, cheek curved beneath his fingers. It was the shape he knew, and it brought all of the hopes and dreams and fears crashing in upon him, mingled and intermixed, given solid shape and form that he could reach out and touch.

The sobs caught him about the chest in a vice of pain but he was helpless to hold them back. He felt the face beneath his hand flinch in answering pain, reverberating through their link. Then the hand in his hair released him, and in the next instant face and hands both dissolved into the darkness, reappearing as he was lifted, pulled into an embrace at once tight and gentle, the arms around him achingly familiar. Qui-Gon buried his hand in cropped strands of hair, shaken with tears, feeling the answering shudders run through the body that held him. [Padawan...my Obi-Wan...I thought I had lost you.]

The other body jerked, withdrawing. Qui-Gon tightened his hold but Obi-Wan broke away easily, brushing the Jedi Master away. In the space of a blink the darkness enveloped him; when Qui-Gon looked again the pale blur of face and hands had retreated several steps. "You have lost me," he whispered, the tone flat. Eyes black in the dimness caught and held him, gleaming brightly, voice a sibilant caress of sound. "This...this is nothing that you know."

It wasn't the Force that reached out to him; it was something primal and chill that twined itself about his thoughts. Almost, for a bare second, he would have turned away - he knew, in his heart, that the moment he did the ghost would fade, and with it, all recollection of what had happened. But the tiny rippling bond between them would not be denied and he clung to it desperately, refusing to be turned aside.

Deadlocked silence, gazes fixed, unblinking. At last the ghost dropped his head, breaking the contact. A soft, choked chuckle rang out into the darkness, gaining strength. The sound crackled from the walls around them, bouncing crazily, harsh and painful to the ear. Qui-Gon stood firm before it, though a shiver ran down his spine and through his bones. Obi-Wan quieted at last, and the dark humorless smile on his lips broke Qui-Gon's heart with its viscious, bitter edge.

"Bound and broken," the shade whispered. "You would tie me to life, and I...I am death, Qui-Gon. Yours, if you won't let me go."

"Then so be it." His voice was overly loud in the stillness, the words ringing. Sitting up, breath coming shallow and fast, Qui-Gon held out his hand. "I won't lose you again. I can't."

Obi-Wan flinched, shaking his head. "You can't follow me in this," he said harshly. "And I can't come back to you. We can't ever go back." Another bitter burst of laughter, the sound like oil. "They were right."

"Who were?" Qui-Gon leaped at the words, grabbing at them, but the pale face shook back and forth, denying him.

"Better you don't know. Better you walk away, forget all of this. Go."

It pushed at him, hard and firm, but he would not yield. He gathered the Force to him, pushed back through the bond they shared, refusing to be manipulated...and as the Force leapt from him he saw the pale face gasp, stumble back, hands half raised in defense from something they could not touch.

He was up on his feet despite the pain, crossing the steps that separated them and reaching for one dimly seen shoulder. "Obi-Wan...." [Padawan, let me help...]

"Stop it!" Pale hands flew to temples, pressing hard. The voice he knew so well echoed with a desperate pain that he would have done anything to ease. Qui-Gon reached out, the Force gathering beneath his hand to soothe and heal.

Obi-Wan cried out, jerking away, falling back against the wall. "Stop it!" he gasped. Black tears ran wet down his cheeks, and as Qui-Gon watched, horrified, thin trickles of black seeped from under his fingernails as his hands clutched at his head. "It hurts!"

...cut from the Force... Yoda had said. Qui-Gon released his grasp on the Force, letting it swirl away. The ghost of his padawn drew a low breath, some of the tension draining from the fingers that dug so violently at his temples, as though he might physically claw the pain forth.

Cut from it. Not passed into it, but cut from it. Existing in an absence of it, a cold well of nothingness, hurt unbearably by the touch of the very thing he had once reached for with every breath.

Nerveless, the Jedi Master sank back to his knees, the paving unfelt beneath him. He could not tear his eyes away from the figure before him. "My Obi-Wan," he whispered, voice breaking. "What happened? What was done to you?" He could still feel the press of those cold hands. A physical being, animate, conscious...and without the living Force. Qui-Gon's mind reeled, searching for an answer he did not posess.

The figure crouched against the wall did not answer, dark eyes peering from a pale face, still and unmoving as a statue. Qui-Gon did not dare to move. They stayed there, as the cold seeped up through calves and knees to chill him and muscles protested the stillness, falling at last to prickling numbness.

There was no time but fatigue began to set in, falling over him heavily. And still they sat, barely breathing, unwilling and unable to move. Qui-Gon started when the thin whisper reached him, sliding through the silence.

"You won't go, will you?"

He wet dry lips, voice cracking. "You know me better than that."

Obi-Wan dropped his head, shaking it slowly. "You'll kill us both," he whispered, but the words held no strength to them. "And Force help me, I'll let you. I love you too dearly to let go."

"Then don't let go," Qui-Gon answered softly.

Pale lids closed across dark eyes. "I don't have a choice."

Hear my cry
In my hungering search for you
Taste my breath on the wind
See the sky
As it mirrors my colors
Hints and whispers begin

The quiet of the room was almost a physical thing, a cold pressure that closed around him. Qui-Gon opened his eyes slowly, looking out into a blackness that was only dimly resolved into shapes by eyes that had adjusted as much as they could to the lack of light.

His bare shoulders, where they pressed against the wall, had developed an small itch that he could neither banish nor relieve. His ankles and calves had long since progressed from numb to the agony of prickling needles, and then back to heavy numbness.

He let out a shallow breath, daring to slowly shift his weight from one hip to the other. The needles returned, driving mercilessly into his flesh. He bit his lip, waiting for them to subside.

