Circle of healing

I.

Oïgame compay! No deje el camino por coger la vereda.
(Listen friend! Don’t stray from the path.)
--Ibrahim Ferrer--

***

The tea he was given shone like dark gold. He felt the heat the drink was exuding, but it didn't really register in his mind. Almost automatically he placed the delicate bowl to his lips and swallowed mechanically, without thinking. There was nothing left to think about. His mind was exhausted.
The healer priestess waited until he had finished drinking and carefully took the bowl out of his hands. "You need to rest, young master."
'Rest! What an irony. If I hadn't rested so much in the past, this rest I'm advised to have now wouldn't be necessary in the first place.'

***

The woman watched the form of the man intently.
He could have been her son. A young man, barely 25 standard years old, clad in a sand coloured tunic accompanied by brown breeches. A roughly woven cloak lay around his shoulder. She didn't know if she was the only person to whom it seemed that way, but she couldn't shove the feeling aside that the weight of this cloak was going to crush him.
"Rest, young master," she repeated. She was sure that he wouldn't follow her advice. Just like he hadn't followed any of her suggestions since she had seen him for the very first time.
The priestess shook her head in worry. This couldn't go on like that.
She was interrupted in her thoughts when a small hand was placed on her arm. Even though she managed to quell a shocked yelp, she could feel her heart pounding painfully against her ribcage.
The fragile figure of a young woman, clad in a cloak which nearly hid her face completely, pointed towards the young man. "How is he?"
The priestess motioned for the newly arrived person to follow her. With a last glance at the figure in the heavy brown cloak she retreated into the shadow of the high arches. Once arrived there the woman turned back her hood.
The priestess sank to her knees with a suppressed sound of surprise. "Your Majesty, I wasn't informed that you were planning a visit . . ."
"I beg you, get up." The queen's voice was soft." There is no need for you to kneel in front of me." An apologetic smile flashed over her face. "I wanted to look for him by myself. There is no need for the whole royal household to accompany me."
Only when she had stood up did the priestess realise that the queen hadn't just come in a simple robe. The make-up, usually her constant companion outside the palace, was also missing. Suddenly she looked very young.
"Tell me, Reaja. How is he?"
Sorrow clouded the face of the woman in her best years. "I don't know, your highness. The physical wounds have healed. But as sad as it is, my healing powers don't extend to the soul."
The queen frowned and glanced back to the silver sparkling pond where the tall figure still hadn't moved. "Is there nothing we can do?"
"Before the healing process of his soul can begin, he has to learn to forgive himself. I'm afraid that he is not ready for that yet. Until then . . ." Reaja sighed heavily, "I can only stop his body from failing."
A second priestess in the traditionally radiant blue robe of the healers appeared out of the arches. She didn't recognise the queen who had turned away slightly, and spoke quietly but urgently to Reaja. Indicating a bow that showed her respect for the older woman, she retreated.
"I am being called back to the temple, your Majesty."
The young woman turned to face the priestess. "Do you think I could stay?"
The queen's voice was so sad that Reaja had to restrain herself not to scoop her into a warm, motherly hug. This woman in front of her was no longer the queen of an entire nation. This was a young woman who worried about a friend, even more than she admitted. Reaja saw the brown eyes darkening, just as if shadows were flying over them, dark premonitions and fear.
She whispered a short spell to save her from harm and then placed two fingers on the perfect parting. The queen was momentarily confused but when she recognised what the priestess was doing she smiled.
"I thank you, Healer," she replied her short appreciation.
Without any further word, the priestess turned on her heel and left the queen behind in the soft sound of light rain.

