Breaking the Silence

by Black Rose (lenoirrose@softhome.net)

Pairing, Rating: Q/O, NC-17

Archive: SWAL, m_a, WWOMB and my page

Feedback: YES! Live for it, I do! Why this is written, it is!

Series: Sequel to Silent Legacy

Categories: AU, Crossover, Angst, Drama

Summary: After "Silent Legacy" Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan must come to grips with the changes in themselves and the past that created them.

Disclaimer: George owns the Jedi, Anne owns the vamps, and I'm doing nothing but playing for fun. I promise to dryclean them all and put them back where I found it.

Dedicated: To everyone who wrote and said they liked Silent Legacy. You're the reason this is being written, folks!

Breaking the Silence
Part 1
Sequel to "Silent Legacy"
Star Wars/Vamp Chron
by Black Rose, lenoirrose@softhome.net

There in your starry eyes lie hopes
that have been betrayed

The cause of your desire
Can also lead to your demise
When all is said and done
It will be you who pays the price

The cold penetrated my dreams, shifting around them like the lazy slide of a serpent within my guts, its coils tightening around my heart. The landscape of my dreams was rimmed in frost, tiny sparkling crystals of bitter cold and iridescent light.

I was running without motion, in the slow, frantic form of dreams. Behind me the dark reached out, claws hooked, scratching and tearing. I could feel my breath run liquid ice through my lungs, see the silvery plume of it in the darkened sky. On and on I ran, through a world of black and white, the cold snapping at my heels.

I slipped, fell. The frost burned the palms of my hands, binding my flesh to the smooth ground. It seeped into me, a numbing freezing pain, winding up through vein and bone. I hissed, trying to draw away, to escape. The darkness was coming, stretched out behind me like a sea of nightmares. I had to run. I had to...

Warmth enveloped me, the bright, burning heat of it thrusting back the darkness, melting the frost. Relief seared away my breath, freed my body. I turned into the warmth, greedily burning myself in its flames, reaching hungrily for the light that danced just beyond my reach.

A mouth crushed against my own dragged me from the haziness of dreams to bright reality. Lips branded me, fiery and hard, swallowing my muffled moan. Darkness met my opened eyes so I closed them again, letting taste and touch and scent craft my world. Letting the deep, resonate throb of a heart define my reality.

He let his body slide down, rest against me, the pressure of his weight and the heat of his skin against chest and hips and there, between my thighs. I groaned, arching into the touch, wrenching my lips away to gasp breath into aching lungs.

His heart throbbed against my chest, vibrating through ribs and shooting down my spine in great, rhythmic beats. His skin was warm, fever hot, and I clutched it gladly to banish the chill. "Master," I hissed into the darkness, and in response his fingers slipped from my shoulder down my arm, nails scraping across my inner elbow where the veins ran so swift close to the skin.

The spark became fire, flaring hot through my veins, from nowhere and everywhere at once as it seared through me. I gasped, an open mouthed cry that he silenced with his mouth, teeth grazing my lips.

His hands grasped mine, bearing them down to the couch, pinning them tight. His lips passed to my jaw, teeth nipping a quiet promise, the silk of his hair brushing across my face and throat as he lowered his head to trail a wet line down the length of my throat.

Nerves engulfed in mindless fire, making me press my body upward, offer it, helpless and moaning. He hesitated against the pulse in my throat, the warmth of his breath burning me. I groaned in frustration when he moved away, forcing my muscles to unclench, my back to sink down to the couch.

His lips trailed kisses across my chest, and in each touch I could feel the blood in his lips, feel the beat of his heart and the throb in his veins beneath soft skin. It was a slower fire, a smouldering heat that warmed me from inside, shivery and needful. "Master," I whispered again, and he released my hands, letting me thread them in the fine strands of his hair.

He had learned... oh, how he had learned. I was an instrument in his hands, his fingers skimming across the strings of nerve and flesh with a delicate touch. His every breath was a caress, an exhale that spread the fire within me, teasing it out slowly.

Hot and wet, a tongue slipped slowly across the line of my collarbone, sliding down to gentle tease the nerves in first one nipple, then the other. I found my back bent again, thrusting up, encouraging him. My fingers tightened around the strands of his hair, pulling, fighting to keep that maddening mouth there.

My hands were peeled away, pinned to the couch in invisible bonds of tightening pain. I cried out the shock of it, twisting to escape. The pain eased at once, his hands replacing the Force bonds, fingers stroking and soothing. His breath was against my ear, a low rumble. "Shhh... Hush, my Obi-Wan. Let me."

Tears burned my eyes, slipping heavy from their corners to run down into my hair. I swore softly, forcing my body to relax, trying vainly to wring the tension from my muscles. The warmth of his lips brushed my cheek, my mouth, the wet tip of his tongue gently wiping away the tears. I felt him stiffen slightly, breath hissing between his teeth.

Oh, yes. Yes. Pleasure and pain, fire and ice. Oh, sith take it, yes.

His teeth found the lobe of my ear, bit down hard, making me focus on the pain. When he had my attention the blunt tips of his nails found the veins in my wrists, scraping savagely. The cry wrenched its way from me, loud in the darkness, ringing from the walls as the fire slammed into my body.

"Keep them there," he whispered, his voice a hot growl against my ear. "Do you hear me, Padawan? Keep them there."

I could only gasp assent, trembling as he withdrew his hands, tensing to keep my wrists against the couch. He moved back, his weight leaving me, and I cursed softly for its loss.

Fingertips slipped gently across my ribs, circling gently over hips and gliding down to stroke my thighs. It was a tickling pleasure, slight and shivery. I took the sheet in my hands, gripping it to keep my arms where they were.

He mapped my skin by touch, fingertip to flesh, tiny intimate connections that resonated with our shared pulse. I squirmed against them, arching, lifting, breath rasping between my lips.

Fingertip gave way to nail, a scraping pressure that left warmth in its wake. Across the backs of my thighs, teasing scratches over the veins behind knees and down, all the way down, over the dips and bones of ankles that I couldn't keep still, jerking them from his grasp. I growled, wordless frustration, and heard the soft, breathless burst of his laughter.

I cursed that sound, even as I craved the sharp bite of it.

I felt the brush of his hair across my hips before his lips found me. Hot and wet, engulfing, drawing deep to awaken an unfulfilled ache that made me twist in his grasp, swearing. It wasn't enough, it wasn't nearly enough. I could recall nights spent longing for the grasp of those lips and now... Now I needed more, told him that, in every gasped curse and moan.

He let me go reluctantly, lips slipping away with a softly wet sound, tongue trailing damp across my belly. I arched into the touch, moaning between breaths. "Damn you," I was whispering, a breathless refrain. "Damn you, damn you... Master... SITH..."

His weight returned, crushing down on me, soothing part of the ache with the sweet burn of completion. I wanted to claw him into my arms, rake my nails over those broad shoulders - the errant tremble slipped between us, betraying, and his hands came down around my wrists again, pinning me roughly.

"Leave them there," he whispered, tight, commanding. Deep and rough, the caress of sound. "Hold them - or I will." The stinging pain of the Force flickered across me, mingling with the pleasure in an oily mix, emphasizing his words.