Across the room the still figure who curled upon the floor never moved. Qui-Gon let out his breath, shifting into a position slightly more comfortable and then falling still again.

It had been hours - he had tried to count the time and failed, slipping into light bouts of sleep and then waking again. Through it all Obi-Wan's still body had never stirred. Qui-Gon watched it with a dismayed fascination, not daring to move himself.

Not since the first time.

Dawn had come with a faint reverberation in the Jedi Master's bones, something he had sensed dimly without knowing it. Obi-Wan had felt it strongly, something that made him wince and stagger to his feet. He had said nothing - had turned his back to Qui-Gon, lips pressed tight. Words between them had failed, trailing off into a silence that neither could break.

The door Qui-Gon had opened had lead to a tiny set of rooms, bare and empty. Obi-Wan had looked at him once as he stepped through the doorway, a hooded glance that said quite firmly that he could stay on one side of the door or the other, but he would have to decide now. Not understanding, Qui-Gon had none the less struggled to his feet and followed after, letting the door hiss shut behind them.

"Lock it," Obi-Wan's whisper had instructed. Raw, bitter amusement had trickled through their bond. "It won't matter, but lock it anyways."

Qui-Gon had done as instructed, reaching hesitantly to the Force to activate the locking mechanism in the door. It had taken him only moments, hearing the rustle of movement behind him, and when he had turned it had been to find a sight that had nearly stilled his heart in his chest.

The body curled on the floor was the perfect picture of death, and he had seen that state enough times to recognize it. Pale and still, not with watching but with closed eyed limpness, the limbs heavy in a way that sleep alone could not bring. Slipped, from one breath to the next, into the death that had haunted Qui-Gon for weeks. His own breath had caught, choking him.

No motion had stirred the chest that he could dimly see in the darkness. Assumption and guess had abandoned him, leaving him floundering. In the end, forcing himself to motion, the Jedi Master had slowly dropped down beside the still body, hand reaching out to seek a pulse or any sign of life.

Reflexes honed in decades of being a Jedi were the only thing that saved him. One pale hand lashed out faster than the eye could follow, fingers brushing his own with bruising strength even as he had thrown himself back and away.

[Obi-Wan!] But there was nothing there, not even the faintest hint of a presence. The single motion of the hand ceased as he moved beyond range, the body collapsing once more into the stillness of a corpse. Heart pounding slightly, Qui-Gon had moved back further, pressing himself against the far wall.

Hours passed but the body had never moved again. Qui-Gon, settling himself against the wall, had not dared to. The tiny room provided barely two arms lengths between them, forcing him to draw his knees in, pressing his large frame into as small a space as possible.

He would not have thought it possible but sleep caught him up with pressing urgency, the heavy lethargy pulling at mind and body. Nerves ragged and alert, he slipped in and out of restless dozes, aware of the need even in sleep to remain where he was. It had left aches in yet more places and a headache throbbing quietly behind his eyes.

All of the little aches and dimly throbbing pains of his body pounded through him in time with the beat of his pulse. Tilting his head back to the wall, he sought comfort in the chill of it against his skin.

Even regulating the breath that hissed silently between his lips was almost more concentration than he could muster. His thoughts skittered blearily from one point to another, never staying still long enough. He hardly dared to open himself to the Force for fear of a reaction from the body so close to his. A thin thread trickled into him, warming him somewhat and keeping the throb within his head from becoming blinding. Sighing noiselessly, he eased another ache with a small shift of position.

He was not sure how much later it was when the first breath echoed into the silence, loud and startling in its slow inhalation. His eyes flared open, centering first upon the body before him. A breath swelled the chest, released in a soft sigh, the first such in countless hours. Only when the motion was repeated thrice more, with no sign of ceasing, did Qui-Gon dare to release his own breath.

His throat was dry, mobility coming only grudgingly to tongue and lips. "Obi-Wan." The whisper was only a breath, cracked and trailing. Swallowing, he tried again. "Obi-Wan."

The response was immediate. The body surged up before the black eyes had even sprang open. Qui-Gon braced himself against the wall, holding his breath.

One of those pale hands was a hairs breadth away from his throat before focus came back to the dark eyes that hovered over him. Even then the hand did not immediately draw away, fingertips brushing across the surface of his throat. Obi-Wan's nostrils flared, lips peeling back for a second across teeth that gleamed unaturally white and sharp.

Qui-Gon drew in a sharp gasp, unable to quell the piercing shiver that streaked down his spine, primal and fierce, a flight reaction that tensed his muscles and took his breath away as knife edged fangs flashed in the darkness. In a heartbeat Obi-Wan was gone, dissolved into the shadows and reappearing pressed tight to the far wall.

They stayed there for several heartbeats, eyes locked, bodies frozen. Obi-Wan slid slowly down the wall until he came to rest against the floor, body still tensed as though he might flee. "You stayed," he whispered softly, voice wondering.

Qui-Gon tried to slow the furious pounding of his heart. At a distance the illusion of an ethereal beauty resumed, pale and wane, as perfect as flawless crystal for all the dark smears of tears and dirt upon cheeks and eyes. Swallowing, he pushed the flash of fear down, releasing it. His nerves, strung tight to breaking, vibrated with an alarm he couldn't entirely dismiss.

Moving brought back the furious needling pain of limbs left in one position too long, drawing a hissed breath through his teeth. Clumsy with the numbness, he leaned carefully forward onto his knees, letting the blood rush back to his feet.

Obi-Wan watched him, still and silent, the tip of his tongue just touching his upper lip. A minute shiver went through him, felt more through their bond than seen. "You shouldn't have," he sighed.

