Master Apprentice
Archive
Stoicheia 16:Iodine
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Silence, throbbing silence in his ears... and he found himself desperately wishing for the hum and whirr of an old-fashioned life-support system, something, anything that would imitate a heartbeat in the absence of the one he craved. Not that it wasn't there, it simply had to be, had to exist purely to justify this coldly silent array of machinery, but it remained elusive, distant, to weak to fight its way through the thick reddish liquid. It was there to do good, he had to remind himself, the bacta was there to do good, for all it so resembled the thin wispy trickle of blood that still oozed from the wound, painting indecisive weak trails down the weary pale skin.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi?"
The singular ugliness of the thin humanoid in the brownish-red healers' robes did little to distract Obi-Wan from the sight that was slowly but surely filling up his eyes, his head, his heart. He was no longer sure just how long he'd stared at the horizontal tank and its barely living occupant... but it must have been long enough to allow the healer to sneak in and position himself behind the silent Padawan and prime himself for a dose of living ugliness delivered to the heart of one grieving for a beauty that had been dead, and was strangely reluctant to relinquish that state.
A small craggy hand settled on Obi-Wan's shoulder, hesitant. "This was your Master, wasn't he?" - "Was?!" Obi-Wan flushed at the sudden shrillness of his voice, mumbling an apology to the healer whose face slowly settled back into what Obi-Wan assumed was an indulgent smile.
The black markings on the horrid healer's visage. And the tight black straps holding the breathing mask in place, obscuring the features he craved to see, cutting through the soft pallor of Qui-Gon's skin just as that blade had... he tore his gaze away from the tank and faced the healer once more, expression set in stone. Not that it would fool a Temple healer.
"I am sorry, Padawan Kenobi. It is not my place to... but I meant what I said here. This man was your Master, and will never be again..."
"Irreparable?" Tears sprung into Obi-Wan's eyes, cutting through the facade of thin threadbare serenity and acquiescence. "He... will he ever wake?"
The healer slid his hand around Obi-Wan's other shoulder, supporting him. "Oh yes. He will. All parameters point to a full mental recovery. Whatever happened directly after he - well, technically he died. Most of him had shut down... but whatever happened kept his connection to the Force alive. He was never given the chance to join it, and so... he didn't."
"Tell me - how long has he been here?"
The healer glanced at the eerily silent machinery that fed air into Qui-Gon's abused lungs and kept the bacta circulating around waxy skin... and through the gaping hole in the man's chest. "Three days ands a half since planetfall. You were out yourself for quite a while, I believe?"
Obi-Wan nodded. He felt drained beyond measure, had done since he'd set foot on Coruscant and allowed sleep to take him. The last thing he'd remembered was folding up into aching grey unconsciousness after what must have been over 50 hours of non-stop piloting. He remembered the sad gazes of the Naboo, unable to muster the medical supplies to support the dying Master. War had torn their civilisation inside out, and victory had left them with nothing but shards. Keeping Qui-Gon in stasis had taken more out of him than he'd known he had in him. A wonder that they hadn't both crashed into some stray asteroid... and Obi-Wan still wasn't sure whether that wouldn't have been a mercy for them both. Rejoined in the Force... not a barely-alive body in a cold transparent tank, and a barely-alive mind echoing with the hollowness left by the squirming sprite that was Qui-Gon's spirit.
The healer disengaged himself from Obi-Wan and turned aside to read the controls on the life-support system, came back with what might have passed for a smile on the ruined landscape of his face. "Two more days and that's it, I would say...", then hastily added at the sight of Obi-Wan's blank-faced horror, "until he can come out, I mean. We're keeping him under for the moment, as you've no doubt noticed through the remains of your training bond... there's...," he was wringing his hands in uncharacteristic hesitation, "substantial damage to the spine."
Obi-Wan swallowed, mouth too dry to say anything, hoping the healer would just carry on, hoping he would give him something to hold on to.
"The blade went right through one lung, and grazed the spine -- wouldn't have been too bad in itself if it had been a solid blade. But the heat...," the healer squirmed visibly under Obi-Wan's flat grey gaze, "well... two of his discs are just... cooked. Exploded. And they've squashed and torn the nerves running along his spine."
Obi-Wan took a deep dry breath. "He'll be... paralysed."
