Disclaimers: I am basely and scurrilously misappropriating the
creations of George Lucas, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox,
with an eye toward debauching otherwise upright and decent
characters. But no one is paying me to do so.
Archive: Master_Apprentice archive, and Witnesslist: Not
Admissible in Court archive
Feed Me: hth29@hotmail.com
He is faster than he used to be. I can barely stay ahead of him
now. Yoda was right about him, though it took me so many years
to see it: he is meant to be a Jedi.
Strike ... miss. Parry ... barely. I can feel his strength
radiating down his lightsaber as it clashes with mine in a
shower of sparks, strength that races up through my own arms
like electric shocks. Not a boy any longer. Strong, hardened by
all these years of my abuse, the long hours of practice, the
climbing, the racing, the tireless, thankless manual labor.
It is how I was treated, when I was a padawan. It is the only
way to train a Jedi Knight.
I hated Yoda, when I was the age that Obi-Wan is now. That was
my great struggle as an apprentice ... to overcome the pain of
being so powerless in comparison to him, the anger I felt
because he trained me like a Jedi Master instead of looking
after me like a father.
He was not my father. I see that now. Older, wiser. A Jedi
Master, and even, from time to time, a credit to Yoda's
reputation.
Strike ... miss. Parry ... hard. Still not as strong as I am.
Not likely to be, if this is to be his full height, the body he
will wear for the duration. Still smaller than me, and as
firefly-quick and surreptitiously treacherous as ever he was.
A nuisance. All these years, wondering how I acquired a padawan
learner, and why it should be my destiny to have one who is, if
possible, more ungovernable than I was. He crept in, sooner or
later, years ago, a thief in the night. Not a tagalong boy,
full of questions and prone to overturning my dignity, but a
young man, a friend, intelligent and intense, his heart
fiercely pure, though his understanding often clouded.
Strike ... miss. He leaps, almost to the level of my head. I
never taught him that. I never do that. Well, he is my
apprentice, not a younger self. He will have his own ways. I
begin to see them even now, a habit here, a tendency there,
things I could never have taught him, things I am seeing for
the first time in him. He has begun to amaze me. He will
continue, I am sure.
He is breathing hard, harder than I am. He almost heaves,
sucking in oxygen, and yet the exhaustion only seems to
energize him. Obi-Wan thrives on the challenge. He will not
find his still center, will not surrender to the rhythms of the
fight. He wants to break one of us. He longs for the conquest.
My young padawan. Dangerous, Yoda told me. I see it. He is
dangerous. Impatient. Arrogant. He will never turn away a
challenge, however outmatched he may be. He will throw himself
into the jaws of utter destruction before admitting--
Dodge ... barely. I felt the heat of his lightsaber as it swung
by me; in a real fight, that could have incapacitated me. I
hesitate. I should concede his victory this time, compliment
him. A good fight, graceful and effective.
No. No. No. I am still too young ... he is still too young. It
is not time for me to face defeat at the hands of my own
apprentice. Later, years from now. It is the way of things, but
only in its own time.
Strike ... hard. Press ... faster. He is retreating now, no
longer smiling. This should finish it, and yet he will not
surrender. With nowhere else to go, he digs in his heels. Leaps
again. I hate it that he can do that ... so light, so bright,
like a spark, like a flame, not stone and bone and blunt,
barren strength like me.
How dare he? How dare he? Strike ... clumsy. He was not always
so quick, and not always so stubborn. He is becoming more
aggravating, not less. He is making me tired, through and
through. This is why I have always moved alone, why I resisted
taking an apprentice for so many years. Block ... buckle. No.
No. Strike ... fail. Falter. I go to one knee in the dirt,
graceless and without effect.
I look up at him. His face is grave, but his eyes glitter. He
is preening, tossing his apprentice's braid back, twitching off
the last of his adrenaline-fueled energy. He lowers a hand to
help me up, and I pretend I cannot see it. "A heady feeling, is
it not, my padawan?" I say, coldly. "To best one's teacher."
