Saga Pushing Back-An AU-Part II & Cover Art 11.24

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v673/LuvEwan/temple.jpg]

Disclaimer: All belongs to Lucas.



()

Blood-caked fingers curled around the steel frame of the door. The steel was smooth, flawless, and cool. It was all these lovely things he could barely remember, things he had not known for so long, things that were the opposite of what the shriveled pit caged within his lungs was composed of. His insides were the jagged cave walls. He thought of those walls, the places where he raked against and felt the swell of warm liquid on bare flesh.

And now, suddenly, there were these walls and this door. A door. He could barely wrap his mind around the concept, this rectangular shape that was not a huge, yawning mouth of pointed teeth, smothered by chains. He had to blink the burgeoning fog from his vision; his entrancement with all the silvery beauty was threatening his focus.

Focus, yes. He couldn?t recall most of his life, but focus jutted out at him, it floated, whole and coherent, among the pools of gray ether.

And what did focus mean? It meant narrowing his eyes and breathing slowly and reaching from the doorframe to the little control panel. He was afraid he wouldn?t know what symbols to push, but his fingers had retained more than his head. They glided across the grid of buttons, and then there was a soft beep and the door vanished into the wall.

It was dark.

The layers of shadow unnerved him, for as he took a tentative step inside they webbed around him. They pushed against him. Like the others did, when they shoved him to the ground, and the dust stung his eyes. There was no dust here, no stale scent of rot and sweat, but his eyes were wet somehow.

He moved further into the space. Oh, his fingers had slipped from goodness and softness, and he had existed without days or nights or laughing. But this place had been a secret buried beyond the omnipresence of the cave. He went here and for a while, there was nothing else. Nothing and no one, except the two of them.

Here was happy. He remembered happy, too. It was warmth in his chest and a grin and not needing, because what he needed he had.

There was no happy moment in the other place; each second there throbbed with need. He needed food, but his plate was small and the colorless lump in the middle was smaller, and he was small beside the others, who wore lumps but those made of muscle and could take his plate. They always took it, and so he was even smaller, and could see the sharp ridges of his own bones straining against his skin.

The only way to keep the plate was to push back. He tried to, he would feel the anger boil to a frenzied froth inside him and would try to push against the others, but then a switch was turned inside him, and he couldn?t. He didn?t know why, but it was wrong to become them. They said he would become them, when enough time had ground away into that painful dust, and he wouldn?t care anymore and would push against them all until his bruises were lumps of muscle on his arms and legs.

Time went, like they said it would, and he didn?t care anymore. He pushed. No one took his plate after that. No one would take anything from him again.

He stopped just before he came to the corridor. This was where his hidden warmth would freeze, and the grin would flatten out. He never made it over the threshold.

But now it was different. Because he learned to push, and then he learned to fight, and then he learned to break the chains. He took the starfighter and saw the sky and then burst into that sky, the black stretch with just enough light.

The hall was like the sky. Dark, but with a slit of white illumination to go by. He walked into it, to the glowing strip.

And that door opened, like the other had.

But there was blinding brightness behind this door, and he was not accustomed at all to that. He covered his eyes, letting the room seep in between the cracks of his fingers.

Then his hands dropped, and he allowed the flood to hit him fully.

His room from the life that died

 

Creepy! But in a good way!

 

Sweeeeeeeeeeet you posted it here! This was so chilling at first and still gave me goosebumps!

Great work! Loved the twist to it all Will there be more? Hmmm?

 

Whoa!

That was incredible!

It was rare to hear the tremble of real fear in Anakin Skywalker. The boy experienced it, of course, but he was always careful to drain it from his voice, and restrict it to the private pockets of his soul.

For some reason this passage really stood out for me! Wonderful!

 

OMG I am really surprised and amazed by that one

 

Wow. Kind of hard for Obi-Wan to claw his way back and find his master with a new apprentice. I think Anakin should be frightened.

 

whie_dreams Thanks.

Kynstar More? I honestly can't think of what I'd write. It might require thinking, which is a serious no-no for me. Thank you so much for reading.

VL I know why it stood out. It had the name 'Anakin Skywalker' in it.

PK Thank you.

Noi Anakin is definitely afraid. I mean, look at his competition!

Leona Real subtle there. And thanks for reading again.

 

Truly frightening. ::shivers:: Obviously Obi-Wan has endured some kind of horror in the interim, and it's unbalanced his mind quite completely. Poor Qui-Gon.

Kind of glad you ended it there, actually.

 

^
|
|
|

My emotions... not necessarily in that order.


