Circle of healing

XXIII.

Never felt last evening,
that by this afternoon
Whole new way of thinking,
And I’m talking about you.

(James Yorkston)

***

If there was one thing Padmé hadn't expected, it was Obi-Wan submerging and disappearing in the clouds of steam rising from the hot spring. The past moment was suddenly just that - passed. Gone was the strange feeling of power she had shortly held over him. Gone the slight twinge in her stomach, the hope to finally have found the right words. Gone also the relief to have vented steam for once.
Gone with him.
Padmé stared into the impenetrable clouds. The bird that had flown away earlier came back and started to sing. It seemed as though it was mocking her. Her and her naïveté. Had she really expected to find a way to him? He was a Jedi and stayed a Jedi, someone who didn't allow anyone to see behind his carefully erected walls.
Nevertheless. It was enough. She would have given anything if he had only told her a bit about himself. Something, anything. Something which would have showed her that the word trust wasn't just a polite but meaningless phrase. But it seemed that she had erred.
She felt empty.
How could he do this to her over and over again? And why did she let him?
Padmé breathed quickly. The emptiness was being filled more and more by anger.
And then, suddenly, she rose, threw her head back and screamed. Screamed so loud that the jungle around her fell silent immediately. Screamed until her voice resonated in the empty rooms of the temple. Screamed until her throat ached and she didn't have any breath left.
Weakness flooded her when she halted. Padmé closed her eyes and sank backwards against a fallen column.
"Impressive."
When she opened her eyes, Obi-Wan stood in front of her, smiling, an over-tunic in one hand and the data-pad in the other.
"Remind me never to anger you. I'm sure your voice alone could kill."
"Never to anger " Padmé began. She groped for a comeback. Any kind of answer which would have been fitting or worthy or in whatever way proper. She found none.
In its place she did something Obi-Wan clearly hadn't expected.
She slapped him across the face, the pushed against his ribcage and sent him stumbling into the hot spring with an "oomph" and a splash.
"Bastard."

***

"Hush, hush, please be quiet!" Naara rushed from one tiny bed to the other and tried - to no avail - to calm the screaming babies. "The priestess will never allow me to return to the main temple if all of you don't sleep soon!"
Five. Only five children had been given into her care. And everything had been just fine until it was time for bed. Because this was exactly the moment her little ones decided that it wasn't time to sleep at all.
And her worry was justified. It was her duty to make sure the children slept, and if she didn't do it, they would keep her here until she had - after night upon night - found a way to make sure they slept peacefully.
Sighing, she acknowledged grudgingly that it may not have been an overly good idea to raise the ire of the acolyte in charge.
One of the kicking children on her arm, she walked between the beds and wondered what would happen if she just took a few of the herbs she had cut in the Aborethum this morning and combined them into a sleeping potion. Not that she knew how to brew such a potion, but there was no harm in trying, was there? Or maybe she should just fake an acute fit of madness? It wasn't as if she was far from this state anyway.
The baby on her arm started to become more quite, but the others still screamed and kicked loud enough for her to worry that she would lose her little victory soon enough.
It was the last option, and Naara didn't hope for much of a success, but she had to try.
The melody she sang was simple, a lullaby she remembered her mother singing to her. Naara lost herself in the uncomplicated song, and suddenly the children weren't her opponents anymore, but her allies. She went from bed to bed and sang. Sometimes quiet and alluring, sometimes a bit more brash, and sometimes tender as could be.
It was a little miracle to her, but the children calmed down. One after the other started to listen to her, and fell asleep soon after.
Naara's song ebbed away into silence. The head of the baby on her arm had sunk against her shoulder and she felt the warmth of the little bundle, realised for the first time the child's pleasant smell and the tiny hand which clung tightly to her index finger. A smile played around Naara's lips. Her gaze travelled over the beds and the sleeping children. They weren't quite was bad as they had seemed.
Taking her little load with her, Naara sat down in the comfortable chair near the window and watched the moon rise.

