Master Apprentice Archive In Dark Corners Quick search:

Archive: yes, MA, anyone else ask, i'll say yes.

Category: Q/O, O/A, POV, kinda Dark

Rating: PG

Warnings: unbeta'd. i actually wrote a fic with Qui's perspective. be wary.

Summary: Things turned out a little differently after Naboo.

Feedback: please sir can i have some more? E-mail: maskmf@hotmail.com

**SITH**:

He would tempt any sane creature; the arrogant swagger of his hips, the lithe body hidden beneath layers of fabric, the fire in his eyes when someone arouses his anger. There once was a slave-boy from Tatooine...

Temptation, personified. Does Qui-Gon know what he harbors in his precious Temple? Probably not.

I know them both, inside and out. Better than I ever could have before. Their blind obedience to an insular Council that is entangled in the machinations of politics and removed from their Knights who suffer and die to placate the Senate; I pity them.

Qui-Gon. Always considered rebellious and just this side of being a rogue, in the end a lifetime of conditioning proved more powerful than "the Will of the Force." But I'm sure that looking back at what would be a very hollow and bleak existence without the comforts of the Jedi Code had more than a little to do with it.

I loved him. As much as any emotionally crippled person is able to love. I look back and cringe at my pathetic devotion to him. I would have been his willing slave, offered up my body and soul to him without a second thought. It has taken time and many painful lessons, but now I'm almost glad he rejected me. Though he'll never really understand the reason I hate him. Naboo was merely the catalyst.

**JEDI**:

Eternal vigilance. Guarding my life, my padawan, and my heart against the Dark.

I knew. I knew when they met, though I denied it for years.

My brilliant radiant padawan; I had not questioned his dedication to the Light since I had overcome my own prejudices, my own scars and memories of betrayal long ago.

How could I know I would be the one to break him? And there is no denying that I did. Before, everyone hastened to assure me the fault was not mine. Xanatos was manipulative, charming, and a talented actor; nearly everyone was taken in by him. Now it is all I can do to ignore the stares and whispers; real now and not a product of my guilt-induced imagination.

He offered me everything my battered heart could ever have wished for: love, loyalty, happiness. There was scarcely a soul in the entire Temple who did not know of his devotion. And I turned him away.

Logical reasons, excuses, for my actions are of no comfort and regret is a misplaced word, I find. There is no way to describe the torment I have endured since he...left.

**CHOSEN**:

I found one of his journals the fifth year into my apprenticeship. Until then Obi-Wan was nothing but a hazy childhood memory, a phantom that shadowed my life. I hated him, blamed him for our troubles in the Temple; the fights with other padawans, Master's tedious sessions with the Council, the whispers that followed us everywhere. Then I found his journal, and discovered a parallel life. Strange how one passion can transform into another.

Reading Obi-Wan's thoughts, his hopes, fears, adventures and disappointments, I felt that I had someone who understood me, who I could confide in, even if only in my imagination. For the first time since leaving Tatooine, I wasn't alone.

For so long I felt guilty. Master has always done what he could to help me adjust to life here: the philosophy lessons, the training schedule, the strict discipline. I tried never to show my occasional doubts about ever becoming a Jedi. But everything I did was tainted, done the wrong way, never good enough.

Things other padawans spent years learning, I picked up in months; languages, astrophysics, mechanics, economic politics, I hungrily absorbed every subject I could get my hands on. But the most basic concepts taught to the initiates, like releasing my emotions, were beyond me. It killed me every time I saw that flicker of disappointment in Master's eyes, especially when I knew, when I was absolutely certain I had done my best to please him.

**SITH:**

The potential exists in every being, in the dark corners they pretend don't exist.

They warn young initiates of the dangers of not controlling your emotions. Master Yoda's infamous litany about the path to the Darkside is ingrained in every padawan to pass through the Temple for the past eight centuries. Jedi philosophers have expounded in countless volumes that rage, anger, and pain consume and ultimately destroy a person who has turned to the Dark.

None of the fools truly understand.

Negative emotions are allowed free reign, yes, but the capacity to feel every emotion is magnified to the brink of insanity. Love, grief, jealousy, joy, lust, all these and more free the soul from a lifetime, a hundred lifetimes, of imprisonment. It takes more control than those ancient Jedi ever dreamed of to retain one's identity in the maelstrom of sensation.

There is a malicious delight in watching my master flinch at the very thought of my presence. But that is not what brings me into the shadows of his life.

His padawan, my successor; the lost soul who calls to me. I see myself in his eyes.

**JEDI**:

I can feel him, watching from dark corners, the scent of him still lingering in the air when I return to the quarters I share with Anakin. We'll be here in the Temple, or in the streets of Coruscant, or even on a mission, and I will sense that other's gaze burning into me with a fire born of hatred instead of love. Years have passed and still he haunts me.

It wasn't until two cycles ago that I realized I was not the reason for his visits.

My current padawan, my Anakin. A troubled boy whose potential nearly blinded me with its shear strength. I introduced them, and lying on the cold deck of that transport, thinking on the pointed reminder of my own mortality delivered by the Sith, I felt the spark of Darkness. I dismissed it then, taking my own advice and living in the moment. I dismissed it even in light of his warnings. A twisted irony.

I know better now.

Anakin's training has been an uphill battle from the start. He was already accustomed to the harsh brutality outside these sheltered walls and keeping control of Anakin's turbulent emotions, guiding him toward the Light, taxes me more than I would ever admit. I feel every one of my years when we spar, and though he has yet to best me, I am beginning to doubt my ability to reach him.

He has started to look for the shadow in dark corners.

**CHOSEN**:

Obi-Wan is waiting for me.

I feel him all the time now. At the moment, he is impatient, amused, and angry all rolled into one. Impatient because I should already be out the door, amused because he knows of my clumsiness in the hurry to pack, and angry because it is my master's presence in our quarters that is keeping him from reaching me.

I don't belong here.

The Jedi never wanted me. Master brought me here and made me his mission in life, tried valiantly to fit me into the perfect Jedi. I never asked for this. I was ignorant, optimistic, and full of dreams when I first came to Coruscant. Obi-Wan showed me the truth behind the pristine white marble of the Temple spires.

A towering bureaucracy playing lapdog to a corrupt Senate that wanted to shove my mother into a dark corner and pretend she didn't exist.

I am a slave who never should have been granted his freedom, when it means giving up love. Obi-Wan has given that life, that love, back to me.

**SITH**:

He doesn't belong with Qui-Gon. They'll kill him trying to break him. Hypocrisy. In pursuit of the Light, they deny the passion for life that sustains it. He feels too much and the Jedi feel too little.

I wonder if they will feel their own death.

**JEDI**:

I caught Anakin staring at an old flat-pic, taken during a `saber tournament almost a year before I met him. Anakin was so entranced he didn't even feel my presence; he traced his fingers along beloved features with such reverence and longing, I knew I was loosing him.

So I watch, and guard. Keep him safe from that other that seeks him. He is all I have left, in a lifetime of professional success and personal failure. I know that I can save him.

Yet I cannot save him from himself.

**CHOSEN**:

He owns me.

**JEDI**:

He is gone.

**SITH**:

He is mine.