***

The woman who still looked at the figure on the now slightly rain-ruffled pond wasn't the queen anymore. This wasn't Amidala, the cool and self-controlled woman who led her people with strong hands and calm demeanour. This was Padmé, the woman she had been before – the woman she still was.
Sometimes this hide-and-seek confused even her and often she asked herself which of those two lives was better. The queen's or the handmaiden's? No matter how often she thought about it - she never found an answer. And maybe it was good the way it was. Only due to these circumstances she could allow herself those rare minutes in which she - far away from the stiff ritual and the pomp of the palace - could simply be herself. Without make-up, without ornaments for her hair that seemed to weigh a ton and without those gowns that made moving a nearly impossible task.
Now here she was, desperately wishing for the authority which this mask brought with it. Perhaps it would help the friend. Perhaps the queen's authority would bring him out of this lethargy. Padmé dismissed the thought as fast as it had come. Authority would only drive him further over the edge.
But what was she supposed to do now? Helplessness was not a feeling she was used to.
Reluctantly she walked a few steps out of the arches and up to him. The rain was icy cold and even though she wore a cloak, it seemed to go right through to her skin. Nevertheless she didn't dare go any closer. The young Jedi had erected an aura of dismissal around him, with the intent of sending everyone away, no matter how noble the reason. No one, not even his Padawan who was on his way to Tattooine now, had been able to reach him.
Had all of this really happened just a week ago? To Padmé it seemed like an eternity. No one was beginning to know how often she had been here since that day. Too often she had sneaked out of her rooms and had left Captain Panaka and the royal household behind in sheer panic.
But that didn't matter. Her worries were only on the young Jedi who was standing out there in the rain. Whose loss was her fault. The rain was falling steadily by now, drenching her cloak. Padmé was miserably cold. Her gaze wandered back to him.
Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Did he know that she was standing here, watching him? Did he know how much she suffered with him, how much the pain of the recent loss hurt her, too?
'If I hadn't asked for their help, his master would still be alive right now.'
That sentence had burned into her thoughts and no matter how often she tried to push it away - Obi-Wan's silent grief was there to remind her of it.
'I have those lives on my conscience. Qui-Gon's, the the pilots' , the the Gungans' . . . How do you live with a load like that? Is that the burden that a queen is requested to carry? Is it demanded?'
Padmé's teeth had started to chatter in a steady rhythm, without her realising it. She welcomed the cold like a punishment for her actions.
'What else could I have done?' she asked herself. 'My people would have been killed or enslaved! But was our freedom worth this terrible price?'
Her head started to hurt as the sheer load of her conscience sank onto her shoulders with its full power.
'And Kenobi? What right did I have to make him become this shadow of himself?'
Padmé raised her face into the rain to stop the hot tears that threatened to fall. She couldn't cry like a small child. She still was the queen. No matter if Padmé or Amidala - both were expected to be in control of their feelings. But why did it hurt so much? Why did she feel like she was breaking apart under the horrible weight of her guilt?
As if he had sensed her thoughts, Kenobi turned around to face her.
Padmé cringed under the gaze. The eyes that had once been a mesmerising, radiant blue had now become dull. His face looked sunken and emaciated. How could a single week possibly destroy so much in a man?
Kenobi didn't avert his eyes. "Your Majesty."
Had that been a formal announcement? An indictment? A question? The answer froze in her throat. She felt the urge to run, far, far away to avoid the pain in his eyes. But she was locked in the place, unable to move a single muscle.
The young Jedi walked a halfhearted step towards her. His eyes were still filled with an almost inhuman, barely endurable pain. "The rain is cold, your Majesty. You shouldn't be here."
Padmé swallowed and forced the words around the lump in her throat. "Is the rain any less cold for you, Jedi Kenobi?"
"What difference does it make?"
Unwanted anger arose in Padmé. Who did he think he was? Who gave him the right to occupy all of the grief for himself, to drown in it without thinking of the others?
"You're so self-righteous, Jedi Kenobi." The words had left her mouth before she could think about why she had wanted to verbalise them.
The young man lifted his tired eyes. He didn't even try to look surprised. The rain started to leave his marks on his handsome features. They looked like tears.
"Am I?" he asked. "Well, if your majesty thinks that way, then I wonder why you are still concerning yourself with me. The palace surely has a warm bath and dry garments ready for you."
The self-loathing that reverberated in those words hit her like a slap in the face. What had made her say that? She had had no right.
Still reluctant, she closed the remaining distance between them. "By chance I know that there is enough hot water and dry garments for two."
She tried to smile without letting it become the pained grimace it threatened to become. Just as she had expected, the Jedi didn't return the smile but stared at the clear play of the raindrops on the surface of the pond.
This place was beautiful, but Padmé doubted that the Jedi realised it.
"Come with me, Jedi Kenobi," she implored.
Under no circumstances would she leave him standing here. Jedi or not, she knew those rains better than he did. She knew how high the chances to catch a nasty case of flu were. Every Naboo knew.
But Kenobi was no Naboo.
Even though the thought of breaking some kind of taboo by touching him worried her, she plucked gingerly at the drenched sleeve of his cloak. The brown fabric must have become extremely heavy with all the water it had soaked up.
"I thank you, your majesty, but I prefer to stay here."
'Damn Jedi politeness!' she fumed inwardly.
There was scarcely a more effective way of chasing someone away than with this kind of icy politeness. Too bad for him that she was immune to that. She had been learning how to use exactly this kind of tactic for far too long not to be able to sidestep it.
"Jedi Kenobi, I don't want to make this an order, because I am not here as the queen. I ask you as a friend: Come with me. Qui-Gon surely wouldn't want you to catch your death out here."
Kenobi mumbled something that was too soft for her to understand, but he nodded. With heavy steps that made all the ease and the litheness of his usual way of carrying himself forgotten, he followed the queen. Both of them left a twinkling trail of droplets of water behind them on the marble floor under the arches.