"Well fought, my Master." Casually, complimenting me with the
generosity of the benevolent master. There is nothing of the
apprentice now about him. He is a stranger to me, not at all
the boy I raised and trained and abused, as a proper Jedi
should be.
It is enough to break one's heart. I turn away.
"Master?"
"Skill with the lightsaber can make you a soldier, Obi-Wan,
never a Jedi Knight. There is nothing of the Force in the way
you fight."
"Why should I fight to lose?" Cheeky, practically laughing. He
has never taken my harshness to heart as I did Yoda's. I have
lost the boy I never wanted. As it turns out, I miss him after
all.
"Fight to preserve the balance, not to conquer, my young
apprentice." Not so young now. It is late in the day for us. I
recall the bargain I made with Yoda, and I feel a chill at my
back, whistling between my body and Obi-Wan's.
Arrogant. Ambitious. Thoughtless. Reckless. Obi-Wan ... and me.
So many times, Yoda swore that if I could not overcome these
flaws, would not heed his teaching and mold myself as a proper
Jedi should, I would lose myself, to death or the darkness. I
resented him and his stifling morality and his bleak, boring
swamp and his complacency.
I run my hands through my hair, surprised to find it stiff with
sweat. Obi-Wan makes me work now, as surely as I used to make
him fight to prove every boast he made. A fitting revenge.
When did I lose my fear of Yoda, and my respect for him along
with it? Perhaps when I realized that he was wrong. My
arrogance and my defiance have not destroyed me. Not yet. I
have wisdom and compassion with which to balance them. I
manage, a poor excuse for a Jedi Master, I suppose, but still
alive, still in the service of the light. I move, without a
doubt, more easily than Yoda through most circles, walking
among the galaxy's mere mortals and earning their friendship in
a way that virtuous, heartless Yoda never could.
I, like Obi-Wan, have become my own man, not my teacher's murky
reflection. I have sacrificed much of Yoda's skill with the
Force, his ability to read a being's heart and destiny, and he
sacrificed much of my understanding of politics and
practicalities. What sort of a Jedi will my own apprentice be?
Will I ever understand why he chose the road he did? Will I
respect him when I cannot understand him? Will he respect me
when he realizes that I am a stranger to whatever it is he
feels most deeply? The Force speaks to Obi-Wan in its own
voice.
He rarely listens. That gift will come in time. It came even to
Qui-Gon Jinn in time. But it was not a thing that any Master
could teach me, and not a thing I can teach to him now.
The fault was not Yoda's. He failed me because it must be so,
between masters and apprentices. No more than two, but no less,
either. With Obi-Wan and me, there will always and only be two.
I turn to him, sensing the futility of words to make amends for
what I have just said to him. I can only say, "You have speed.
You move with great control, great precision. It takes most
Jedi many years of seasoning to do what you can do. You should
be proud." Words I wished someone would say to me when I was
his age. Words that went so long unspoken from my master that
the wounds never healed. I went on alone after I became a
Knight, even after I attained a Master's rank, traveling on
behalf of the Senate and the Chancellor, my contact with the
Council as minimal as I could make it.
Today I failed with Obi-Wan ... I gave him too late what he has
deserved for so long. Did I truly know no other way to train an
apprentice? Did I want him, somehow, to share my wound with me,
to join me in earnest on my self-imposed exile?
"If I should be proud, Master, then shouldn't you, as well?"
His voice is sly; he thinks he is catching me in some logic
trap. It is a word game to him. He doesn't know how badly I
wanted to hurt him, hold him down.
Remain an apprentice forever. Never change. Never grow beyond
this, never go away.
"You will find, Obi-Wan, that the skills you come to rely on
throughout your life are the ones that were never taught to
you. You hear them when you learn to listen to the voice of the
Force. If I could teach you only that single truth, it would be
enough to make you a Jedi, in time."
His hands touch my beard. He has never done this before. His
lips brush mine.
