Master Apprentice Archive Tread Softly Quick search:

Rating: NC-17

(Originally Published in the Rituals and Meditations zine)

Archive: Sure.

Disclaimer: I am not George Lucas, as I never could get that beard to grow, and I don't own Star Wars or the characters within. I am making no monies off this.

Summary: One year after the event of Naboo, Obi-Wan must return to fulfill a promise to his master.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

W.B. Yeats

Imagine that the most wonderful person in the galaxy is in love with you. They know everything that you've ever done, every wild, heroic thing, and every spiteful, nasty thing. And not only do they love you anyway, but they look at -you- and see the most wonderful person in the galaxy.

Now imagine that you could just curl up inside that person, like he was a pillow. And you would be safer and warmer right there with them than you have ever been in your entire life.

Now imagine trying to live without them.

I've been doing it for a year now.

Naboo is a beautiful world. So many worlds destroy themselves, with pollution and mining operations that leave ugly scars on the landscape, but Naboo isn't one of them. The people are very careful to live in harmony with the natural world around them. The people on more planets should live by their ideals.

I hate it here.

Perhaps it's not seemly for a Jedi to admit to hate but, if anything, I will be honest. I hate this place. Just being here eats at me like a canker, a raw place deep inside of me that won't heal or leave me in peace from the moment I stepped from the ship and onto the soil.

The queen knows it, because I not something that I can hide, no matter how hard I try. It is in everything about me, in the coolness of my demeanor, the stiffness of my walk. It shows in my eyes, though perhaps it is not hate that she sees there, but the pain of a loss that I can barely describe, because before she leaves me, she touches my arm, once, very gently, and then leaves me to see to my duties.

Had I been rude to her, I wondered distantly. I hadn't thought so but I really couldn't be sure. My surprise at her greeting me at my arrival had been ill concealed certainly, though I should have expected it. Amidala had never been one to shirk her duties, no matter how small.

Anakin had been crushed that he couldn't come with me. It had been a year since he had seen the young Queen and he had yet to forget her kind treatment. I had my doubts that he ever would, there are some memories that linger with us forever. I made vague promises that I had no intention of keeping that we would come here together another time and it had satisfied him for the moment. Anything else I would deal with later.

I walked across the grounds slowly, taking in this place that I had seen so briefly as is the custom. No one disturbed me, they had all been warned, I assume. Despite my personal feelings for Naboo, hatred so keen that I am disgusted to have the dirt of this planet on my boots, I can see that under different circumstances I may have enjoyed a visit here, aesthetically pleasing as it is to the nose and eyes.

He would have liked it here. The very thought gives me pause and I closed my eyes against an ever-present pang of regret for those things that he never had a chance to see or do. Our brief journey through this planet had been as a Jedi doing battle and not as men who might simply appreciate the beauty of the landscape.

I walked on quickly, eager to have this done with. The grounds and inner palace swept past me in a blur as I hurried through it, nearly running if that wouldn't have been so undignified. It was only as I came again to the landing hanger that I finally slowed, walking over a shined floor that bore no marks of a battle once fought there. A battle won, a battle lost, every step and blow etched into my memory, and Force, he could fight.

My Master had been one of the best swordsmen in the order and at the time I could say without pride that I was well on the way to joining his rank, owed in no small part to his teachings. I have no way of knowing who trained the Sith, but it had been such a battle of the likes I had never seen. And never wished to see again.

Striding across the narrow walkways, every instant of the battle replaying in my mind, my nerve finally failed me at the glowing red shields that led to the melting pit. I could not go in there, my feet refused to walk across that threshold, and after a time I walked away, granting myself one small bit of mercy. Surely he would have understood. I know he would have...but then, if he were so understanding then why had he ensured my return to the place of his death in the first place?

As I walked into the small room that was aside the main Temple in Theed, the first thing I noticed was the dust. A thick layer that covered everything in the room, dust and perhaps whatever floating ashes escaped from the funeral pyre. The thought is disturbing, and uneasiness twists in my stomach. I am the first being to step into this room since it was sealed the night of Qui-Gon's cremation, and it is opened now only for me because custom demands it.