***

Padmé had some difficulties trying to calm down an agitated Captain Panaka and a much more agitated handmaiden. Sabé, her personal bodyguard, was outraged about the queen's little excursion. Padmé didn't need an angry outburst from her to find that out. She saw it in the tense posture and in the reproachful looks Sabé gave her.
"Sabé, bring dry garments for the Jedi and me and prepare a bath." Her teeth were chattering so fast by now that she found it hard to talk at all. Her jaw hurt.
The handmaiden raised a questioning eyebrow, but retreated from the queen's chambers without another word. Padmé knew that it was unseemly to bring a man into those chambers. But as of right now she didn't care about what was seemly and what was not.
Kenobi still stood in the doorway, with a puddle of water around his feet that was slowly growing larger.
At Padmé's gesture another handmaiden hurried into the room and removed the queen's cloak from her shoulders first and then the Jedi's. Padmé smiled when the young woman gasped, surprised by the weight of the Jedi's cloak. The handmaiden shot the young man an inquisitive glance before she retreated.
Padmé sighed. The mills of gossip had started to turn. In less than one hour the whole palace would know that the queen had a man in her chambers. She shook her head, resigned, and waited for Sabé to return.
"Sit down, Jedi Kenobi." She pointed towards a soft chair.
"That won't be necessary, your Majesty. I do not intend to stay."
Padmé's eyebrows shot up. "You don't?"
Kenobi shook his head. "This is not the proper place for me and you will be in trouble."
"Trouble?" The queen gave a silvery laugh, a sound echoing softly in the high chamber. "Trouble, Jedi Kenobi? Did you forget who's the queen here? This is the place where I can do what I please."
A slight gleam in his eyes showed that he was amused. Not more. His face stayed expressionless. "Nevertheless this is not the right place for me."
Padmé rose and tried to get her chattering teeth under control to give her words a little bit of the much needed dignity. "Where is the right place for you then, Jedi? With the deceased?"
That must have struck a nerve. He flinched visibly but didn't answer.
Without paying any further attention to him she turned towards the returning Sabé who signaled her to come behind a folding screen in a corner of the huge room.
With swift and efficient movements she undid the queen's garments and handed her a silk robe. She had found out quite some time ago that the queen didn't approve of being attended too much, so Sabé only did the bare necessities.
"Your bath is ready, Your Majesty. So is the Jedi's."
Padmé whispered something to Sabé who nodded. While the queen left the room to walk the short distance to the bathing area, Sabé shifted her attention towards the soaked Jedi.
"The queen told me to attend you," she informed him when she undid the belt of his tunic without inhibition. Sabé was used to the kind of work, so it surprised her even more when the young man caught her hands and stepped back from her.
"I don't think that I will need your help." He released her hands.
The handmaiden smiled softly after she recovered from the initial shock. "I realise that you don't need it. But don't you think that it would be nice to have someone take care of you instead of you always taking care of others?"
Obi-Wan Kenobi felt the earnestness behind the young woman's words, but he raised his hand in a dismissive way. "I am grateful for your offer. But it's not the way of a Jedi to have someone to attend him."
Sabé shrugged. "As you wish. I'm going to put your fresh robe over here and wait for you outside to show you the way to the bathing area." With those words she retreated and left Kenobi on his own.
He shook his head and asked himself, not for the first time, why he had taken the queen's offer. This was not a place for him. The splendour nearly suffocated him - every inch of his soul yearned for the quiet serenity and the simplicity of the rooms in the Jedi-temple. But she had been right. A little longer out there in the rain and the cold and he would have caught a dangerous case of pneumonia.
'What would have been so bad about that?'
He dismissed the thought with some difficulties and took off his wet garments. Even though his awareness was still numbed by the excruciating pain of his loss, he realised that he was freezing. Quickly he slipped into the robe Sabé had given him and was surprised to feel the cool silk sliding against his skin. A luxury like this was not common to a Jedi and he felt correspondingly bad about it.
Even though his mind wanted to deny him the pleasure of a hot bath, he couldn't fight his body this time. Without much thought his legs started to move and followed the waiting Sabé.

