His hands were beautiful. For so many reasons, I remember his
long fingers, clasped around the base of a lightsaber, and his
soft gaze directed at me, slowly burning, challenging me to
become...to become what he made of me. What I am.
I watched him die, held him in my arms and cradled the
grievously wounded body which I had no power to heal. I could
not calm my feelings. Despair, anger, fear. What would I become
without him? My anguish flooded into my master like the
desolation which follows a harsh rain, and he knew then I had
loved him, beyond imagining. He could not have avoided my
heart's cry. I am sorry for that. I could not give him peace,
only sadness. In this one thing I failed him, at the hour he
needed me most. I could not bear to apply what I had learned.
In those earliest days, I quickly accomplished my task,
becoming the other half of his soul in the pure symbiosis of
Jedi and Padawan. Practice, teaching, debate, and always the
spark of something deeply desired, kindled fast but smothered
under discipline. I could not read my master, but how he must
have smiled to know my longing. I remember every detail of the
first time he took me in his arms, ran those strong fingers
down the curves of my face, listening to me weep with joy at
the thought of him loving me. When his decision was made, and
the time had arrived, how quick he was to soothe my pain, to
kiss away tears. He tossed away my garments, and moved his
strong hands with the confidence of honest hunger across my
skin, to make me understand I was no longer a boy, not just a
pupil of a Jedi, but the beloved of a man.
So many years between those tears of joy, and these bitter
tears.
Where one turned, the other followed. We two could not have
been more intertwined. Our minds were like opposite halves of
one pure emotion. I learned his lessons well. By day under
punishing training regimens, he sculpted my body. At night,
with his lips fastened to mine, he explored his creation. We
moved together, connected, joined in an ecstasy I thought never
to know, and will not know again.
So it was that when I felt his spirit wander from him, mine
wished to follow, and nothing mattered. I made a promise which
I will obey, for the sake of what his eyes spoke as he looked
at me that dreadful day. For when he reached out his hand,
which trembled from the effort, and comforted me with a touch,
I was lost.
My master is dead, and my heart has gone with his into the
flames.
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