Qui-Gon.

I've found in the past year that I can barely think his name without a thick knot lodging in my throat. When I first returned to the Temple, minus my master and with a new padawan in tow, none of my friends seemed to know what to say to me. Death we all knew, intimately on occasion, and yet no one person handled their sorrow the same.

For the first few months, I was handled as if I were one of the delicate sugar castles that they made on Tel'hair, fine sparkling crystals that were held only with the frailest of bonds and would dissolve instantly with a too-rough touch. Each of them tried to keep me wrapped safely in cotton batting, if only they knew how. Should they talk about him more, less, at all? Should they try to keep me company or should they let me be? Grief is a confusing mixture of emotions, not a single one, for those of us who survived.

How could I tell them that nothing they could say or do would help me? I hadn't lost my master; he had been torn away from me. It was a wound that would always bleed, would never heal, never fade into a pale, barely remembered scar.

Now I am here on Naboo, again.

But for Master Yoda, I would have avoided this. I went to him, to ask him formally to excuse me from this. I had gone as far to kneel before him, the words on my lips, when he looked at me. Master Yoda is a powerful Jedi and a powerful being and his words often contain great wisdom. That day I learned from his silence, and I nodded and left. Whether or not I wanted this, I had to do it, if only out of respect for my master--respect and something more than that. I loved him and I will always love him. Death is no barrier for that.

So here I am, one year after my master's death, offering my respects. I can almost imagine that this dark, musty smelling room as it was that day: filled with mourners as they watched silently what I watched sightlessly. I looked, but I saw nothing, couldn't allow myself to see. I could not watch the flames consume him; hadn't I endured enough watching him die? How much more could he ask of me?

He asked for this. I sighed, dropping to my knees to begin. The stone was hard and cold, but there was a breeze coming in through the windows that felt wonderful against my face and I closed my eyes, centering myself and allowing the warm tide of the Force to rush inside me, embracing me. Not like he had embraced me, nothing could be like that, but it was better than nothing.

So many dreams I'd had of the way our lives were supposed to be. My future had been mapped out in my eyes, since I'd been little more than a child. After a suitable length of time as a padawan, I would pass my trials -- gloriously, of course. I would become a Knight and Qui-Gon and I would be free to declare ourselves bonded and then...well, we'd live happily ever after, like in all the greatest stories.

Only one of my many dreams had come true and now my future was as clouded as that of the boy I was training. And I was here, alone.

Who would have thought that my master, so disdainful of the Council clinging to the ways of the past, would have asked for a Vigil upon his death? It was an ancient ritual, older even than Master Yoda could remember. That the one person most trusted by the deceased would return to the burning site to ensure their oneness with the Force. I was Qui- Gon's most trusted and because he had asked it, I had come. When had I ever been able to deny him something that he truly wanted? Argued with him, certainly, doubted him, perhaps. But deny him? Never.

Although how I was supposed to 'ensure his oneness', I had no idea. Master Yoda had been even more vague than usual, telling me that the Force would show me what I was to do.

I trusted Master Yoda's wisdom in most things, and the areas that I hadn't trusted him in I'd often regretted, so I came here with the sense that I had to do this. Now I was here, without the faintest idea of what to do.

Apparently, the Force didn't feel like giving instructions today.

Still kneeling, the faint 'touch' of the Force was all around me but it told me nothing, offered me no reassurances. Was this it then? If this was what I had come all the way here for then it was worse than knowing that Qui-Gon was dead, because I felt no sense of peace. No sense that Qui-Gon was one with the Force, nothing, nothing! That knowledge was worse than death and I found myself nearly choking on my pain, tasting salt and was I crying? How could I be crying, I'd held my tears for so long, even then.

I shouldn't cry, shouldn't, there is no death there is only the Force and for the third time in my life I feel as if the Force has forsaken me. Once, when I was nearly thirteen and I was told that, despite the urgings I'd received since I was little more than a baby, I wasn't good enough to be a Jedi. Again, years later as I knelt on the cold floor of a stinking melting pit as I tried to will healing energy that I was too exhausted to draw upon into my dying master. A year later again, and I was drowning in the taste of my own tears, couldn't breath and I hadn't cried since that moment in the melting pit, holding my dying lover in my arms.