***

The water was pleasantly hot and he sank into the most agreeable, fragrant warmth with a sigh.
Instantly his consciousness stung. What right did he have to enjoy this luxury? He didn't deserve it. He had been more than discourteous to the queen and there was nothing about his behaviour that could be excused.
Furthermore there still was the pain - the icy cloak around his heart seemed to be melting in the warmth. Tears stung in his eyes.
'Not here. No weakness. No anger. No weakness.'
He had repeated those words so often after Qui-Gon's death that he didn't even willingly have to think them anymore. They were there as soon as his carefully placed mask of strength started to slip. Obi-Wan tried to centre himself to escape those thoughts at least for a little while.
He was tired beyond measure. Sleep was unthinkable, he had sunk too far into grief and fear of what he had done. Sleep appeared inappropriate now; thinking of what he had done, it almost seemed that he would fail Qui-Gon in some way if he slept.
Part of him knew that this was nonsense.
But that knowledge didn't help at all.
Days ago his body had started sending him warning signals, which he ignored vehemently. Here, in the warmth of the water and the obviously very close steam bath where the queen was, he realised just how much he had overtaxed himself. As a Jedi he was trained to cope with a few days without sleep, but more than a week without sleep was too much, even for a Jedi.
His gaze wandered over the luxurious but not pompous furnishings of the bathroom. It was one huge room, divided by different paper-like partition-walls. Soft light seemed to emanate from everywhere without him being able to find its source. Next to him, only two partition walls away, he could hear Sabé talk softly to the queen. Had he wanted to, he could have understood every single word they were saying. But what would that have accomplished?
He sank deeper into the comfortable warmth and felt his hurting muscles starting to relax. Fatigue came over him like a heavy black blanket. There was no point in trying to escape this. Obi-Wan had known, or at least expected, that this would claim its tribute sooner or later.
'I'm sorry for not being stronger, Master,’ he thought before the dark blanket of fatigue swathed him completely.
He didn't feel anything anymore when he sank under the water.

***

The queen sat up at the young Jedi's bed. It was the least she could do.
She wasn't quite sure whether it really had been an accident or if Kenobi had tried to follow his Master - fact was that Sabé had found him in one of the pools; unconscious and under water. Her scream had alarmed Padmé who had been drying her long hair behind a thin wall right next to that pool, and so it had been the queen who had been there to help Sabé and not a guardian. Luckily he couldn't have been laying like that for very long, because they could resuscitate him quickly.
Padmé's heart had stopped beating for some endless seconds when she had heard Sabé's cry for help. She had immediately known that something had happened to Kenobi, had been afraid to have lost him, too.
'Hadn't you already lost him before?'
Unwillingly, she shook her head against that thought and then turned back towards the sleeping Jedi.
She was sitting in one of the seldomly used rooms belonging to her private chambers. A bed for the Jedi had been put up here.
Sabé and Reaja had tried to convince their queen to get some rest, but Padmé had categorically refused. Just as long Captain Panaka had tried to make her move the Jedi into the guest rooms. With that he had nearly crossed the line.
Padmé knew that Panaka didn't like the Jedi. But to turn against his queen, on top of that because of such a triviality? To start a discussion like that with her was not very wise, and it was not his place to give her any kinds of orders. If she wouldn’t have managed to expel him from the room with an icy friendliness in the very last second, she would have lost her temper because of his insubordination.
While Sabé had brought a tray with fruit and wine mixed with a bit of water and had retreated once again, she had murmured something about not wanting to be in Panaka's skin the next time he met the queen.
Thinking of that short flicker of the handmaiden’s dry sense of humour, Padmé smiled.
She watched the Jedi’s features. The healer priestess Reaja had given him a potion that would make him sleep quietly, until his body had recovered some of its strength. He looked peaceful, Padmé thought. The grief had embedded itself, leaving deep furrows in the smooth, boyish face but at least the resigned look on his face had disappeared.
For a moment her petite hand lingered in the air just above his face, then she brushed past one of those stern lines.
"How much I would like to undo all of this, Jedi Kenobi," she whispered.
She knew that it was not in her power to change the past.
But she would watch over the young Jedi's sleep. It was the least she could do . . .

