Master Apprentice Archive 'Sabre Quick search:

Archive: Yes to M_A, anyone else just ask

Pairing: Q/O

Rating: NC17

Warnings: Nah. Nothing squicktious here ... :)

Feedback: Pretty please with Mhara nut cake and honey. On Obi-Wan. :)

Disclaimers: If I owned the boys I would get them to make me a decent lightsabre. As it is, they're George Lucas' and I'm making an indecent lightsabre, not money.

Summary: Nearing the end of Obi-Wan's days as a Padawan, Qui-Gon muses over his apprentice's new lightsabre. There's a memory in every part ...

Thanks: to Master Yo-ghurt for cajoling me into writing the bit about the kickboard, to the Emu for "will you behave yourself, Master?", and to my Master for behaving herself :)

It is a beautiful thing, and I wonder idly whether he left it lying on the table on purpose just before strolling out to the outer regions of the Temple to arrange for transport to take us to Naboo. Of course there would be no need for him to be armed, not here in the Temple, but there is something else as well. We both sense this will be our last mission as Master and Padawan, that he is more than ready to face the Trials, and it is this mixture of anticipation and wistfulness, half-joyful, half-apologetic, that is radiating off this object. My Padawan's dawning maturity cast into this shiny smooth weapon.

He has completed his own lightsabre.

It is beautiful to be sure, sleek lines and competent design crystallised into something as deadly as it is nonchalantly attractive. Oh yes I feel it, that sharp pang of guilty memory every time my thoughts stray down that path. Well, it shall be not much longer -- the 'sabre is going to leave along with him, resting comfortably against a slender hip I never dared to look upon unabashedly since Myristane half a year ago.

The 'sabre is going to leave. I snort at the incongruous image, personifying that assemblage of metals and materials, here on the table, hardly longer than my own hand. It is but a thing.

No.

It is a microcosm of my Padawan, my Obi-Wan. And it tells stories.

I trail my fingertips along the grip, sturdy, rough and warm to the touch, and smile at the scrape, the scar in the material tearing boldly across the hilt end. Flawed even before it was perfected, and proudly so. My Obi-Wan ...

He was 14 then, thin and gangly and all arms and legs, making a serious bid at growing out of his tunics and pants more quickly than even Knight Vaurt and her seamstresses could keep up with. He had taken to using my razor and blushing furiously when I questioned him about it, not knowing where to look, and frequently just staying away from our quarters at odd hours, shielding himself carefully.

Not that I would have insisted on reading him -- I may be old now, but it doesn't seem all that long ago when that furious blush had been mine (though the razor had not been Master Yoda's. Force knows his eyebrows could do with one occasionally.) and I had tried my best to evade the probing along our training bond, to the point that I still occasionally tense at the sensation of a bit of odd grammar intruding into the back of my mind ...

//Maaaster!//

The mental scream had hit me quite unprepared, and I reached out in reflex for Obi-Wan's mental signature. Blank terror. A thin stab of physical pain but mostly thick acidic waves of shock and horror. Near-by. Within the Temple. The Ganmow Courtyard.

I leapt to my feet and bolted along the winding corridors, setting as much of my mind as possible aside to send soothing, encouraging warmth along the quivering bond. What had the boy done??

Emerging into the courtyard's bright light I blinked my eyes raw at the scene before me, then expelled my racing breath in a huge resonant laugh and sagged against one of the ancient stone pillars holding up the archway  that surrounds the cloister. Oh, Obi-Wan, what have you got yourself into again ... ?

I was met with two withering stares. Master Yoda, flat on his back on the ground, waving his stick in the air angrily: "Laughing at what, you are? Funny to see your old Master run aground, you think it is, hmmm? Help me up, you will!!" It is the least I could do to pad over to the grumpy green heap and lift him to his feet without bursting into laughter again. "No better than your Padawan, you are, Qui-Gon! Give him this, you did, hmmm?" He pointed accusingly at the slightly twisted arrangement of metal rods and wheels lying at Obi-Wan's feet. I took a long look at the thing, but failed to recognise it. It certainly was not mine, and in a bad state too -- one sharp edge of the thing had scraped against Obi-Wan's knee and drawn blood. I looked down into his face, and read at least nine different kinds of embarrassment there. "Master, it was ... Bant and ... Reeft have ... no, I mean ... everyone ... " a deep sigh. "You wouldn't understand, Master."