I held my tongue between my teeth, swallowing the curses back. He let me go again and I could feel the cloth of the sheet tear beneath my hands but I held on regardless, desperate, tasting my own blood in the back of my throat.

One large hand slipped up, curved for one moment around my throat. I moaned, arching, as he drew it away. "Yes," I whispered, the sound broken. "Master..."

Hands beneath my knees, lifting me. Shivers touched my spine as his fingers found me, brushing, pressing lightly. "Do it," I hissed, pressing back against them. "If you want it, do it."

His teeth touched my chest, nipping, scraping. "What do you want?" he asked, his voice vibrating against my skin.

"You," I breathed. I choked on the word as his answer came in motion, one blunt tipped finger driving into me. It was pain and it was pleasure, the barest sip to the draft I craved, feeding the ache. I moaned deep in my throat, feeling the sound shiver through me, feeling his heartbeat buried deep within me.

Control was a thing of the past, burned away in the fire that fed on my veins and spiraled deep through my body. My back bowed, moving with him, the growl sliding through my clenched teeth between panted breaths. He leaned into me, pinning me, a second finger joining the first. Pleasure and pain and I couldn't tell one from the other any longer, all of it sinking into the darkness of aching thirst and desperate need.

When he pulled away I moaned, wanting even that teasing touch back. I was rewarded with the hard press of his erection replacing the touch of his fingers, hot flesh against the chill of mine, a flaming brand thrust into me. His mouth covered my lips, swallowing my scream, his hands grasping my wrists in a grips of steel.

Heartbeat to heartbeat, echoing through me like a bass drum from chest and lips and hands and burning me with every pulse deep inside. I locked my ankles against his back, desperate to hold him closer, to cover myself in the heavy scent of his blood and the throb of that heartbeat. He shifted, sinking deeper, and I tasted the shiver of his moan against my tongue.

The rhythm of that pulse dominated everything, every movement. He moved with it, pounding it into me, letting it wash over me in waves with every connection of his flesh to mine. I was crying, moaning sobs, twisting beneath him. He let my mouth go, his breath harsh against my face, teeth hard on my lips.

His heartbeat was hard and driving as it climbed towards his climax, resounding deep within me like a siren call. The need was everywhere in me, I was the need, feeling it in every nerve, sweating it from every inch of my skin. Swearing became begging, begging reduced to one mindless word breathed across dry lips. "Please. Please. Pleasepleaseplease... Master... Please..."

I felt him call it to him, felt the hot and cold pricks of pain strike me as the Force swirled around us, lifting me, letting him sink even deeper into my body. It didn't matter; I welcomed it with every other sensation, craved more. And then his throat was against my lips, scent of salty sweat and rich blood, there, where the pulse fluttered frantic beneath fragile skin.

The moan was dragged from my soul. I strained upwards and his flesh parted beneath my teeth as sweetly as my body opened for him, blood spilling in incandescent streams across my tongue and lips. I heard his cry as my body stiffened, felt the hot rush of his trembling orgasm, tasted it in his blood as it streamed through me. Heat beyond any sun, life and fulfillment, chasing away the cold empty core of my being, satiating the need within me. Love and desire and the thick taste of lust, flooding me with every gulping swallow, every pulse that drove his blood into my mouth and down my throat.

So easy... so easy to loose myself in that warm stream, to swallow it down to its source. To drain him dry, and he, pressed against me, in me, would let me do it.

The pain saved me. The lack of pain, as it shifted, became tangible, became something I could reach out to, call to. Became that warm, bright presence that swirled around us, that was life and all things within it. It replaced the thirst, transmuted it, poisoned the blood on my tongue with the taste of death.

I pulled back, let him go. His blood spilled across my chest, wet bursts pulsing with his heart. I barely felt the pain of biting through my lip, could hardly taste the tang of my own blood through the heavy taste of his. I pressed my lips back to the wound, letting my blood mingle with his, feeling the flesh close cleanly beneath my tongue.

When I drew away he followed, mouth seeking out mine. His tongue pushed past my lips and I let him, feeding him his own taste, feeling him shiver as he swallowed the droplets of blood. Aftershocks of passion, shared between us in the tremors of taught muscle and throbbing nerve. Two breaths, two heartbeats, loud in the darkness. I moaned as he pulled slowly from me, my body dimly aching with the loss.

Rasping breaths, gradually quieting. I could feel the exhausted tremors of his body beside me, dwindling slowly to the limpness of sleep. A bare hands width between us, and if I reached out I could touch him, run my hand along the sweat slicked length of his skin.

Could have, but wouldn't. When I felt him slip past the edge of dreams I opened my eyes at last, letting the darkness resolve itself into the shape of our chamber.

The night around me glittered with a knife edged sharpness, a dual vision traced in the eddies of the Force and the bright, too detailed range of eyes meant to exist in stark darkness. The floor was cool to my bare feet as I rose from our couch, slipping away quietly to pad with silent steps across the room. He never stirred.

The controls blinked beneath my fingers as I keyed them, letting the broad view of the outside spill into the room. I pressed my hands to the cool surface of the window, staring out into the glittering lights of Coruscant's night.

Another night.

Another night, borrowed on the sufferance of his blood.

Lyrics: "The Cardinal Sin" by Dead Can Dance from the cd "Spleen and Ideal"

I still recall the taste of your tears
Echoing your voice just like
The ringing in my ears
My favorite dreams of you still wash ashore
Scraping through my head
Till I don't want to sleep any more




You make this all go away
I'm down to just one thing
And I'm starting to scare myself
You make this all go away
I just want something...
I just want something
I can never have

//Qui-Gon//

The scent of colors and the taste of sounds - they skittered through my dreams like multifaceted raindrops from a livid, weeping sky. I sank through a world of sensation, restless random waves thrusting me inexorably towards the waking world even as I tried to drift into the sleep I could feel my body crave.

Thirst was what woke me at last, forcing mind to reunite with body and the whole to register the world as a solid, structured environment. My mouth was parchment dry, throat scratching painfully as I swallowed. The fatigue clawed at me, trying to pull me down again, my eyes unwilling to open.

"There's juice on the table." His voice held that tight edge to it that I had learned to call controlled anger. It gave his tone a biting note, sharp and striking as a serpent.

Angry and tight and cold, when the feel of his body twisting beneath mine was still printed in the memory of skin and muscle, when I could still taste the bright glittering after effects of his tears on my tongue and recall the echo of his moans. The gasps of a lover replaced by the distant voice of a stranger that at times it seemed I hardly knew.

I forced open eyes that felt covered in sand, running dry tongue across equally dry lips. My lungs felts tights, as though the air was too heavy, pressing me back against the bed. It was an effort to rise, pushing myself up heavily and swinging my legs over the edge of the couch. The room spun, the droning in my ears deafening me for a moment as the darkness of the room grew a life of its own. I shook my head, drawing in slow breaths as I waited for it to recede.

When I opened my eyes again the dizziness had dampened. My head ached dully and I couldn't call enough Force to ease it. I let my head fall back, rolled it slowly to one side and then the other, easing the tension.

