And The Force Goes On

by Pumpkin

Pairing: Q/O, O/Other

Rating: PG 13

Archive: yes to MA

Summary: My answer to Emu's tmi same plot challenge.

Warnings: There are no spoilers for episode 2 or 3, anything that takes place between TPM and ANH is purely speculation.

Ever thought the Force was laughing at you? I don't just think it, I know it. She's a doubled faced bitch, too, I can tell you that much.

I fell in love with my master, with the man behind the mask of serenity, the body behind the katas and lightsaber. He was my teacher, my mentor, a man some good number of years my senior, it should have been all wrong, but it wasn't. It was right and good and I shouldn't have resisted it so long, shouldn't have doubted myself, him, or the Force.

But fight it I did.

I was fifteen. I didn't want to be in love with my master, the man was old, not as old as Yoda, but at fifteen the gap between them didn't seem that large. And at fifteen, it mattered. So I buried it so deep that I didn't even dream about it. Instead my dreams featured excelling, being the best Jedi Knight there ever was. And if anyone wondered why I never seemed to be bothered by the usual teenage crushes and lusts and indiscretions, well I wouldn't be the first chaste Jedi, now would I?

I was eighteen before the matter reared its, well my, ugly head again. It was, in fact, my eighteenth birthday and my friends took me out to celebrate. I soon discovered that celebrate meant pool together their meagre funds and hire one room with a bed, complete with a Sorean whore and several hundred roaches (thrown in at no extra charge, it was that kind of place), and leave me there to "deal with my pesky virginity/chastity thing".

I spent the entire hour spilling my guts, sharing every last pent-up and dream and fantasy that I had inside me about my master. An hour's worth -- who knew? I sure didn't. She looked bored, I think at one point she was actually asleep with her eyes open and I know for sure that she cleaned the gunk out of her toenails. By the end of the hour I was convinced that my love wasn't real. If I had truly loved my master, my tales of passion would have brought even the most hardened heart to tears.

I actually believed that. Or at least I believed that I believed that. It has been a long time since the world revolved around me -- oh, to be eighteen and the centre of the universe....

I was twenty-three before I allowed myself to think of it again. Oh, come on -- you try being a Jedi Padawan and see how much time you have for self-reflection and mooning over your master, we were kept damn busy.

Civil war is never very civil, it is in fact an ugly business and when genocide is served as a side-dish, the banquet becomes quite vile. Throw in a pair of Jedi unable to do more than watch from the sidelines and watch the whole thing simmer.

And simmer we did. For two whole days before Qui-Gon lit his sabre and growled. Just one word: enough. He nearly died on that mission. We fought long and hard and in the end changed nothing, helped no one. We both received minor wounds during the battle, but once he was felled, blood welling up endlessly from his belly onto the mossy green of the forest floor, staining it dark, we could not continue. I called for extraction and, as I held him close, I could no longer deny my feelings for this man: my teacher, my mentor, my friend. My lover? That remained to be seen. If I had squandered my time with him, if my chance to love him and possibly be loved in return was gone, I had no one to blame but myself.

He didn't die and once we were returned to the temple and he was well, I finally approached him and spoke of my love. I had been taught to honour truth and so I shared it with him, all my hiding from myself, from him, my earlier ageism, all of it.

To my joy, my love was returned. To my frustration, I was told we would have to wait until I had been knighted before a lifebond could be formed. I had no problem with that. What I did have a problem with was his edict that we would not make love until then either. I protested to no avail, I tried to entice, seduce, madden him into changing his mid, but he insisted that my earlier actions, or rather inaction, had proven my judgement suspect and that such steps would be better taken whence I had been declared a knight. It had kept this long, it would keep a while longer. I would have been more upset if I hadn't been convinced that he was right. How were we to know?

The two years that followed were by no means empty of love and affection. We loved each other, honoured each other with words and gentle actions: a soft kiss, holding hands, sitting together, knees, thighs, hips and shoulders touching along one side as we read or talked, or sometimes just sat. Our communication grew deeper, our partnership flourished, we were going to be an unbeatable team. We had joy in the moment and the promise of continued and deeper joy to come.

I was barely twenty-five when we found ourselves playing diplomat on a ravaged world. Peace failed and war broke out and we were dismissed to wait for a transport home. Mistrusted by either side, there was very little we could do but keep our heads down. Qui-Gon lasted almost a whole day before his need to help overcame the Order, his training, my objections. We argued. We became separated when he insisted on doing more than caring for the injured, he left to defend the weak and I refused to go with him. I had never been so angry with him, nor so proud. Qui-Gon served the Force first, hearing and heading its call above everyone and everything. I have tried since to follow that path. The Force has never made it easy.

It was while we were separated that our transport landed, well, fell might be more accurate, given it was shot down out of the sky and nearly landed on top of the tent where we were treating the injured. At least it made it handy for moving its occupants to the makeshift hospital.

The pilot and co-pilot had suffered fairly minor and straightforward injuries, the worst of which was a broken arm. Chotr Peer, one of the Order's foremost peace negotiators had broken two ribs and was in serious, but stable, condition. The transport's last occupant was, however, near death. Master Yoda himself, injured internally. The doctors could fix the injuries, but had no blood available that they could use on the Dagoban.

He was going to die.

He was going to die unless he got the help he needed, unless someone linked their life to his, sharing their lifeforce, their energy with him. Then his body could work to replenish his own blood. It would take a lifebond, a lifebond with another Jedi, to allow such sharing. Not that the doctors knew this, but I did. I also knew that I was the only one available to do it.

