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In Dreams Begin Responsibility

by WriteStuff

Title: In Dreams Begin Responsibility
Author: WriteStuff (Writestufflee@mindspring.com)
Archive: Certainly on M&A. Others please request.
Pairing: Q/O, occasionally O/Other
Category: AU, Series
Rating: Anybody

Warnings: Life-like situations and sometimes nasty surprises. You pays yer money and yer takes yer chances. No spoilers.

Disclaimer: George's Boyz, George's Universe. Not only not making money, I'm hemorrhaging it in this endeavor.

A couple of characters from the YA Jedi Apprentice series appear or are mentioned here: Bruck Chun, Obi-Wan's tormentor; and Qui-Gon's failed apprentice, Xanatos. I don't own them, either.

Notes:

Er, well, this one was as much a surprise to me as it was to the characters. But it makes a certain kind of sense in the long run of the arc, so, er, well, here it is. You decide what the hell just happened.
Eleventh installment in The Long Shadow series, in The Warrior's Heart universe (which can be found in the archives and in order (eventually) at http://home.mindspring.com/~writestufflee/index.html).

The Long Shadow Series runs as follows, so far:

Love Letter I
The Long Shadow
If Memory Serve Me
Padawans and Lovers
The Amazing Adventures of Ass Master & Slut Boy
Love Letter II
Ships in the Night
Love Letter III
Spare the Rod
Auto da Fé 1: Faith
Auto da Fé 2: Fire
Auto da Fé 3: Ashes
In Dreams Begin Responsibility

Summary: Obi-Wan has a dream and walks a bit farther along his own path.

Feedback: Any sort is a pleasure to receive if you care to give it.

Obi-Wan wakes in the middle of the night, shivering and gasping, his head full of darkness, his heart pounding. It isn't a flashback this time but a vision of the future that pulls him from sleep. He's been walking through an empty Temple, one not just devoid of residents but filled with bodies, burn-scorched, maimed, and still clutching their own weapons even in death.

All but the younglings, who've had no defenses.

The horror of seeing their small, mutilated bodies scattered through the halls of the creche has pushed him into wide-eyed wakefulness, filled him with nausea.

And as always at home, he wakes with Qui's arms around him and Qui's warmth at his back and the gentle light of Qui's presence filtering through their bond to dispel the darkness of his vision. Another night, another vision, it might be enough to soothe him into sleep again. Tonight, the horrific images stay before him in the dark and he knows he will have to get out of bed and wake fully, step into the physical light, to dispel them.

"Kosai?" comes in a sleep-heavy voice as Obi-Wan extricates himself from his lover's arms and slips out of bed.

"I'm all right," he whispers, sending a thread of reassurance through their bond. "Go back to sleep."

Back through it, along with the glowing warmth that is Qui himself, comes concern and love, and the desire to soothe and protect. But Qui cannot protect him from this, cannot protect him at all, anymore. It is no longer Qui's duty, even if it is one he desires. He carefully picks up his robe from the bench at the foot of the bed and struggles awkwardly into it, then slips through the door silently, leaving Qui alone in their bed.

He walks into their kitchen in the dark, bringing the lights up as he decides to make tea. He opens the drawers and cupboards with the Force, removes the things he needs—pot, cup, strainer, canister, spoon—and levitates them gently to the counter, objects flying about like in some magic show. His fine control is excellent now and quite automatic, after so many tens of daily practice. He can feed himself, dress in his full kit, even wipe his own ass again, he thinks sardonically.

But there are days—long, idle days of nothing but therapy and running or swimming when he has to work to keep himself occupied. Only in the past ten has his mind settled enough to concentrate on reading, instead of the hours of mindless holo broadcasts he has filled it with. Lately, his fingers itch to pick up his instruments and make music with them. He wonders if he ever will again. His physical therapist tells him it will be good exercise when the splints come off, but he wonders if he will be able to bear the frustration of his own clumsiness then. In the meanwhile, he sings, instead. It's not the same.

Carefully, he pours the water with a gesture and leans back against the counter while his tea steeps. The light and activity have shaken some of the horror out of his head, but there is one scene that stays with him: a young woman's body, her hands wrapped tightly around the hilt of a saber too large for them. Clearly she has died defending her friends, doing her duty. What haunts him is that he knows her, among all the other nameless dead. Her name is Jicky and he helped rescue her from slavers years ago. Already at the age of three or four she had very good control of Force manipulation, almost as good as his own at the time. He cannot get out of his mind the sight of her lying dead with another dead Jedi's saber in her hands. He wonders what the Force is trying to tell him.

Nothing, Qui would say. Live in the moment. But then what is the point of these visions, this talent? His master has always discounted this particular ability in Obi-Wan, but he is coming to believe that Qui is not right about this—and that perhaps Master Yoda is more evasive about it than necessary. His own hunches and visions have proven true too often. His foreseeing of the whole Naboo debacle should have—

The answer comes to him in a flash of insight. Qui-Gon fears his visions and what he fears, he puts out of his mind, dismisses, ignores: his own fear of heights, for example. Afraid of another failure with a new padawan, he had ignored what the Force told him about Initiate Kenobi until their bond formed despite him. Qui-Gon lives eternally in the moment because he knows he cannot control anything else. And Qui-Gon is very much a man in control—at least of everything he does, if not of everything that happens to or around him.