"Obi-Wan..." Qui-Gon broke off, shivering. He could not tear his gaze from the form of the other man, little tremors working their way down his spine. Words spilled out, desperately searching. "What happened to you? We thought you were dead. I heard...I felt you die."

Obi-Wan flinched, his pale face turning away. "I called for you," he said at last, reluctantly.

Screaming through his nightmares, the death knell of his own heart. [MASTER!] Qui-Gon closed his eyes, shuddering. "I heard you," he replied softly.

Dark eyes hardened, black upon black in the darkness. "Then you should have left it alone," Obi-Wan hissed softly. "Why look for the dead?"

The Jedi Master jerked his chin up, jaw tightening. "Because you aren't dead," he answered sharply. "The dead do not talk. The dead do not walk and move and touch. A dead man would not try to frighten me away." [Tell me what happened!]

Obi-Wan stiffened, face tense and still. "There is no death," he intoned, sarcasm stabbing visciously through his tone. "There is the Force. But there isn't even that any more...why does it matter what happened?"

Qui-Gon swallowed, stung by the bitterness that flowed across his mind, biteing and sharp. "I don't even know what you are any more," he admitted quietly. "I felt you die, Obi-Wan. I lived that death with you. Yet here you are and here I am...you say you are death. I would almost believe it. Are we both dead, then? Ghosts together?"

He did not think it possible for that face and those eyes to be any harder. Ice and darkness, dirt streaked and pared down to the bareness of bone and hollow, sharp edged and tight, turning on him with burning intensity.

He never saw or felt the movement. A brush, a breath of passing wind in the darkness - cold hard hands clamped about his shoulders, his back scraping across the wall as he was hauled effortlessly to his feet. A cry burst from him at the jostling. In the next heartbeat the white mask of a face appeared a hairs breadth from his own and a mouth, hard and bruising, crushed down against his lips.

It stole his breath. There was nothing of the lover in that kiss, only hunger, a burning desperation that took, consuming. Qui-Gon gasped as Obi-Wan pulled away, hand grasping for the sleeve of one of the arms that held him. The other man's breath brushed his cheek, cool and sibilant. "Is that the touch of a ghost?"

Qui-Gon looked into dark eyes, breath rasping. Obi-Wan dipped his head, cold lips brushing the Jedi Master's cheek, trailing down across his jaw. "Do you know," he whispered, breath caressing, "how much I want you? Waking to your smell, your heartbeat, the sound of your breath... do you know what this hunger is like? Do you have any idea?"

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, shivering helplessly as those lips brushed feather light against his throat. A dream, it had been a dream...but he knew, feeling that soft touch, that it was anything but. [I don't understand...]

"No." Obi-Wan moved back, breathing the word against his lips. The pull of that empty nothingness forced his head back, pushed until his eyes opened, meeting the dark ones above him. "No, you don't." Soft, almost dreamy, a throaty whisper. "But you can."

Lips pulled back from teeth and he was helpless to pull away, to do more than shiver with a captivated terror that spoke to something deep within him. Watching, breath held, as the sharp tip of incisors bit down into the softness of flesh, blood welling black to stream down the pale lines of chin and throat.

He tried, at the last, to turn his head away - to move, to run. Harder than stone, the hands held him, fingers digging bruises into his flesh. He could only stiffen, hand shoving futily against the body that pinned him, as wet lips closed across his own and forced his mouth open.

When the blood touched his tongue the universe imploded.

The taste of colors and the scent of touch exploded across his senses, burning through his veins and searing his flesh. Sound and sight and fire roared through the emptiness, filling it, filling him. He moaned against the lips pressed to his, tasted the pain in the timbre of his own voice. ...you want to know... the colors whispered against his skin. ...taste it...feel it...

PAIN. Pain and fear, blind stifling panic. It flared through him, consuming him. Hands on him, hard and colder than the grave, ripping, tearing. He fought them, twisting, struggling, but there were too many of them and the hands where everywhere. With it, echoing and frantic, came the laughter that pierced and fell like shards of glass all around him.

Crying out, trying to push them away, to run, to escape. They laughed, the emptiness of them engulfing him, a nothingness that swallowed him whole and spat him forth, drained and stumbling. Hands in the tail of his hair, wrenching his head back, the scream ripping from him wetly as claws raked deep across his throat, flesh parting and blood spilling forth with every beat of his heart. Life draining away, over chest and hands and floor until everything was slick with it and his heart was ragged in fear.

At the last breath, as the darkness swelled around him, he screamed. Clawing for the bond, the only link he could reach, he screamed out his dying heartbeat in a single word, knowing it was his last, begging that it would not go unheard. Pleading, crying, for one last touch...and with that touch, willing to sink down into the embrace of the Force.

But there was no Force, nothing but dark emptiness that threatened to snuff thought and life like the pinched wick of a candle. And then it came. It poured across his tongue, down his throat. It bound him, trapped him, tying him to the fading flesh that had once been his body. And to that flesh it brought life, a heart that beat, lungs that pulled in breath, muscles that surged against the hands that held him... anything, anything at all, to reach the source of that life giving fount.

And when it was done, when they pulled him away as the life raced through his veins...he fought them. Unknowning, uncaring, he fought them, hand and nail and tooth. And they, a ragged court of white faced fiends, let him go. Laughing and laughing, possessed, their laughter chasing him out into the unknown depths of Coruscant. Laughter and taunting mockery, biting at his heels, stabbing at his heart as he ran the darkened corridors and walkways.

The images faded, drawing away. Qui-Gon sucked in a breath, only then aware that he could. Blood across his lips, tingling flashfire across his tongue, explosions flaring white at the corners of his eyes. A moan dragged its way from his lips, shivering in the still air.

Cold hands released him, letting his body drop limply to the floor. Even that could not jolt him, the swirling incandescence of sensation drowning the pain.

