Master Apprentice
Archive
Frater
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Length: 683 words
Rating: mild-R
Pairing: Implied Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan and Unrequited Obi-Wan/Anakin
Warning: Wanking, minor, minor spoilers for ROTS and my first Star Wars fic /ever/. That movie has officially brought me into fandom. Yay? You tell me XD. Oh, and not-beta'ed
Obi-Wan always had a fascination for history.
When he had been just a child, learning the ways of the Force and before he ever knew of Qui-Gon or Anakin or life or love or anything but the Force, he had found a book. That, in itself, was unusual. Books were ancient, priceless and rare, not to be touched by grabby little younglings.
In a surge of greed, he kept it and didn't show it to his teachers. Tucked it underneath the soft mattress of his cot and ignored the lump it made as he tried to sleep.
Later, he thought back and felt he should have predicted the way things eventually ended. He did, after all, read and love that book.
Gibbons, The Decline and Fall.
When he became a master, he cut his hair and burned the locks with his book. It was a pointless, greedy act –the book was valuable- and though it was supposed to be an act of maturity for him to force himself to let it go it merely proved that he was still, indeed, a grabby youngling.
It was unfair how quiet the ventilation was, how harsh and loud his breathing sounded in the silence of his room. The soft shifting of his body against the sheets and the slick-slip of his flesh made more noise than Coresant outside the window.
It was hot, so hot (his warmth pulsing in his fist, ruddy purple and frightening) maybe the air wasn't working, maybe the flush on his cheeks and the sweat sticking his back to the cotton underneath him was not a result of shameful attachment, maybe he had control.
His eyes fluttered shut as to escape the glow of the nightlife that was so unfairly quiet, only to reward his imagination and make it far easier to see Anakin's face, dark eyes.
Obi-Wan tasted blood in his mouth and imagined Anakin's lips, imagined they tasted the same.
His back arched and his light saber callous brushed the glands on the underside of his head. A sudden, wild thought made him think of Qui-Gon, what would his beloved master think of this?
And then he came.
After the book, he sought a more acceptable way of gaining his knowledge into history. He traveled the archives, looking for information that was older than ancient and more obscure.
He found parts of the archives that felt old, untouched and would have been dusty in some forgotten era before computers made that quaint conceit far too costly. He found snippets of information, hints of the empire before its Decline and Fall.
And after he found the records, he read them.
As Anakin grew older, he grew more predictable. Obi-Wan doubted anybody else noticed predictability in the impetuous boy, but no one else watched him as Obi-Wan did. And Obi-Wan was glad of that, because through jealousy temptation lay.
His room was quiet, as it always was, with only his own soft breathing to break the silence.
He relished the stillness, if only for his own desire to see it broken. The light up digital display of the clock seemed to be moving dishearteningly slowly.
4:50 A. M.
Obi-Wan pretended that when he suggested the assignment of Padme's room, he did not put his on the way there from Anakin's consciously. And even if he admitted the decision to himself, it was for Anakin's own good.
Anakin could not let himself get attached.
He could not let himself fall in love.
The last part was true and Obi-Wan refused to acknowledge that it was only the object of Anakin's affection he had problem with.
5:00 A.M.
There were footsteps outside of his door, as there always were, and Obi-Wan wished desperately for another assignment, somewhere far away from Coresant.
"Tell me about Qui-Gon, master."
"There was nothing more to tell, you already know he was a good man."
After fire and hell and Anakin, after Obi-Wan watched himself leave his padawan, he found that in ancient Rome, men named lovers their brother in lieu of marriage.