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Archive: master_apprentice

Category: AU Drama Angst

Rating: PG

Warnings: The Scene That Didn't Happen happens.

Summary: In all times and all worlds, the same lessons must be learned.

Feedback: One can never get enough of a good thing.

Disclaimer: Do not adjust your television. We control the vertical. We control the horizontal. And George controls just about damn near everything else. But for the record, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and all artifacts and situations pertaining thereunto are the property of Lucasfilm Ltd. As for the rest of it, you may send me Diet Coke or Ray Park in spandex bicycle shorts. I mean, it's not like I'm picky or anything.

Note: I'm making this one long post. It's only around 1000 words. Happy motoring!

Obi-Wan heard the harsh impacts of the Sith's red lightsaber against the side of the melting pit, could feel the wind of the blade's swift passage against the skin of
his face, cooling the sweat there. The ratchetting sizzles of the red blade, the sparks, struck like clockwork, counting out the moments as he hung from one of the plasma
emitters helplessly. Counting out the moments his Master had left on this side of the Force.

Black despair all but consumed him as he hung there, his sweaty fingers sliding on the warm metal, dangling over a pit whose bottom was lost in distant darkness. He had not heard his lightsaber hit bottom.

*Journey's end,* he thought to himself, the words whispering through his exhausted mind bleakly. Another strike of the red lightsaber only a meter above his head.
*I'm sorry, Master. I was not fast enough. And now...all will be lost.*

*"Obi-Wan,"* he could all but hear his Master say, *"Have you heard nothing I have said? There is no ending. There is only change. Suffering and pain is when you do not accept those changes and allow life to go on. No matter the form, life -- and the Force -- never ends."*

It faintly amused Obi-Wan that he should be remembering such words now while hanging from his hands over a pit of unimaginable depth, a crazed evil monster leering at him from above.

But perhaps not inappropriate, all things considered. Hidden in the words of the lecture was another message, *"Don't give up. Change."*

Despair and grief for his Master had blinded him. But he could no longer deny that it wasn't his Master who was important here. It was life itself. If the Sith won, how many more people would loose their lives here on Naboo? And how many more when this monster was unleashed on an unsuspecting galaxy? In a burst of stunning clarity he realized this was not a simple lightsaber battle between an unknown madman and two Jedi. What they did here was of a greater, higher nature, and the outcome would change the fates of untold numbers of living souls.

He knew well what his Master's answer would be, given this choice. That selflessness was the very quality Obi-Wan admired most in his Master, and tried so hard to emulate. Yet now he understood.

With that understanding he found his center again, felt the warm metal sliding beneath his fingers as his weight pulled him downward, heard the rasping crackle of the red lightsaber blade above his head, almost felt the predatory stare of the Sith on his body. The Force swirled around him again at his call, unfaltering, unwavering, pushing away the exhaustion. With only a thought it carried him up out of the pit, over the Sith's head. He felt his Master's lightsaber smack into his hand as it flew from the floor, and then it was over.

"Master." His own voice was a grief-wracked squeak in his ears now, as he tried to lift his Master to lean against him. He knew it was futile. The lightsaber strike had
definitely vaporized lung and heart tissue. They had moments, only moments, and he had so much to say...

"Obi-Wan ... promise me you will train the boy..."

*What?!* Obi-Wan wanted to shriek, but at this moment he would promise his Master the jewel moons of Iego if it would make Qui-Gon relax and be at peace.

"He is the chosen one... train him..."

And his Master's body went limp in his arms.

Years later he would realize that his Master had foreseen another of those moments, another convergence of time and fate, where the saving of one soul could preserve the lives of billions. It was a lesson -- and it's consequences -- that the galaxy would never forget.

The scent of snow was strong on the freshening wind as Arthur lifted his face to the bright late winter sun, pulling his bear-fur cloak about him. The turret walk was awash in sunlight, giving a commanding view of the vale of Arvon. It had been a long winter already, bitterly cold, tense with anticipation of what the spring might bring. It was only the approach of winter that had saved Caer Comlainn from seige some few months before, the screaming winds of blizzard that had driven Vortigern's forces from their imminent attack on the keep.

Peace was something that ticked away with the inevitabilty of approaching war drums. Arthur knew better than to waste it.

The rough shale of the mountains of Kymry had built the small fortress on the mountain, the work of hundreds of hands had raised the walls and lifted the beams of the roofs. It was built in the old ways, the stone naturally splitting into relatively flat, straight chunks easily mortarred together with mud, the roofs of thatch. The natural crags of the mountain provided many places for archers to pick off anyone approaching by the main road up the mountain. There were actually many tracks up and down the mountain but no force of any strength would be able to struggle up the steep animal tracks and half-overgrown pathways. Any commander with any sense at all would see the only way to approach Caer Comlainn would be up the main road, which was easily defensible. Yet at the same time the inhabitants of the keep could, in desperate straits, escape by those same routes. It was perhaps not the most perfect of escape plans, but it offered a chance. Until the war with Vortigern and Morgana was over it was all they could provide. Arthur simply did not have the resources or manpower to spare for building improvements. At the moment it was all he could do to hold off the wolves at the door.

