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/KHARPT /#15
Mal Shin hadn't made any objection to their joining of the Rebellion, and, with as easily as he accepted their offer, it seemed as if he'd expected it. Once they'd stolen their way onto his smallish ship and were on a course towards the location where the Rebellion was gathering to confer (apparently, they had a base on one of the moons of Endor; it was quite an unknown and out-of-the-way place), Padme and Obi-Wan were finally, at last, given the opportunity to sit down.
Of course, being the workaholics they were, or perhaps as a way to avoid mourning properly, they didn't rest but sat together at a holodesk, its holo lit up in front of them with the star charts and data from the microchip with the five Hutt syndicate locations that Mal had given them. At this particular moment, Mal stood behind them and peered at the holo with his arms crossed, having a moment away from the ship's controls while his main droid took over the autonav.
"What are you going to do with this information?" asked Mal.
"If we plot the location of each Hutt syndicate with the locations and timeline of the hijacked shipments, we might be able to triangulate the relative location of who was orchestrating all of this," said Padme, distracted by the input of data.
"Huh," said Mal, shifting to leave, "Good luck with that."
Padme didn't notice until he'd already wandered off.
"That one goes there," said Obi-Wan, correcting an erroneous data point she'd placed.
"Ah, you're right," she said, adjusting the point using the console, "I just… I must have missed that." Stopping momentarily, she closed her eyes and let out a puff of air to regroup.
Obi-Wan's hand encircled her wrist, his warmth seeping into her as he clenched it, like a small-sized embrace. She opened her eyes to find he wasn't looking at her; his eyes were downcast, on the holodesk's surface, and he was embroiled in his own personal fatigue.
"Maybe," she ventured, "we should rest for a little bit, before continuing on."
"Perhaps that would be best," he relented.
It was the admittance of defeat by regular fatigue that brought the sheer mountain of exhaustion down upon her, and as she rose, she stumbled and wobbled uneasily until Obi-Wan caught her arm and held her steady. Annoyed over her weakness, she straightened up and shored herself mentally.
"I'm fine, it was just a moment's dizziness, that's all," she said, refusing his assistance. "Thank you."
"Of course," he replied, though he walked near her to the bunkroom as if he thought she might pitch and go reeling at any moment.
The bunkroom of the small ship was relatively small as well; it allowed for the housing of a small crew but no more. There were two sets of bunks stacked on two opposite walls, and not much else except a window showing the stars streaking by at light speed. Padme fell onto the bottom bunk on one wall and threw off her boots, relishing the feeling of lying down on something moderately comfortable after … she didn't want to think about what had happened that day.
Grabbing the pillow and stuffing her face in it, she drew a deep breath and sighed it out, then turned on her side to gaze across to the opposite wall where Obi-Wan was lying on his back, his hands behind his head, staring unfocused at the bunk above. She wished the troubled look on his face wasn't there, but she knew why it had to be.
After a few moments, he seemed to sense she was looking at him and he glanced over, briefly.
"You should get some rest," he said, returning his gaze to the top bunk.
"So should you," she said.
"I can meditate," he replied, and then amended, "I should meditate."
He fell quiet after that, as if stuck in his thoughts, and his silent tension mounted.
"Or you should sleep," she said.
"No," he said, glancing back at her, "I'll keep watch."
"Keep watch for what?" she asked. "There isn't anything to watch for, Obi-Wan. We're safe, here."
"I don't know," he said, and then she saw a crack form, a fissure. "I don't know, I…"
He drew a sharp breath and closed his eyes and she knew he was strung tight like a wire near breaking. She threw her pillow aside and padded across the floor to his bunk at once. She knelt and threw her arms across him, as if she could defend him from the tragedy of today. In this embrace, she laid her head on his shoulder and turned inward, speaking to the collar at his neck, with his beard against her forehead.
"If you don't know, then you should sleep," said Padme, her voice soft, "so you can be well-rested and protect me when it's actually important."
After the gentle rise of a breath which subtly lifted them both, he let out a soft sound of wry amusement, dropping a hand to her wrist and grasping it lightly as she loosely held his shoulder.
"Were you always so bossy?" he wondered aloud.
"I did used to be a queen," she replied, and her face grew warm at the low rumble of his voice beneath her ear.
"Spoiled, then," he said softly.
She smiled into his robes at his collar. "And you used to be a padawan," she said. "Now you're a Jedi Knight, and a master, at that, and I'm just a lowly senator."
"How the mighty have fallen," he said with humor, at first, but then what he said sunk into them both and they grew quiet but for the hum of the ship's propulsion.
She ran her hand across his shoulder to embrace his neck with her hand on one side and her forehead on the other.
Brushing the tip of her nose against the warm skin of his neck, she whispered, "It'll be okay."
His breath hitched, just barely.
"I'm just tired," he said, his voice barely above a whisper, but stilted. "I'll be fine, I'm just… I'm tired-."
But the last word barely came out before his voice broke, and she knew he was using the last of his strength to be impartial and disconnected and unattached and all the things that a Jedi is supposed to be, but he was losing that particular war, and quickly. His sorrow was vigorous, like a primal force clawing its way out.
"Move over," she said, and he did.
Lying beside him, elevated on one elbow, she pressed her hand along his face, across his cheek and into his hair, her thumb caressing the crest of his cheekbone. He shuddered and shifted, though his body hardly moved; it was the energy within him, the force within him that trembled with friction, and as he gazed up at her, he looked helpless, hopeless, and she tried to comfort him as she watched him crack, to split, for his seams to come apart with a slow, crushing, thunderous release of control, and within his eyes she saw pure, agonized sorrow and grief and the rising of and overflow of a tear; of one, spilling backward, across his temple and into his hair – she brushed it away, and another came and his breath shuddered with intensity.