As easily as that, it came to me, my tears drying in a moment of insight. This, this calmness, the centered serenity that is so much a part of being a Jedi, this was not how I remembered Qui-Gon Jinn.

Standing, I stripped away my clothes and tossed them aside, standing there instead as bare as the day of my birth. A cool breeze flowed through the opened windows and I closed my eyes, letting the drifting currents of air caress my body like a lover. Like Qui-Gon had, not so very long ago.

Qui-Gon had been my master, had trained me, and that was something that I would never forget, but it was not how I remembered him. When I thought of him, I recalled him as something more, so much more to me.

I knelt, the floor as cold and unforgiving on my knees as it had been during my meditation but I ignored it. Instead, I slid my hands up the bare skin of my thighs, concentrating on the sensation of being touched. Awkwardly, at first, it had been so long since I'd allowed myself even this much pleasure but one never forgets some things. I held the softness of my penis in one hand, felt the shaft firming as I stroked gently and I remembered my master.

I remembered the first time he had touched me like this, my nervousness and excitement, and my shock as he realized he felt the same. The things one felt when they were with a lover for the first time did not change as one aged, I learned, and my own delight at this knowledge had made him laugh.

As cool and distant as he must have seemed to others and as he was forced to be as my master, Qui-Gon had opened his soul to me as a lover and held me against the brilliance of his essence. It is something that I will never forget and it makes me feel that much more empty now, living without it.

I forced that thought from my mind, concentrating instead on the building pressure inside as I touched myself, stroking hard, just the way I liked it. Qui-Gon had known that, and I could remember him gripping my erection firmly, the slide of a callused palm against my softer skin. Or sometimes it would be a gentler touch, the delicate brush of fingertips against me, flirting with being something else as they taunted me into begging for more, for harder...

Sliding my free hand between my legs, I cupped my balls firmly, a shudder escaping me as I rubbed my thumb over the head of my cock. It was good, so damn good, to touch myself again, to be clasped in a tight grip and only one thing could ever make this better; if the hand that I was arching into helplessly wasn't my own. If it was his hand.

I came to thoughts of my long dead master, my lover, as I remembered him laughing and touching me and simply existing within me. I fell forward, curling into myself as ecstasy cut into me like a blade, making me remember feelings that I had been denied for so long. I could dimly feel hot wetness spurting over my hand, slicking my grip as I shook with almost unbearable pleasure; unbearable because it was not what I truly wanted and never would be again.

Slumping down against the floor, I rested my forehead against the coolness of the stone floor as I gasped raggedly. Oh, it had been so long, so very, very long...

It was a tingling sensation that I felt at first, burning between my shoulder blades and for a moment I hardly noticed it, so lost in the aftershocks of my orgasm as I was. But it changed slowly, the weight of eyes upon me and I knew. Carefully, I shifted back onto my knees, closing my eyes as I waited.

A coolness slid across my back, moving up to rest on my shoulders in an unmistakable gesture. His hands touched me softly, but unmoving as he waited for some response. My eyes were still closed and I was in no rush to open them because if I did, I knew what I would see and I had no desire to see him that way, in nothing but shimmering Force-lines of blue. That was not the memory I wanted of him.

He waited, his hands still resting cool and faintly tingling against my skin but he did nothing else and I understood why. There was bitterness between us now, unintended as it was, but it was there nonetheless. He had betrayed me, not once but three times: once before the Council that we both served, once on his deathbed as he passed on with another's name on his lips and once...once by leaving me alone. No, not alone, but that was another matter entirely and another betrayal that, in my heart, I had yet to forgive.

But had my actions betrayed him any less?

Now I was here in my life, my lover lost to me and saddled with a padawan I had never wanted but was coming to care for regardless, and all I had was this.