A pale hand emerged from the darkness, thrusting a glass towards me. "Here."

I looked up but his face was turned away, shadows hiding his eyes. It took effort to still the trembling in my hand enough to take the glass safely, my fingertips sliding through the condensation beaded on its surface, trying not to slosh the contents over the lip. Dignity abandoned, I used both hands to bring it to my mouth. The juice was wet and cold, the tartness bursting across tongue and throat like fire.

By the time I had drained the glass, feeling slightly better for it, he had slipped away again into the darkness of the chamber. I could see the pale ghost of his form, caught in the dim highlight of light from beyond the window, silhouette picked out in silver fluidity as he sank back into a chair beside the table.

I realized, dimly, that I couldn't recall the last time either of us had turned up the lights in our quarters.

I set the glass down beside the couch, reaching up to skin my hair away from my throat. Some of it had dried, stuck fast in blood, and I winced as I pulled it away. I traced the line of it with my fingertips, dry crumbling flakes that fell away from my skin across collarbone and chest.

I could feel his eyes following my gesture, but all he said aloud was "You should shower." Flat words, unemphasized, but flickering between us on the lines of a bond that was changing even as we were, was the echo of hunger, of desire and need.

Once, I would have responded somehow. With warm love, with mild exasperation, with the studious reserve that I had cultivated through a lifetime and which now slipped, effortless, through my fingers. I drew a hand through my hair, let it slip down, trailing light across throat and over pulse, feeling his eyes track my every movement.

The boneless flow of my stance when I rose to my feet was purely necessity - my insides felt liquid, each step a study in balance, one flowing into the other as I made my way across the room. His eyes followed me, burning over every movement, tracing me like a physical caress.

I left the door of the bathing chamber open behind me, setting water running in the sink. Cupping it in my hands, I splashed the cool liquid across my face, letting it wash away the sandy feeling in my eyes. I knew it wouldn't help but I couldn't resist cupping up another handful to drink, the water not even dampening the thirst that I felt. Sighing, I let it trickle away.

I sluiced water up, over throat and chest, washing away the blood. Black, in the darkness, shades of gray on charcoal and sable. I could still taste the lingering effects against my tongue, as though I could reach out to touch the texture of the shadows, taste the clean scent of the water.

It was no surprise to feel the brush of his passage, the warm touch of his fingertips across my back and hips. He slipped silently behind me, not quite close enough to feel the heat of his body against mine. Looking up, I met the pale mask of his face within the mirror, shadow of eye meeting shadow. His fingertip traced my spine, walking slowly up my back.

"Obi-Wan," I whispered, the sounds dry on my lips.

"Master." I had never known there were so may syllables in the words, drawn out across his tongue in long, slow breaths. It made me shiver, closing my eyes from the image in the mirror, my whole world telescoping down to the single touch of his hand against my back.

He leaned forward, his breath sliding softly over the flesh of my shoulder, raising the hairs of my skin. I opened my mouth in a soundless moan, arching into his touch. My entire body vibrated beneath his touch, a single note of longing.

His lips brushed across the ridge of my shoulder, stilling the breath in my lungs. I could trace each point between there and the throb of my pulse, pounding fast beneath the flesh of my throat. "I could," he whispered, knowing my desire even as I knew his. The movement of his lips sent small shockwaves through my body. "I could, Qui-Gon."

"Please..." He had begged me, only hours before, cursing as he cried. Now, I did not even have the strength to voice the word, letting it slide soundless from my throat.

His hands grabbed my wrists, hard, yanking them up against my back. I gasped as his strength shoved me forward, the edge of the sink digging into my hip. "I could," he whispered, his voice a hiss against my ear. "But you'll die."

He shoved me hard as he let go, sending me roughly down to one knee on the floor as the world spun around me. The bitter steel was back in his voice, biting with cold teeth. "Do you still want it?"

For one bleak, terrible moment I could almost hear my own voice saying "yes". The impulse was there, beating darkly within my heart, a longing that reached out with chill fingers to swallow me. For one infinitely long instant I could feel it there, drawing me down, pushing me past the point of redemption.

My life, bled away upon the dark, cool tiles as I knelt at his feet.

I clenched my fists, unable to look up to meet the weight of his gaze upon my back. "No," I whispered, voice breaking.

His fingers slid into my hair, wrenching my head back painfully. "Louder," he demanded harshly.

"No!" I hissed, wrenching away. Surging up, I knocked him back, stumbling against the edge of the sink as I caught myself. He glared at me, the barest tip of tooth beneath velvet lip.

"Remember that," he spat sharply. There was no sound as he left, no footsteps upon the floor... nothing but the emptiness of the darkness around me, the lack in the place where he had been.

It was as though I were the silence, intangible, lost within the shadows and echoes of the chamber. I sank down, scraping my shoulder against the sink and heedless of the burn of it. I could reach out to the Force, call it to me... but the warm light of it no longer drowned the siren call of the darkness.

"Peace," I whispered to myself, my voice loud in my ears. "Serenity. Honor. Life." But the mantra my entire life had been built upon fell like grains of sand into a vast and arid desert.

He had donned trousers when I finally emerged, composure wrapped around me like the thinnest of cracked shells, a tissue thin cloak that did nothing to warm me. Sprawled in a chair before the table, one leg hooked over the arm of the chair, his dark eyes watched me as I drew out clean clothes and put them on. Stubborn pride made me hide the trembling of my hands, though I knew he could hear the rapid trip of my heart.

"You're drowning," he whispered, his voice sliding through the shadows to touch me. "And what then, Master? Shall we fall together?"

"Stop it," I snapped. Snatching up a tie, I roughly pulled back the fringes of my hair, binding it tight.

But he wouldn't stop, his words chasing my unwilling ears, whispers of blackness that burned what they touched. "We're not finding a way out of this, Master," he hissed. I twisted as he rose and came towards me, meeting him face to face. "'Trust me', you said, but you can't even trust yourself any more. What will happen when you do say 'yes'?"

His words sparked fire, jerking my chin up, my jaw tense. "I won't," I ground out, determination lending strength to the words. "We will survive this. Both of us." I stepped forward, forcing him back, my fingertips resting on the bare planes of his chest. "If you abandon that, you kill us both, my Obi-Wan."

Anger, shuddering tight beneath my hand. "Sith take you," he whispered, but the coldness had melted from his voice and there were dark, unshed tears sparkling against his eyes. I let him push my hand back as he closed the distance between us, his hands reaching up to frame my face, his lips warm against my own.

We kissed in desperation, in hunger, to drown the ache within between lip and tongue, in the touch of hand and body. I felt his tears slip, hot, across my thumb as I cupped his cheek in my palm. Felt the answering tears burn my own eyes, the knowledge a spike in my chest. It wasn't enough. Not any more. The darkness took even that from us.

'There is no passion, there is serenity'. But on the razoredge of our descent there was nothing but passion, the quicksilver lurch from the height to the depth, spiraling beyond our control. 'There is no anger, there is peace'. But peace was a luxury we no longer had, torn ragged from our grasp.

'There is no death, there is the Force'.