Obi-Wan sank slowly to his knees beside Qui-Gon, the fingers of one hand sliding into loose silver hair to cradle the base of his neck and lift him. "You wanted to know," he whispered heavily.

A cough forced its way through Qui-Gon's chest, but the pain was a dim thing, easily forgotten. His hand clutched at the arm that held him, fingers knotting into the fabric of sleeve. [Obi-Wan...] It slipped between them, a benediction, a prayer. [Obi...]

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, breath exhaling softly through blood stained lips. Leaning down, his brushed the memory of a kiss across the Jedi Master's mouth. "This is death," he breathed. "If the Force is life, then this is death. You can not follow me here."

Words found their way like a long forgotten fragment of dream to Qui-Gon's lips. "I can't leave you."

Obi-Wan shook his head slowly. Qui-Gon reached up, cupping cheek and jaw. His fingers brushed cropped hair, slid into it. Bare flesh beneath his fingertips behind one ear set his hand to trembling, combing softly through the hair around it.

A grim smile touched Obi-Wan's lips. "They tore it off," he breathed, letting the Jedi Master's fingers twine into the loosened tail at his nape. A small inarticulate sound whispered between them as Qui-Gon touched the smooth scar where hair and flesh had been torn away. Eyes still closed, Obi-Wan tilted his head, rubbing his cheek gently against Qui-Gon's palm. His breath exhaled, the words a soft moan. "Ah, my Master..."

Qui-Gon closed his own eyes, the small shudders of reaction still twitching along his spine. "I can't lose you again," he repeated, the words thick on his tongue. "I can't. I won't."

[I don't want to be lost.] Pain and despair, crushingly heavy. Qui-Gon reached out, drawing them together, tucking the bristled hair beneath his chin as he held the other man close. Obi-Wan stiffened, drawing away, then slowly settled back. Stiff, unyielding, but allowing himself to be held.

Stroking that short hair, Qui-Gon bowed his head, pressing his cheek to the head against his chest. "This isn't death," he breathed, his voice rumbling through his chest. "This is...nothingness. Change. This is loss."

ObiWan tensed, pulling back. Qui-Gon held to him, knew that it was only willingness on Obi-Wan's part that allowed him to halt that hard flesh from doing whatever it wished. "This is hunger," Obi-Wan spat bitterly, face twisted. "This is hell, Qui-Gon. This is a nightmare I can not leave."

The Jedi Master reached out, pressing a tentative finger to the pale lips of the other man. "Maybe," he admitted softly. "And maybe I can't follow you into it. But I would follow you into death, Obi-Wan..." He hesitated, throat tight, then jerked his head slightly. "And if this is not death, then perhaps that is still where we might be together.."

Every finger is touching and searching
Until your secrets come out
In the dance, as it endlessly circles
I linger close to your mouth

Obi-Wan moved his head back. The light pressure of the Jedi Master's fingertip against his lips burned them with its heat. His breath rasped in his throat, caught in jaws clenched tight and hard. "Do you never listen?" he hissed.

Qui-Gon drew back, brows furrowing. For a moment the mask of the Jedi Master outweighed the man, the frown one of familiar irritation for a Padawan's quick tongue. Obi-Wan bit back a laugh, the soundless spasm shaking his chest. He had grown to hate the feel of his own laughter.

The older man sat up slowly, broken wrist cradled to ribs mottled black and green as he leaned against his good arm. Obi-Wan swallowed, looking away. He could all but feel the beat of the other man's heart, like a patter of soft caresses stroking across his own skin. Qui-Gon licked his lips. "I am listening, Obi-Wan," he said softly.

The laughter escaped, little chuckles that slid like bitter oil across his tongue and through his teeth. The sound of it was harsh in the small room, pain and predatory pleasure mixing through his heart as Qui-gon flinched from it.

"No, you aren't," he said, each syllable a separate entity in his mouth. "It's a fault of yours, Qui-Gon. You don't listen. You aren't listening right now."

The movement came so frighteningly easy to him, thought translated into the motion of muscle driven on violent emotion. The flesh of Qui-Gon's chest seared the palm of his hand, heat and life and the rush of blood where he could feel it, just beneath the skin. He pushed, hearing the small muffled cry as the Jedi Master fell back, moving to pin the larger man.

Qui-Gon's breath hissed out, a sound of pain. Obi-Wan shivered, feeling the brush of the air. "You aren't hearing what I'm saying," he ground out. "This is nothing to do with you any longer. This is nothing you can join me in or should want to."

The Jedi Master winced as Obi-Wan's hand drove down, an inarticulate cry of pain as bone ground against bone in his broad ribcage. Obi-Wan felt the pain ring through his own chest, flinched, but held his ground. One heartbeat ringing between them, echoing from chest to pressing palm and back again. Another. Only then did he relent, drawing away.

The bruise blossomed as he watched, broken capillaries beneath the skin spilling their blood forth in a brilliant dark color to match the shape and pattern of his fingers. Qui-Gon did not move, breath barely leaving his lips, the briefest shudder running through him.

Obi-Wan met his Master's eyes, letting the morass of his own emotions spill through the trickle of their link, watching as the Jedi flinched from it. "That is what this is, Qui-Gon. It is pain and darkness. It is a hunger for that pain."

"Is that what you need of me, then?" Qui-Gon breathed softly. His dark eyes were glassy with pain but focused none the less, his face pale and lips set tight. "You think I would not face that for you?"

Obi-Wan leapt to his feet, his fist crashing an indentation into the wall. The blow rang through the room, deafening. Turning, he pressed his back to it, tight, needing to feel the cold steel. "What makes you think I would let you?" he cried. The teetering dip and swell of emotion caught him, anger flowing to pain, the pain shuddering through him like a physical sensation. "You are all I have left," he whispered, the words dropping like ice into the silence. "They took everything else. Would you let them take you from me as well?"