I picked up the battered makeshift vehicle. A scooter of sorts, with tiny wheels and a handlebar about level with my thighs. "Did you make this yourself, Obi-Wan?". Silence, a blush. "Yes." -- "Good work, Padawan. If only you'd applied as much skill to riding it as to making it. If I were you I'd keep it. And keep it out of the Ganmow courtyard -"

I could just picture them, Obi-Wan and shy but deft little Bant and that annoying kid Reeft, racing each other across the yard, slaloming around the pillars and cutting through the thick curtains of trailing Ganmow vines, practising their Force skills to avoid getting entangled. And doing well, judging from the less-than ruffled state the Ganmows were in. Hadn't we been the same?

"-- and you'd better apologise to Master Yoda, young man!" The masterly tone in my voice must have been a bit overplayed, as Yoda cackled gleefully at me, straightening his tunics and tapping my shins with his stick. "Horrible to this young Padawan, I will not allow you to be. Remember your own childhood, you should!" I grinned sheepishly. "With all due reverence, Master Yoda, " and I took a theatrical bow that shows off the enormous height difference between us, "I seem to sense you're just jealous that this vehicle's handlebars are a tad too high for you to have a go at it yourself!"

A relieved little smile spread over Obi-Wan's bright red features, and Master Yoda's eyes glinted wickedly as he turned to retreat. "Kick your ass I would, Qui-Gon, if reach that high up I could!!" Obi-Wan's laughter was musical, despite the fact that his voice was breaking audibly.

I stroke the scarred metal. One of the handlebars of that scooter has become the hilt of this lightsabre. I smile. Obi-Wan's resourceful stubbornness. Ever such a mirror image of mine at that age. And yes, too high for Master Yoda to reach.

I finger the controls, idly. No, I will not attempt to ignite this 'sabre. It would probably work, seeing as the training bond between us is still in decent shape and I should be able to tap into his Force signature enough to light it up ... but it would feel like invading his privacy, like burrowing into his mind. Like abusing him. Like Myristane.

Myristane.

However much I try, I cannot purge the image from my mind of how I found him, after days of hunting high and low over the ragged mountainscapes of Myristane, racked by guilt and fear and casting out ever more desperately for a sign of his mind, threatening, pleading and screaming along our bond, half ashamed to admit how much this boy had come to mean to me over the years. Much more than a Padawan. More than a friend. The star of my impossible dreams, I snarled at the sheer rock faces, the keeper of my soul and tormentor of my body, and I'll be damned if I let him know and corrupt that wonderfully innocent mind and have him look on me with scorn for the rest of our time together. Old lecher, Qui-Gon.

Maybe it had been that, looking back on it -- maybe it had been my anxiousness to leave him to his privacy, my hope that he would find a lifemate so that I could at least revel in the sight of his face flushed with young love, catch a glimpse of his body in its awkward grace, twining around whoever the lucky one would be.

I had not even considered accompanying him when he announced he was tired of pummelling common sense into the North Myristanian party and fancied a round trip of Myristanian night life. I had let him go, cherishing that light careless spring in his step and that warm smile as he went out the door. I would do my best to build from that memory before he would come home, tired, loose and elated, perhaps smelling of Corellian spirits, perhaps of Myristanian lovers ...

But he did not come home. Not that night, and not the next, and none of the nights long after I'd hastily finished the treaty negotiations and set out in search of him. I had instructed our hosts to let me know immediately if they heard or saw him, and they had agreed, and looked at me with their sad slanted eyes as I refused an escort. And I had never heard from them again.

Up the mountain range, heart sinking at the same rate as my feet were mounting, I cast a calm, almost dejected tendril of Force out for him again. Force of habit. But this time it encountered resistance. Not the gentle privacy shield I had come to expect, and not the clear effervescent open young mind I had not really come to expect but knew was there anyway. No, what I got was a blur, a singing golden haze of sensation, a languid lost mind with the faintest imprint of Obi-Wan on it. I cringed in terror at the altered signature, the utter looseness and incoherence of the image. Force, what had they done to him? Whoever they were ... trying my best to release my fears out of my mental voice, I essayed a curt //Padawan?//, but got no reply beyond the swirling metallic mist of relaxed pleasure. Yes, pleasure. The sting of jealously made it ever worse, and made those mountains crumble by the handful as I climbed like a man possessed, desperate to reach the ridge and whatever dungeon dimensions lay beyond, desperate to get my Obi-Wan back.