But only now, only when my blood still burned in his veins, warming the lips beneath mine, the body in my arms. Only when that circle connected us, blood to blood, mouth to throat. And when we broke, his eyes meeting mine, I could see that knowledge there in his dark gaze.

He did not live. I did. And somehow, I must live for us both.

He was right. I did not speak it, but it flashed between us, bright as fire. If I lost sight of that, then we were both truly dead. I dropped my gaze, unwilling to bear the look in his eyes.

He touched my lips, his fingertips gentle. "Look at me," he whispered. Reluctant, unwilling, I slowly raised my eyes to his.

There, in his face, I saw the ghost of the somber young man I had trained, the Jedi who had, from the moment I had first called him Padawan, made me unutterably proud of him. He traced my lip with a light touch.

"We will try to survive this," he said softly. "We will try to overcome it, as we have been trying." His hand beneath my chin held me firm, wrapped us in the bond between us, starkly beautiful in it's bitter truth. "But I want your promise, Qui-Gon Jinn. I want your solemn promise. If ever it is too much, if ever you do say 'yes'... I want your promise that we shall fall together."

I could not speak, could not look away, his fingers sliding down to press, feather light, against the pulse in my throat. "My lips here," he whispered, the words a sensual caress. Taking my hand in his, he raised it, pressed it to the back of his head where the longer strands of hair slid over my fingers. "And your hand here, gripping your lightsaber. Do you understand me? We go together. That will be the last thing you ever do."

The breath would not come, would not push the words of denial from my throat. Voiceless, powerless against the flat, solemn determination of that gaze, I could only close my eyes. Press my hand to the base of his neck, where the hardness of bone gave way to softer tissue, able to imagine only too vividly the searing hiss of an activated blade as it burned through flesh.

"Do you understand?" he whispered, his lips soft against mine.

The words would not come, and so I let it echo through our bond, a capitulation that burned grey charnel ash within my soul. It was all I could answer, the only thing I could offer the hunger in his voice. [Yes.]

Lyrics: "Something I Can Never Have" by NIN from the cd "Pretty Hate Machine"

Pressing hands
Against this scar
There's no warmth
There's no warmth to be felt
Don't damn this cold flame
Cold burns powerful
Has powerful needs

*//Obi-Wan//*

He was gone, and in his absence the silence of our quarters hounded me, nipped at my heels and pressed with cold chill hands against my mind, scratching and scrabbling.

I lengthened my stride, the cool surface of the wall passing beneath my fingertips as I trailed them, tracing the lines of my prison, the width and breadth of my cage. Back and forth, around and around, an endless circle that seemed to grow tighter with every repetition. Too long. Too much silence. His presence was a taunt that made me angry, made me want to lash out. His absence...

His absence was killing me.

A flicker of light made me start, jumping. Only a transport, passing down below, the light caught and refracted for one instant on the edges of the window. Only one drop in the far away stream of glistening lights, the ropes of dancing illumination that spanned for as far as the eye could see. I cursed myself, forced my feet to traverse the distance, forced my hands to press to the cool surface of the window. Cold and smooth to the touch as I looked through into a fantasy land just beyond reach, into the distant soundless night.

What would I feel, out there? The brush of the wind with its thousand voices? The chill of the night, plucking at my flesh with tiny fingers? The noise of the teeming life of Coruscant, the sleepless sounds of countless beings, of transport and passing shuttle. I dropped my forehead to the cold surface, closing my eyes to watch the lingering blue phosphorescent lines against my eyelids.

Unbidden, they came to me. A quiet trickle of whisper, a gentle ghost of sound that coiled around me, through me, caressing beneath the skin. I opened my lips to its kiss, breath hissing out softly. I could feel it, not through my hands where they pressed to the window, but inside of them. Soft, so soft, the whisper of a lover, of countless lovers that beckoned me to their bed.

The pulse of the hunger, echoed in a million heartbeats, just beyond that unmovable clear pane.

I moaned softly, tongue touching the flesh of my lower lip. I could feel it like the aftershocks of orgasm, each pulse a beat that shivered along my nerves. But here... here there was no sense of satiation. Here there was only anticipation, the longing for more. Here, there was only need.

Need and the sharp, brittle laughter that trailed across the edges of my mind, vicious and biting as it mocked me. My lips pulled back from my teeth as I pushed myself away from the window, held it and all beyond it at arm's length. My fingernails scraped across the surface, gouging shallow wounds in the clear material. Backing away a step, I wrapped my arms tight around me, wrapped my shields even tighter. Locked away the voices, the pulse, the entirety of everything beyond the confines of the room. Everything at all.

Except for the silence. I couldn't lock that away, and in the wake of the absence of everything else it came creeping forth once more with wicked hooked claws.

It was foolishness beyond foolishness but I couldn't stop. I whirled, bolted. Away from the lights of the city, away from the silence of the outer room. Lunged through the door, into the room that had been mine since Qui-Gon had first brought me back from Bandomeer. The safe, secure space which was solely my own, the room I had slept and lived within for years before abandoning it for my Master's bed.

The door hissed shut behind me. My hand fumbled across the wall to the controls, palmed the lock. Leaning back, I let my shoulders slide down the surface of the door, until the floor rose up to meet me.

It was dark and silent in my room as well, but the silence had a different quality to it, the angles and dim shapes a more comforting atmosphere than the outer room. I wrapped my arms about my knees, hugging them tight, trying to release the tension across my back and the base of my neck. But there wasn't anywhere to release it to - not any more. It hovered there, persistent, a part of me that I could no more banish then I could my fears.

I swallowed the laugh in my throat. It masked too much, the sound of it cutting at me. I couldn't recall the last time I had laughed in real pleasure, without the bitter taste that it left behind now.

Fear lead to the dark side. Anger lead to the dark side. A million things lead to the dark side and I, immersed in them past the point of seeing the light, could not touch even that elusive Force.

It took me a small lifetime to uncurl my stiffened joints, for the shivers to subside and the tension to abate enough for me to move. I didn't bother to climb to my feet, sliding across the floor on knees and rising only enough to catch the edge of the sleeping couch and flip myself across it to sprawl upon the surface.

Familiar cushions, familiar fabrics, familiar relationship to the rest of the room. There, the lump at my right hip that had plagued me for seasons. The slight dip, where my weight had rested for years, night after night, a comfortable hollow worn to just the right shape. I twisted, settled myself better, curling my feet up.

The light from the window painted white shadows across the floor, banding the room in bright and dark. I stretched out a hand to it, watching it slide across my skin. There was no texture to the light. I closed my eyes, not letting myself watch it closely.

My room, my belongings, the sum repository of countless memories throughout my life. Familiar, comforting... and no longer home. I drew in a breath filled with familiar scents and could find nothing that spoke of home. Nothing in the room, nothing in our quarters, nothing in the Temple. It was as though I were trapped in a plush prison, high atop the towers of Coruscant, where naught but the wind tapped at the window of my cell.

And yet I couldn't imagine belonging anywhere else. This had been my entire life. Where else would I go?