"Would you leave me?"

Obi-Wan flinched from the Jedi Master, nails scraping across the wall. The shudders worked through his chest, small sobs begging to be released, voice rasping harshly. "Why can't you let. it. BE."

Qui-Gon struggled up slowly, breath catching in small hitches as he sat, curled around the pain of his body. "Because you wouldn't," he gasped, teeth clenched but words firm. "You and the visions you sent to me."

Obi-Wan jerked as though struck. "I didn't..."

"Wind," Qui-Gon's voice cut over his, rising in a pained shout. "The sound of wind, the feel of it. Light playing on water. Music, every note perfect, every sound a physical thing. They were yours, weren't they? Things you were feeling."

Brittle silence trembled between them. "Things you experienced," Qui-Gon continued slowly, each word dropping into the quiet like stones thrown with deadly accuracy against Obi-Wan's body. "I can't even begin to describe them. The beauty of it...is that your nightmare, Obi-Wan? Is that why you sent them to me, made me share them?"

"I didn't send them," Obi-Wan pushed the words out, biting them off sharply. "I didn't..." he sucked in a sharp breath. "I didn't want you here. I don't. Qui-Gon...you don't belong here."

"And you do?" Qui-Gon asked softly. "Why?"

"I didn't say I did," Obi-Wan snapped. "But I am here. I can't change that. But I won't bring you down with me." He could feel the tears stinging in his eyes and he brushed them away quickly. Wet on his fingertips, and he thrust it out to the other man, taking refuge in anger. "You say its beautiful, but I showed you what they did...you have no idea what this is. Look at it. Look. This is what I've become. This isn't the Dark side of the Force...this isn't the Force at all. This is death. Nothingness."

Red tinged tears of blood streaked across his fingers. Qui-Gon reached out unsteadily, taking Obi-Wan's wrist in his hand. The younger man watched, breath catching, as the kneeling man leaned forward, eyes open and unwavering as he took one wet fingertip into his mouth.

The cry was wrenched from both of them, one in horror, one in deep trembling wonder. Qui-Gon shuddered, fingers closing with desperate strength around Obi-Wan's wrist, breath exploding from his lungs as the droplets of blood burned through his consciousness. "No," Obi-Wan whispered, nerveless.

Qui-Gon's breath was hot against his palm, the edge of his beard scratching sharp against skin that jumped and shivered at the touch. His eyes, when he opened them, were black ringed thinly by the darkest blue, unfocused and bright.

"Is this what it is?" he whispered brokenly, and Obi-Wan could not suppress a shiver as the other man's breath moved across his wrist, caressing. "You called it hunger...is this it, then?"

"No," Obi-Wan breathed, but he could not force feeling into the word. Could not draw his hand away, for all that he knew he had the strength to do it, to thrust Qui-Gon away from him. The warmth of that breath across his skin left his hand nerveless, his body shivering. "I've killed, Qui-Gon. I've murdered for the hunger. Drank the last beat from a heart and still craved it."

Qui-Gon pulled, drawing the younger man's hand down. Obi-Wan closed his eyes, breath failing him as the wet warmth of that tongue slid across another finger, teeth closing on the tip as the answering shudder wracked through the Jedi Master, his low moan reverberating through Obi-Wan's palm.

"Don't," Obi-Wan whispered, but his voice cracked and the word trailed into the silence.

The older man pressed a lingering kiss to the palm of his hand. "Then crave me," he whispered, the words burning through Obi-Wan like a physical bolt. "I won't leave you. Drain my heart...I died when you did. All that remains is to finish it."

Obi-Wan's knees failed him, dropping him heavily to the ground, a moan rising hoarsely from his throat. He could feel the hunger, bittersweet, twining his nerves in pain. Scent and touch and sound...the beat of the Jedi Master's heart, heavy and wet, the sweet scent of the blood that rushed through it.

"I won't," he whispered to it, breathless. "I can't." Teeth grazed the heel of his hand and he gasped, breath strangling in his throat. "My Master...don't..."

Qui-Gon's lips closed across the pulse that fluttered in his wrist. The cry jerked from Obi-Wan's chest as fire blazed through his veins, hot and bright, tearing at him.

Blunt teeth scraping hard across the tiny veins so near to the surface of the skin, unable to break it. Obi-Wan gasped, shuddering, a spasm twisting his wrist away from Qui-Gon's grasp.

Qui-Gon swayed. Obi-Wan caught his shoulder in a bruising grip, holding the other man upright. Overwrought nerves trembled through him, the fire catching his breath and setting it free in gasped pants. "You think this is what you want?" he demanded.

"You," Qui-Gon gasped dimly. "I want us. I will not lose you again. Whatever that means," the Jedi Master whispered. "In death, in nightmare, in hunger, in hell...I will not lose you."

Obi-Wan hesitated, fighting, the fire coiled in his guts and streaking in starbursts through his veins. Closing his eyes tight, he shook his head, knowing the battle already lost on the breath of his Master's whisper. "Damn you," he whispered fiercely. "Damn you..."

It hurt, flashing icy stabs of pain up his arm as flesh and vein and tendon severed beneath the cut of his teeth. Blood welled out in a gush, hot and wet across his lips, spilling over chin and down. It steamed in the cold darkness, splashing in droplets across the floor.

It hurt a thousand times more to hold that dripping wound out, a pain of defeat that lodged in his soul and gave a harsh bite to his voice. "Do you want it? Then take it."