I have known this day would come. Even I, limited as I am,
foresaw it when I first met him. I saw the child grown, a man,
handsome and radiant with confidence and energy. I saw humor
and intelligence and desire in his green-gold eyes, eyes that
in the boy before me held none of those things, only sulky
stubbornness. Yoda whispering to me: "Hopeless this is. Do with
him what you can. Look up to you he might." Insult and plea at
once -- this balky, defiant child was like only one Jedi in
history, so let that Jedi have the handling of him.
I saw his future then, a hologram superimposed on that
unlovable little boy. I saw that he would be a man of wit and
heart and great power, a man anyone might love.
A man I would love.
The man I do love. Parry ... and fail. He has struck home. I
wind an arm around his neck, allow him to lean into the kiss. I
touch his hair. He is still young. I thought this would not
happen until he was ready to take the test, until all vestiges
of his youth were swept away with his years as a padawan, only
a memory. There are years left, much refining to be done ...
some of it by me, some by Yoda. Obi-Wan is still very much a
work in progress. Still young in so many ways.
I lift my other hand to touch my fingers to his cheek. His eyes
are laughing again. Can't he sense it? It's too soon. I have
only today accepted that he cannot be my apprentice forever. I
cannot, in the very same hour, watch him become a man, make him
one. My hands knot in the back of his robe. No. No. No. I am
still grieving for my little boy, my foolish, wayward, reckless
Obi-Wan. This man who wants to take his place is wrong for me
now.
His lips part, and I am slow to discourage it. I savor the heat
of his breath, the touch of his tongue as it prods gently
between my lips. But then I stroke his shoulders, and push him
away.
The anger in his eyes startles me. I am forcing him away from
me, refusing him something he needs from his master to feel
strong. Just as Yoda did to me when he withheld his praise.
Inside, I keen. Must these things always repeat themselves?
Will it always be a master passing on his worst fears, an
apprentice going astray because no one is calling him home?
"Not yet," I say, hoping that he can see my rejection for what
it is.
"When?"
"Patience, my apprentice."
He pays that as much heed as I would have at his age.
"When?"
"There will be time."
Stubborn, like his master, inclined to take only his own
advice, Obi-Wan kisses me again, harder this time, trying to
burn understanding into me. I am shocked by his intensity. How
long has he been capable of this, this insistent seduction? How
long has he harbored desires that go this far beyond aimless
adolescent longing, desires that shake me, force me to doubt my
judgement and my willpower?
I reach out with the Force, testing him. Hoping to hear that he
has harbored them all his life, that in some instinctive way he
saw what I did in the very beginning. Hoping that, like me, he
is just now coming to the shore of an ocean he has always known
existed.
There is nothing. Nothing.
I am falling, both physically and spiritually. I land, in the
first case, in the grass and soft dirt, Obi-Wan on top of me,
pulling my head closer, resuming the kiss that shattered when
we began our descent to earth. In the latter case, I think I
must still be falling.
No. No. No. I have gone through too much with this boy to be
this to him.
I push him away, roughly, because he is deaf to subtlety by
now. "There is nothing of the Force in this, either," I grate
out. "If you intend to make love the way you fight, then you
have much to learn about both arts."
His eyes narrow; he doesn't like this, but he won't speak
openly against me. "Then why won't you teach me?" he asks, too
strictly courteous.
"Would you hone your skills with the lightsaber by dueling with
the most dangerous man you know?" I let that sink in. He may be
thinking through the implications of that for minutes, or
years. With Obi-Wan, it is impossible to predict.
At least he sits up, moving away from me enough to break the
immediate tension. He turns his back to me, and draws his knees
up to his chin. Thinking. He may act before he thinks, but
Obi-Wan is more than capable of thinking when he feels the
moment is right.
I press up on one elbow. As tenderly as I can, I reach out and
stroke his long, red-brown hair. "I will not break my word, my
padawan. I promised you that there will be a time for this."