Obi-Wan picks up his cup gingerly, holding it with two hands, and takes a sip, letting the warmth fill him like Qui's warmth through the bond. What does that make him, he wonders? He is the one who has always followed the rules, the Code, but the Code says nothing about his visions or what should be done about them. Like their bond, his visions are of the Force, and outside the Code . He wonders idly why he never saw the consequences of Qui's near-fatal injury, why he now only sees this horror at the Temple and not what leads up to it.

If he is supposed to do something to prevent this, to change it, shouldn't he know more?

Perhaps not. He'd been shown only Qui's death—the burning pyre—and in the moment it had actually happened, formed the bond that connected them now, and dragged the man he loved back from joining the Force prematurely. He had followed Qui's dictum to feel, don't think. Given more time to think about it, would he have done the same?

Perhaps not. Given a clearer picture of that when, he might just as likely have followed the Code, reconciled himself to Qui's death, and let Qui go, as he nearly had, seeing the man filled so beautifully with the light of the Force. There is no death, there is the Force. In that moment, Qui was both utterly himself and the Force itself. Death, yet the Force, as some of the older texts say, which could mean something entirely different than merely passing from life into the Force. Perhaps, sometimes, there was the Force to stave off death, at least for a time. Or to preserve some part of them in death.

He shivers, slopping a little tea onto the floor. Thoughts like that border on attachment and heresy. Why would the Force save Qui-Gon Jinn for the sake of his soon-to-be-knighted padawan? Why would it allow them to bond so closely that it is sometimes almost physically painful to be apart, so closely that they share one another's emotions and sensations? As he'd said earlier to Qui, if that isn't attachment, he doesn't know what is. And yet the Force not only allowed it, but helped it along, not as the Dark Side might have, by filling them merely with power, but in a moment full of ecstatic and blinding light, like their now-long-ago night in the Temple gardens.

And as Qui has pointed out repeatedly, the Code is not the Force.

He blots up the dribble of tea. The bond is quiet and Qui deeply asleep again, having taken Obi-Wan at his word.

And he was—is—all right. Just full of questions tonight, in the wake of his vision, and the events of his latest mission, and his "accidental" pilgrimage to the Kirtan. Discovering that his own namesake was wed and the father of children makes his own devotion to Qui seem less transgressive than it has in the past. The Order wasn't always like this. The Force has remained the same; only their interpretations and customs concerning it have changed. And who is to say they are more right now than in the past? Change is not always progress. Just as often it is entropy and decadence.

He sips his tea, lets his mind go blank to see what might swim up from its depths. By the time his cup is empty, three tenets of the Code are cycling through his thoughts. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Mixed in with that somehow are the girl, his bond with Qui, the moment now and the moments to come.

He hears Qui snoring and smiles a little sadly. Despite his crooked nose, Qui never snores unless he's very tired. These last several tens have been exhausting for him, emotionally and physically. Obi-Wan knows he has been a trial to live with, being both helpless and fractious, and yet there has been not one sharp word or complaint from Qui, only the same incredible tenderness he shows every wounded, lost, or miserable creature. If the Order had such a thing as saints, the man would be one, Obi-Wan sometimes thinks.

And he himself anything but: hotheaded, impatient, naive, still finding his own way beyond his master's shadow. The two of them are so different, sometimes he wonders what makes them love each other. And yet, when it comes down to it, it is the same thing: the light in each of them, manifested in its different ways. In their differences, they balance each other. And perhaps that is what their bond is all about: balance. In their relationship, perhaps in the Force itself. Perhaps it was not himself the Force allowed him to save Qui for, but Anakin. He can think of no one else who can possibly guide the boy away from the anger and darkness inside him into the light, if anyone can.

If, if, if. Now he knows he is in the realm of speculation. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Clearly, there is some work to be done, and this is the perfect time to do it. It would keep his mind occupied in his idleness, now that he can concentrate again. And perhaps there has been a reason for that, too. And if not, at least he can give it some meaning of his own.

He rinses his cup and leaves it in the sink, flicking the lights off as he turns back to the bedroom, where the warmth and light of the man who is no longer his master awaits. Tomorrow, he will visit the archives—and the creche. In the bedroom, he shrugs out of Qui's raggedy old robe, appropriated long ago, and crawls in beside him once again. Qui shifts in his sleep, turning toward him like one of his plants toward sunlight. The image makes Obi-Wan smile. He moves back into Qui's arms, nuzzles the broken nose, sighs contentedly, and settles down to sleep again. The bond fills with Qui's soft glow, the bed warm with the heat of his body.

Passion, yet serenity. At least that much is clear.