Dungeon dimensions. How much more trite can you get, lovesick fool? The valley was the epitome of calm and serenity, a patchwork of green and yellow fields, villages dotted around, like rugged brown pearls on the strings of silver rivers. Shangri-La. Bloody paradise. The part of their planet the Myristanians referred to as The Swimming Valley of the Nilouphages, in hushed tones. I had occasionally suspected them of harbouring an unspoken desire to be part of the dangerously beautiful world they had portrayed, but had been too caught up in the day's business to enquire further. Here, then, it was, and Obi-Wan was somehow entwined with this. Shielding my eyes blind to the insidious beauty, I descended in search of him.

I found him almost by accident, my Force sense all but useless in this valley swimming with a haze of foggy pleasure, a constant background hum of contented satiation. I am almost ashamed to say it was not my Jedi sense of spiritual presence that spotted him. It was my sight, my plain old eyes, drawn irresistibly to this tableau of sensuality.

There on the steep grassy bank of a tiny stream, among a scattered group of local youths engaged in games, feasting and conversation. Obi-Wan. Stretched out languidly in the grass, a half-eaten piece of brown cake in his hand, a blissfully blanked-out smile dancing on his features. Glowing. Naked. Force knows I fought hard to tear my eyes away from the sight, and being the almighty Force it also knows there was no way I could. Never moving my gaze from him, I raced across the field, leapt the brook in one large stride, too small still, too many steps on my way to him, to this gut-wrenchingly beautiful sight, this sculpture of pale golden skin, all slender limbs and warm lush grace. I drank in the view, in hasty gulps, anticipating how he'd leap up at the sight of me, flailing for a fig leaf of sorts, blushing that childish red we both remembered so well from the courtyard incident. Even though those long arms and legs were now finely-sculpted and muscular, honed in years of training, elegant and supple and yet retaining that faint aura of innocence, of youthful softness. Oh, Obi-Wan, would that this moment could last forever. I knew you would jump up and just be you, the person, the carefully shielded young man, any minute, and I remember to this day how shocked and strangely overjoyed I felt when you didn't.

You just didn't, Obi-Wan.

You lay there sprawled on the lush green, languidly turned your head my way as if to see who had had the cheek to intrude between your satin skin and the sun caressing it ever so gently. You smiled, uncertainly, a hesitant welcome. Unrecognising. Alarmed, I dropped to my knees, scanning your face. Oh, those lips, deep pink and parted slightly, quizzically, perhaps amused at the bearded stranger who would enter this valley cloaked in brown wool and innate Jedi reservation. If you could have read me, Padawan, you would have seen the flare of heat in my mind at the sight of those lips, and the all-consuming wish to cover them with mine, tasting slowly of the sweet poison of you.

Your eyes were on me, half-hidden under long red-golden lashes. Black. Almost totally black. Your pupils were so dilated, Padawan, that even I had had difficulty recognising your famed changeable irises. I took a deep breath. Drugs. Whoever had done this would pay for this. Or be rewarded. For the most beautiful sight I could possibly have expected in my sixty-year-old life.

Laying one hand on your shoulder, I shook you slightly, your slender body unresisting, going with the motion. "Obi-Wan?" No reaction but a slight amused raising of eyebrows at the tone of anguish in my voice. "Padawan, can you hear me? What have they done to you?". He smiled, stretched himself lazily and propped himself up on one elbow. "Who is Padawan? And nobody has done anything to me, stranger. Nothing I would not have wanted anyway." A wicked smile that made my guts melt with desire. "Have some cake. Make yourself at home." He offered me the half-eaten piece of bread-brown cake he'd been holding in his hand. I sniff at it, cautiously, causing him to grin at me. "It's good, believe me. Mhada nuts and honey."

Mhada nuts. Whatever these were. He was hallucinating. And I was hallucinating too, watching the golden sunlight pool on his silken skin and imagining my hands, my lips, my tongue trailing the golden paths down his chest and belly and thighs and ... honey. I shook my head violently, trying to dislodge the thought, clinging desperately to the shreds of my serenity. Sanity, more like. He had forgotten his own name. What had they done to him??

"Padawan? How many fingers?" I held up three, with a gap between them. Prayed that this would not be permanent, that my Obi-Wan would not wander forever in a haze of dim vegetative pleasure ... "Three. And ... could you guess where I would like these?". That wickedly delicious smile again ... there is no passion, there is only serenity, there is only serenity, there is only bloody serenity, Qui-Gon. Deep breaths.

