Master
Apprentice  Archive
Opposite Truths #2: A Trial of Faith
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Series: Second story in "Opposite Truths" which includes
It is highly advised you read #1 first.
Archive: M_A. Anyone else, just ask
Category: POV, Angst
Rating: R (M/M sex, but not explicit)
Spoilers: Yes, for TPM.
Summary: A companion piece to A Change of Season. Qui-Gon's point of view.
Disclaimers: Not mine, don't sue, all in fun, etc.
Feedback: Are you kidding? All comments, complaints, suggestions and questions will be given undue attention.
Notes: Thanks to everyone who asked for this oh so long ago (especially Laurana, who kept asking), and massive apologies for the long, long wait. Thanks also to Calysta Rose, Aubergine, and Betsy, who were kind enough to beta for me, way back before my computer turned to the darkside and self-destructed (hope I didn't forget anyone). All mistakes are entirely mine. I had to re-input the story from a hard copy and I couldn't resist more tinkering, sorry guys.
Although I'm not sure if it's absolutely essential to have read A Change of Season to comprehend this story, I would definitely help (and far be it for me to discourage you). It can be found here. Thank you, Sockii.
Since he had been a child, Qui-Gon Jinn had felt it. The certainty. The Force spoke to him and he served its will. In all his life, he had never faltered, even when others, their own understanding opaque, sought to hinder him. It had not made for an easy existence, but that had not been a consideration.
He opened his eyes and stared unseeing at the featureless bulkhead before him. He knew what he had felt when he had met the child on Tatooine. And every passing moment had only made him more sure. The child was the one. And Qui-Gon was certain that it had fallen to him to be the child's teacher. Why else had Qui-Gon found him exactly when his own apprentice was nearing the completion of his training? Qui-Gon, who would champion any cause he believed the Force had set him, regardless of the opposition of the Council, the Order, or the galaxy itself?
There were no coincidences. There was only the Force. Or so he had believed the whole of his life.
He snorted aloud, the sound loud in the empty room. It was as though after nearly sixty years of unquestioning, unshakable service, the Force itself was mocking him. The thought made him want to lash out in fury.
It was not the knowledge of dying that had shaken him. Death had no power over him. A week ago, a year ago, a decade ago, the knowledge of his own impending death could not have moved him. There would be regrets, yes, for what was left behind and what would never be, but he was a Jedi Master, and death held no mysteries. But now . . . with the Light seemingly safe in his hands, to watch it slide through his grasping fingers and explode into a billion tiny fragments absorbed without a flicker into the feeding Dark . . . . It was too much to bear.
Submission. Willing submission to the Light and what it required of its servants. It was the truest essence of the Jedi and the hardest lesson a Jedi had to learn and constantly relearn. It was what separated them from the Dark, whose slaves sought to use the Force and instead found themselves used.
Qui-Gon, who had long watched others struggle to submit with distant, uncomprehending compassion, was, for perhaps the first time in his life, finding submission hard.
His mind whirled in confusion, an endless circular path whose outcome was irreconcilable.
He was meant to train the child. On that, he believed the Force had spoken clearly to him. If he trained the child, the Light would blaze forth even more brilliant than before.
But he could not train the child because in a few short days he would be dead. The flash of foresight in the Council chamber had left no room for doubt.
If he did not train the child, the darkness would spread like a cloying, noxious smoke and choke the galaxy.
He was meant to train the child. He was the only one who believed.
He could not encompass it. It made no sense. He had been so sure that that he knew the Force's will. He could not, would not, accept that the Dark was meant to win. And so he was finding serenity elusive and acceptance beyond his means.
He flexed his stiff shoulders. It was well into the ship's night and his body required rest. It was futile to remain here. He had no more peace in his soul than when he'd first come to kneel in this small, deserted cargo hold so many hours ago.
He rose, ignoring his aching knees. He was suddenly desperately weary, and he still had his padawan to face. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he left the hold and set out for the small cabin he shared with Obi-Wan.
He had no idea how he would answer his padawan's questions. And questions there would be. Obi-Wan, for all his soft-voiced courtesy, had never been obedient enough to be silent when he felt he deserved answers, his master's displeasure notwithstanding. And Qui-Gon's shielding of the master-apprentice bond was something not even the most timid of padawans would let pass without demanding an explanation.
