Conquest by Hth He is faster than he used to be. I can barely stay ahead of him now. Yoda was right about him, though it took me so many years to see it: he is meant to be a Jedi. Strike - miss. Parry - barely. I can feel his strength radiating down his lightsaber as it clashes with mine in a shower of sparks, strength that races up through my own arms like electric shocks. Not a boy any longer. Strong, hardened by all these years of my abuse, the long hours of practice, the climbing, the racing, the tireless, thankless manual labor. It is how I was treated, when I was a padawan. It is the only way to train a Jedi Knight. I hated Yoda, when I was the age that Obi-Wan is now. That was my great struggle as an apprentice - to overcome the pain of being so powerless in comparison to him, the anger I felt because he trained me like a Jedi Master instead of looking after me like a father. He was not my father. I see that now. Older, wiser. A Jedi Master, and even, from time to time, a credit to Yoda's reputation. Strike - miss. Parry - hard. Still not as strong as I am. Not likely to be, if this is to be his full height, the body he will wear for the duration. Still smaller than me, and as firefly-quick and surreptitiously treacherous as ever he was. A nuisance. All these years, wondering how I acquired a padawan learner, and why it should be my destiny to have one who is, if possible, more ungovernable than I was. He crept in, sooner or later, years ago, a thief in the night. Not a tagalong boy, full of questions and prone to overturning my dignity, but a young man, a friend, intelligent and intense, his heart fiercely pure, though his understanding often clouded. Strike - miss. He leaps, almost to the level of my head. I never taught him that. I never do that. Well, he is my apprentice, not a younger self. He will have his own ways. I begin to see them even now, a habit here, a tendency there, things I could never have taught him, things I am seeing for the first time in him. He has begun to amaze me. He will continue, I am sure. He is breathing hard, harder than I am. He almost heaves, sucking in oxygen, and yet the exhaustion only seems to energize him. Obi-Wan thrives on the challenge. He will not find his still center, will not surrender to the rhythms of the fight. He wants to break one of us. He longs for the conquest. My young padawan. Dangerous, Yoda told me. I see it. He is dangerous. Impatient. Arrogant. He will never turn away a challenge, however outmatched he may be. He will throw himself into the jaws of utter destruction before admitting-- Dodge - barely. I felt the heat of his lightsaber as it swung by me; in a real fight, that could have incapacitated me. I hesitate. I should concede his victory this time, compliment him. A good fight, graceful and effective. No. No. No. I am still too young - he is still too young. It is not time for me to face defeat at the hands of my own apprentice. Later, years from now. It is the way of things, but only in its own time. Strike - hard. Press - faster. He is retreating now, no longer smiling. This should finish it, and yet he will not surrender. With nowhere else to go, he digs in his heels. Leaps again. I hate it that he can do that - so light, so bright, like a spark, like a flame, not stone and bone and blunt, barren strength like me. How dare he? How dare he? Strike - clumsy. He was not always so quick, and not always so stubborn. He is becoming more aggravating, not less. He is making me tired, through and through. This is why I have always moved alone, why I resisted taking an apprentice for so many years. Block - buckle. No. No. Strike - fail. Falter. I go to one knee in the dirt, graceless and without effect. I look up at him. His face is grave, but his eyes glitter. He is preening, tossing his apprentice's braid back, twitching off the last of his adrenaline-fueled energy. He lowers a hand to help me up, and I pretend I cannot see it. "A heady feeling, is it not, my padawan?" I say, coldly. "To best one's teacher." "Well fought, my Master." Casually, complimenting me with the generosity of the benevolent master. There is nothing of the apprentice now about him. He is a stranger to me, not at all the boy I raised and trained and abused, as a proper Jedi should be. It is enough to break one's heart. I turn away. "Master?" "Skill with the lightsaber can make you a soldier, Obi-Wan, never a Jedi Knight. There is nothing of the Force in the way you fight." "Why should I fight to lose?" Cheeky, practically laughing. He has never taken my harshness to heart as I did Yoda's. I have lost the boy I never wanted. As it turns out, I miss him after all. "Fight to preserve the balance, not to conquer, my young apprentice." Not so young now. It is late in the day for us. I recall the bargain I made with Yoda, and I feel a chill at my back, whistling between