***

He couldn't remember how many times he had said he was sorry. What was it between them that kept resulting in misunderstandings?
He had left the hot spring so quickly to bring her back the data-pad, to prove that his plea for earning her trust was serious.
And now? What good had it done him? A burning cheek and an unwanted bath. Great. And he had just donned dry clothes. And he wasn't even talking about her tunic and the data pad. He laid the dripping wet tunic onto the basin's edge, and dove for the data-pad.
Suppressing a wry grin was hard. Luckily, those pads were waterproof, or her impulsive reaction would have destroyed all her work.
He saw Padmé's glance stopping at the small wet heaps and then turning to him, thoughtfully. The silence became uncomfortable once more, and he felt the urge to flee from this searching glance. But if at all, this was the moment to take the Bantha by the ears.
Obi-Wan couldn't stand her silence one more moment. Not the silence, not the unreadable glances, not the mixture of sadness and burning anger in her aura.
"I will say it once again, Padmé: I'm sorry. What else can I do?"
She considered for a painfully long time. "You could talk," she finally ventured. It wasn't obvious whether or not she would continue. But when Obi-Wan opened his mouth to respond, she resumed: "But not now."
His mouth closed. He felt stupid. Whatever was it she wanted to hear?
"Trust, Obi-Wan. That's what it all boils down to. True friendship must be built on trust, or it is a meaningless and hollow word."
"I kept thinking we had a friendship. Is it really so easy to destroy? By a hidden data pad?"
She tapped her foot impatiently on the marble floor. "Do not play dumb with me. This is not about the pad."
"What then?
"Give and take. Do you even remember why we were sent here?"
Give and take. The water around him seemed to grow cooler as her words sank in. They had been sent here to help each other to sever the bond which had formed between them so unnaturally. Yet until now, nothing had happened which went even remotely in the direction of achieving that goal. And it wasn't Padmé who was to blame. It hadn't been her who had shut herself off and didn't let anyone get close to her.
Give and take. Until now, she had given without taking. He had taken without giving. And somewhere in the middle, in one of their many scrambled attempts to understand each other better, he had developed feelings for her which didn't help matters in the slightest. But had he really tried to understand her until now? Hadn't he just had a picture of her, and had tried to make her fit into it?
But the picture, the stereotype didn't fit the woman in front of him. She broke out at all corners, couldn't be tied down, couldn't be described properly. Was that what made him retreat?
Take the Bantha by the ears.
It was worth a try. But it wasn't the first time that Obi-Wan wished he had listened to Qui-Gon better when his master had told him about the unpredictability of all female beings in the universe. Back then, he had thought it a fairy tale, little stories to tease him, maybe test the concentration of the pupil. Well, this was one test Obi-Wan had not passed.
Thinking about how he would only be able to repeat that lecture in his memory hurt. So he shut away the past and concentrated on the present.
"You have worked on the background of the ritual. What have you found out?"
"You didn't read the pad?"
"Your safety precautions were good." Obi-Wan shot her a wry glance. "So much for trust."
Her eyes lit up in a dark fire. "How dare you "
He raised his hands defensively. "Strike the last sentence. I don't want to fight now."
She breathed deeply. "Fine." Then, as though she couldn't help it: "I would have thought you were better at bypassing safety measures."
He raised an eyebrow. "Maybe I simply didn't want to find out that ending the ritual involves me being quartered and fed to the Hutts by you. The thought is terribly disillusioning."
She gasped, but suppressed a laugh. "Not quite, but close. Yet, should you decide to continue being difficult, the Hutt option is open."
Obi-Wan flinched in mock terror: "Mercy!"
In her most royal pose, she answered: "You could promise reformation." Padmé gestured toward the hot spring and the soft light, brightening the clouds of steam. "Here."
"In the spring?" Obi-Wan's eyebrows shot up again." "Do I have to drown myself? Or will you do that?" He bit his tongue. It was time to lay sarcasm aside and start taking her seriously.
Padmé glared at him. "That wasn't funny."
"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan back-pedalled. Indeed. Even if the cheeky comments seemed to have amused her mere moments ago, this definitely wasn't the time for them anymore.