Never had Obi-Wan seen his Master so firm, so utterly unmoveably entrenched in the tightness of lip and jaw, the set of shoulders and spine. The Jedi Master reached out his good hand, taking Obi-Wan's in a tight grip. Their eyes met, unbreaking, and then Qui-Gon leaned forward to press his lips to the gash.

The moan began in Qui-Gon's chest, drawn from the depths of his body and passed, trembling, through the flesh of mouth and tongue to shiver through Obi-Wan's arm and burst from his lips. He could feel the slow draw in every vein, surging through him, culminating in one wet gush that slipped from the corner of his Master's mouth, streaking chin and cheek.

Hot rushing heat as Qui-Gon drew the blood forth. Obi-Wan moaned again, the sound rattling through his bones. Leaning forward, he let his lips press to flesh, let his tongue slide across thin skin, tasting the salt of sweat and the tantalizing promise of heat beneath the surface. "Master..." he whispered.

[Padawan...] It slid between them, binding even as it tore, caressing with sharp shivers of heat and slivers of cold pain. Qui-Gon tore his mouth away reluctantly, a groan shaking him. His hair was tangled in Obi-Wan's fingers, his hand pressed tight to the nape of the younger man's neck. Leaning back, he arched up, the fluttering pulse of his throat touching Obi-Wan's lips.

A moan drawn from two throats. Sweat and the scent of the man, driving straight through Obi-Wan's being, nerves consumed in flame. So terribly easy to press that one bit closer, to draw his lips back and feel the flesh part beneath his teeth, the blood hitting him like a shockwave of raw sensation.

Qui-Gon cried out, shuddering. Obi-Wan pressed him back against the floor, nails drawing welts over the bare flesh of back and ribs, pulling him closer. The thunder of the Jedi Master's heart pounded through him, hard and deep, echoing a counterpoint to his own.

The whirlwind opened to him, bits and pieces of the other man laid bare before him on the river of blood. Padawan...My Obi-Wan... Skittering across thought and feeling, memory, touch and taste. Qui-Gon moaned softly, the sound vibrating through Obi-Wan's lips.

Obi-Wan broke away, the wail of loss dragged from both of them. Reaching up, he tore at his own throat with his nails, desperation sinking them deep. Blood rushed across his collarbone, it's heat nothing to the furnace that burned beneath his skin.

Qui-Gon's fingers twined into the tail of his hair, tight and painful. The spasm caught Obi-Wan as his Master's mouth found the wound, choking his cry. His hands were rough, bruising, the bite deep and vicious as he sank back into the pulse beneath his lips.

Blood to blood, a circle pumped through two hearts, two bodies. Burning through vein and mouth, a ring of fire that consumed them, pleasure and pain. Love and life, as close as the brush of a hand. It flooded Obi-Wan, washed through him, as tangible as the taste on his tongue.

He ached for it, for the warmth, for the bright sparkling touch he had lost, the life he could reach for and feel respond. Only here, only in the blood, could he feel it. It flooded him now, brighter than it had been since the darkness washed it away. He reached for it, grasping it greedily.

Through it, linked with it, he could feel the bright incandescent pulse of his Master's life, beating through him, with him. But in that pulse was an echo, fading, dimming...loss, darkness, and for one brief moment Obi-Wan saw it, spread out before him in the map of their bodies.

Darkness, streaming nothingness that devoured in cold. Life, bright and hot, burning. Mixed and intermingled, each taking the other, his death in exchange for Qui-Gon's life.

It was agony to tear away, pushing, struggling. Loss and agony, the blood link broken, ripping away. Throwing himself back, shoulders slamming against the wall, screaming out the loss and hearing it echoed in the bass cry of his Master. Pain, reverberating endlessly through a bond that had once been their entirety and now seemed dim and pale.

Darkness and the four cold walls of a small bare room that he hated with passion, white flashes flying before his eyes, throat choked with sobbing screams. He slammed his hands against the wall, against the floor, the metal crumpling beneath his fists, the sobs tearing free. Distantly he could hear his own voice crying, a mantra of pain. "No. No. no. no. nonono."

Electric blue sparks across the metal surfaces, bright and crackling in the darkness. And then large hands caught his, forcing them back, pinning him to the wall with frightening strength, a deep hoarse cry in his ears. "Obi-Wan!"

He gasped, the breath jolted from him. Reaction was the stuff of instinct, one drilled so often it came without thought. Reaching out to the warmth, pushing with it, feeling the hands fly away, the cry as the body hit the floor.

Obi-Wan paused, stunned, even as training completed the movement and his hands reached to his belt for the saber that wasn't there. His breath caught, the warmth tingling through him, a touch as familiar and intimate as breath. Qui-Gon pushed himself up, eyes wide.

Trembling, Obi-Wan looked at his hands, extending them to his Master. The Force leapt out between them, familiar, catching and holding, the trickling bond flaring to life with crystal clarity. Obi-Wan shivered, unbelieving. "Master..."

"Obi-Wan..." Qui-Gon pushed himself to his feet, taking a step forward, hands outstretched to catch his Padawan's. It was only as he did so that he realized the ease of the motion and saw the understanding reflected in the widening of bright grey eyes.

[Master?] Instinctive and warm, that touch, sparkling through mind and soul, rushing to fill all of the areas laid barren in his heart. Qui-Gon could not suppress the grin that stretched his lips, an expression of giddy delighted wonder. One deep breath, filling his lungs as he had not been able to in days, then another, and only the barest of sore tender twinges across one side.

A tremulous smile brushed Obi-Wan's lips, the first truly pleased expression that Qui-Gon had seen. "The bruises are fading," he whispered, reaching out to press cool fingers to the larger man's ribs. Qui-Gon caught his hand, pulling him closer, and Obi-Wan did not resist. A small thoughtful frown creased his brow, fingertips tracing lightly over the faded bruises on chest and arms that he had inflicted.