"When?" He is not overwrought now, not speaking out of an agony
of need. His voice is low, wistful.
"You have been with me for the better part of your life,
Obi-Wan, and there is no other who knows you so well. Give us
both room."
"Room? For what?"
"For you to grow. Trust me, little one." He half-turns his head
at that, the name I used to use, years ago, to needle him out
of one of his fits of pique. "When you return from Yoda's, you
will be...very different. I will seem different to you, as
well." I trace my fingers up his curved spine. "Then we can
become acquainted at our leisure." I feel the smile on my lips,
hear it in my voice.
He lands in the grass beside me with a little thud and a tiny
sigh. "What you're asking isn't easy, you know. I'm ready now."
"Obi-Wan, the hardest lesson I ever had to learn from Yoda was
patience. I was eager to be a Jedi; I felt that when my trials
were passed and I was a Knight, I could be alone and my life
would begin at last."
"Alone?"
"The Force was company enough for me." Back then.
We are nose to nose, scratched by blades of grass and breathing
in a thin film of dust. His golden eyes are still opaque like
stones, and he stares at me like a stranger. I wish I could
feel him, but a part of me is glad he is too far away to feel
my confusion. Where is he, behind those eyes? What is he
looking for as he fixes so steadily on my unbeautiful face?
"Did you love Yoda, Master?" he asks.
I am a stone in the grass, a geode. Pretty image. Hard to keep
the crystal on the inside, hard to stay this blank when I want
to smash open for him. How does he do it, a mere boy as he is?
It should be impossible. Like loving the Master who breaks you
to the Jedi's yoke, it should be all but impossible. "No," I
admit. "I eventually learned to respect him."
Not while I was his apprentice, of course, or even during my
years as a Jedi Knight. Only when I wanted to take my place
among the other Masters, but I was still too jealous of my
hard-won independence to have any use for an apprentice of my
own. It was Yoda who intervened on my behalf, Yoda who smoothed
the way for me and procured my dispensation from the Council.
For the first time in twenty-five years, I thought it possible
that Yoda might understand what was inside me. He is wise. He
knew me well, and it made him the first to see Obi-Wan's
potential.
Disagreeable, he is. Untrusting, like you. Teach each other
you must, or your debt to me is still unpaid. At first I
thought it was a supreme irony: Yoda in his generosity
single-handedly sparing me from the duty to train an
apprentice, then single-handedly shunting the worst prospect
the Council had seen in years directly to me. Now I see it
differently. Leave me be when I am sure of nothing, not even my
own strength, and bring me a soulmate when I am growing grey
and slow with loneliness. Oh, yes. I am learning to trust.
"Trust me," I implore Obi-Wan; we are here in the grass to
teach each other, after all. "Desire must never rule a Jedi.
You are the master of your own passions, Obi-Wan."
"I want you." When did he learn this language, this minimalist
poetry, raw and lovely?
My life-Force sings his name much too strongly to answer him
with less than the truth. "And I want you. But I will want you
still when the time is right."
"Won't I?"
"I don't know." Bright white strands of my own future,
conducting my passion for Obi-Wan up and down the line like
searing electricity. I see that. But his future is hidden from
me. Yoda was right, as usual. He is as untrusting as I was,
choking down his own life-Force, locking it up inside him so
that not even I, reaching for him, can find it. Will he be as
old as I am before he discovers that being open, not being
alone, is the serene silence from which the voice of the Force
proceeds?
Must these things always repeat themselves? Will it always be a
Master learning much too late that which he should have been
teaching all along ... an Apprentice surpassing his mentor in
skill and forgetting the secret language they once shared? Boys
grown up, men grown old. The Force growing sluggish and cool
between the two who need each other most.
Untrusting, like you. Yoda trusted me to go my lonely
way. Then he went deeper, and he trusted me to teach Obi-Wan,
and to learn from him, too. I give the old man that much. He
found something in me to trust, and long before I stumbled
across it myself.