"For the time being, yes." The Healer did his best to appear optimistic and busy. "For now, the best we could do was let the bacta eat away at the necrotic nerve tissue... the stasis was probably the best thing for his general survival, but it didn't help the burned bits, you see? It was best to sever the connection cleanly until his system's stabilised itself... with time, we'll be able to recultivate neural tissue and consider implantation... but I wouldn't advise that until he's stable, until the charred tissues have been broken down and washed out..."
Washed out. The thin trickle of diluted blood, darker red against the pale red bacta, an asymmetrical belt around the trim waist. Washed out. You've got to survive this, Qui, for my sake, he thought desperately, and received no reply.
"You said you're keeping him under --"
"Yes," the healer nodded. "For the duration of the immediate physical recovery, only until he's out of the tank. We did scan his cerebral activities though, after he'd come out of stasis and before putting him under. If I may say so, I am amazed. There seems to be no damage at all. As if he'd had his own supply of energy in there, disconnected from his body...". Me, Obi-Wan thought, let it be me. "Anyway, he'll almost be your old Master when he wakes."
"Except he won't be able to walk for..." Obi-Wan let his eyes rest on the healer's still-horrid face, now a solid anchor of hope in a world that was buzzing with the cold sinking feeling of shock abating.
"... a few weeks if we're lucky, a few months if not. I take it he's not yet reached the age of decay for his species?"
Obi-Wan snorted. Of all the places to deny Qui-Gon's supposed elderliness to his face, the intensive care unit at the Healers' ward wasn't one he'd ever imagined. "I wouldn't say so -- he's brutally strong. And I should know, he is my Master." And lover, he silently added.
"Was."
Obi-Wan whirled around to glare at the insolent critter of a Healer. "He _is_ my Master, Sith damn it. What more does it take to prove my identity, or his?? Would I have nearly run myself aground for a complete stranger, would I in all hells have..." A resolute appendage across his mouth silenced him, fuming as he was with inexplicable rage. Too much adrenaline, too much...
"Listen to me, Kenobi. It may have escaped you in the turmoil following your arrival here, but I mean what I say when I say he _was_ your Master. This means nothing less than you will soon be addressed as Knight Kenobi by all and sundry. And now," the Healer put an authoritative hand on the soon-to-be-ex-Padawan's shoulder, "you should rest a little. Go, sleep. I will look after him, trust you me. And if you feel the desire to see him, give Keleti Pu a comm. That's me."
With that, the healer left, and the silence closed like a curtain around his retreating form. A silence that held a faint heartbeat, the beating of a big struggling stubborn heart.
To say he was absent-minded during his Knighting would have been missing the point. His mind was very clearly present, it just wasn't where the majority of those present expected it to be.
When they spoke of the Light, he saw the faded but living light in Qui-Gon's eyes, still impossibly blue, even more so now that the rest of his face had lost its robust tan. Yes, he looked older, and sadder, enthroned in his hoverchair, but even more precious than he had ever been to Obi-Wan. Eyes blue as 'sabre crystals. You had to tease the Light out of them.
When they spoke of the Force, he saw the vestiges of brutal strength in Qui-Gon's body as he struggled to keep his hands from trembling, cutting his former apprentice's braid with the small ceremonial knife. Saw the violent discoloration of skin just visible in the V of the Master's tunics, skin tinted a thick brownish yellow from the iodine-laced bacta he still had to apply every morning. Beyond that, beyond the shade of dead gold, lay the fading bruises of what would have been his death blow, cloudy and paling from angry purple to red and a sickly yellow swallowed by the iodine. Beneath that lay the raw tenderness of skin growing anew, covering Qui-Gon's very real soft spot. The bone would never quite regrow, but the cartilage would eventually harden enough to support the surrounding tissues.
When they spoke of the strength of a Knight, this was what he saw. This, the colours of Qui-Gon's body struggling back to life, and the stark white of the cast that supported him and took the strain off his spine, hard, like a corset beneath his tunics. This was the strength of a Knight.
And when they spoke of the peace he would defend and support, through the cultures and ages, he was at a loss for what to say, and what to see. Peace, when there was so much to be done still, and his patience so worn. And yet, so much time ahead of him... so much time until Qui-Gon would be well again, so much time... and at the roots, his long hair had gone a shade greyer.
"All right, all right, Pada... Obi-Wan. I am sure I can manage that by myself." The tone in Qui-Gon's voice was more than a little indignant as Obi-Wan knelt before the severely mutilated hoverchair his former Master was perched on.