He spoke, softly, his rich voice just as I remembered it. "I can't give you promises of forever, Obi-Wan. I never could. I can't even offer you tomorrow. All I have is now, tonight. That's all. Now, my Knight, do you stay or do you go?"

The last word echoed briefly in the silent room and I could have laughed at his question. As if I could leave, even if I had wanted. I have never been able to refuse anything that Qui-Gon Jinn asked of me, no matter the pain it caused.

I reached up, my hand still wet with the evidence of my orgasm, and I clasped his hand in my own, tightly, and I was lost to him as I had always been.

He wasn't even real, nothing more than a shadow, a collection of cobwebs and still I touched him as he whispered to me how wrong I was. It was I that was an illusion, cloaked in flesh and blood. He was reality at its purest.

His hands were a cool touch against me, tracing a path down my back and I shivered helplessly. They pushed me forward onto my hands and knees and I went willingly, for him, and I remembered our last time together before he...before the Sith. We were on the ship traveling back to Naboo with a wall of iciness already between us. Yet we had still slept on the same couch, perhaps out of habit more than anything, and I had turned to him in the night, still half-asleep from an unremembered dream.

I don't know if he had truly allowed me to touch him, or if perhaps, like me, he had been more asleep than awake and again it had been habit. Had it been too late when he finally remembered our anger, as it had been for me? Had he remembered when I was inside him, the backs of his legs resting on my shoulders as I thrust deeply into his seemingly willing body? Had it been afterward, in the silence that followed when we held each other mutely, my hands idly tracing patterns over his sweat-slicked back? Or had he never forgotten and simply craved a tiny reprieve from it, in the form of my touch?

Even if I thought he would answer me now, I wouldn't ask. I know what I'd like to believe and I'd rather not know otherwise.

His hands seemed to be everywhere, sliding down my hips to my thighs, moving up to reach around my waist and he spread his fingers over my chest as if to touch as much of me as he possibly could. He lifted me up from the ground and back against him and I allowed him to manipulate me, as pliable as a doll in his hands.

It was such an odd feeling; the coolness of what was not bare skin touching me, the tingling of his essence down my back as I leaned against him. His hands slid down from my waist, past the flatness of my stomach and down between my legs. I was already hard, still young enough and needy enough that I recovered quickly. His fingers combed lightly through the soft curls at the base of my shaft, teasing me, and I exhaled through my teeth, unwilling to beg so early. Finally, he touched me, barely, running the tip of a finger along the underside of my cock.

He was so gentle, so tender, his lips against my neck and I tilted my head to allow him access even as I longed to protest. I didn't want the gentle sweetness of lovemaking; I wanted him to fuck me. I wanted his hard, hot length inside me as it had not been in a year's time, piercing me, taking me and I wanted it now.

His own erection was pressing against the small of my back and I nudged my hips back against it, trying to show him what I wanted without words. If he understood then he ignored me, instead clasping my cock in a gentle grasp, long fingers barely stroking the sensitive flesh.

I gasped, my hands flying up to catch at his arms. No, I wanted to plead, not like this. I couldn't bear his gentleness, not after all that had happened. My fingers circled his wrists but without strength. I could do little more than simply allow him whatever it was that he wanted.

He pulled away from me and before I could do more than whimper in protest, I found myself on my back with hands beneath my hips, lifting me, positioning me. My eyes were closed tightly, I didn't want to see, couldn't bear to see but my hands reached up and tangled in the long hair that brushed softly against my cheek and I remembered what it looked like. Behind my closed eyelids I could see malt brown hair streaked with gray and I knew how it felt wrapped around my fingers, sweeping across my belly, tickling my nose in the middle of the night. A hundred memories flickered before my eyes from an instant of touch.

I was jerked back to reality as he leaned over me, lifting my legs over his shoulders. One hand trailed down my thigh to the cleft of my ass, searching for the puckered entrance there and I arched against the touch, eager to feel them pressing inside.

