Circle of healing

XV.

Look with amazement

Soon you will find

That the past is still real,

and it’s all in your mind

(Steve McDonald)

***

The fire began to die down and the last, incandescent log sank into the heat with a sigh, causing crackling sparks to rise and go out like tiny falling stars in the cool night air.

Padme exhaled deeply and leaned back - into the solid body behind her, into the gentle hands patiently brushing her hair. Could she admit how much she enjoyed this closeness, this simple, warm closeness? Wouldn’t it cross the invisible line they had both drawn?

She sighed softly.

"Did I hurt you?" His worried voice was so close to her ear that she tensed fiercely when his cool breath moved her hair.

"No." She laughed insecurely and hugged one upraised knee to her chest. "No, not at all."

His hand hovered over her head for a split second, timidly, then it lowered and continued the soothing strokes. While his left hand slid the brush carefully through the heavy, silky-soft strands of hair, his right trailed behind the silvery object - a movement somewhere between a functional gesture and a lingering caress.

"I miss Sabé." The words burst out of her as though they had been long prepared.

"So I am hurting you?"

His hands let go of the silky strands and fell into his lap.

Padme smiled at the downcast tone of his voice and turned around to face him. "No, you are not," she reassured him. "Brushing my hair is not Sabés task. It’s just . . ."

Obi-Wan mutely raised an eyebrow.

Padme’s eyes wandered over the temple buildings, only barely visible in the velvety darkness. "Sometimes I wished it was."

"Why?"

A slight blush flew over her face and she bent her head a little, causing the dark curtain of her hair to hide her features.

"It’s . . . You will laugh."

"Oh yes," Obi-Wan agreed dryly. "Since I’m known for my outbursts of laughter as of late, I’m sure I am going to laugh."

"You are impossible."

"So I am told."

His features grew softer and he carefully lifted her chin with his crooked index finger.

"Why do you want this to be Sabé's task?"

The long lashes hid the dark brown of her eyes nearly completely.

"It . . . would make me feel closer to her."

Now that the words were spoken, Padme felt relieved. She had never talked about this with anyone, and articulating this feeling hadn’t been easy for her. Now she felt the urge even stronger to explain this sentiment.

"I’m sure it sounds irrational and not at all royal if I say this now, but . . . Sabé is closer to me than any other person in the palace. Yet she is always reserved and professional. There are only a few moments when I see the young woman behind the servant. But . . .," her gaze dropped to the silvery brush in his hands, "I wish we were closer. Doesn’t that sound unbearably sappy?"

Her voice was filled with a cynicism her expressive eyes belied.

"No."

Obi-Wan reached for the brush again and turned Padme around carefully until she was sitting with her back to him. With calm and steady movements he continued brushing her hair.

"I think that allowing yourself to feel that way is a strength, not a weakness."

A smile flickered over her features. She relaxed, leaned back and allowed her eyes to flutter closed - enjoying once again the natural proximity to him.

Padme’s head sank to her chest more and more often as fatigue overpowered her. A few times, she tried to fight her way back into reality, but the gentle brushing made it impossible to concentrate. After a while she gave up struggling and allowed sleep to take her into his warm embrace.

Obi-Wan concentrated solely on giving her as much as possible of that closeness that she had long yearned for.

He hadn’t known how lonely the queen was. And if he was honest with himself, he had never actually thought about it before. But this small confession that had come over her lips so very reluctantly had revealed more to him than she suspected.

She didn’t want this loneliness. But she couldn’t talk about it with anyone in the palace. There she was the strong sovereign ruler who always showed a calm facade and reigned with a cool reserve.

But not here. Here she was who she wanted to be. Here she found the strength to admit what was missing in her life.

Gingerly, as to not disturb her light sleep, Obi-Wan breathed in the scent of her hair deeply and leaned his cheek timidly to her sleeping face, half hidden by the mass of dark hair. He enjoyed the warmth her body, so close to his, exuded.

What he felt was so unreal, so far away from everything he had ever known. So crazy.

Still. The featherweight on his shoulder, this delicate, fragile being, seemingly arisen from a dream and yet stronger than he could ever hope to become - all of this was real and Obi-Wan knew that he did not want to miss this feeling of her unobtrusive strength and support, her closeness. She had become his anchor.

When he was completely certain that she was sound asleep, he picked up her slim body and carried her to bed.

Obi-Wan tucked her in and slid a strand of the silky hair through his fingers one last time.