Swallowing hard, I dared to look at that epitome of lush sensuality again. "Obi-Wan! Do you not remember? The Temple! You are Jedi. You are my apprentice ... " No reaction, a quizzical smile. He must think I was mad. I resort to desperate measures, slap a palm on his knee as un-gently as I can. It is still warm and silken ... "That scar, Obi-Wan. The Ganmow courtyard? You took Master Yoda down, remember?" -- "You are entertaining, stranger. And soooo handsome," halfway between a yawn and a lazy lascivious come-on, "that I would rather like to take you down a bit ... like so."

I must have cut a strange sight, stiffening and staring open-mouthed as that catlike naked creature swooped up at me, locking his slender arms around my neck and pulling me down to roll in the grass with him, pinning my shoulders to the ground and diving at my mouth, enveloping it in the richest warmest softest swelling heat imaginable. I moaned, and felt no more shame at it. Easily, so easily, I gave in to the waves of thick hot lust washing over me, your lithe golden body stretching over me in languid caresses, undressing me slowly, nuzzling into the moisture and scent of my sweat, melting against me in sensuous curves, your Padawan braid tickling my neck as you swallowed my mouth in a greedy kiss, licking the surprised gasp from the tip of my tongue. You ate me, there and then, and I prayed that this would never stop, no respite from your lush hungry mouth ravishing mine, your satin skin pressing against my straining erection, already too hard to be comfortable and throbbing with a long pent-up desire.

I wanted you, Obi-Wan, all my life I wanted you, and there and then I took you, and all you had to offer, throwing caution to the wind and going with the flow, the gentle undulations of your body against mine, the maddening heat and taut softness of your lean youthful frame clinging to me, chasing your tongue around both our mouths as my hand followed yours to the firm roundness of your ass, the heated rosette of straining muscle, and probed inside, the last remnants of my composure burning away at the hot moist clinging softness within. One finger, two, three, just like that and I was lost in your abandoned writhing, rubbing against my painfully hard cock and raining kisses all over my face until I could hold out no more and thrust up into you with all my might, sending you rearing up into the sunlight with a deep guttural laugh of pleasure, pulling yourself off my fingers and settling yourself down on my sweat-slick hardness, hissing with pleasure at being filled so thoroughly.

Oh your face in that moment, Obi-Wan, I will never forget that distant look on your face, floating far out on a boundless sea of pleasure, so beautiful it made me scream and howl and cry at the impossible perfection of this moment, held tight inside you, your glorious body flaring up like a rhythmical flame, pounding unbearable joy into mine, filling me with such pleasure and emotion that tears flooded from my eyes as the heat flooded from my cock, into you, so close, my Obi-Wan, you so close.

You kissed my tears away tenderly, stroking my hair, looking at me earnestly with those deep black eyes as if you were wondering what this beautiful stranger could possibly be upset at. This beautiful stranger. With the heat of your tight embrace dissipating into my spent body, the cold spike of reality pierced through. Oh yes, I had enjoyed you, I had taken all you offered, I had fulfilled my lifelong need and desire and had made deep and sincere love to you. But you -- you had not made love to me. You had given in to the carnal pleasures incited by that insidious drug. You had perhaps not even been willing to do this, lost in a haze of drugged perception.

And you had not made love to me. You had loved the handsome stranger you thought I was.

I felt wretched for it, the impossible lack of love from you, and your sensuous embrace felt like a burden. I had taken you selfishly, quenched  my burning desire without being able to give anything in return, without being able to even get through to you. You, my Padawan, my charge, my son. The pieces of your soul lay shattered around me, and I had ravished the empty vessel ... new tears welled up in my eyes and I howled my shame and anguish into your willing shoulder, hating myself for doing it but unable to pull away from you.

"There, there, stranger ... you seem so sad, so far away ... " You stroked my hair gently, "Will you stay here with me and become mine, join me and the Nilouphages. We could spend forever here ... drinking of the clear water, eating of the sweet honey-cake, and of you ... " the light nip of your teeth on my earlobe was torture to my heightened senses, desperate to locate a trace of my beloved Padawan in this blank-minded sensuous beautiful animal.

"Obi-Wan ... Obi-Wan, will you come with me? Will you follow me to my world?" I took a deep breath, trying desperately to focus on my rapidly fading memory, "Will you taste the adventure of my life, and meet my off-world friends, and ... sit in the Ganmow courtyard with me?" It hardly seemed an enticing prospect compared to this blissful valley, but to my surprise, the young stranger that had once been Obi-Wan smiled and nodded gracefully, a faint glimmer of curiosity in his black eyes.