***

Later on she couldn't tell when exactly she had fallen asleep in the big armchair. The only thing that was sure, was that the sleep wasn't the least bit refreshing. The last week's events rushed past her again and again, remaining menacingly, and did not let her have any rest at all.
Suddenly the dream changed.
She was standing on a high catwalk that led over a bottomless abyss. The deep and threatening hum of lightsabers became audible.
Sparks crossed her vision before she saw the persons. Her adrenaline level shot up immensely as she ran up to where the noise of static was coming from. Right in front of her, a red force field closed, stopping her from running any further. Her hand painfully locked around the handle of her own lightsaber while she tried to control her erratic breathing. From where she stood, she was damned to watch idly as . . .

***

Padmé woke abruptly from the dream. Cold sweat had formed on her upper lip, and her mouth was dry. It took her a few moments to find her way back into the real world. Her whole body was shaking, the adrenaline was pumping through her veins in doses that were much too high. Her heart was racing.
What kind of a dream had that been? She didn't even know the places she had seen in it, had never held a lightsabre in her hands. But nevertheless it was as though she had never been anybody else than this person in front of the force field who was so vastly helpless despite his strength, his knowledge and his training.
Padmé rubbed her eyes and rose to get herself a glass of water. Her throat was dry and hurt.
Instinctively she asked herself how the Jedi, who had been standing in the rain much longer than her, would be feeling. Carrying this thought with her, she turned to Kenobi.
Had she ever realised how pale he was? Or was that just another sign of grief? Reaja had told her that he had been sent to the healer's temple because he neither slept nor ate.
Padmé felt another wave of guilt starting to suffocate her.
She wondered whether she should call for Sabé. But the handmaiden already slept for a few hours and Padmé didn't want to wake her for nothing.
So what was there left to do? Uneasy, she walked up and down in the big chamber. It was strange how, in such a state of mind, even the biggest room could cause claustrophobic feelings.
With swift steps she strode up to one of the big windows and opened it wide. Cold night air found its way in and instantly filled the room with the silvery light of the moon and the smells of the hundreds of different flowers outside the Theed palace. Silence lay over the big arches.
A silence she had always enjoyed, a silence which . . .
. . . was sharply broken by a muffled cry.
The queen flinched fiercely and closed the window at once. She only realised that the cry had come from her own chambers, when it was repeated.
Behind her, Kenobi had started to toss and turn and mumble incomprehensible words. "No! You cannot leave!"
Padmé worriedly sank to her knees next to the Jedi and watched him closely. The nightmare he was caught in seemed neverending, his face turning more and more into a mask of hatred, loneliness and vindictiveness that scared Padmé more than everything else. She knew that sleepers shouldn't be woken before their time, especially not when they were dreaming. But this sleeper scared her. With great care she put her slim hand on the Jedi' shoulder and shook him gently.
"Wake up, Jedi Kenobi."
She vaguely remembered Reaja's potion and the fact that she probably wouldn't succeed in trying to wake him - but she had to try.
Again she shook him. The answer was an irritable growl.
Now Padmé was not only shivering because of the cool night air that had flooded the room. Jedi were known to be peaceful, they had left feelings like anger far behind them. But all she could find on Kenobi's sleeping face was darkness.
"Kenobi!" Her voice had become sharper than she had intended, but it seemed to have worked.
The Jedi slowly freed himself of the nightmare's claws and woke up. When his eyes opened and fastened on the queen, they had the colour of a storm-darkened sky. The worry and the fear that had not completely ebbed away were both emanating from her as loudly as screams to Obi-Wan. Something had happened while he had slept. Something . . . elusive.
'This terrible darkness . . . Is he all right?’
Kenobi stared at the queen with an expression of mild confusion. She hadn't moved her lips, yet he had heard her as if she had spoken clearly.
More words reached his mind this way, but the woman opposite him had not moved a single muscle even as he heard her speak. A boundless dark wave of guilt washed over him, so sudden that it left him gasping for air.
Padmé felt the Jedi's utter confusion even before she saw it. It ran deep and brought forward questions she couldn't answer. But despite the confusion, she felt more.
Anger, grief, despair hopelessness – all those emotions that lay hidden behind the Jedi's stoic facade, dragged her down into an increasingly violent whirl which threatened to drown her.

***

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