"Not if I remember the last time you tried, Master. Small steps, remember? The way to recovery is comprised of small steps. Leaps and bounds will only make you stumble." Qui-Gon rolled his eyes as dramatically as he could, knowing that Obi-Wan wouldn't be paying any attention. Not for nothing had he been his last, and best, apprentice.
"Anyway," the young man continued, calmly, "I'm not sure Healer Pu would like the sight of what you'd done to the hoverchair he issued you with... and we don't want that visage frowning at us, would we?"
Qui-Gon was slowly but visibly fuming. What had he done to deserve to be treated like an initiate? After all, the standard issue invalids' hoverchair had been quite simply too wide to manoeuvre through the 'fresher door, and he had expended infinite amounts of patience and Force manipulation to lop the offending side stabilisers off. And now his own Pada... his own ex-Padawan chided him like a little child for it. All right, the reduced-size chair made it a little difficult to stay in position on it, with no side pieces to keep his legs in place, but that was not his problem, was it, and anyway, there was nothing wrong with his legs apart from the fact that he couldn't feel them or move them but as far as he was concerned they didn't require special treatment. Especially not the kind of treatment his infuriating Padawan was blithely administering this very minute.
"What... what do you think you're doing, Obi-Wan?"
"Why, strapping you in, Master," the young man replied, in a tone that sounded rather too close to that of a long-suffering crèche Master for Qui-Gon's liking, while threading Qui-Gon's spare belt through the framework of the chair and buckling it around the Master's thighs. "I don't know about your preferences, but I'd rather not have your legs dragging behind you every time you turn a corner. People could trip over them. And besides, I quite like them, so you'd better keep them intact for my sake... Master? ...Master!"
//And don't call me that// was the terse reply as Qui-Gon made the closest he could get to a hurt retreat, zooming through the outer door on most of a hoverchair.
Obi-Wan sighed and rubbed the beginnings of an ache at the base of his skull. It was getting worse by the day. Not that he had ever been a patient patient -- but not being able to speed his own recovery was something that gnawed at the Master's serenity deeply. He was probably off to the Healers again, to inquire about the state of the recultivated nerve tissues, and to be told that they weren't ready for implantation yet, and that he should count himself lucky he was insensible from the waist down at the moment because he would curse them for the first few days after the new nerves had been grafted in place, because they would burn like fire until they'd been properly absorbed and coated in Qui-Gon's own cells, and he would snort at the Healers yet again and maybe tell them about one of the countless encounters with fire he had had in his long-standing service to the Jedi Order, and yet again he would not get anywhere and would curse them all inwardly for managing to out-stubborn him and go and sulk in a garden or a courtyard, watching the young and feeling old.
Several more weeks of this were going to give Obi-Wan his first grey hairs too, of that he was certain.
"No you can't." Obi-Wan felt more than saw the icy blue glare from above as he squatted down to unbuckle the strap that had held Qui-Gon's thighs in place. "And you don't have to try it to prove to me that you can, because I have seen the shape of your corset thing and I know it's not meant to bend that way. Look, just relax and let me do this for you, right? And then there's dinner on the low table in the common room so you can lie on the cushion on the floor and have your legs level with the rest of you for a while. Circulation, you know..." Obi-Wan's fingers kneaded the slack muscles of Qui-Gon's calves, firmly gripping the flesh as if to hold it in the moment, to keep it from fading away before it was used again.
Fading away. Looking down at his former Padawan's diligently, blithely busy hands, Qui-Gon felt a helpless anger rise in him, a sadness turned sour, sadness at not being able to give in, or to give back. At being so bloody helpless, like a baby that needed to be taken to the 'fresher and to their meals and petted and patted and looked after all the time, and Obi-Wan doing all this as if he was enjoying it when Qui-Gon was unshakeably sure of how he was robbing this beautiful youth of his own personal life. He was no longer his Padawan after all, and could no longer be held responsible for his Master's well-being, if indeed he ever had been. And what could he gain from all this anyway -- Qui-Gon was practically dead from the waist down, and he had a very clear idea of what Obi-Wan's sex drive had been like back in their happier days.
And yet he could never quite bring himself to urge Obi-Wan to take a lover, with his blessing. He could imagine the hurt in Obi-Wan's eyes, and furthermore he could imagine Obi-Wan not budging from his side anyway, and having to withstand that hurt undertone at all times... no, that was worse than making Obi-Wan suffer his own impatient grumpiness.