It scratched and beckoned at the back of my mind, an errant whisper of an answer, the laughing medley of a demonic court that danced to the harmony of the lunatic moon and the symphonic shadows. I snarled aloud, my voice breaking the silence roughly, jerking myself up as I redoubled my shields. "Be quiet," I hissed, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes. "Sith take you, be quiet."

Laughter, and I hated it a thousand times more than my own.

He could banish them. His presence quieted them, the nearness of his pulse, the warm audible rush of his blood - it drowned out the whispers, drowned out the laughter. The touch of his hands could scatter them to the winds. He was no more distant then a momentary thought, a brush against the bond between us. If I called, he would abandon all else and be there in an instant. And for that reason alone, I wouldn't do it.

I put my palms over my ears, as though I might physically block away their laughter. I hummed, tunelessly, a droning note that I could focus on rather than the sound of them. Anything. I cast my eyes about the room, looking for anything that might safely engross my attention away from their whispers.

I rose to my feet. Two steps across the room and the storage shelf doors flung open, fingers pawing over the jumbled contents. Clothes and cast off bits, mementos and projects, datapads and things I barely recognized buried deep in the back shelves. My hand closed over something heavy wrapped in cloth and I drew it forth, cradling it as I peeled the folds away.

An imaging globe, a child's toy. I couldn't even remember when I'd gotten it, or why. I let the cool surface slide into my hand, fingertips trailing over it until I found the concealed activation stud. The fist sized ball faded into light from within, a tiny scene of forest and sky, rose tinted dusk.

I moved back to sit on the edge of the sleeping couch, turning the ball slowly as I watched the scene within revolve. Tiron? Tishon? It had begun with a T. Diplomatic assignment, and I must have been... what? Fifteen? I couldn't recall. Leaning back, I held up the ball and shook it, watching the image swirl away and reform, this time showing a delicate cityscape aglow with hundreds of twinkling lights in the night. Aldaaran? Yes, that was it. The whispers faded as I shook the globe again, my mind trying to match images to countless assignments.

A moonwashed landscape on some planet I couldn't name. A bustling marketplace. The interior of a palace, all marble and ancient stone. A garden, a stream, the wash of waves over a beach.

The bright, fiery brilliance of sunrise over the towers of Coruscant herself, leaping out in rays of red and gold.

I winced, flinching back from the fire I held in my hands. The globe slipped, crashing loud to the floor, the image dissolving into fragments that shattered out in sharp slices of pain against my ankles.

I hissed, drawing them back up onto the couch, my fingers going to the already closing wounds. Only blood remained, streaking my ankles, and a dull throb that I rubbed at. The floor was littered in shards of glass, glittering and fine in the moonlight.

I shivered, cursing softly as I wiped the blood away. It had been an image, only an image, a perfectly safe moment of the past preserved as a visual ghost within glass, nothing more. Yet the memory of it danced before my eyes in jagged streaks of black light, too bright and brilliant to be viewed. Was that to be taken from me too? Even the images of the day? I snarled in wordless frustration, unthinkingly licking the blood from my fingertips.

His presence reached out to me like a wash across my skin, long before he ever reached the door to our quarters. He was returning then, and my wanting to have him back twisted into resentment at his actual return. Both and neither, a greedy need that wanted everything and nothing. I sucked the last of the blood from my thumb and sank back on the couch, shoulders against the wall, knees curled against my chest as I glared at the door.

I heard the door to the outer room hiss open, heard him move about. Felt his approach, once, heard the soft click as he tried the lock and then let it be. He knew, as well as I did. Could feel it through the links sunk deep into our minds, even if he couldn't taste and hear my presence as I could his. His heart beat loud through the door and I was glad that I had locked it, locked that infuriating pulse on the other side, where I couldn't track it in the fragile flesh of his throat and veins. I curled closer on the couch and closed my eyes, willing him to leave again. Willing him to retreat to his own room and leave me be.

His warmth brushed my mind, caressing. I gritted my teeth and shoved it away. Acknowledgement from him, a cool tint of rigidly held composure. I could trace the cracks in his facade like gaping flaws, laid out in a brittle map of his soul. The promise I had wrung from him burned in him like a brand, a cold fire that devoured from within. That would burn us both, until nothing was left.

I could only hope.

No words, only that caressing brush, only the knowledge that he was going to seek his bed and that I was, as always, welcome there. No hope lingering in his thoughts, no bright promise. Hours spent with healers, with Jedi Masters, and nothing at all to show for it. I felt my lips curve in a bitter smile, the tears stinging hot in my eyes. My promise ate at him and he didn't understand - it was the only hope I could offer. The only one I could believe in any more.

He left at last, the prickling touch of his nearness fading to a dimmer awareness as I heard the door to his room shut. I let myself slide the rest of the way down, curling into the covers. Outside, the moon shone brighter than the lights of the city, white and cold from a dark sky. I could recall waking countless times to the dim light of morning, to skies of gold and blue. Now, I would be long asleep before then, caught in a state I could not wake from no matter how I tried.

And what, I wondered... what if, when I slept, that window had not been darkened? What if, as it had so many mornings before, the dawn light spilled through that window to splash across floor and wall, across the bed where I lay and the lines of my flesh?

Truly hot fire, not the phantom of an image but the real thing, burning and searing. The Healers had run every battery of test imaginable to find what my condition entailed, and that one had remained with me vividly - in memory, and in flesh, in the form of angry red blisters that had taken nights to fade away. It wouldn't be a quick death. It certainly wouldn't be a painless one.

And it would be a lonely one. He would live without me, freed of my promise, freed of my presence, of my nightmare. Free of me.

A Jedi is selfless. But I... I was finding I was terribly selfish. That, alone, would keep me from the dawn. I had tasted his promise, drawn it from his lips, and I would not relinquish that claim in some martyred gesture of personal sacrifice. No. The last beat of my heart would echo the last beat of his. He had promised.

Turning my face into the pillow, I reached out with unthinking fingers of thought and dimmed the window, plunging the room into the true darkness of enclosed space. Still I lay with open eyes, staring into the blackness for long hours, ghosts held at bay with the soft beat of his heart in the other room until sleep came at last.

Lyrics: "Blood Bitch" by Cocteau Twins from the cd "Garland"

Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum.
[Believe that each day which breaks is your last.]

**//Qui-Gon//**

I had come to dread waking, the point in time when dreams were stripped away, shredded beneath the onslaught of consciousness, leaving only the darkness of reality. I reached out automatically even as I knew the answer. No body beside mine, no indentation in the pillow beside me, no warmth to signal a recently vacated place. Only the empty chill of my room and my couch, dim and silent.

But not solitary. I could feel him, in the dusky pool of shadows across the room. The weight of his gaze held me more firmly than any physical weakness ever had, a harsh coldness that seeped into flesh and bone, borne on the unblinking stare of crystalline grey eyes.

I pushed myself up on one arm, turning towards him. I could feel my own heartbeat, feel the fluttering skip of it, each labored beat within my chest a drum that resounded between us. He met my gaze, his eyes coal black in the pale smudge of his ghosted figure. It burned where it touched me, that gaze, stark and bleak mirrors set within a frame of bleached bone.