I had very little time to consider my decision, he was fading quickly. Closing my eyes, I reached for the Force, striving to let it guide me the way my master had taught me. It led me straight to Master Yoda. With the sickening lurch that I had learned true prescience brought with it, I knew that Yoda must not die. I knew that I was the one who must see to it that he didn't.

I would like to say that as I initiated the lifebond with the oldest living being I knew, that I spared a thought for my master, for Qui-Gon, my intended lifemate, for how this would affect him. I would like to, but I cannot.

The truth is that once I began, reaching out to Yoda's mind, to his lifeforce with my own, I was met more than halfway. If he had not been injured, Master Yoda might have overwhelmed me. Where I had denied, examined and then waited with Qui-Gon, I surged forward with Yoda. The Force knew this was right and made it easy.

For a moment, it felt as if I were sinking into him, our bodies occupying the same space. Our heartbeats slowly aligned until they beat as one, our minds became connected and I was suddenly engulfed in a mind nine hundred years old. If my own mind was a grove of trees, growing tall and full, his was an old growth forest, dark and still at first glance, but teeming and complex as I delved.

There was an incredible feeling of oneness, of joining with another being and I would have revelled in it if I could. Yoda's illness meant that it was quickly over, the need for his body to repair itself was great and together we focussed on his injuries, using the Force in ways I had only dreamed of to close the cuts and speed the process of cellular rebuilding.

We were both weak for several days, Yoda sleeping, almost comatose. Qui-Gon was out protecting the weak the entire time, never once coming back to the hospital. I was glad -what would I tell him? My master, my mentor, my friend, my beloved, my intended.... I had given myself to another.

The day a second transport came and made it through to us, Yoda woke for several hours. He knew immediately what had happened and the soft touch of his clawed hand upon my arm, the large eyes sympathetic, spoke far more eloquently than words could have. He was sorry that my plans had been ruined, but he could not be sorry for what we shared, for it was right and good.

A part of me knew that, but I kept it well hidden behind the chip I had grown on my shoulder. I had martyred myself for the Order's greatest living Jedi. I almost believed it myself when I told Qui-Gon.

The transport had picked him up first and, after seeing Master Yoda to a bed in the infirmary, I searched him out. My first instinct was to avoid him, but I didn't need the Force to tell me that was a bad idea, waiting to talk to him was what had gotten me into this in the first place. I found him in the galley. He knew immediately that something was different, asked me if I was all right. I told him, none of the fancy words I had spent three days concocting came out, instead just the words themselves, simple, straightforward and unmistakable.

He wasn't angry, or disappointed or mad, it would have been easier if he had been. No, he wasn't angry, he was hurt. I told him I had no choice and he countered with the truth I did have a choice and I chose Yoda. Over him. It was that simple. I will never forget the look in his eyes and the knowledge that I had put it there.

I left the galley as quickly as I could, the pain almost too much to bear. Yoda called to me, the soft, gentle and kind sharing waiting for me to soothe my own hurt. I curled up next to him and cried. He never said a word, he was just there, strong and loving.

Qui-Gon and I were sent back out on another mission almost immediately, the feelings of love and hurt coming with us. Our teamwork suffered and I still blame myself for his death; if I had not bonded my life to Yoda's and broken my promise to Qui-Gon, he would have lived. Neither of us were at our best, how could we be, we were at odds with one another.

Yoda was pretty upset that I went against him to train Anakin, but I had already broken one promise to my master, how could I break another? I couldn't. Yoda accepted my decision with a lot more grace than either I or my master had shown through any of this. I guess maybe nine hundred years teaches you not to change the things you can't.

I railed against the Force for a long time, resisting what it had given me in Yoda, seeing only what had been taken away. There are days when I wonder if my own resistance to the Force's will assisted in leading my padawan astray. I tried not to let my personal feelings bleed into our lessons, but Anakin was perceptive and strong.

It was an odd existence, being with Yoda felt good and right and made me happy on so many levels, but I would fight it. I wouldn't go and see him until his absence became a physical pain in my gut. I was still young and the stubbornness that would serve me well later, kept me from enjoying my happiness for more years than I care to count.

I finally came to accept the fate the Force had granted me, came to accept and flourish within it. There was joy and laughter and intense communication. I learned that age didn't necessarily bring an end to the committal of practical jokes, nor did it have to mean a decrease in one's sex drive. Yoda was a being full of life and wonder, even at nine hundred years old, each day brought him something new to look upon with delight.

Ah, but as I said, the Force is a doubled faced bitch and it was not long after I had not only accepted my fate, but embraced it that the Force decided to play with my life once more.

The temple was destroyed, the Jedi killed, scattered under my very own padawan's leadership. It made what I had done to Qui-Gon seem child's play. Yoda and I were of the few who made it but to have stayed together would have been folly -- the Jedi were being hunted and killed. Our deaths especially were sought.

So we separated. I was given the task of watching over Anakin's son. As irony seemed to have such a firm hold on my life, I took the boy to Tattooine. Yoda headed in the other direction. I have spent the rest of my life alone, my lifemate hidden halfway across the galaxy, with only a soft kiss and last slide of our minds together to keep me company.

In the end, I have learned the lesson the Force spent my life trying to teach me. You can only live in each moment you are given, accept it and enjoy it, revel in it, even if it isn't what you want. The truth is, whether you do that or choose to live in what was or what will be, the Force goes on.

End.