Title: For He Is Not Truly Mine
Author: Erin
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I don't own them, never did.
Distribution: The Archive. Force Haven. Anyone else, just ask.
Warnings: Only if you've no knowledge of "The Phantom
Menace." Or that Qui had a rebellious Padawan before Obi.
Pairings: Obi/Ani. Unrequited (kinda) Obi/Qui.
Summary: Qui-Gon's thoughts in the movie, not beyond. I'm
not sure how I feel about a glowy Qui.
Author's Note: This is just a rough draft posting to see if
I've got Qui's voice right. To see if I'm on the right
track with this little drabble. Uhm, goes along with the other
drabbles I've written.
"I have a bad feeling about this."
Those were the first words you used to describe the young Anakin Skywalker and you had yet to meet him, you only felt him where I could not. Yet you did not understand the subtle fluctuations within the Living Force as fully as I did, so I discounted your words as merely your anxieties.
So logical and levelheaded you had become that I could only barely see you as you were, so hard did you try to eradicate your past. A past that was as ambitious as young Skywalker's own dreams for his mother and the enslaved people of Tatooine.
In desiring you to learn calm and to lose yourself in the Jedi way, did I crush that passion within you? Did I give you the impression that to show outward emotions, to show any overt emotions, was wrong?
For I well remember the passionate young man who became my Padawan, reluctant though I was to take you on. It was not entirely about you, for you were and still are a bright young man, rather it was what I saw and feared within you. Anger and pain, doubt over your own capabilities, a hungry need for acceptance from anyone who would care, these were things I had seen before.
An ambition to be the best, to be the brightest, my own, dear old Master had those desires as well, though he hid it from the Council well. Yes, you were a Padawan that I did not want, even despite the fact that the Force was telling me that I needed you in my life.
The Living Force could see what I could not, for I was too focused on what had been rather than what could and should be. You are my center, the one who gives me the focus I need to work the will of the Force as it desires to be.
I know that my ways have often confounded you, has often left you baffled and grasping for some kind of limb to cling to. In truth, I have rarely understood them myself for I seem to follow that voice so easily that I do not question what must be done I just know, with everything that I am and all that I have learned, that nothing happens by chance.
Nothing I have done in my life, none of the things that we have done on our missions, is an accident.Yet, you have always followed me and provided for me the things I ask, asking for nothing in return from me, save my approbation.
Introducing you to Anakin, I could see what you with your skeptic sight fully in place, could not. Not even after arriving on Coruscant did you see it, though it was plain to any who cared to look.
Walking away with the Queen and her entourage, he turned back to look at us but it was not me he sought permission to go with them from. It was to you, my dear Padawan, to you that he looked at so pleadingly, so earnestly and waited for some kind of sign from you about what to do.
He wanted to know that it was okay with you if he left with them, wanted to know that you would not disapprove. You who had distrusted him from the first moment you felt his presence and became away of who he was. You who did not do more than offer him a half-hearted smile and a barely there shake of the hand.
You who had seen him bundled up in that blanket on that hard bench in the ship's commissary and gave him your bed. I had felt a disturbance in the Force and walked out to investigate the source, fearing that it was Anakin who had been forgotten in the excitement.
What I saw in that moment let me know that I had not misjudged you, though it filled me with a fear that I did not understand then. Ever so gently, you bent down and wrapped your best cloak about him, before you picked him up and carried him into your room. Watching you move so slowly, as though you feared he would awaken, I was breathless at the tender emotion on your face. You spent the night on the floor, the cold and hard floor, so that he could rest in the comfort of your bed. The next morning, you left him sleeping on that bed and he never knew who had brought him there to rest.
Anakin thought it was me who had given up my cloak and my bed, who comforted him all through the night. I did not bother to correct his belief for a reason that I clearly see now as I wait and recall our time on the ship.
Was I wrong in doing this, in denying the both of you the bond that I was beginning to see between you? Was the jealousy that I thought was yours because I wanted this boy to come with us, really mine? Could I have been fearful of loosing you, my Padawan, to him for the Force seemed to have chosen you to be his guardian as it chose me to be yours?
To lose you to this boy who gave so freely and asked for so little in return from others, could I really be so selfish? I asked the Council to give him to me and grant you Knighthood for I wanted you to stay what you had always been, mine.
I was denied, for they felt they knew best and, though it meant I was unable to help him as a Padawan, in my heart I was relieved. But I would see to it that he had some training in the Jedi arts, I did not want his talent to go to waste.
`Stay on that ship', I ordered him, wanting him to be safe and out of the way of the fighting-and away from Obi-Wan, though that went unspoken.Anakin could not understand why I wished him to stay there but he did as I asked and remained behind.
Obi-Wan and I fought the Sith and in fighting him, I fought a battle within my own soul over my conflicted wants. I realized that I had to let Obi-Wan go for his destiny lay with the boy I had found and brought into the light. My Padawan's destiny was no longer entwined with my own as it had been; for all that he loved me as I did him.
But I was holding him back and he would never grow up to be the Jedi I saw in him as long as I did so. To leave him this way, so alone and confused, not yet ready for the future before him, deeply hurt me.
Losing him to death while there was still so much to say, but I had to let go and leave him to care for Anakin. Trusting his heart and binding him to a fate of great joy-and infinite sorrow, this was something I had to do. For I could see Obi-Wan in ways that he could not, as he would never allow himself to see who he was.
He was my Padawan, my Obi-Wan Kenobi, who would bear up under the pressure with a grace and nobility befitting a Jedi. He would transcend the limits placed upon him with Anakin by his side; he would become all that he needed to become. Before the both of them, a terrible era would begin and they would need each other to get through it.
It was enough for they would be enough to face it together, though they may be torn asunder for a time Obi-Wan was no longer mine to love and protect, I give him freely to the one who will love him best.
Together, they two are one, in a way that we could not be and now, it is enough for me.
End.