My fingers touch his face. Much power is concentrated in the
hands. All Jedi know that. "Have faith, child."
Amusement plays in his mossy, dark eyes, and a little pity for
me. "Child? Am I a child to you, Ma... Qui-Gon?"
Silky bravado. He is beginning to believe he can win this
fight. He can, but like the first man you kill, the first man
you bed is anything but what you expect. "You are my padawan
learner. It is very like the relationship between a father and
his child."
The humor blossoms, and the pity becomes a backdrop of sad,
untouchable wisdom. He finds me naive. I find him charming in
his vanity. "You don't know my father."
No. But I knew the son we took from him. I saw the bruises, the
skittish glances, the bitterness that marred what should have
been a small boy's ordinary face. I close my eyes and make a
leap of faith, my hand passing against his cheek, spinning the
threads of power. "I know he taught you a great deal."
"Not to get hit." Obi-Wan chuckles, and sighs into my hand. It
is another life for him. He has shed that skin, except for the
knots deep inside him that bind up his Force and keep me from
feeling what he feels as he lies inches from my face.
"If you can't learn that lesson, none of the others matter."
Obi-Wan's lips part to give voice to his light laugh, and we
kiss.
We kiss.
We kiss.
Hard to believe in this deep, blind happiness. I have been
alone so long. He has become a brilliant young man overnight,
leaving me shy and vulnerable before the changes in him. I love
him. I am untrusting. He must leave me ... so little time left
to us now. For all of these reasons, or none of them, I am too
frail to kiss Obi-Wan the way he deserves. I only yield up my
mouth to him, letting him celebrate his first victory over his
Master by feasting on my lips and tongue and teeth.
He can maneuver the wraps and sashes of a Jedi's habit easily,
as only a man who has worn one himself can. I can allow this,
for the moment. Let him revel. Let him be the conqueror. Soon
enough, he will learn his next lesson: that the seduction is
merely a prelude to the work of being a lover.
Still a nag lingers somewhere low in my throat. Is this
strange, inappropriate, unwise? I was never told. Taking a
padawan learner is meant to be a lesson for Master as well as
Apprentice ... am I failing, even as I give him what he wants,
my hands sinking down inside the collar of his robe? Difficult
to imagine most Jedi caught up in passion, never mind two of
them. Obi-Wan and I were always different.
In love, as in swordsmanship, there are many guiding
principles, few iron-clad laws. One principle, which in my
experience is always sound, is to begin with what has worked
for you in the past. I cup Obi-Wan's face in my hands. He looks
down at me, vaguely puzzled, vaguely pleased at my touch,
mainly waiting to see what the next moment will bring.
"When a child is born, he spends the first months becoming
aware of his own senses. He learns to use his eyes and ears,
and to understand that he can affect the motion first of his
own body, and then of other objects around him."
"Qui-Gon...." He trails off, giving me one last chance to make
all this relevant.
I smile a bit. He is so intense, even in his attempts at
patience. There is no peace in him, only restraint, and
shrewdness. "It was not so long ago, young padawan, that you
were in the habit of calling me 'Master.'"
He brushes his lips across mine. "Is that really the biggest
thing you have on your mind right now?"
"And after the child becomes aware of his physical
surroundings, he begins to attune himself to the emotional
fabric of his universe."
"Qu--Master."
"As before, he first becomes aware of his own nonphysical
relationship to his environment ... happiness, frustration,
loneliness, love ... and then progresses, gaining an ability to
interpret those nonphysical needs in others."
His kisses contain desperation now, and my only hope is to keep
him from blocking my mouth. I guide his lips to my neck
instead. "The third stage in a child's growth is an
understanding of the social reality, of the external
expectations his family and society place on him. He becomes
able to recognize--"
"Stop." He presses his fingers to my lips, and I have no
instant desire to push them away. "Just stop talking. You're
making me nervous."
