"YIN AND YANG"
Part I- Two Halves
By: Princess Sassafras
Notes: My first Star Wars Slash Romance. ALTERNATE UNIVERSE (isn't all Obi/Ani fiction at least slightly AU anyway?) With implied Chinese philosophy!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters of George Lucas' Star Wars…though I often wish I could "borrow" Master Kenobi.
The universe is comprised of pairs, of opposites. Of this, Obi-Wan Kenobi is very sure. There are, after all, night and day, sun and moon, earth and sky. There are also Love and Hate. Anger and Joy. Birth and Death. There is the frozen glass of winter opposite the pure-bright explosion of summer. The human body itself has two sides, one of which is used for balance and the other for primary gesturing. All the opposites that are perceived in the universe can be reduced to one of two forces, Light and Dark, neither of which are completely good or evil. For they are the powerful and opposing sides of the eternal Force to which many have dedicated their lives, or at least have admitted to the existence of. For how can it be denied?
Obi-Wan is more aware every moment of every day that the Force is both the guiding and yielding element of the entire universe. It both controls and obeys. It can calm or impassion. Passion…the troubling subject of his present meditation.
All of his long life—from youngling to Padawan under his beloved Master Qui-Gonn Jinn, to Jedi Master himself—he has been taught to avoid what engenders passion. He was taught that the word passion encompasses many dangerous things: anger, hatred, obsession, lust, and love. A Jedi must know none of these.
As a young boy he swore to love and serve only the Force, driven by the pain he saw around him to make right what was wrong in the universe, to give light where there was only blackness, and he was encouraged by his new Master to take a vow further than the vow of a Jedi to the Order, the vow of a Jedi to the Force itself, a marriage, a sacred and unbreakable union.
In his language, there is only one word for the intense attachment of a human to someone or something: love. In more ancient or otherworldly languages there are thousands. Obi-Wan is increasingly puzzled by this. How could a word that has so many meanings have only one form? For here is abruptly inserted into his mind—like a strong unbreakable arm thrown across a forbidden threshold—the feeling of guilt, the feeling of the wrongness of considering any other love than the one he has pledged his life to.
It broke his heart that day, that day in silent meditation, when alighting on the residual spirit of his old Master, he cried out in joy and pain. He had broken his vow already…and many times.
Obi-Wan Kenobi realized then that he loved not only the Force, but also many of its creations. And he wonders now, as he did then, if this can be so wrong, as many of the more experienced Masters have repeatedly sworn.
As he closes his eyes again, beloved faces swim to and break the still surface of his consciousness. Not only his Master Qui-Gonn, his father and his teacher (for he loved him as both), but others…
Padme Amidala Naberrie. The precious Lady he has pledged in his heart to protect. In her eyes he sees the mother he barely knew, the daughter he may never have, and perhaps a sister…someone to see eye to eye with. But though a Senator and a Jedi may share quiet jokes about their differences on political stances and loyalties, in reality what they are joking about is quite adverse and serious. But Obi-Wan loves her nonetheless.
Shirking meditative thoughts of his former Padawan has never worked for Obi-Wan for long. Even though Anakin is no longer his pupil, the blue-coal-fire eyed, rakishly handsome youth who once followed him and lived only by his counsel, is still there…beside Obi-Wan, a comrade and a brother. No mere fellow Jedi, Anakin seems to complete Obi-Wan's very world with his presence. He is dark and fierce and electric one moment, and bright as the piercing rays of the Tatooine suns the next. He is young and wise, guarded and headstrong. The fact that he was never completely tamed by the Order's tight principles makes him all the more a fierce and formidable fighter for one so green. He leaps from moving speeders, disturbs nests of strange feral creatures on outside planets, flirts far too openly with the women of the Court, and drives Obi-Wan to absolute fits of insanity.
Obi-Wan's lips crack into a fond, though rueful, smile even as he continues his meditation. Rueful because he regrets not having taken on Anakin at an earlier age, not having discovered him soon enough to prevent the young man's forcefulness from flowering. FORCEFULNESS. Obi-Wan thinks this quite a fitting descriptive word for Anakin Skywalker. And he thinks of the meaning of the word: full of force. Though none can deny that Anakin is full of the Force, some doubt in his control of it. And this is what Obi-Wan regrets most of all.
But could it have been prevented by earlier training? Or is Anakin Skywalker simply temperamental by nature. For even when he meditates the aura around him hums with motion. He is a creature of perpetual movement.
Obi-Wan feels that he, himself, is the opposite of this. Sometimes he aches for nothing more than to sit in the cool darkness and the quiet, to sink deeply within himself, and to forget that there are bodies and planets. He wishes to feel only the beautiful shapeless void, full of both brightness and blackness.
Though there is the Dark Side of the Force, this does not mean that everything that is dark in the Force is evil. Obi-Wan knows this to be true, because he feels that he is a sort of dark creature himself. He was often praised by his teachers for his calmness, his cautiousness, and his unfathomable reserve, but there are some Masters who whisper worriedly, or even in outrage, about the attitudes and actions that Obi-Wan Kenobi allows his former Padawan to practice. Rash they call him, and even too bright, like a raging fire. They whisper that it should be contained.
Could it be? Wonders Obi-Wan, isn't he? Wasn't he created to be so? Could I have done anything more to make him less than what he is? Would I have wanted to?
Obi-Wan's heart tells him that there was nothing he could have done, that Anakin would have grown into exactly the man he is, and that there is nothing wrong about him. But Obi-Wan fears that his heart might lie. For here is another conflicting belief of the Jedi: to trust your feelings, but not always your heart.
Here is the struggle: here is the Passion: here is the crux: this beautiful, forceful emotion tearing at his breast. It is fierce and it is bias. He felt it the moment he stared into those electric blue eyes, eyes that should not have belonged to a six year old. They were too knowing, too keen, and too bright. He admits that he loved the boy even then, and though it was chaste it was not at all safe. The very thought of his Padawan in danger had sent him into throes of panicking agony time and time again. To lose him…
To lose him would be sin, would be imbalance itself. Obi-Wan admits that he is a mere half of one whole, a mere piece of the full Soul that was created long before his feeble flesh had begun to be constructed. He has had Anakin by his side for so long, even longer than their very lives it seems, and the thought of losing what he cherishes more than all else makes his insides spasm too painfully for him to bear. Anakin is the piercing star in his black sky, the burning heat that makes his frozen veins thaw, the pure white electric presence, whose absence would leave him in nothingness. For how do we know that black is black, if not for white? How would we know there was nighttime, if every morning there did not rise a blinding sun? Obi-Wan knows that just as these things are right, so is his relationship with Anakin. Even those who doubt the success of his teachings cannot deny the inherent bond between Teacher and Student, Brother and Brother.
Here Obi-Wan speaks his silent prayer, a litany that was forged in his subconscious long before he could accept his heart's own desires: Brother, Student, Teacher, Friend…Love. You were made for me, and I for you. Be with me, stay with me, ride through this long dark sky with me…until the end of days.
Even as he wishes it, Obi-Wan feels the drowning cold blackness envelop his senses, trying to strangle the very memory of light and heat from his heart. He clings to the memory of blue eyes, forcing them to take perfect clarity in his mind, until the cold melts, recedes, is swept from him by a wash of pure fiery light. Anakin…