Fourteen: Sinking
By the time I sit again on the couch, I'm convinced that the matter was addressed completely, that I did what any capable Master would do.
The speech issue was troubling, but it's all been handled. He answered me, and his reasoning was perfectly legitimate. He wouldn't lie to me.
I know him and I know he wouldn't.
I can feel him sinking to sleep, but very slowly. His eyes are closed, I sense, they were closed before I ever left his room.
But his mind is fighting the exhaustion, pulling his consciousness up from lethargy while his body continues to surrender to it.
His eyes are closed, but his mind droops and lifts like lids, flashes of dark and blurred slides of dusky thoughts.
I brush fingers, composed of the Force and ethereal as a feather's touch, across the weary field of his battle, and he stops, quickly aware of my presence.
//Still awake, my apprentice?// I ask softly.
//I'm sorry, Master…I shouldn't broadcast something so small…so loudly…I'm sorry//
I only smile, though the heavy quality of his aura reminds me of my own eternal insomnia. //You weren't so obvious, Padawan. I was checking on you.// My hand spreads a lulling sereneness over his mind, as it's done so often these past years…How many years?
And I think, abruptly and in aged sorrow, how I was so nearly without this chance again. He was separated, in body, mind, in soul, from me, and I never knew if he was plagued by nightmares, if he reached for the balm of my Force only to meet with a cold, empty pit.
As he did when he was younger, when we might as well have been lightyears apart, so was the gaping, stretched canyon of my voluntary breach in the training bond.
Grasping for wisps of nothing, of memory, as he will once the braid is shorn.
There's a tightness in my throat and I swallow. //I was just checking on you.//
//Oh.// And his mind is loosening from whatever shackle of cognizance it was locked into, slipping toward the black, downy cushion of slumber. //Maybe..Maybe you should rest as well…Master…I'm fine now. I'll be…fine now.//
For some foolish reason, my stomach twists into ice-rimed knots and I breathe out in a gust. //Of course you are. And you will be.// My face falls into my waiting palms, and I can't see anything save the dark cradle of them, not even the slits of light where my fingers don't quite meet.
Because my eyes are shut. //Now go to sleep, my Padawan. Or I'll send Master Yoda in there to sing you a lullaby.//
A faint, silver-bright chuckle. //Force…forbid.//
//You've been warned.// And I hope he doesn't notice that the humor is forced, that it's solely for his benefit, for the peace of his precious mind.
His reply is hesitant. //Now I think…I'll just be too scared to sleep.//
My closed eyes tighten. I can't feel the mirth, not within myself, not even within him. //You never have to be scared, Obi-Wan. I'll be here…//
//Then why…why are YOU scared?//
A fleeting question, for I sense him gone, at last, to rest.
And too, I sense new words, more painful, occupy my mind.
The door buzzes. I put a hand to my heart, thinking I've become an old man finally--and in an instant.
I raise thin shields over Obi-Wan, then move to answer it.
Mace is standing in the frame. "Qui-Gon."
"Mace?"
He purses his lips. "I think we need to talk."