"Obi-Wan." The whisper hurt my throat, dry and scratching, pulled reluctantly from my lungs in the half breath of the weak or old. He raised his head slightly, a barely perceptible motion, but made no response. I closed my eyes, touching the dry tip of my tongue to parchment lips. "Why? Why the anger? Why to me?"

He tilted his head back, eyes dark slits against his flesh. "'Fear leads to anger...'"

"Then you fear this?" I forced my hands to push me up, plagued by the lingering strengthlessness of clinging sleep. Brushing back the veil of my hair, I gazed at him. "You fear me?"

His head snapped back down, eyes open and fixed upon me. "You're the fool if you don't fear it," he hissed, voice cold. "Even animals fear their own death."

"I am not an animal," I said evenly, firmly. "And neither are you."

"No," he spat. "You're a fool. And I am your death."

My breath caught, dry in my lungs. His eyes were so cold they burned, but I would not look away. "You are my life," I breathed, the words heavy on my lips.

Obi-Wan surged from the chair, the motions blurred before my eyes. The chill touch of his fingers closed against my hastily outflung wrist, bruisingly tight. He jerked me up to my knees, wrenching arm and shoulder, but I closed my lips to the pain. His eyes were bright in the dim light, pale rimmed glittering darkness. His free hand clasped my jaw, fingertips biting into the joint as he forced my head up, his breath cool against my throat. "Is this life? Is this love, Qui-Gon?" His lips brushed my pulse in the mockery of a kiss, a touch more intimate then I would have dreamed only weeks before, sparking a shiver through my spine. I felt the faintest pinch of his teeth, blunt tipped, scraping, and then he flung me back, my shoulders crashing against the wall as the breath was slapped from me.

"Death," he spat, the word slicing at me. "And hunger. Fear is the only thing keeping us alive."

I licked my lip and tasted the heavy salt of blood, felt the ache in muscle and bone as I sat up. "Fear destroys life," I challenged. "The Force keeps us alive. We keep us alive."

"You keep us alive," he whispered, his voice slipping smooth through the space between us as he leaned forward. I could not help but flinch slightly and he smiled to see it, an expression utterly devoid of humor. Reaching out, he tapped a light knuckle against my chest, once, then again, and again. Tap. Tap. Tap.

It throbbed there, beneath his hand, beneath my chest, behind my ears and vibrating beneath the shallow tissue of skin. The beat of my heart, thundering loud in the silence. The rush of my blood through my veins, shared between us, some faint echo still calling to that in his own.

"There's more to life then that," I breathed, my voice dry in my throat.

His fingertip touched my lip, a caress tender for all its inherent coldness. When he drew it away I saw the smear of my blood, black against his pale flesh. He let me watch as he brought it to his own lips, eyes closing as he licked it away. When he opened them again they were darker, pupil swallowing the pale rim of steel color. "Is there?" he asked softly. "Is there really, Master?"

I reached out and touched ice, but beneath the ice the curve of his cheek in my hand was a familiar form, one I had traced a thousand times. There, in touch, lay the image of my Padawan, the Jedi I had trained and loved. "Yes," I said. "There is."

He glanced away, eyes falling, and I reached out with the other hand to clasp his face and turn him towards me. "Look at me, Obi-Wan." No response and I made as though to shake him. My touch did not move him in the slightest. "Listen to me."

He looked up slowly, meeting my gaze fleetingly before closing his eyes. "You drown them out," he whispered, brows furrowing. His palm pressed to my chest, ice to skin, searing me. "There's only this." He swallowed, the motion swelling beneath my fingers. "In my thoughts, in my dreams, when I sleep and when I wake..."

Naked need in his voice, rough and ragged at the edges. I knew the sound, knew the haunted darkness in his eyes, the shadowed hollows of cheeks and bones where they lay beneath my hands. It shivered between us, dark and hungry. Releasing him, I reached up, drew back the strands of my hair to the nape of my neck. "Then take it," I urged him gently.

He touched my throat, his fingers feather light. Where he touched I burned, a slow heat that suffused me, shivering like tiny sparks down my spine. I leaned into the touch, let my head fall back, a willing sacrifice to the altar of his desire. We fit together easily, entwined, and his shape in my arms was all I had ever desired. His lips brushed my pulse, the vibration of his soft moan shooting fire through me. "Obi-Wan..."

He thrust me away, roughly tumbling me to the floor. I landed heavily on knee and shoulder, hissing against the flash of pain. He was on his feet above me, poised between flight and assault. "Don't you listen?" he raged. "I'll kill you! You promised me, Qui-Gon! You gave your word!"

"I keep my promises," I ground out, struggling up. He backed away, as though even my very nearness threatened him. "I have kept my promise, Padawan!"

Silence, my breath alone breaking it. He watched me, eyes slitted in thought, arms wrapped tight across his chest. "Liar," he breathed, and then was gone, only the hiss of the door tracing his movement.

I let my breath out, slumping heavily back to the cool floor. I ached, body and heart, and the cold of his touch had sunk across my skin, biting deep at joint and bone. Shivering, I drew my legs up, wrapping my arms around them as I rested my chin against one knee.

The soft sound of the door chime roused me, forced reluctant muscles into action as I rose, gathering a robe about me as I made my way to the outer room and the door of the suite.

Windu waited there. I wordlessly stepped aside to let him enter, saw him glance once through the room before doing so. Of Obi-Wan there was no sign, and I was certain I would find the door to his room locked once more.

Windu glanced at me, a slight frown creasing his brow. "Sit," he told me firmly. Too tired to argue, I found a chair and sank into it, accepting the datapad he wordlessly extended to me.

It flashed to life beneath my thumbs, alight with miniscule words that scrolled past in endless procession. File after file, from hundreds of worlds scattered like a handful of sand flung across the breadth of the Republic. Legends and folklore, myths, gleaned from children's stories and primitive fancy, tempered by each culture it was taken from - yet despite that, there was an eerie similarity that ran too deep for chance. Beings that lived without light, moving in the shadow of night. Creatures of stone, the dead who returned to life, feeding upon the blood of those who passed before them. Creatures of ravenous hunger, chill as mist, eternal as death itself. No harm could befall them, age did not touch them, caught always at the twilight between death and life. And always blood. Blood and death filled every legend, though the name changed with each culture.

Though filled with rich accounts of attacks, diagnosis and possible cause, the legends were maddeningly silent on one account: cure. Many referred to their local gods. Some flatly stated only death could stop the hunger, then bleakly warned that such death was nearly impossible to achieve. Having experienced Obi-Wan's new found speed and strength, I could well understand the legend of near-invulnerability. Light seemed the only universal safety - the heat of a sun the only protection.

I closed my eyes against reams of information I did not wish to see. "The Healers concur with this?"

The sound of a cup being set upon the table prompted me to look up - Windu had availed himself of the suite's small food preparation area and the sweet smell of warmed kava juice rose on wisps of steam. I shook my head, pushing the cup away, but Mace determinedly pushed it back. "You need it."