"I never thought..." he paused, tongue touching his lip thoughtfully. "The blood. Cuts, bruises, any injury...it heals almost instantly. There must be something in the blood. I didn't think it would work like this, though."

Qui-Gon caught his chin, lifting his gaze up. His thumb swept across a dirt and tear stained cheek, caressing. "Thank you," he said softly.

Obi-Wan jerked back, eyes flashing. "Thank you?" he repeated, disbelieving. "For what? Almost killing you?"

"I told you to," Qui-Gon replied mildly, bending to drop a gentle kiss across the younger man's forehead. "I don't take the words back now."

Shaking his head slowly, Obi-Wan closed his eyes. "I don't know which of us is dreaming," he whispered.

"Maybe we both are," the Jedi Master whispered. [Padawan...] The Force came to his call, warmth and strength surging through a body already vibrating with a shivering vitality. Taking a breath, he thrust it from him roughly in a concentrated burst.

Obi-Wan had already jerked back, hands half raised, a Force shield blunting the thrust of the shove. Surprised anger flashed through their bond, snarled words already leaping to the younger man's lips, but Qui-Gon held up a placating hand. "What did you just do?" he asked softly.

Surprise, then wonder all over again. Obi-Wan let the Force shield bleed away, the shivers running through his body. Tears glittered in his eyes. "I can feel it," he whispered brokenly. "It's there. I can feel it, I can reach it."

"Maybe we are both dreaming," Qui-Gon said quietly, gathering the younger man back into his arms. "But it needn't be a nightmare."

Obi-Wan's arms came up around his chest, holding tight to the point where lingering bruises began to ache. Qui-Gon said nothing, pushing the pain away and returning the grasp, finding all of the reassurance and completion needed in the feel of the body in his arms.

A trembling shiver ran through the younger man, shaking him. He tilted his head up and Qui-Gon bent to kiss him, a light touch. Obi-Wan pressed up into it, his lips laced with the sharp tang of blood. There was a desperation in the touch that Qui-Gon answered willingly, broad hands slipping beneath a loose tunic to caress achingly thin ribs.

Obi-Wan's fingers threaded into the loose fall of Qui-Gon's hair and he breathed a softly pleased murmur against the older man's lips. Qui-Gon let the Force linger in his hands, smoothing it across the cool skin of back in a long sweep. Obi-Wan's breath caught softly and he arched into the touch. "Yes," he hissed softly, eyes closing. "Make this real. Please..." He pulled Qui-Gon's head down roughly, his kiss demanding.

[QUI-GON]

The Jedi Master jerked away with a cry, the collective call ringing through his head with all the subtlety of a blaster bolt. Obi-Wan winced as well, feeling the echos, a hand going to his temple. "The Council," he muttered, shaking his head as though to clear it. "They're looking for you."

"I know," Qui-Gon ground out through clenched teeth, even as it came again, a focused call sent by several minds, forceful and seeking. The Jedi Master swore, softly, a litany of words picked up on planets the galaxy over. Obi-Wan stared, eyes wide, then dissolved into quiet laughter against his chest, the sound one of genuine amusement tinged with a warm hilarity that rang out like balm to Qui-Gon's nerves and heart. He dropped a kiss to short cropped hair. "Now we know it's not a dream," he commented wryly.

Obi-Wan only laughed the harder, tears of overwhelmed emotion spilling wetly down his cheeks. Holding the younger man close, Qui-Gon shook his head softly. "I should answer them."

"Yes," Obi-Wan gasped, the laughter trailing away. "No...I don't..." Hesitation and trepidation, another shiver sweeping through him. He glanced up, seeking. "Can we..."

"Go back?" Qui-Gon finished the thought softly, reaching to cradle the pale face between his palms. Doubt and fear and anticipation of pain, swirling through their link until he could not tell what were his own feeling and what had their birth in the man before him.

"I can't..." Obi-Wan began, the darkness gathering in his eyes, but Qui-Gon silenced the words with his mouth, roughly, swallowing their bitterness into his own heart and letting it bleed away into the darkness.

"You can," he hissed, willing the other man to believe it. "We both can. We will."

Obi-Wan shook his head slightly but Qui-Gon held him firm. "Trust me," he breathed. "My Obi-Wan...trust me. There is a way, and I will find it."

The younger man sighed, brokenly, body sagging as the tension in him finally snapped, worn past its holding point. "I can't help but trust you," he whispered. "Damn you, Qui-Gon...I can't ever say no to you."

Qui-Gon gathered the other man close, holding him tight to his heart, intensely aware of the double throb of their pulses. "Trust me," he repeated softly, dropping his cheek down against the cropped hair even as he reached out to answer the insistent call.

* * * Epilogue * * *

Familiar and not familiar, like a dream, dimly remembered, stepped out into the light and made reality. I found myself shivering with it at the oddest moments - beneath the decadent spray of a hot shower, letting it wash dirt and memory away, or at the brief glimpse of my own reflection in the mirror.

I forced myself to meet the eyes reflected back at me. Did I know that shadow in the mirror? My hands raised hesitantly to the sharp angles of bones, traced the hollows under eyes and in cheeks. Skeletally thin, sickly pale, with only the faintest of flushes in cheek and lip. Small wonder the Healers wanted so badly to get their hands on me. I look like death, I thought, uncharitably.

No. Not quite like death. But only a step from it.

My skin was warm from the shower. My hair, clean at last, was once again the color I remember instead of the dull mud that swirled away into the drain. I felt...better. Not whole, not by half, but better.

The silence of the room weighed heavy on my nerves. I let my ears tune outward, catching the whisper of voices in the next room. Qui-Gon's bass rumble soothed me, the tones flowing over me like warm comfort. The other voice was too smooth, too cool...Master Windu. If I closed my eyes I could hear their words.

