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Disclaimers: George owns it all. I'm just sneakin' around. No money, no gain.

Pairing: Q/O

Category: POV, Angst

Rating: R for violence (memory)

Warnings/Spoilers: None really. This is pre-ANH but nothing anyway hasn't known since l977.

Feedback: is like the air above...Is the breathe of life!!!

Requiem

It had been so many many years since he looked into a mirror. Was he so very changed?

Who was that man, so grey and old, skin stretched like fragile parchment across bones grown brittle and sore? His heart ached and he felt the sobs beginning to choke him. The tears were hot, but he kept from cries. He wept silently, letting the tears slip down fallen cheeks into a silver beard.

Where was that boy? Where was the beautiful boy with eyes like silver-ice flames framed by those even, straight brows; brows now white and straggling with errant hairs that poked up or out in discord with the shadow of the old, lovely arch. Would his Master even recognise this stooped and stumbling old fool?

A shuddering sob tore through him like a winter wind. He had no hope left and no where to turn in his isolation. He was alone and his solitary anguish was his hell. He should have died years ago. Should have gone to a bloody death rather than face this desiccated burning of his heart, then his soul, then his very self and all he held dear.

It was too soon. Luke was only nine. Anakin's age. Anakin.

He collapsed forward, head buried in gnarled and arthritic hands, rocking back and forth without breath or faith.

Once he had been strong. Once he had been beautiful. Once, just once, he had been loved.

He had known enough to treasure it, even then. Every year, on this night, he allowed himself to access his memories and feel. Every year, he looked at his aging face and set the razor-sharp knife before his knees and never used it.

First, he held the rock in his hand. The rock. The one Qui-Gon had given him, for lack of a better gift, on his thirteenth birthday. His first year as a Padawan. He smiled at the memory of his younger self, eyes raised expectantly in a kind of blind hero-worship.

Another sob tore through him and he lifted the knife, caressing the blunt edge of the blade. His fingers were so creased, the joints swollen and stiff.

He settled down into his meditative pose. The past five years he had changed from the stark and traditional kneeling-head-to-floor posture to a looser, sitting position. His knees and back simply could not stand the three hour meditation. He spent another six hours every day in training and writing, desperately putting into words his every memory. There was nothing left of the creche, the Temple, the world that had raised him. He was its only legacy.

His tears were streaming faster now. He remembered it all so clearly. He should be able to run down the hallways, laughing with Bant, should be able to jump out of a shrub to scare Garen. But they were long gone and he was alone, in a desert of despair.

"Oh ghods." his voice was a whisper. Why hadn't Vader found him? Why had he left him alive? Death would be easier. So much easier. Even then, he had been strong and vibrant. Now, he just felt dead, except that the dead are lucky. //They don't cry.//

He sobbed again, stumbling to the chest of drawers. This was always the worst.

Slowly, reverently, he opened the bottom drawer, lifting out its meagre contents with great precision. His tears splashed down onto the wooden interior, leaving dark spots mingling with the faded discolouration of last years' weeping. He lifted the false bottom out and nearly fell forward, sobbing uncontrollably.

There were hundreds of them, all with different beads and lengths and threads and colours. Padawan braids. Hundreds and hundreds. Thousands, more like. He had never counted. Each one taken as he proclaimed each dead or dying victim knight, severed the braid and eased the sufferer out of life. Thousands of crosses, thousands of pitiful, broken bodies. He had come too late. Every padawan in the Temple had been impaled, mounted on a spit to die in agony. In that one night, he had gently given release to so many young souls that his own mind balked and he could remember only the grateful eyes, all burning into his brain as they went still and cold. No one should have witnessed it and remained sane. He did recall the youngest, a child of only twelve, her bleeding body shorn of hair, her teeth gone, her.....

He stuffed the edge of his robe into his mouth to stifle his scream.

This was his night to remember them, to weep and mourn them. There was no one else and soon, soon he would be gone. Luke would call to him and he would go and meet his destiny.

It was always on this night he wondered why the Force hated him so much.

He would be better at dawn and live through another day. This night was always the worst. He looked down at the knife with longing eyes.

"Not now. Not ever." He knew that he would never take his own life, no matter how terrible the memories. A pair of ardent blue eyes held him to life and duty and the belief that, when it was over, he would, once again, be loved.

FIN