Loved it, LE. Mind you, I still don't understand some parts... I mean, I know WHAT happened, know I want to know the why... but it was good. Anakin chills me, and I don't know why... *ponders* Anyhow, great job! Poor Obi-Wan! To come back to Anakin... it'd kill anyone.

This was his, because when he was here before, the other person had not been.

You strike me with your one-liners, my friend. That was so poigant, so beautiful... and so sad and breaking at the same time.

Now, please... continue...

Or you can always go post on Broken Cadence. I wouldn't mind either...

-Krystal

 

may Kind of glad you ended it there, actually. Thanks a lot.

Krystal To come back to Anakin... it'd kill anyone. Oh diss! I thnk it would be strange, though, like coming back home after a long time and finding out there's a new member of your family. Your kind words are very much appreciated. Thank you.

 

II: Moving Closer


PG

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.

()

He tested the water first, before dipping in the cloth. It was warm, but not to a temperature that would flush the skin. It did need to be warm, that was certain.

His apprentice was shivering.

But no?no?he corrected himself instantly; sharp as a stinging slap, this was not his apprentice. Time and separation and the irrepressible forward momentum of life had stolen the title from the quietly cold form before him. In the official documents, Obi-Wan Kenobi was not the Padawan of Qui-Gon Jinn. Until recently, Obi-Wan Kenobi had been listed in the Tempe Memorial as a fatality in a ship explosion. The young man had been banished to bittersweet memory in the minds of those who had cared about him. Even his own teacher had left him in the past, it would appear, taking a new student and embarking on countless missions that took him from one edge of the galaxy to the other.

Qui-Gon paused, his hand half-submerged in the bowl. I never looked for him. The rational voice, the prevailing one within his head, insisted that it would have been ridiculous to search for someone who had been reduced to ash among molten rubble. It had been hard enough to recover from Obi-Wan?s death. To have chased a ghost through the emptiness of space would have been forfeiting his sanity.

So he let go of the person who had possessed his whole heart and his every hour. He reverently placed the scarce belongings of his slain protégé in his closet, and only looked at them when the swell of ache inside him was threatening to overwhelm his shattered excuse for existence. He remained Jedi, despite the urge to abandon the Order--the compulsion that seeped into the unguarded thoughts that came when he stood in the barren doorway of Obi-Wan?s old room. And yes, he freed the slave boy Anakin Skywalker, and accepted him as his Padawan. He even came to laugh again, without hearing the phantom chuckles of Obi-Wan layered within the sound.

Now he sat in the amber-tinged light of evening, watching how the illumination poured softly over the otherwise jagged line of Obi-Wan?s cheekbone, and he found himself battling the hot approach of tears. Gods, how did I ever laugh, or smile?or breathe without you?

Obi-Wan merely looked at him with eyes that refused to settle in either aquamarine or emerald; they constantly shifted, the light catching facets of gray and azure and jade and-too often-the pulpy tangle of red veins. The skin surrounding those uproarious/calm eyes appeared to be stained a ruddy purple, as though the weariness of the body was permanent.

Perhaps it was.

For about the thousandth time today, his mind was pulled towards the dark pit in which the truth of his apprentice?s twelve-year disappearance lurked. Nearly two months had passed since Qui-Gon was catapulted from sleep to discover a disheveled, bloody figure trying to squeeze the life out of a wide-eyed Anakin. That in itself was a soul-rumbling shock, but when he had confronted the attacker, he was not met with an anonymous set of features, but the face that had scorched itself in his memory. The ire had drained from him completely, replaced by surprise and confusion and the flooding sensation of unequaled joy. His Obi-Wan did not meld with the motes of conflagration on an alien world, alone and screaming, as the Master had envisioned. He was alive, and glorious Force, he had come home. Suddenly Qui-Gon?s universe had expanded in Light, yet narrowed to focus on the miraculous young man returned to him. He was like a parched creature at last given the sweet replenishment of water, and he drank, and he relished every drop that was every second he could gaze at Obi-Wan, knowing that it wasn?t another cruel fantasy of a bereaved mind. It was wrong for that creature to wonder where the well had sprouted, and why, after so many barren seasons, it was now blessed with what it needed to survive.

No, the creature would not wonder. Qui-Gon wouldn?t either.

Instead, he lifted th

 

poor baby

 

PK I know.

 

Ooooooooh, I just know Obi-Wan was starting fires in Anakin's room. He's so alone and forlorn. There is such agony in the descriptions. They're so touching (literally) with each other, but oooooooooh, Qui-Gon, you're just not ready to handle it without much heartbreak.