He sighed. Truthful answers were not an option, and he'd never directly lied to his student before. But he was in no mood to deal with the boy delicately. Perhaps another rebuke would silence Obi-Wan -- at least for a little while. Obi-Wan was stubborn, but not without a measure of pride.
He braced himself as the door to their cabin slid open under his touch. It was with a rather undignified amount of relief that he found his apprentice, not awake and pacing the room like a Nigrian steppe leopard waiting to pounce, but apparently asleep, curled like a child on one side of the bunk, his back to the room.
He hesitated, taken off guard by the innocuous sight when he had been braced for an argument. And it was odd to realize that he could not feel Obi-Wan -- couldn't actually tell if he was truly asleep -- reliant as he was on the poor evidence of his eyes alone. He had blocked the training bond so thoroughly and shielded himself so fully that Obi-Wan could have screamed into their bond and he would not know.
No master ever shielded his apprentice out so completely, even in the most intimate of private moments, but Qui-Gon could not risk anything leaking through the bond. The boy was too perceptive and too damned protective. His own death Obi-Wan would face with unblinking courage, but his Master's? Qui-Gon would likely find himself trussed, shielded, and halfway back to the Temple while Obi-Wan went on to Naboo alone. The thought nearly made him smile. Obi-Wan just might have managed it, stubborn and increasingly formidable as he was. But Qui-Gon could not allow it. As hard as he found his vision to comprehend, he would bend his head to the Force's will.
As he shed his robe and boots, he found himself thinking it was oddly fitting that Obi-Wan had been the catalyst. That sudden, quickly-shielded wave of pain he had felt through their bond during the Council meeting had echoed and re-echoed through the Force until Qui-Gon had recognized it as the shadow of a pain yet to come. Then he'd seen it: Obi-Wan, face tear-streaked, eyes agonized, crouched over his lifeless body.
His own shields had slammed up the instant he had understood. He was sure Obi-Wan, who had already shielded his end of the bond, had felt nothing from him.
Ironically, he'd never cultivated the skill of foresight and had not encouraged Obi-Wan to do so, although the boy's gifts had been too strong to be silenced. Still, there was no doubting the truth of his vision. It had struck with the force and subtlety of a sabre hilt to the back of the head. His death waited for him on Naboo.
Careful not to wake his padawan, he finished his preparations for bed and slid into the bunk beside the slumbering youth. He rested on one elbow and idly watched Obi-Wan's face a moment. All traces of the frustration that had been building for the past few days seemed cleansed away by sleep, and to Qui-Gon's eyes Obi-Wan did not look much older than the boy he had first called padawan. Yet he was disconcertingly unfamiliar, as if a stranger was somehow wearing Obi-Wan's lovely face.
Qui-Gon was acutely aware of the silent place in his own mind. He had not been truly alone in a dozen years, for he had Obi-Wan's soul singing in the back of his head all that time. A lovely song, growing in beauty and complexity the more closely he listened. He had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be lonely.
The strange sense of disconnection made him want to touch and be reassured that this was indeed his own familiar Obi-Wan. But afraid of waking the boy, he contented himself with carefully running his fingers along the braid that trailed across the pillows.
For twelve years uncut, this deceptively simple length was the sum of their years together. It would be shorn only on the day of Obi-Wan's knighting. It hit him then, with force enough to leave him gasping for breath. Another hand would sever this braid which he had first plaited. Another hand would raise the new knight to his feet and embrace him as an equal. Qui-Gon would not be there, would not see it. Grief rushed through him, all the more powerful for being unexpected, and he wrestled it down.
Weakened by emotion, he could not stop the instinctive reaching of his hand, and he watched as his fingers pushed aside the inhibiting cloth, slid over the smooth skin of one lean thigh and moved upward to trace the jutting bone of Obi-Wan's hip. How he loved its shape. And someday, just as another's hand would sever his padawan's braid, another's hand would trace this path and perhaps find in it the same wonder Qui-Gon did. Someday -- and if he was kind, he should wish that day not too far away -- another would share Obi-Wan's bed. Obi-Wan would grieve his Master. He would grieve hard, but then he would move on. He was simply too strong to do otherwise. Or so Qui-Gon let himself believe.