Pulling his hand away from the shiny hair and the warmth of her skin proved to be infinitely more difficult than he had imagined.

His anchor.

He smiled warmly and went to sleep himself.

***

The wailing sound of the alarm-bell woke Naara abruptly from her dreams. For a while she lay confused with open eyes in the darkness of the room and tried to place the sound.

But before she could call back her thoughts from the warm arms of dreams, somebody knocked at her door in earnest.

"Naara!" The voice of her fellow novice Kezia sounded loud and anxious through the heavy door. "Naara, are you awake?"

The fragile novice crawled from under the comforters and tapped barefoot over the cool floor. Bleary-eyed, she opened the door a crack.

A small ray of yellow light filtered into the darkness of her room.

"What is it?"

She looked at the older girl in confusion and tried in vain to tame her unruly curls.

"Didn’t you hear anything at all?" Kezia pointed behind her. "The alarm-bell has been ringing for a few minutes now!"

The shrill sound still echoed hollowly in the long hall.

"Isn’t it a little late for a training-alarm?" Naara mumbled and rubbed at her eyes.

Kezia's blank face showed her that this was obviously anything but a training alarm, and fatigue fell from Naara like a fine veil.

The tall girl with the shoulder-length dark hair radiated uneasiness, and her expressive green eyes, which were a strange contrast to her bright blue robe, left Naara's face again and again to look into the hall behind her. Her broad, dark eyebrows furrowed impatiently each time. There was a strained expression in her overly pale lips.

Naara scrutinised Kezia, searching for further signs, until understanding began to dawn.

Since she had become a novice in the temple, she had heard the bell ringing only once - after the invasion of the Federation.

Hundreds of injured people had been brought to the temple and the priestesses had worked to the point of total exhaustion.

Now the bell was ringing again. What was the meaning of that? How could she possibly have forgotten about that terrifying sound?

Naara’s bright blue eyes fastened insecurely and nearly pleadingly on the older novice in front of her. "What are we going to do now?"

With a painful suddenness she remembered the punishment of the high priestess.

Were they going to make her stay in her chamber while there was actual work to do out there? Real work - not just training?

"I . . . I’m not allowed . . ."

Kezia seized the younger girl’s arm and directed her back into her chamber.

"Get dressed," she said with a hectic side-glance to the other Novices who scurried out of their chambers. "We’re going to need every single hand tonight."

***

"Well, how do you feel now?"

The voice, laced with acidic taunting, made Obi-Wan’s blood freeze in his veins. He felt strangely heavy, motionless, and completely at the mercy of the changing lights and shadows of the reactor room. The red force-field, which had been inactive up to now, flickered to life with a low hum.

"Better, right?"

He didn’t know the voice, had never heard it before, but instinctively he knew whom it belonged to. His hands clawed into Qui-Gon’s tunic.

He also knew that it was impossible that this voice should ever speak again. Obi-Wan felt the foreign presence reaching inside him, reaching for a place behind the pain that covered everything and made everything else unimportant.

Living, dying - what difference did it make? His life had ended. It had died along with the man whose lifeless body he had bedded in his lap, whose blood soaked his clothes - warm yet lifeless.

Nevertheless this voice touched something inside of him, something strange and dangerous.

Arduously he removed his hands from the rough material of Qui-Gon’s tunic and allowed his master to slip to the floor. Each movement that separated him from Qui-Gon ripped more out of his heart, yet he rose - eyes closed and knees shaking.

A part of himself had just died here and the soft presence of Qui-Gon’s quiet, unobtrusively strong and supportive mind had been replaced by an emptiness that was endless and made him feel the loss as if someone had burned a vital organ out of his body.

The emptiness threatened to pull him into the depths of the maddening pain.

The other, foreign presence found this emptiness and fed off it, becoming stronger. Obi-Wan almost thought he heard a satisfied laugh.

"Stop whining, little Jedi. I kept thinking you were all so damn stoic."

The laughter was there now - distinct and cruel. Heavy boots produced clicking noises on the reflecting floor.

"You can't even manage to look reality in the eye? The old man must have been a great teacher."

The biting taunt in those words seduced Obi-Wan to open his eyes and stare at his opponent hatefully.

"Aha." The Sith grinned and exposed a line of decaying teeth. "A reaction."

Obi-Wan nearly wished he hadn’t opened his eyes. That wasn’t possible.

Through his burning hatred he tried to analyse the situation calmly.

That was it.