I had led him out of the valley, clothed him in my robe in the chill air of the mountains, bracing myself for never being allowed to set eyes on this beautiful willing body ever again. We had not spoken much on that journey, little shards of my past life, which he had lapped up eagerly as if they were adventure stories. Some of them had starred the man he once was, I reflected bitterly.

He was blissfully exhausted by the time we reached the town and my ship, and I noticed with a pang of regret that his eye colour was beginning to show again. The drug was wearing off, and I hoped to all the Gods on this planet that he would soon be my Obi-Wan again, my dutiful Padawan.

Settling down at the controls, I prepared for takeoff, and for the sealing of this memory deep inside my soul, so deep that he would never find it and be horrified at what I had done to him, my beloved Padawan.

He had woken the next morning without a trace of memory of the last few days. Padding barefoot into the cockpit, he smiled at the sight of me hunched over the controls, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Let me have a go. You must have been at this for hours ... would you believe I was so stone tired the night after the North Myristians finally gave in and accepted your plans that I simply fell asleep there and then? Hey, I  didn't even notice you dragging me out of the bloomin' throne room, Master! Slept in your robe, tsss ... and a strange dream I had too ... " He stretched languidly, then gently shoved me off the pilot's seat. A small brown object fell to the floor with a clatter. It must have been tucked into the sleeve of my robe.

I picked it up. A Mhada nut. I handed it to him. "This is yours, I believe ... at least I didn't pick it up anywhere on that Force-forsaken planet." I managed a weary smile, relieved at Obi-Wan's restoration and tightly enclosing the bright golden shimmer of my memory in a hard brown nutshell in my soul.

A hard brown nutshell. The energy control switch on his new 'saber. It is warm and smooth to the touch, and I imagine I can feel the tingle of sensation even from this dead piece of Mhada nut. I wonder if he felt it too, and for a moment I glory in the illusion that he chose to put it here because it reminded him of our coupling on Myristane. Fool, Qui-Gon. He cannot know, and he must not know. He might never trust you again. Hold on that little bit longer, and see him knighted, and then see him no more, and be done and be alone with your reveries.

I peer inside the business end of the 'sabre, as much to distract myself from my sombre thoughts as to figure out what colour it'll be. He never told me, and he's never displayed any particular fondness when it came to choosing colours for his training 'sabres. I'd seen him with green ones like my own, bright orange ones, an ill-adjusted white one that was nearly grey, and even a baby-pink one for a while when he was seventeen, and, I suspect, in love with Master Galia's Padawan.

I toy with the new 'sabre. This one will be blue. The crystals are the deepest, clearest blue I have ever seen, and they must have cost him a fortune in credits and time, polishing them to perfection. Sky blue. Not the dim whitish blue of the Coruscant city sky. More like the deep azure of the sky of Eab Nanoorn, at least if the frequent postcards from Kourt are to be trusted. Oh, him and his cushy mission ... he's been tucked away on that Force-forsaken tropical planet for almost a year now, and never writes of anything but his lover, this crazed sensualist musician of his, and of course he hasn't got the faintest how sad he makes me with that. Me, the ever-serene Qui-Gon Jinn. Hell, if he knew how I felt. Blue. Yes, blue.

"They're blue for your eyes, actually."

I start so violently that I clench my fingers around the 'sabre and it ignites in my hand, powerfully, shooting a deep blue beam across the table and searing a clean hole through the jug of water there, leaving a freakish sculpture dripping water and molten glass.

"Will you behave yourself, Master!"

A laugh. A lilting voice, a sonic smile in the vowels. Obi-Wan. Have I been so absorbed in my sorrow I haven't even heard him come in? I turn around slowly, abashed, half-fearful. I face a bright smile, clean, radiant, beautiful, edged with the slightest tinge of doubt as he draws a deep breath ...

//I want to carry a reminder of you, always. If I can't carry you, this is the least I could do.//

//Obi-Wan?//

//Yes?//

//If I threw myself into your arms, would you ... carry me?//

"Master ... " His features are a picture of delight, of being overwhelmed at seeing his highest hopes fulfilled and surpassed, and I don't want to know what my face looks like behind the veil of tears that is fogging my sight as relief and happiness wash over me and I fall into his arms ready to burn myself in the consuming flame of my love ...

He jumps, and I nearly tumble, embracing thin air. Blinking, I turn around at him.

"Master ... I'm not hugging you unless you turn my 'sabre off, okay?"

Never have laughter and tears felt so good at the same time.

--- The End---