Summary: Obi-Wan healed Qui-Gon after the battle, but then left
while QG was still unconscious. QG has a few things to say to
his ex Padawan about this.
Feedback: um... yes? Please?
This is my first bit of creative writing since I was a
teenager. I'm amazed at myself. Even more so that I have
another one simmering in my mind - those bunnies sure do breed!
My thanks to Smitty for her beta and for warding off the Sith
comma!
The song is Separate Tables by Chris de Burgh, and is where the
title came from.
At separate tables we sit down to eat
In separate bedrooms we go to sleep at night
I only wish you knew how much
You've been on my mind
I sit down to another quiet evening meal, so many now since I
woke up from the healing that followed the events on Naboo and
I pause to think of you and where you are and where you might
be eating. Hoping that your mission is one where you have the
time to do so and not one like so many of ours seemed to be -
always running to mend a situation before it was beyond
mending.
When I go to bed I wonder if you also find that sleep is hard
to lay claim to. My blankets have never seen such restlessness.
You are in my thoughts constantly, slipping in and out while I
deal with the Council and while I undertake Anakin's training.
I think about you when the morning comes
I think about you when all my day is done
Wondering what you're doing now
Are you lonely too?
I did find some sleep last night, but I don't know how much.
Not enough. Too many hours were spent wondering at your
departure while I was still in the hands of the healers. Still
recovering from the Sith's attack. I shook then, when they told
me you were gone - amazed that you would leave me without
knowing how I was. It took me the better part of a week to find
that you had not left my bedside until you knew, beyond
a doubt, that I would recover, that you had made one of the
healers promise to keep you informed of my progress... and not
to let me know that she was doing so.
My day has been busy, enough so to keep me from thinking of you
more than every other second. An improvement of sorts, though I
am not happy - with me, with you, with this pain that is
tearing at my soul because you are not here. Is it like this
for you also? Somehow I think it is.
Because I - I miss you here tonight
And I wish you were by my side
And I don't want to let go
I have been preparing myself to let you go for the last two
years. Or maybe that was just me fooling myself, because now
that you are gone I find how painful it is that you are not
here. You belong with me, where you have been since just before
you were thirteen. So many years, such a treasury of
partnership, affection, work, love.
My love for you built slowly and I was amazed when I found it
lurking within me. But delighted, and hopeful. Hopeful that you
felt the same. There was so often something else in your eyes
when you looked at me over those last few years. Something more
than the usual love a Padawan feels for his Master.
We never spoke of it - I felt a need to wait until you were a
Knight and you... well, I don't know why you never spoke of it
but I was happy at the time that you did not. We would talk
about it when the time was right, when we faced each other as
equals. When I cut off your Padawan braid in that final
ceremony.
But I didn't get to do that. I woke and I could not feel you
and eventually Master Yoda told me that he had Knighted you
while I was still recovering. That you had been sent out on
your first solo mission. A precious moment in our lives taken
from me. Two in fact, as I was not there to see you go, either.
Yoda told me you had been given the choice of waiting for me
but that you had been anxious to get to work. Anxious to get
away. I asked him why he let you go, but he went all
inscrutable on me. Told me I would know when the moment was
there.
He also told me that it is because of you that Anakin is now my
Padawan, that you had told him you would take him as Padawan if
they would not assign him to me. Apparently you were more like
me than even I usually am in my dealings with the Council.
At separate tables we sit down to write
The separate letters that never see the light
If only we could just agree to read between the lines
I have tried to write to you, to contact you and tell you...
but that is where I have to stop, because I cannot tell you of
my love while you are so far from me. I have to be able to see
your face, feel your emotions. So I have put my letters away
uncompleted and unsent. I tell myself that maybe you do the
same.
I am confident of your love for me, despite the pains and the
shocks of your actions. It was a miracle that I recovered. I
was so close to being gone, to letting go and crossing into the
Force, but you - you brought me back, and you could not have
done that without loving me. Only love could have forged a
strong enough net to catch my soul and bring it back to my
body. Only love could have given you the power to heal my body
enough for me to stay until the properly trained healers could
begin their work on it.
And I ask myself again why you left, with that amount of love
for me in your heart.
I want to see you and I know what I will say
We must be crazy to throw it all away
Never knowing what is lost
Before it's all too late
But I think I know. The thought came to me while Anakin and I
were meditating today. The thought that perhaps you didn't know
how I felt. That it was that which kept you quiet for these
last years, that pushed you away just when I would have been
able to finally reach out to you.
I was appalled at the thought. That it was possible that I
could have left you in such ignorance of my care for you. But
when I surfaced and looked at Anakin, still meditating before
me, I saw how perhaps I could have planted that seed of doubt
in your mind. Those were hectic days, the last ones before
Naboo, and I didn't take the care I would have in usual times
to be open with you. I was so frustrated with the Council and
their obtuseness when it came to Anakin that I was hard on you.
When that was followed by the fight with the Sith and my
injury...
So perhaps I can see why I lost your confidence in me. And I
can imagine why you left, taking your love away before I could
perceive it.
And I - I miss you here tonight
And I wish you were by my side
And I don't want to let go
But I will not let you keep yourself from me, my love. I want
you here with me, I need you here to complete my heart, to help
me in everything I do. I have spoken again to Yoda. I have told
him of the state of my heart and what I know to be the
state of yours. He looked at me in the way only he can, and
promised me that you would be called back to Coruscant when
your current mission ends, so that I can talk to you. Tell you
of my heart. Ask you to stay. With me. Forever.
Yes I - I miss you here tonight
And when I hold you by my side
I'm not going to let go
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