DISCLAIMER: Star Wars and all publicly recognisable characters, names and references, etc are the sole property of George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd, Lucasarts Inc and 20th Century Fox. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
You awaken to the feel of a broad chest pressed against you. A pair of arms like iron bands encircles you, clasping you to this mountain of body. Slowly you open your eyes. In the darkness you see nothing. Instinctively, you know the man that holds you is Qui-Gon. You shift on the ground, uncomfortable, and try to find a place to rest. The sharp, intense pain of your cracked ribs stops you.
“Easy, love. Take it easy. You have two cracked ribs.” Qui-Gon’s rich voice floats over to you. You rest in his arms, taking deep breaths, willing your torso to stop hurting. The snow is cold against your head, the hardened mass like a rock against your head. The crystals grit together as you move your head on its surface.
“Where…”
“We are on the tundra, to the east of the camp. No one has followed us. The transport will be here within the hour to retrieve us.” He answers his voice low and gritty. You can feel your naked skins pressed together, his warm, yet clammy. Your skin is cold in comparison.
You close your eyes as you realize that the man carried you across the wastes naked. In the cold elements, bare to the environment, he carried you until you had reached a safe area. You try not to think of his feet, unclothed, slapping against the snow, toes curling for leverage. If his feet had been iced in his boots…
“Your feet…” you gasp.
“Are fine. A Jedi can incorporate the Force to warm him or herself. I simply used it to generate the most heat that I could. Mace supplemented what he could to keep you warm. And the extra furs that Mace grabbed was an ingenious addition for our survival.” His voice is low again.
The smell of his sweat and the skins mixes, making you feel safe, as your eyes remain closed. The pain in your body is overwhelming. But the pain in your soul is deeper. Much much deeper. It is like a rendering of your arms from your body. It is like someone ripping your very deepest beliefs from you and then leaving you adrift in life without direction. Sadness covers you, pulls at you.
“It won’t work, will it, love?” he asks.
You don’t answer, leaving your eyes closed. His voice is full of pain that you have never heard in him previously. With your eyes closed, you see visions of your history with this Jedi. Images of laughter, images of love. You see his golden skin in a bath; you see his blue star eyes in the reflected light off a sea. The smell of roses tickles your mind, your senses. You see, feel, experience the depths of his love. And yours.
And yours.
“Please tell me I am wrong in that assumption, love.”
You see him standing amidst crimson stains, his saber lit, glowing in the darkness. His bare skin is covered in the stain of killing. His face impassive, strong, peaceful, and yet, he holds in his hand the instrument of death.
You feel him shift on his side, falling to lie on his back. He does so in a manner that does not disturb your body. You open your eyes to see his profile in the low moonlight. The snow around you reflects off the gathered crystals, painting the landscape in eerie blue.
“I never saw you that way before,” you state quietly.
His eyes swing to yours, as his head turns on the snow. His eyes are deep like an endless well – bottomless and dark. “I am a Jedi, dearheart.”
“I see you as a man,” you answer, staring at him. “I love you as a man.”
“And you don’t love me as a Jedi?” Qui-Gon sighs, his eyes drifting shut in pain or in acceptance. You feel suddenly cold from the loss of the fire in his eyes. “Tira….”
“I love you regardless. Man or Jedi….it does not matter,” you grit out. The pain in your heart is deeper than any internal injury. “I just can’t…”
“I saved you in there, love,” he returns with a loud explosive sigh that causes your hair to billow around your head. “Would you rather me have let him have you….”
“Herein lies the problem,” you answer, just looking at him, allowing his mind to tap into and follow your path.
Your lover is nothing if not an intelligent man; his mind will work the world, drifting along lines laid by the living Force. His eyes open slowly and pierce yours with alarming quickness.
You lift a hand with extreme pain and brush it down his face. “If I had not been there, you would have thought more about acting or reacting in the manner that you did. That is a truth, is it not?”
“I protected the woman that I love. With. My. Life. I would do it again.” He emphatically answers. You can hear his heart beating. You can almost hear the rushing of his blood through his veins. He quiets momentarily, and you see the liquid of melting snow running from his hair across his face. “It is because I did this…”
“Yes. You put a mission in peril, killed…for one single woman. I am sure that the Council…”
“The Council has never felt what I feel for you, love. I would have died if I had to watch you be abused by another man.” His eyes appear to turn downwards into sadness.
“As I would have died if you had been injured or killed.” You answer, “but the violence…against everything that I…”
“Don’t.” he whispers, rubbing a hand down your face, brushing over the tear tracks that you didn’t know existed. “Don’t.”
“I would not ask you to give up your system of beliefs, but I cannot give up what I believe in the same manner, Qui-Gon. To preserve peace with violence, with might instead of with diplomacy…it is against everything that I am..”
“And it is how Jedi handle situations, love.” His sigh is shaky and you look at his eyes. The crimson of blood still shouts at you, calling to you in its vivid brightness. “I cannot go against thousands of years of training. We only resort to violence when the situation demands it.”
