Morning Blood

by Bonny Magret ( Bonnymagret@hotmail.com )

Archive: help thyself, I careth not.
Category: angst, is there a category for melancholia?
Rating: R for adult subject
Pairing: Obi-Wan Kenobi / Qui-Gon Jinn
Feedback: Good, bad, indifferent, it's all appreciated.
Thanks: To Sian for a very, very nice beta. And to Inya, who always fixes up the loose ends for me. All mistakes are my own.
Summary: Obi-Wan grows old on Tatooine – alone.
Warnings: if bodily functions as metaphors bother you, move on. You want to go home and re-think your life.
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Trust me when I say I make no money at this at all; The Great and Powerful Wizard of Lucasfilms owns all.

The suns rose, blood red, against the dark Tatooine horizon, turning the skyline crimson in their wake. Obi-Wan stood at the edge of the cliff that fell sharply away from his small garden plot. As he did every morning, he had awakened with a full bladder and had gone outside to relieve himself. The dry air and brisk wind evaporated his offering as quickly as it left his body. As he did every morning, he again wondered why he bothered to take the short hike from his little hut to the cliff face to perform this daily task instead of using the recycler.

The leggings he had pulled down around his hips were a far cry from the clothing he had worn as a Jedi. No longer having the financial resources of the Jedi or the Republic to fund his needs, he had few credits to spend on clothing; he had to make do with what he could craft from the rough homespun fabric that could be bought cheaply in Mos Eisley. One would think that over all these years, he would have developed more proficiency with a needle and thread, especially with so little to do with his time other than tending his sparse garden and the irregular trips across the desert to check on Luke's progress. But his skill was limited to the elementary drawstring leggings and plain open-front tunics – a few simple seams.

He stood looking out, with his knees apart (to keep the leggings from falling to his ankles), the toes of his bare feet just a few inches short of the escarpment leading down to a wide valley laid out before him, click after click after click of uninterrupted sand. He looked down, away from the vista that was still strange to his sight after half a life time of tall buildings and air traffic that were omnipresent on the place he used to call home. His genitals had extended as he aged – probably the effect of gravity since he had given up wearing small clothes when his last pair had finally worn out. What was it? Ten years ago? Or only seven? Other than watching Luke grow up, and keeping track of his age and development, he had long-since given up keeping track of the passage of years and his own decline.

Like the wrinkles. At what age do humans get wrinkles around their genitals? On their hands? The skin of his hands was slack, dry and thin, wrinkled, with age-spots speckling the surface. Like everything else about him and this place – wearing out. Oh, well. His hands got a lot of use: keeping his small precious well functioning in good order; caring for his little vegetable patch; maintaining his ancient speeder. His withered penis? It's use was now limited to bodily functions; Obi-Wan had long ago given up using his hands to pleasure himself there – ultimately, it just enhanced the frustration, the longing.

He and his master had planned on being bonded. It was supposed to have happened after he was no longer Qui-Gon's padawan, of course. A life bond that would have connected them together for all eternity, for all of their lives and beyond as they became one with the Force. But fate hadn't allowed that. Obi-Wan refused to blame it on the Force. It was just one of those things that happened; all Jedi knew that the likelihood of dying of old age was slim.

But for Qui-Gon to die in his prime? At the hands of a Sith apprentice, a being who was supposed to have been extinct for centuries? It wasn't supposed to happen that way. Just as Obi-Wan wasn't supposed to have been saddled with the responsibility of raising a precocious padawan before his time. From padawan to master in a day – in the space of a saber stroke – with no opportunity to experience knighthood and with minimal support from the Council that had balked at Qui-Gon's decision and had resented Obi-Wan for following through. That padawan had turned and taken the fate of the galaxy into his black-gloved hands – that padawan who should have died at Obi-Wan's hand on Mustafar, just one more responsibility which Obi-Wan had been unable to fulfill – just more unfinished business. Surely there were some things that the Force was responsible for?

But maybe not. It was hard to keep those things straight in his mind any more.

Like Qui-Gon, his rogue master, who had been ever-so-willing to disregard the provisions of the Code and the instructions of the Council when it suited his purposes, purposes which Qui-Gon had believed were Force-driven. But Qui-Gon had never broken the prohibition against sexual relations between masters and their padawans. No matter that the day they had acknowledged their love and every day since Obi-Wan had silently prayed for Qui-Gon to do so; it was not in his master's nature to take matters into his own hands unless there was some greater good to be served -- the Will of the Force -- and Obi-Wan's wishes would not and did not rise to that level in his master's esteem.

Obi-Wan had saved himself for his master. In the idealism of his youth, he had believed in fidelity, chastity and fealty. And so here he was, on the top of a cliff overlooking a vast barren expanse of wasteland, a virgin looking back on a life of lost causes. If such a word could be applicable to a used-up old man

Did it matter?

Probably not in the grand scheme of all things.

He came here every morning, to the edge of his world, his cock in his hand, to relieve himself and to watch the sky turn to blood red -- to the colour of the blade that had ended his life as effectively as it had ended the life of the only being to whom he had given his love, his heart, his loyalty and his future - his beloved Qui-Gon Jinn. He came here to remember that once, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, he had been loved in return.

An Cean