I kiss lightly. There is a stirring of the Force in him
suddenly, as though for the first time he knows I am Qui-Gon
Jinn, his Jedi Master, his friend, and suddenly he is calling
out, searching for me. I extend, putting out a light to lead
him in. "No reason to feel anxious, my apprentice. This is just
a brief theoretical introduction to our discussion of the role
of sexuality in the maturation of a young Jedi Knight."
The expression on Obi-Wan's face revolves slowly from baffled
to appalled to bemused. "Master. You are the most handsome man
I've ever seen, and you mean everything to me. On the other
hand, I can't imagine anyone but you making sex sound this
boring."
"I hope you will not find the practice so much so as the
theory."
"The practice never seems half so boring as the theory."
A little shiver runs through me, and into Obi-Wan, as the
thought occurs to me: if he moves in my arms the way he moves
when we duel, I may not survive this.
I notice that while Obi-Wan is holding quite still, I am the
one moving in his arms. Our robes have landed in a ring of
their component parts, and I am rocking back and forth against
his chest, letting our nipples brush against each other in a
slow rhythm. "May I finish?"
"Will it wait?"
"About as well as you do." He bites me under the ear, trying to
pretend it was an accident. Now his life-Force is sneaking out
of him in tendrils, testing around my borders, feeling the
shape of my own aura. He wants to trust. He wants in.
I choose to reward his risk with another kiss, less desperate
than before, even more probing. "Now," I continue, raising my
volume just enough to let him know that I am serious about
this. "Training a Jedi is much like raising a child.
Counter-intuitively, however, it seems that the stages must be
approached in the reverse order. The first stage is to teach
proper comportment ... self-discipline and self-control,
respect for your elders and patience as well. Only then
can you move to an increased awareness of your own inner
states, the first step toward accessing the greater Force,
since, as you know, all of your understanding of the Force as
it affects the universe and the flow of time--"
"Grows out of my ability to understand the voice of the living
Force within me. If you know that I know it, why are you
telling--"
"Obi-Wan."
His hands slide up my arms, elbows to shoulders. "Just make
love to me."
"I am trying--"
"Yes, I follow. Social maturity, spiritual maturity, physical
maturity."
I feel the first barbs sinking into me, Obi-Wan anchoring to my
life-Force, shifting and nestling up against me in more than
just body. Strike, and I am open to it this time. I sit up,
pushing him forward with me, my hands raking possessively over
his smooth back, my lips drawn back to his. His eyes close this
time, and he is becoming more and more still in my arms.
"If this is going to make you even more disrespectful--"
He nestles closer to me, until I can feel his breath,
heartbeat, even the slight rumbling of his stomach vibrating
against my body. His mouth, warm and wet, traces softly over my
ear. "I'm ready."
Indeed. I lean him back underneath me and reach for his
erection; my own is pressed comfortably against his hip. His
tongue rolls lazily inside my mouth, and his touch on my hair
is sure. He should be nervous, but I can find no evidence of
it.
I am. I am his Master, trusted by the Jedi Council to do his
worrying for him, to be older and wiser and seasoned by hard
experience. For once, the Council can be proud of me. I am
older, wiser, experienced, and terrified.
"Hush, hmm, hush." Nonsense, music, sleight-of-mouth to
disguise the fact that I am without a plan and without faith.
Blood burns through the fine skin of his inner thigh as I track
my hand upward. "Mmm, little one...."
So many years alone, sleeping on the cool, hard ground,
cradling my own head on my folded arms while I half-remembered
the days of my earliest childhood ... my mother's singsong
voice, my father's enormous, calloused hands, my grandmother's
milky-blue eyes set deep, like mine, into a tanned face. I wrap
my arms around his head, protecting it from the earth. With his
forehead touching mine, I try to feed him those bittersweet
memories, no different from feeding him mashed fruit and bread
when he was ten and too sick with walking pneumonia to eat on
his own. Slowly, I give him one: her voice.