*Keep your mind on the here and now*, he recited dutifully to himself. *Your focus determines your reality. How many times has he told you this? After all these years it should have gotten through your thick skull. But how I wish he were here to say those words again...*

"Sire?"

He turned and glanced back at the archway leading into the tower. "Yes? Is there news?"

The youngster came out onto the walkway, his thin face wreathed with a smile under an unruly wing of black hair. "Aye, Sire, but not what we've been waiting for!"

"Out with it, Tristan," Arthur admonished gently with a grin. His squire could be quite the jokester when he put his mind to it. "It it fire, flood, or rioting in the
courtyard this time?"

Tristan grinned and gestured to the figure coming up the stairs behind him. "A little of all three, I'd guess, m'lord."

"Your sense of humor, Tristan, never ceases to amaze me," said a deep voice, and the sunlight sparked off the silver in Medwyn's hair as he emerged from the tower stairs, unfolding to his full height as he came out into the open air.

"Master!" Arthur was across the intervening distance in a moment, throwing his arms about the Druid, feeling the rumble of laughter in the wizard's frame. Soft white linen and rough brown wool, the scents of horses and peat fires and woodsmoke and pine. Solid strength of muscle and bone, the uncommon height for a man of the Kymry, the long silvering brown hair tied safely out of his eyes. Arthur looked up at last for the last details. Sapphire blue eyes twinkled down at him mischievously, filled with a happiness deep as the waters of the Goddess' holy springs, in a ruggedly handsome face. "Oh Master, you've come home!"

"Yes, Artos, I'm home," Medwyn said gently, "And just in time, it seems. Vortigern is already raising his army in the south. We must prepare for seige unless you have a plan already in place."

"Master," Arthur said softly, looking up pleadingly into the wizard's eyes. "I missed you. We -- I -- thought you were dead! When my damned sister -- "

Medwyn rolled his eyes at that and gave his adopted son a look of faint exasperation. "Artos. What is death? Only change. The spirit given us by the gods does not die. Nothing Morgana could ever do to me can change what the gods have wrought. In one way or another, I will always be with you. We cannot be parted," the wizard concluded, then sighed and smiled lopsidedly down at his student. "And just to inflate your already monumental ego, I missed you too. I trust you appreciated my efforts to dissuade Vortigern with that blizzard."

"So that was you? I should have known. A blizzard at Mabon is not normal even for this part of Kymry," Arthur said, moving away at last. His hand fell on the emerald pommel-stone of the sword hanging at his side and he pulled Fragarach from the scabbard reluctantly. Through the long months of his teacher's supposed "death" at Morgana's hands the magical sword had become hope and memory and legacy, cherished not only for it's power but for the lifetime of memories it held. The silver-gold blade flashed like sunfire as he drew it forth, the great round spherical emerald in the dragon's claw pommel prismed the light. The entwined snakes of the quillions seemed to writhe without moving, and the blade rang softly as he drew it forth. There was a time -- years ago now -- when he and Medwyn had used the wizard's weapon to prove his right to be King by perpetrating a hoax on the bands of refugees displaced by Vortigern's greed. Medwyn had left the priceless magical weapon embedded in a stone by the side of the road and had circulated the rumor of a prophecy that "whosoever draws the sword from the stone shall be rightwise King of all Camlann." Druids were not thick upon the ground in the wilds of Kymry. The Master had been fairly certain no one but himself and Arthur would have the force of will to even touch the sword, and Fragarach had made it clear it would tolerate no other hands save Medwyn and Arthur. So at the age of thirteen Artos of Arvon was proclaimed King of all Camlann by acclamation, a hollow title he had yet to fulfill.

"I have kept it safe," Arthur said in a small voice, turning the beautiful blade in his hands. He held it up on offering to the Druid. "But ever it cried for you."

"Artos," Medwyn said, lifting the bowed head to look into crystal blue eyes. "Did you not know? Fragarach has always belonged to you. It was I who kept it safe for you. You are the King of Camlann. You are the protector of her people against the Dark. Not I. Fragarach belongs to you."

Arthur blinked up at him in confusion, then down at the magical sword and Medwyn laughed softly.

"Idiot boy," Medwyn chided gently. "Have you heard nothing I have said?" He waited another moment while Arthur simply gaped, then, "Just because we live forever doesn't mean we have endless amounts of time. Are you going to stand there as if you've been struck by lightning until Beltane or are you going to get to work? Vortigern and Morgana are already on the move, I assure you."

Arthur blinked again, then automatically slid Fragarach back into the scabbard and turned for the tower door. "Tristan! Call the company to the Great Hall! Tell Galahad to get that mule of his saddled and get into his beggar's rags, I need information on Vortigern's forces. And someone find Morgana and my son! And you," the King concluded, reaching back a hand to latch onto the wizard's cloak as they descended the narrow stairs. "Don't stray from my side again."

"But Artos," Medwyn said softly, "I never left."

The End