She fell upon his forehead, kissing it, and wiping another tear away with her hand to try to comfort him.
"It's all gone," he said, his voice wavering beneath her, thick with grief, and he whispered: "All of it."
"No," she whispered against his temple, desperate to ease him, "No… it isn't."
Even though they both knew it was.
All at once, he embraced her fiercely as if he could disappear into her, as if his emotions could be safely expunged in the depths of her arms, and it was there that he released it all; the same release of energy that Padme had done immediately after finding out about the Senate, but his grief over the Jedi Order had been bottled and had thus built to near intolerable heights, though he was, as was his way, less expressive. He buried his face in her neck and released a brief cry, almost inaudible but to Padme due to proximity, and then he turned with her in his arms and wept upon her while she ran her fingers through his hair until, slowly, the storm faded into silence broken only by breathing.
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Through the fog of unconsciousness, Padme could vaguely sense someone was speaking, but it was hazy, unintelligible, and her body felt warm and heavy. Unusually heavy. Weirdly heavy?
The absurdly heavy blanket upon her stirred, and then she began to regain consciousness, like coming up for air from the deep, and she realized, like lightning, that it was Obi-Wan's body that was blanketing most of hers.
With a gasp she opened her eyes and partially elevated herself, rising onto her elbows, and saw Mal lurking in the doorway, observing them. Padme realized he must have been the voice she'd heard a moment ago.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" she asked, blinking to further wake herself. She glanced at Obi-Wan by her side, who had rolled over when she'd moved and was currently running a hand over his face.
"I didn't think that the Jedi were into that sort of thing, but glad to see the two of you are well-rested," said Mal, looking a bit too smirky.
"What? No," objected Padme, moving to rise from the bed, "It was all innocent, I assure you."
"Nnff," murmured Obi-Wan, straightening his robes.
"We were just… in mourning and very tired, I guess," she added lamely.
"Sure, I definitely definitely sleep like that with my friends," said Mal, and before either one of them could protest, he went on: "We're almost there, so get yourselves together and come join me at the navs, alright?"
"Yes, of course," said Obi-Wan, having risen, and he added, "thank you."
Once Mal left them alone it became awkward; Padme found she didn't know what to say. It seemed as if she and Obi-Wan had just shared a high degree of intimacy, yet there wasn't much that was concrete about it that she could put her finger on. Wild, unspecified yet deep and interpersonal intimacy seemed to be all the rage for them, these days.
Their eyes met briefly, and she glanced away as quickly as he did, then she heard him draw a breath.
"Thank you, Padme," he said, busying himself with further tidying his appearance.
"Oh," she said, doing the same for want of something to do, "please, it was nothing."
"Don't discredit your value," he said, straightening a sleeve.
She glanced over at him and crossed the space to tug at his collar to bring it to rights. He gave himself over to her easily, and then he did the same, straightening and removing lint from the fake merchant's outfit she'd been wearing all this time. After perfecting the crossing of his robes, she ran her hands into his hair, smoothing it back, and the front fell forward a little, despite her efforts, so she tried again while he began tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear.
A third time she sifted his hair between her fingers, and it was then she became more aware of what they were doing, of their hands on each other, of the little caresses and the desperate need to touch the other and, as their eyes met, their hands began to slow. Simultaneously, he shifted from tucking hair behind her ear to tracing the curve of her face and her hands fell out of his hair to glide along his jawline, and she felt an overpowering magnetic force pulling her down, down, into the depths of him and his fair eyes, belying the true legion of deep that lay within him, the one that would eventually drown her, she just knew it.
She caught her breath softly at the powerful intensity with which he focused on her, his hand having taken control of her jawline, his fingers tilting her face upward with absolute precision and in exactly the angle in which he wanted, and as she watched a shift, a dilation of his pupils, the expansion of black darkness within the blue, she knew he meant to kiss her, to have her mouth for his own, to have it to have her to take her breath and fill her with his own power, she gasped at the change in him and he stopped.
It was so alien, so unorthodox, so un-Obi-Wan-like, so so… so…
Was this also who he was?
He had been beautiful and terrible, devastatingly powerful and irresistibly beguiling, but he had stopped himself at the look he saw on her face. Concern melted into his features and the darkness withdrew, and she watched his face as the layers of control were methodically replaced; neatly, calmly, meditatively, layer after layer after mended layer, as perfectly folded and belted as the Jedi robes he wore. The waters went from dark and deep to pale blue - a surface level of calm, cool liquid.
He caressed her face once, gently, compassionately, and then pulled away. Padme felt cold, perhaps abandoned, and perhaps frustrated.
"I'm sorry, I've…," said Obi-Wan, checking on the status of his lightsaber hilt in his robes, "not quite been myself lately."
"No, I think you have quite been yourself," said Padme, feeling obstinate. "The self you hide, that is."
He glanced at her.
"I can't begin to imagine what you might mean," he said, deflective.
Was she to be like rain, hitting the surface but never going deeper? Perhaps that's what he wanted.
"I will allow you to lie to me out of respect for the Jedi Order," she informed him, and he glanced at her with shock at her overt reveal. "But I would prefer that you didn't."
He glanced over her as if his mind was considering his options.
"We have a lot to do," she said, having had enough.
"We do," he agreed, seeming eager to get back to work. "Shall we resume work on the data points?"
"Yes, let's," she replied, making for the door.
She had no doubt that he would follow her, and that he would watch her as she walked, telling himself that he wasn't, and assuming that she would never know.
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