It drops into his mind like a loose stone down the shaft of a
mine. A thin, reedy breath of air rises from the darkness ...
his answer. My voice, lilting and strong. No words, just a
sound, a flat, dark plain of noise like thunder rolling
unimpeded over a prairie. I hear what he knows. I hear the
Force as it speaks to Obi-Wan in my voice, and there is no
separating us now. I am his Master, his fate, his truth, his
peace. I am all his memories, and all his faith.
My appetite for intimacy whetted, I toss down another stone,
another memory of my own that haunted and sustained me through
those lean years: his hands.
Even before I receive Obi-Wan's reply, I cup my hand around his
groin, leaving my mark inside his thighs, making him aware of
his present, my presence. His answer, his end of the liquid,
living dialogue blossoming between us. His own father's hands,
battering him to the ground with open palms. Obi-Wan's head
striking the kitchen wall with a resounding crack, the distant
sensation of pain. I stroke my hand through his hair, with a
sense that I can feel the welt raised on his head, the one
wound that stands out in his mind as a symbol of five years of
pain and anger.
We kiss, we kiss, his hair parts in rivulets to allow my
fingers through, he shivers and draws his legs up around mine,
we groan into each other's mouths, driven down against each
other by the sudden weight of this much trust. The moisture of
my arousal is smearing indiscriminately across his skin and
mine. Seek ... with Force and phallus and fingertips. Find ...
his heat, his texture, his tension. Strike ... he expects the
pain, he almost seems to relish it, he sinks his teeth deeply
into my shoulder. His legs fall wide open, and he reaches for
my hands, clutching at them and pulling them back up to his
hair. His awareness is whipping like wind through both of us, a
ghost river of old hurts and small favors, words and smiles and
fears and conquests. I cannot even separate what he remembers
from what I know.
My hand slides down his warm, youthfully narrow chest, a fond
gesture that seems much more under my conscious control than
the quick, erratic motion of my hips. We kiss, and our teeth
click lightly together. He makes an anguished sound against my
cheek, his back arching, and I hold his face tight between my
forehead and my hand. The other hand tears up soil and grass
above his shoulder. "Ben," I call him, and it must come from
his mind, because I have never known him as Ben.
I am not aware of whatever thoughts and memories I may be
transmitting, but he must be hearing something, just as I am.
"Trust me," he murmurs ... his feelings, or mine? How long must
a master and apprentice spend together before there is no more
need for that question?
Minutes more. Seconds more. It is almost upon us, the instant
when my trust demands his trust, and his conquest confirms my
success. From now on, our fortunes rise and fall together, just
as our breathing has settled into a pattern and we both know
when to ask and offer a kiss.
Minutes more. Seconds more. A heartbeat, two, and three. His
cry. My hand pressing hard against his cheek, leaving red
prints on his face. Little one, my apprentice, Ben, young
padawan ... Obi-Wan, a Jedi, my partner, my lover, the man
locked against me in the grip of our intertwined orgasms.
Feebly, I pet his hair back, finger his braid, mingle the sweat
and dirt and fragments of local flora on my palm with the sweat
on his forehead. Peace, the two of us lying undefended in the
twilight, hands still hungry for the shape of each other, but
otherwise drained to exhaustion. I taste his lips again, and
now that the flavor is familiar it is only that much more
addictive.
He rolls over, one elbow braced casually over my ribs. "The
practice was much less boring."
"I must remedy that. Learning should always be dull."
"Repetition..." he hints, feigning innocence.
I rest my hand comfortably on the back of his neck. My anxiety
is gone, but only because I am blind to the future; for now,
there is only the living Force, and the two of us.
This I do know about my future ... not by any Jedi arts, but
simply because it is the kind of thing a man cannot help but
know: Years from now, when I am as old and wizened as Yoda, I
will never recall the day or the hour that Obi-Wan first
defeated me with the lightsaber ... but I will never be unable
to taste his mouth against mine and smell the dampness of grass
and sweat on his skin, and I will always know how it felt to
fall from high solitude into true humanity for no reason
greater than that he asked me to.
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