"...finding you gone, like that...Force, Qui-Gon, what were you thinking? Were you thinking?" Windu's voice was low, controlled anger rushing the words into a tight stream.

"No." My Master's voice was flat and firm, fatigue only fraying the edges of it. "No, Mace, I wasn't. Can this wait? I'll give a report to the Council tomorrow..."

Windu sighed. "Is the boy in any danger? The Healers want..."

"The Healers will have to go through me first," Qui-Gon snaped, the sound warming me from within.

"Don't think they don't want to," Windu warned sharply. "They want both of you." He sighed again and I could picture the shake of his dark head against my mind's eye. "You're just lucky Master Yoda agrees with you. Now answer me straight - is the boy in any danger?"

A pause, and in the end I could not fault my Master's honesty. "I don't know," he replied heavily. Hugging my arms against myself, I could only agree. I didn't know either.

The sound of fabric, weight shifting on a chair. "Yoda wouldn't let us look for you," Windu said at last, voice falling. "Not until tonight. Not until we all felt it - like a birth, or a star imploding, rippling through the Force and every one of them with your signature and Kenobi's." A pause, heavy. "You won't tell me, will you?"

My Master sighed, a tired sound. "Please, Mace," he whispered. "Not tonight. Not right now. I'm bone tired. Let it wait until tomorrow."

I could hear Windu's intake of breath and my muscles tensed. Another word, another sentence, and I might burst through that door. Might take his throat between my hands, pulse beating there, beneath my fingertips, just below the curve of the jaw...

His next words were lost to me, drowned in the sudden vibrant echo of his heartbeat; ta-thum, ta-thum, a sound I could almost feel and taste. Shuddering, I cought myself against the sink, holding to it, swallowing back the bitter bile in my throat.

Master Windu is no kind of fool - it was there in his voice, the shadow behind the words. Not "Is the boy in any danger?" but "Is the boy a danger to us?"...that was the real question and I shivered, afraid that I knew the answer.

By the time I could catch my breath and stop the trembling of my hands the voices in the next room had fallen silent. I might, if I had listened, been able to tell if Windu was still there or not merely by the heartbeats that teased at the fringes of my mind. I might, but I wouldn't. I would not.

Looking into the mirror again, I met the eyes of my reflection. The pale ghost of death stared back at me, mocking. I pressed my lips thin, glaring.

You can't go back, they had called, laughing.

"Sith take all of you," I hissed, my voice breaking brittly through the silence. "I will."

The lights were mercifully dimmed when I emerged from the bath, the chambers quiet and devoid of any presence but that of myself and my Master. I sighed in relief.

Qui-Gon was seated at the table, a cup of tea engulfed between his large hands, steam rising gently from it. "Master," I called softly. I couldn't help the tone I put in it - that single word seemed like a lifeline, something to cling to through the turmoil within me.

There was no answer. No movement in that still form, no verbal reply or touch through our bond. Nothing.

The chill ripped through me before I could damp it down. I berated myself, even as I crossed the room to the table. He had fallen asleep, I had seen him do it before, chin resting against his chest and eyes closed. "Master," I called again, reaching out to touch his shoulder. "Master, wake up. Qui-Gon."

Nothing. His breath was there but shallow, skipping lightly through his broad chest. His eyes, open, were soft and unfocused, staring straight ahead of him. My heart wrenched to a stop, then started again, painful, pounding.

I tried to reach for him, searching through our bond, only to find a quiet sense of wonder, drifting gently, almost dreamlike. "No," I whispered, denying, even as I bent to follow the line of his gaze.

White wisps rising from the cup of tea, curling gently, swirling, an ever changing pattern of steam that danced and swayed through the air. I could feel my eyes start to follow it, focusing on it. I wrenched my gaze away, the sob a hard kernel in my chest, tight and hot. His hands were relaxed and offered no resistance as I knocked the cup away, sending tea and shards of ceramic flying.

He started at the noise, eyes focusing slowly as the pattern before them changed, vanishing. I dropped to my knees beside him, taking his hands in mine. "Master?"

He blinked, turning towards me, confusion furrowing his brows. "Obi-Wan? What is it?"

I bit my tongue, tasting blood. There were no curses strong enough. "You were drifting," I spat out, hating the words even as I uttered them. "Tranced. On the steam." Tears stung my eyes and I knew, without looking, that they were still tinged with the faintest red.

"Steam." He paused, thinking, then nodded slowly. He looked old, then, the way he only did when fatigue dragged at him, feeding on spirit and flesh. "Everything is so sharp..."

"I do it all the time," I admitted, dropping my forehead to his knee. "Every night...something, anything...I learned to stop looking, stop trying to hear. It's too much." I shuddered, convulsively. "Oh sith... SITH...Qui-Gon, what have I done to us?"

His hand settled on the back of my neck, warm and large and comforting. "What I asked you to," he said softly. "Whatever it is, it's done. And now we face it together, not apart. That is what's important."

In that calm, soothing voice I could almost believe. Almost trust. Almost...almost find hope. Not quite. But almost. I let him draw me up, curled into his lap and his arms as I hadn't even when I was small enough to do so properly. Buried my face in the soft cascade of his hair, wrapped myself in the scent and feel of him.

Not quite. But it would have to be enough. For both of us.

I am living to nourish you, cherish you
I am pulsing the blood in your veins
Feel the magic and power of surrender to life

Lyrics used in Silent Legacy: Melissa Etheridge, "Silent Legacy" from "Yes I Am" (parts 1-5 & 8) Anuna, "Riverdance" from the Riverdance soundtrack (parts 6-8)

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