His dark eyes brooked no argument, and I hadn't the heart for it. Grimacing, I took the cup, wetting my lips against the liquid. The warmth of it, at least, was welcoming; I cradled it close between my hands, letting it seep into the aching joints of my fingers. Windu was still watching; I sighed, then took a small swallow to satisfy him, feeling my stomach roil angrily at the intrusion. It gave me the impetus to glare back at him. "The Healers?"

Mace leveled his own brand of stillness into the room. "The Healers, and the Council have both been informed of the findings."

"But they concur with it?" the words were ashes on my tongue, heavy and bitter. "There is no cure?"

"None known thus far." He hesitated, voice dropping from Official Councilperson to the level of weary friendship. "None suggested by the Healers."

I closed my eyes. The juice was suddenly a welcome thing, something familiar in the curve of the cup against my palms, the warmth of it in my mouth. But I could not swallow it past the tightness of my throat, nor did it thaw the painful chill within me. "'Thus far'. Don't gentle it, Mace. Do they think they can find one?"

"Given the infinite possibilities of the universe, perhaps. But in time to save your life? No."

"My life?" My voice cracked on the words, my hands tightening white knuckled on the cup. "Obi-Wan's life, Mace. Is he just to be cast off, then? Lost?"

He didn't hesitate, his gentle tone in direct contrast to the content of his words. "According to the legends he's dead already."

Windu's eyes were heavy on me, dark and still, a quiet, inexorable pressure to relent, but his words flamed a fire that would not be quenched. I slammed the cup down, juice splashing across my hand and the table, half way to my feet. "He's not dead," I hissed. "There is no death, or would you forget our very code? He walks, he thinks, he feels - is that death?"

A long hesitation preceded his words. "What of the Force?"

Ice around my heart, sinking deep in vein and nerve, like a blackness descending across my senses. One breath, then another. "What of it?" Straining for levelness, failing utterly. "He can touch it..."

"By your own reports, only when he has taken your blood," Mace interrupted quietly, his eyes never leaving me.

I looked away, swallowing dryly. There was no answer to that.

"Have you ingested his blood?"

I glared at the wall, at the darkness of Coruscant's night beyond the windows, lit by a myriad of countless lights. Anywhere but at Mace's implacable gaze. The taste of colors, the sight of sounds - it haunted my dreams, borne on droplets of searing fire. "You know I have." My voice was ground out through clenched teeth, spat from tightened lips. "That was in the report as well."

He clarified, his tone gentle. "Voluntarily."

Pushing myself all the way up, I turned bodily away from him. I wrapped my arms tight around my chest but it did nothing to squeeze the chill from my flesh. Dimly I felt my own ribs beneath my palms, wondered when the ridge of them had become so apparent. Mace's presence behind me was a solid, unwavering point and at length I sighed and let the word hiss forth, soft as a whisper. "Yes."

Behind me, the Force pulsed and swirled as Mace quested for a solution, a direction. "Would you follow your padawan, Qui-Gon?"

I turned back to him, angry. "Should I abandon him a second time?"

Windu shook his head slowly. "No, Qui-Gon. Let me hear it from you. I ask... as your friend. Would you follow him?"

I hesitated, and in hesitating was lost, my answer only all too apparent. "Yes," I breathed. I turned away once more, angered by the blur of tears in my eyes, the hitch within my breath. "Sith take it, yes. Better that than let him go."

His voice was measured - considered. "There may be an alternative."

I did not look back, unwilling to take the bait of fragile hope so long denied. "What? You said the Healers found nothing."

"The Healers did not. It is my suggestion only."

His voice tugged at me, forced me to glance around, to meet the dark wells of his gaze. Calm, the epitome of composure; but there, beneath that calm, burned a quiet, unspoken resolve. I shook my head, disbelieving, but he did not look away. "No," I said firmly. "No, Mace. That isn't a solution. That's broadening the problem. Why?"

"He is suffering. You are dying. Why deny the universe the talents of two such brilliant Jedi when an alternative may be had?"

My breath left me in a soft explosion. The chair beckoned again and I went to it willingly, dropping my weight heavily to its embrace. "And what then?" I asked. "It isn't a solution. If it works... IF... it would only extend the period of grace." I hesitated, raking back loose strands of my hair. "Given time... do you hold that much hope that something might be found?"

Finally he faltered. "The only knowledge I have is what will occur if none step in to intervene."

The hiss of the door was shocking in the silence, the voice more so. "And you would be that one, Master Windu?" Mockery there, cold and biting, the chill dark tone that cut so deep. Framed within the doorway, the pale shadow of a man, Obi-Wan turned the piercing spike of his gaze upon Windu.

Windu neither flinched nor faltered. "Yes."

There was no blurring of swift movement. Only the smooth, sinuous glide and looking at it now, watching it directed at another, I could see it for what it was. The slow prowl of a predator about its prey, seductive in its boneless grace. Obi-Wan stalked around Mace, his dark eyes half hooded, watching with unblinking interest. Passing the other Master by, he came to my side, slipping around behind the chair. The cool touch of his hands brushed my shoulders, came to rest against the nape of my neck, his fingers curling around to lay against the beat of my pulse. I could feel it there, thundering beneath his fingertips, feel the soft circular caress of his touch. "And then what?" Obi-Wan asked softly, his breath brushing the crown of my hair as he leaned down. "Your life for his?"

Impossible to know if he was affected by the display. Cool, detached, Mace simply watched. "No. My blood for his."

I felt Obi-Wan's fingers tighten against my throat, felt the jumbled race of emotion straying, ragged, across the thread of our bond. "A noble gesture," he snapped, but I raised my hand to cover his, gently pressing that chill, hardened flesh to quiet him.

"To give us time," I whispered. "What other choice is there?"

"To end it," he spat, releasing me abruptly.

"Is that what you truly want?" I asked wearily.

"Does it matter?" he demanded, his raised voice riccocheting painfully from the enclosing walls. "You've broken your word, Master. What choice does that leave us?

"That," I said, my own voice rising but no longer able to quench him by volume alone, "is what is being offered!"

Mace's voice broke across both of ours sharply. "Do you think you are the first Jedi to return to us injured? Altered?"

Obi-Wan rounded on him, eyes blazing. "Like this?" he hissed, gesturing to himself. "There is no precedence, Windu. The Healers can do nothing, the Council sits in silence. What now?"

"We try to learn what to do next. Through study, observation, trial and error." Mace Windu stood as a block of granite, physically unmoved by Obi-Wan's continued presence, the obvious threat. "Not through self-pity or," here he spared a driving glance for myself, "needless self-sacrifice."

Obi-Wan's hands closed on the back of my chair - I could feel the material give beneath his fingertips with the sickening crunch of twisted metal. "Then there, at least, we agree," he ground out.

Thrusting myself to my feet, I turned to meet his gaze. "Would you have me abandon you?"

"I would have you live!" Obi-Wan snarled. Not since that first night, not since the darkened depths of Coruscant's lower levels, had I seen him so.

Mace stepped forward, hands spread in a placating gesture. "Obi-Wan, we share the same goals."

"Do we?" Obi-Wan spat. "Do we really? Where is the solution in this?" He shook his head. "They laughed, when they said I couldn't go back. They're still laughing. And maybe they're right, because I don't see hope here. I see fools!"