But still, there was care and there was fussing, and Qui-Gon was quite sure he was a victim of the latter as Obi-Wan scraped fingernails down his thighs to stimulate circulation, humming tunelessly at his task.
"Padawan."
Obi-Wan continued to hum, and scratch.
"Obi-Wan, listen to me. Will you stop... Obi-Wan! Cut it out -- " a heavy hand grabbed the back of Obi-Wan's head and tilted his face up unsteadily. Of course, no Padawan tail. Cool sparkling grey eyes gazed up at him, mutely.
"Obi-Wan. I forbid you to fuss over me like I am a little child. I am quite capable of fending for myself, and if I am not, I shall have to learn. There is no point in pampering this old wreck into insensibility here when you could be out and about living your own li-"
A ringing slap to his cheek cut Qui-Gon short, and he stared in mute surprise at his former apprentice, who was rising from his knees menacingly. The grey eyes glittered with a determination that was as scary as it was beautiful, but no retort was forthcoming. Instead, Obi-Wan's thin-lipped expression split open into a ripe lush mouth that slowly and determinedly kissed away the sting on his cheek. Too derailed to keep his indignation up, Qui-Gon let it happen, half-guilty at how good this one-sided caress felt.
The slight groan from Qui-Gon's throat when the lips left his skin told Obi-Wan all he needed to know. Softly, he spoke. "And now it is my turn to speak and yours to listen, I believe. If you think I am doing all this out of some misunderstood claim to charity or because I don't think you're capable of roping in the Force to assist your bodily needs, then think again. This is not that horrid Healer here, at your knees. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Your _lover_. And now guess again why I am doing all this. Because I don't want you coming to any harm? Because I want you well as soon as possible? And because I like to touch you, whether you feel it or not?"
Qui-Gon opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again, then said, in a small voice, "But... what can I give you in return, Obi-Wan? I know perfectly well I can't... satisfy you as I am."
"Satisfy me?" Obi-Wan's laugh was shrill and unexpected. "Believe me, Qui-Gon, the simple fact that you're alive and in one piece is pure bliss to me every morning I wake up and see you lying there on the big bed. On the bed, not on the pyre! And you're going to be well again eventually, even if it's going to take more time and more pain than either of us would like. Satisfy me? Just... just touching you now satisfies me more than any number of wild mind-melting fucks we've had. Just touching you, where you can feel it..."
"Obi-Wan..." Qui-Gon's voice was hoarse, indecisive, as Obi-Wan began to part the Master's tunics and lick a trail of squirming moist warmth along the top of the white plasteel corset that encased Qui-Gon's upper body. He tasted iodine, and it was bitter on the tip of his tongue, spice to Qui-Gon's salty flavour, to the very real solidity of his mighty body. He sent a light Force touch down inside the cast, stroking over almost painfully sensitive new skin, feeling the heavy thud of Qui-Gon's heart pulsing under the thin skin, speeding up as Obi-Wan's real fingers played over Qui-Gon's palms, drawing fluttering small circles on the dry skin, trailing a fingernail down the inside of his middle finger, slowly, maddeningly, again and again until Qui-Gon felt like his whole arms were tingling with sensation and his mouth, dry as his hands, was thirsty for those lips...
"Obi-Wan... love."
"Love. Yes. Love. you're learning, Master..."
Qui-Gon chuckled painedly. "You're... such a gift, Obi-Wan, I find it impossible to believe sometimes..."
"Don't worry, love," Obi-Wan whispered, lips so close to Qui-Gon's half-open mouth that the Master imagined he could taste the words, "I shall convince you, whatever you say, silly man. Again and again if necessary. I've learnt persistence from the best, you know..."
"Obi-Wan?"
"Yes?"
"I do look forward to the day I will be able to walk again."
"I now, Master. So do I."
"Because," Qui-Gon leaned closer to Obi-Wan's tantalising mouth, groaning in frustration as his restricted reach kept him from claiming it, "because, Pada... love, kicking your insolent lush little arse will be one of my top priorities once I'm back on my feet. Really."
Obi-Wan burst into uncontrolled laughter, fell forward and let himself drown in Qui-Gon's kiss. Yes, he was looking forward to that day too. Definitely.
---The End---