But rather than comforting him, these thoughts were like fire through his veins. It was as though his body, knowing its time was short, sought to burn itself out in one last conflagration of purest heat. Weary and heartsick, he gave in.
There was no sweetness in it, no gentleness nor consideration, merely the sudden, burning need. It did not seem to matter that he had been avoiding waking Obi-Wan or that the boy seemed mostly asleep -- barely responsive -- as Qui-Gon's hands and mouth began to move insistently over him. It was enough that he was pliant and warm and that he smelled and tasted of that familiar sweet spiciness, a scent that was Obi-Wan's alone.
It didn't take long for him to find what he needed. Barely noticing when Obi-Wan's arms at last came up to embrace him, he buried himself in his padawan's body and thrust again and again, desperately seeking to be ever deeper, ever closer. But whatever he did, it was not enough. He could not feel Obi-Wan in the way that truly mattered.
Flesh spent, soul unsatisfied, he tumbled into darkness.
He woke alone and automatically he reached along the bond for his padawan's mind, barely stopping himself in time. Instead, he opened his eyes and swept them over the small, colorless cabin. He found Obi-Wan almost immediately and something within him eased as his padawan was once more in the grasp of his senses. Obi-Wan was kneeling, fully dressed, in a corner of the cabin.
Rising silently, he crossed the small space that separated them and knelt before the still figure. He did not close his eyes to meditate, instead he only watched the boy before him, staring into the sightless, rain-grey eyes.
Every humanoid Jedi Qui-Gon knew, or had ever heard of, meditated with his or her eyes closed. He still remembered the flashfire of panic he had felt so many years ago when he had finished his morning mediations and looked up to find his shiny new padawan staring through him with unseeing eyes. He had hustled the mortified boy off to the healers immediately, afraid that Obi-Wan had damaged his eyes and, worse, that that strange, unblinking stare presaged some bizarre neurological ailment. But the healers had found nothing then, nor the half-dozen subsequent times he had dragged the boy back. At last, he'd grown to accept it as simply another of his padawan's peculiar quirks -- as much a part of him as his strange sense of humor and his penchant for aerial maneuverings. He had even, over time, come to appreciate it, for Obi-Wan had lovely eyes, beautiful, if a little disconcerting, even when blankly staring.
Watching him now, Qui-Gon felt a measure of unexpected peace settle over him. Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, the truest thing to have come out of his life. Last night in those futile hours of meditation, he had not thought of Obi-Wan, who faced everything unafraid, with eyes wide open. Obi-Wan would train Anakin.
There was none better. His padawan's innate kindness would ensure that Anakin was well cared for, despite any doubts Obi-Wan currently harbored. While Obi-Wan might not share Qui-Gon's faith, he would, in the end, trust his Master. And, crucially, for all his apparent deference and obedience, his padawan would never back down from the task entrusted to him, even in defiance of the Council itself.
Yes, it would be well, he told himself. Calm washed over him like the tide returning over parched sands. His faith in the Force had slipped last night, but now he could see clearly again. The darkness would yet be averted. He could not train the boy, but his padawan would. It was for this that the Force had allowed him to find the child.
He waited, watching the wide eyes and spending the time fortifying his hard-won peace. At last, the long lashes swept down, and then rose again. Qui-Gon found himself looking into colorless eyes. Like ice, he thought blankly.
He could only stare as his padawan inclined his head formally and said, "Good morning, Master. I will see to breakfast." Even the voice, that elegant, expressive voice, seemed flat and clipped. Before he could open his mouth to speak, Obi-Wan was gone, leaving his Master kneeling alone and suddenly chilled on the floor.
There had been none of the expected questions, no demand for an explanation for Qui-Gon's unthinkable step of shielding the training bond, not even any hint of the pain and anger he knew Obi-Wan had felt the day before.
Had he grown so reliant on the bond that he could no longer read his apprentice's expressions? No. It was not that. For all his proper schooling of his features, Obi-Wan's eyes always gave his feelings away.
Qui-Gon shivered as he thought of the look in Obi-Wan's eyes. It was as though his strange thoughts of the night before had been true after all. That this was a stranger and no one he knew. Something was very wrong.
But there was nothing he could do now; There was simply no time left. He had no choice but to trust in the Force.
They would arrive on Naboo soon.
End