"Enough!" It was rare for Mace Windu to raise his voice. The shock of it now was enough to reach Obi-Wan, to freeze him in his tracks. "Do you wish to be treated as a monster? As a plague upon this Temple? Very well. You have murdered in the name of this condition you suffer, and will do so again unless stopped." His precise words hammered into us both like physical blows. "Would you kill your master? Do you truly wish him dead?

Obi-Wan froze. One hand reached out of its own volition, stretching towards me, but he drew back before we touched, fingers clenching tight. His eyes, set upon me, were dark but the ice had fractured and there, beneath the ice, lay the fear that spawned his anger. His voice was barely a whisper, clear in the silence. "No."

I could not believe what was happening. In the time I had known him, I could remember only two other occasions that Mace had raised his voice. The answer struck me even as I watched. He had gotten through to Obi-Wan, true, but did not remain unaffected. The danger, the despair and above all the desperate hunger had been felt even by him.

Mace continued, every word razor sharp. "Then you will let us help you. You will submit to the judgment of your elders. You will do so with the moderation befitting your station. Or you will be treated like the monster you claim to be and destroyed before you kill us all."

He hesitated, eyes locked to mine. I stretched out my hands, beckoning. "Padawan..."

Resolve firmed his gaze, but even the flash of it came too late. "No," he whispered, the words falling with ringing clarity. "Better that."

Too late, far too late. "NO!" I cried, but already he was gone, only emptiness in his passing before the last sound left my throat. "Obi-Wan! Padawan!"

Time slowed. I watched as the world around me crawled to a stop, measured only in the thundering beat of my heart, the distant echo of his. The decision was simple, easily made. It had been there, unspoken, unvoiced, between us. He was right. And in the end, it was far too easy.

I gathered the Force to me, bright and light, warmth and life. Reaching out, I tapped the bond between us for what I knew was the last time, projecting all of myself into one single affirmation. A promise kept. [YES]

The power of my cry rocked the Temple. I couldn't breath, couldn't move, as even time itself seemed to hold its breath.

When I focused my eyes again, he had returned.

Gaunt and pale, he hovered within the doorway, a wisp called forth by the strength of my will, by a promise we were, both of us, unwilling to break. I shrugged the shoulder of my robe aside, let it fall loose to my waist. A thought fetched forth my saber, the hilt coming to my hand with long familiarity. The floor was cool beneath my knees as I knelt, the hilt clinking softly as I set it down upon the smooth surface. Reaching up, I swept my hair away, leaning back to let the pale light from the window fall across chest and throat. [Obi-Wan...]

He shivered, fingers clutching at the edge of the door. "You would rather die than let me go?"

"If you leave now, I will die."

"If I stay, I will kill you."

I reached out with everything that I was. Heart, mind, being; from the depths of all that I claimed as myself. It stretched out to him, beckoning with my admiration and pride, the fierce joy I had from knowing him, my devotion, and finally, my love. All encompassed in a single instant, shining bright between us. [We live and die together, my Obi-Wan.]

He pushed himself slowly away from the door. One step, silent in the stillness. Another. He was almost with reach of my waiting hands when he slowly sank down, curling tight within himself. His bowed shoulders shook, sobs tearing free from his chest in sickening gasps, a low, deep howl of despair.

The world returned in a rushing wave, washing across me in light and sound. The walls of the room seemed to close around us with the finality of a prison. To one side, as steady as stone, Mace Windu stood silent witness to the entire, terrible scene. I crawled forward, gathered my Padawan into my arms, meeting no resistance. He clung to me, fingers bruising, but there was no comfort in the embrace. Only a chill, appalling finality. I held him tight, my eyes seeking out my friend, so resolute where he stood.

"We are lost."

I expected him to turn, to report to the Council that the darkness had claimed us at last. Instead, dignity restored, Windu shrugged out of his outer robe, folded it, then placed it aside. Without slowing he walked to where we huddled together, then knelt beside us. Obi-Wan flinched from his touch, face tucked firmly against the junction of my shoulder where his breath rasped cool against my collar. Mace's touch was gentle, his dark hands shocking against the pallor of the younger man's skin as he urged Obi-Wan back.

I could feel the trembling despair in Obi-Wan's hands as he allowed them to be drawn away from me, saw it in his eyes as they locked with mine. His lips formed my name, shape without sound breathed into it, and then Windu's hands reached out, caught him, turning him gently and I knew it was only because Obi-Wan went willing.

I could not close my eyes before it had begun. The cry leapt belated to my throat as white hands shot out, clasped dark shoulders. In the last split instant instinct took the place of rationale; Mace thrust back, warding, but it was already far too late. I saw Obi-Wan's lips close against the column of the Jedi Master's throat. Mace gasped, his entire body rigid. His eyelids sank, a low moan rising unbidden to his lips.

I shivered, watching as the muscles beneath white fleshed jaw and throat worked in silent motion, drawing hard against the living warmth that had been offered. Each swallow like a slap, passion and hunger, a pounding drumbeat that stabbed sharply against memory. I looked at Mace, head tipped back, lax within the grasp that drained him; in horrific intimacy, I knew I looked at myself.

It built like a low hum, throbbing to the beat of a heart within three chests, thrumming through the air. I felt the ripples of it, felt the tendrils reach out, sink deep; saw it, visibly, as color flushed pale skin, erased gaunt hallows and warmed from within. It flared to life within us, bright and shining, pathways of pure Force that I had so long taken for granted.

With a gasp Obi-Wan released Windu, jerking back. A trickle of blood stained his lips wetly black, blood that he dashed away against his forearm. Mace fell back heavily, catching himself weakly against one elbow, breathing hard, eyes glassy.

Obi-Wan licked his lips gingerly, chest heaving as he drew in air. "Time," he whispered, rubbing the blood from his skin harshly. "There won't ever be enough time."

Windu shook his head, pushing himself back up. Blood had darkened the edge of his tunic where it lay against his throat, its loss lending an ashen tinge to his skin. Obi-Wan hesitated, then reached for him, an outstretched hand offered in assistance. At that point I saw the other man's composure break, saw him flinch and jerk back, fear and alarm rippling through the Force around us.

Obi-Wan drew away, shoving himself to his feet. "Then there's your answer," he said harshly. "What now, Councilor?" He turned, fleeing, the door of our shared sleeping chamber hissing shut behind him.

Mace slowly met my gaze, and in his dark eyes I saw him more shaken then I had ever witnessed. "What now?" I repeated softly.

He wet his lips. His words, when he spoke them, were heavy. "I leave the choice to you, Qui-Gon. Keep him, and know that it is a slow death for you both... or destroy him. The choice is yours."

I shook my head. "Then there is no choice."

He looked away. Stumbled, staggering, to his feet, kept there by will alone. He reached out briefly, but would come no further. "Force keep you," he whispered. I closed my eyes, traced the faltering sound of his steps as he left, the whoosh of the door and the sharp hiss as the external lock engaged.

No choice at all, and the walls of our home would be the bars of our prison.

Lyrics: "Pac Deorum" by Enya from the cd "Memory of Trees"

to be continued...