Instead, I felt the blunt pressure of his erection against me, pushing inside and I relaxed consciously. It had been over a year since I'd done this, and now with no stretching, no preparation it should hurt, there should be the burn of pain as long untried muscles struggled to accommodate my old master's not inconsiderable length. It should, but instead all I felt was delicious fullness that made me forget the past year's emptiness, the bitterness that should have been long buried.

He rocked his hips backwards slightly before pushing forward again and there was the burning that I had expected yet now I craved it, secreted this feeling away in my mind, the feel of Qui-Gon Jinn possessing me and I swore silently that no matter whoever touched this body, I would only ever belong to him.

The words tumbled from my lips without thought, a promise that I would keep for the rest of my life and I could feel his sorrow at my vow, his guilt, his remorse. But no regret and I could not begrudge him his selfishness because I felt it as well. He was the only thing, in the entirety of my life, that I had ever wanted to be mine, even in death and I took a certain mean satisfaction in the knowledge that he would never be the boy's master.

It was cruel and it was wrong, and I had tried to rid myself of the feeling before yet it stayed with me, a tiny seed of darkness within. All I could do was contain it, even a seed can become something deadly if it manages to take root, and I would perhaps have to spend the rest of my life ensuring that a seed didn't flower into something worse. And I would spend an eternity doing just that, for him, so that he would never have to feel the pain of seeing me turn to darkness. I would do anything for him, I always would. I would die for him and, more agonizing by far, I would live for him. Because he asked it of me.

He moved against me, within me, slow, steady thrusts and I rocked with him as best I could, desperate for this one last gift that wasn't real, not really real, couldn't be real because I'd seen him fall and I'd seen him die and I had seen him burn but it was still happening regardless and it was real. This was real, I could taste the salt of his skin, feel the long strands of his hair falling forward to cling to my sweat dampened face.

He spoke to me, a soft whisper. "Open your eyes." I frowned, trying to ignore it. He persisted, urgently this time, "Open your eyes, Obi-Wan. Please. Open your eyes. Open them!" He punctuated each word with a deep lunge inside my body and I hissed, a near sob escaping me as I struggled against him, wanting more, wanting him to let me go... He repeated it, over and over, and I could have screamed. Could he not leave me just one thing to myself, just this one thing...?

Some weary part of my soul answered his call, the part of me that would always be his padawan and I obeyed him, opening my eyes to see whatever ghost it was of my master who was making love to me.

Had I ever forgotten that he was so beautiful?

Wisps of dark hair were clinging to his damp cheeks, lips parted as he panted for breath, warm blurts of air against my face. His face tightened and relaxed with each thrust of his hips and I traced every well-known and well-loved line of his face with my eyes until I reached his. Blue, not shimmering blue, not lines of the Force but simply the deep navy blue that I recalled, darker with passion and they held my own for only a moment before closing and he groaned deep in his chest.

He leaned down and crushed my lips with his own, his tongue pushing its way inside to stroke against mine and had I ever thought his touch was cold? It was like fire now, an inferno pouring through my veins and he thrust harder, slamming into me, burning into me and I nearly screamed against his lips.

I was engulfed in fiery pleasure, barely hearing his own choked moans, his hips jerking against mine as we both fell into the blaze of orgasm, burning ecstasy that threatened to scorch us both and if it had ever, ever been this magnificent I didn't remember it...

It was morning when I finally awoke, still naked and stiff from sleeping on the cold stone floor. I got shakily to my feet, feeling as if every ounce of my energy had been sapped away in the night. Moving on autopilot, I struggled into my robes, my fingers fumbling stiffly with the fastenings. It was time for me to leave Naboo behind, and if I got my way this time it would be forever, though no longer because of any hatred I had for this planet. It was time I left that behind as well.

The last time I had left Naboo, alone and yet also with a padawan of my own, I had felt nothing but deep, unrelenting emptiness inside me that nothing and no one could fill. A wound cut deeply into my soul that I had believed would always bleed. Perhaps it would yet. This time, I would leave Naboo with something else. Now, I had the answer to the question I had come here to ask, though perhaps not the one I had thought to find. My Master, my lover, my Qui-Gon, was not one with the Force. He was one with me and that was enough. For now.

-finis-