Master Apprentice Archive Heartbeat Quick search:

Category: Angst, H/C, AU, Q/O,

Status: New, Complete

Archive: You mean you actually want this?? Woah, scary. But, yeah, if you want it you can have it. The fic that is.

Rating: PG or PG-13

Feedback: Loved it? Loathed it? Couldn't give a damn? Tell me anyway. Adelaide@morganne.freeserve.co.uk

Spoilers: yes for that event in TPM

Disclaimer: The Star Wars world and all it's inhabitants are the property of George Lucas.

Thanks to: You, for reading this. Rushlight, as ever, for beta reading. Neil for playing word association games until I became inspired.

Summary: The simplest things can cause comfort in a moment of crisis

I can hear the regular beating of his heart ­ a sound I was so afraid was lost to me forever.

But I didn¹t. He is here, and he is alive.

I lay curled around him, my head on his chest, just listening to his heartbeat. The healers are bustling around us performing their tests; all are amazed that he has survived. They say he wasn't supposed to have lived; his wounds were so severe that he should be dead.

Their problem is that they fail to understand the power of love, how life and death fail to have meaning when you are in the arms of the one you love.

There is no death, there is the Force; it really isn't much comfort when the one you love is in your arms slowly dying. So I did what my soul was pleading for - I begged with him to stay with me. And stay with me he has.

He is still very ill; he cannot breathe unaided, and is hooked up to an intravenous device for fluids. He is losing weight and muscle tone. He is feverish with the infection in his lungs, and oh, Force it hurts. He is in pain, I can feel it though the bond, and it hurts to see him so dependent like this.

The memory of his brush with death will undoubtedly remain with us, haunting us for the rest of our lives, but it is something we will have to deal with. For now, he has to get better, we both have to heal, and learn to move past Naboo.

So I will just lie here, lulled by the rhythm of his life, basking in the fact that my Master is alive.