“It is like the rendition of truth that the Jedi follow…it only remains true from a certain point of view.” You add, a slight frown on your face. “No situation requires violence…”
“It does not work that way,” he answers back, a frown on his face. “Please, love, understand. I was born to be a Jedi and a Jedi I will remain until I die.”
“You killed with such a sense of calm…”
“I killed without glee, without want. I killed as a necessary means to an end.”
A silence descends as you stare at one another. This is a crucial point to the both of you, an impasse of sorts. Breathing is loud, strained and full of pain. He has his means, his code of life. You have yours. It is a similarity between the two of you; the fact that they are diametrically opposed is only a side problem.
“I love you.” You whisper, “I love who you are when you are without this mask of Jedi calm while killing. I love the you who walks with me on beaches, the man that makes love to me with his soul. But..”
“By all that is holy, love, please don’t..” he chokes out. A lone tear treks down his cheekbone, the strong bone that supports his face. “Don’t end this.”
“I cannot live this life!” you say loudly, ending with a cough and a wince. The pain in your ribs is not lessening. “I cannot watch you return to me with blood on your hands. I know you stand for peace, I know you stand for what is right. But the means, Qui-Gon. The means to me are as important as the ends.” You gasp. “I don’t want to end this. I just do not want to bond. The bonding….I would be too close to this. It would kill my love for you, eventually.”
A shaky breath is drawn again in the chest of the man that holds you. You interrupt his thoughts with another plea. “Please, understand. Let us continue as we were…”
“You don’t understand, love. I want a family with you. You are the only woman that I want to share my life. Completely, and fulfillingly. I want you there when I wake up in the mornings, all the mornings, not just when I can get away. “ His mouth becomes a thin line.
Your breath catches at the mention of family. Your mind’s eye whips back to the image of your Obi-Wan standing on the tarmac of the play area. His father’s eyes. His mother’s mouth. A blessing. Your son, given over to the Order that his father follows. An Order that acts in contradiction to what you believe. What have you done?
“If it will take leaving the Order…”
You bite your lip. How easy would it be? Tell your lover to leave his very existence to come with you. To let him know of his son, to have him remove the boy from the Order and live with you in peace. To love each other the rest of your lives? How hard would it be to have him leave the Order? To be with you, dying a little each day as his very cause for living is eked out of his life? To learn to you kept the knowledge of his son from him? To watch his love for himself die as he realizes that his very belief system was compromised for another?
“No,” you whisper, “don’t leave the Order. Qui-Gon, can you not see this? What that will do to you? What living in the Temple will do to me? There is no other explanation. We must remain the way that we are. You will keep a clear mind knowing that I am safe. I will keep a clear mind knowing that you are doing what you love and that your ends and your means are separate from each other. It is the only way.”
His eyes drift shut as his shaky breaths are brought under control. “I love you.”
“I know, Jedi, I know.”
“I want to be yours, love. I want to be branded, taken and kept.”
“And I want the same; I will have no other man than you.”
“I will promise to you then, that I will be yours until death, love. If I cannot bond with you, then this is what I want. I want to be yours alone.”
You sigh, “Then take my promise for the same in return. I will be yours until death.”
His hand is gentle as it cups your chin and tilts your head back. Your tears are flowing freely now. They course down your face to pool in the hollow of your neck. The tracks of salt tears are steady and strong, quick and painless. His eyes, now lighter in the new light of the day as it breaks, are blue-black. “I wish it could be otherwise, my love.”
You nearly gasp as the pain of a broken dream descends on you. The light from the new day crosses the landscape and you descend further into darkness of your own choice. “I want it to be otherwise, my Qui-Gon. But we would end up hurting each other with our loss of selves. We will be together and we will love each other, but we must remain apart.”
His nod is accomplished with a measure of sadness that you can tell is bone deep. His finger as it brushes you lips is gentle, as gentle as the day that you met. His arms sneak around you, gently urging you to his chest, careful of your ribs. A small chuckle makes you realize that all is not lost. “I will never give up, love,” he says gently. “I will always pursue this.”
You smile and bury your face in his chest, and gasp at the pain. His hand lands on your flank and you feel the pain lessen instantly. “Pursue as you wish, Qui-Gon, it will make life interesting.”
“A life that you will share, dear, you will have no choice. We are meant for each other. Our love will conquer this. It will come out on top.”
The roar of an approaching ship opens your eyes and ears once again to the surrounding landscape. You smile gently as you wipe a remaining tear from his lashes. “I will keep the bed and bath ready for you when you need it.”
The thud of a landing ship nearby makes you shift and makes his eyes slide shut again. You can feel the chapter of the story ending as you lie there, but you realize, even as the loss settles in, never to leave, that another chapter is just starting again. It will take years to lose the pain of what you have decided on, but it is the only way that you can reconcile the man and the lover, and his son with your life. And you pray, to any deity that will listen, that your decisions are right. Only time will tell.