She bobbed on her feet, an impatient, yet insecure movement. Finally, her mouth settled into certain lines he had observed quite often before when she had set her mind on something and wouldn't move a single centimetre from that decision. And after everything that had happened, he would much rather swallow his own tongue than talk back again. At least within the next hour. It seemed that he had paid attention to at least one of Qui-Gon's lectures.
Her body tensed slightly when she raised both hands to twist her hair into a tight knot she fastened at the back of her head. Then she walked light-footedly to the entrance of the basin and started walking into the warm water slowly.
He watched her, confused and fascinated at the same time. She hadn't even bothered changing into one of the white suits. The flowing material of the crème-coloured dress floated around her and hugged her body where it was already soaked.
She came closer. And he realised acutely, how her closeness stole the ground from under his feet. Yet he stayed where he was, unable to move, unable to do anything but stare at her and hope that she wouldn't interpret his looks.
"Now what?" It seemed to be the most harmless question to break the oppressing silence.
Padmé smiled ominously. "So impatient?"
Obi-Wan bit his tongue. His answer would have made for a handsome drowned body. So he kept quiet and waited.
She glided behind him in a lazy arch. He fought the urge to turn to her.
A wet hand closed over his eyes. He flinched. Salty water ran over his lips. His muscles tensed. Still her mood wasn't readable. Anything could happen anything.
"Close your eyes."
Her voice was near his ear, calm, and almost hypnotic. Still dangerous. Then he felt her withdrawing her hand and placing it against the small of his back to direct him deeper into the water. He lost the ground beneath his feet and submerged shortly, only to find out that she held him safely under his arms and had brought him into a horizontal position. The short panic that had arisen in him when the water had closed over his face, ebbed away.
"Let go."
Easier said than done. His whole body was tense, the unusual position and her unreadable mood woke up his trained instincts.
"Is this really necessary?" he asked carefully.
Her voice was close to his ear again, deeper this time and softer still. "Trust me."
So that was it. That was the test of trust? He was supposed to trust her even though he expected her mood to change and her to drown him any second? It took an effort to relax his muscles. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Nothing." He felt her start to move. To move them both. It was the surreal sensation of floating in a room filled with tiny explosives. Any wrong move, any wrong breath could cause a chain reaction.
"Nothing at all?" He opened his eyes shortly to sneak a glance at her face.
"Try not to expect anything, not to think." When she saw that his eyes were open, she shook her head reproachfully. Oh no, no matter how soft her voice was, the storm was still raging in her eyes. He suppressed a shiver. "Close your eyes. Drift. Trust me."
Finally, he did as he was told. He forced himself not to think about what had led to this situation. Forced himself to forget that he was at her mercy. Forced himself to forget everything but the initial trust he had had - days ago, when she had brought him back from the darkness.
Obi-Wan forgot. He drifted, eyes closed. Meditated on trust. Nothing happened. The longer he drifted, the more distinctly he felt her mood change and her anger dissipate. He floated. And he trusted. Trusted her not to drop him, not to let him submerge should he drift too far, trusted in her not to take advantage of her stronger position to pay him back.
Trust - it was a good feeling to be held by those fragile hands and to know he was safe. Safe - as long as he didn't think.
Safe - until the small hands moved to his chest, pressed down with surprising strength and the water closed over his face.

***

TBC

I cannot apologise enough for keeping you waiting so long, so I won’t even start.
You have a new chapter here, and more will follow, even though I cannot promise that it won’t take just as long as last time. But it will please you to hear that my muse has written me a 7 pages long letter which has spiked quite a few new ideas, and has un-buried a few old ones I had believed to be forever lost.
There’s hope!
And I repeat my words: If you have any ideas about the plot, please contact me, your idea may be the one that gets me writing more.

 

 

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