His brain must have suffered some kind of trauma from the sudden severing of the bond to Qui-Gon and now it compensated this loss with hallucinations.

"This is pathetic, little Jedi." The Sith’s yellow eyes glowed contemptuously. "We were so close already."

Close. Close?!

Obi-Wan’s thoughts desperately raced around those words. Why was he so helpless?

"Are you going to deny that you enjoyed it?"

The Sith came closer, cornered him like a beast of prey would. The dark aura around the man was palpable, taking away the air that Obi-Wan needed to breathe.

Without him commanding it directly, Qui-Gon's light sabre, which the younger Jedi had dropped earlier, almost disgusted, began to jerk slightly.

"Enjoyed??"

It was the first word he had spoken since Qui-Gon had closed his eyes forever. His vocal cords were still rough and overtaxed from the inhuman scream he had given.

He was a little surprised that he could speak at all.

Why did the world keep turning?

The Sith grinned again. "Just forget the old man for a few moments and focus on the important things in life."

He kicked contemptuously at the light-sabre that came rushing at him over the smooth floor. Nevertheless something like interest flickered in those yellow eyes.

"Play with your little Jedi-friends, not with me. Oh, but . . ." The tattooed man stopped and covered his mouth with a mockingly coy gesture. "They’re not going to want to play with you any longer. You violated their rules. You have disgraced yourself, you've been seduced. You have been touched and have tasted the forbidden fruit . . ."

Even though Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to move before - all his power returned upon hearing those words. Within a split second the light sabre was activated in his hands and he launched an attack at the Sith.

But the Sith parried his blows with the red sword as though he hadn't been expecting anything else.

Loud electrostatic humming filled the room and sparks flew around them like falling stars.

"What do you want from me?"

Obi-Wan realised that he was shouting both verbally and mentally, but he didn’t care.

Empty and eaten by such excruciating pain that he thought he would break under the sheer magnitude of it, he couldn’t find a hold on his training. It cost him every ounce of his rapidly fading power to raise his shields once again and block out the Sith and all his poisoned words.

Again the tattooed man laughed and this time there was something akin to satisfaction in it.

"Good."

He struck at Obi-Wan’s sabre with a nearly insulting ease.

"What I want?"

Their swords crossed in front of their faces, sparkling and sizzling. The glowing eyes of the Sith pierced deeply into the ever-changing green-blue of Obi-Wan's eyes.

"I want to welcome my new brother. My master will be very pleased."

Disgusted, Obi-Wan called for the force and pushed the black-clad man away from him without touching him. Only slowly did the words that the Sith had just spoken seep into his mind.

*No, no, NO!‘*

Obi-Wan’s knees buckled under the power of those words.

"That is not true," he whispered hoarsely to himself. "I haven’t left the path of light. Haven’t left it . . ."

The Sith laughed out loud, as if the Jedi had just made a very good joke. He deactivated the blood-red light-sabre and sank to his knees next to Obi-Wan, touching the young man’s shoulders all too familiarly.

"Do you really think that you could have conquered me from your path of light, little Jedi?" The yellow eyes pierced Obi-Wan’s soul. "Are you really that naive?"

In a flash of horrible clarity Obi-Wan saw the moment of his victory . . .

. . . saw himself, saw his wild, vindictive eyes, the uncompromising attitude and the perfidious craving to kill. The dark side of the force swirled and closed around him for a few blinks of an eye. He had enjoyed what he had seen, had enjoyed the sudden rush of pure power that had pulsed through him . . .

Groaning, he hid his face in his hands.

"No. I haven’t turned. I haven’t . . ."

"I thought Jedi weren’t allowed to lie," the Sith interrupted him sarcastically.

Obi-Wan didn’t look up. He heard the black clothes of the Sith rustling as the man rose. For a few moments the dark aura was gone, then Obi-Wan felt hot breath on his neck.

"Face the facts. You enjoyed it. You’re walking in blood, it already reaches your knees, little Jedi. You just don’t know it yet."

When the Sith pressed his hot lips to the base of Obi-Wan's Padawan braid, breathing lasciviously down his neck, the young Jedi’s world shattered.

He shrank away from the pure evil in the creature, thrashing and fighting. "NO!" His scream could not be be called human anymore. "I haven’t turned! I haven’t turned!"

He couldn’t say how many time he had screamed those words until a worried Padmé Naberrie woke him.

***

click next to read the next chapter or previous to return to the "Circle" index