my body and Obi-Wan's. Arrogant. Ambitious. Thoughtless. Reckless. Obi-Wan - and me. So many times, Yoda swore that if I could not overcome these flaws, would not heed his teaching and mold myself as a proper Jedi should, I would lose myself, to death or the darkness. I resented him and his stifling morality and his bleak, boring swamp and his complacency. I run my hands through my hair, surprised to find it stiff with sweat. Obi-Wan makes me work now, as surely as I used to make him fight to prove every boast he made. A fitting revenge. When did I lose my fear of Yoda, and my respect for him along with it? Perhaps when I realized that he was wrong. My arrogance and my defiance have not destroyed me. Not yet. I have wisdom and compassion with which to balance them. I manage, a poor excuse for a Jedi Master, I suppose, but still alive, still in the service of the light. I move, without a doubt, more easily than Yoda through most circles, walking among the galaxy's mere mortals and earning their friendship in a way that virtuous, heartless Yoda never could. I, like Obi-Wan, have become my own man, not my teacher's murky reflection. I have sacrificed much of Yoda's skill with the Force, his ability to read a being's heart and destiny, and he sacrificed much of my understanding of politics and practicalities. What sort of a Jedi will my own apprentice be? Will I ever understand why he chose the road he did? Will I respect him when I cannot understand him? Will he respect me when he realizes that I am a stranger to whatever it is he feels most deeply? The Force speaks to Obi-Wan in its own voice. He rarely listens. That gift will come in time. It came even to Qui-Gon Jinn in time. But it was not a thing that any Master could teach me, and not a thing I can teach to him now. The fault was not Yoda's. He failed me because it must be so, between masters and apprentices. No more than two, but no less, either. With Obi-Wan and me, there will always and only be two. I turn to him, sensing the futility of words to make amends for what I have just said to him. I can only say, "You have speed. You move with great control, great precision. It takes most Jedi many years of seasoning to do what you can do. You should be proud." Words I wished someone would say to me when I was his age. Words that went so long unspoken from my master that the wounds never healed. I went on alone after I became a Knight, even after I attained a Master's rank, traveling on behalf of the Senate and the Chancellor, my contact with the Council as minimal as I could make it. Today I failed with Obi-Wan - I gave him too late what he has deserved for so long. Did I truly know no other way to train an apprentice? Did I want him, somehow, to share my wound with me, to join me in earnest on my self-imposed exile? "If I should be proud, Master, then shouldn't you, as well?" His voice is sly; he thinks he is catching me in some logic trap. It is a word game to him. He doesn't know how badly I wanted to hurt him, hold him down. Remain an apprentice forever. Never change. Never grow beyond this, never go away. "You will find, Obi-Wan, that the skills you come to rely on throughout your life are the ones that were never taught to you. You hear them when you learn to listen to the voice of the Force. If I could teach you only that single truth, it would be enough to make you a Jedi, in time." His hands touch my beard. He has never done this before. His lips brush mine. I have known this day would come. Even I, limited as I am, foresaw it when I first met him. I saw the child grown, a man, handsome and radiant with confidence and energy. I saw humor and intelligence and desire in his green-gold eyes, eyes that in the boy before me held none of those things, only sulky stubbornness. Yoda whispering to me: "Hopeless this is. Do with him what you can. Look up to you he might." Insult and plea at once -- this balky, defiant child was like only one Jedi in history, so let that Jedi have the handling of him. I saw his future then, a hologram superimposed on that unlovable little boy. I saw that he would be a man of wit and heart and great power, a man anyone might love. A man I would love. The man I do love. Parry - and fail. He has struck home. I wind an arm around his neck, allow him to lean into the kiss. I touch his hair. He is still young. I thought this would not happen until he was ready to take the test, until all vestiges of his youth were swept away with his years as a padawan, only a memory. There are years left, much refining to be done - some of it by me, some by Yoda. Obi-Wan is still very much a work in progress. Still young in so many ways. I lift my other hand to touch my fingers to his cheek. His eyes are laughing again. Can't he sense it? It's too soon. I have only today accepted that he cannot be my apprentice forever. I cannot, in the very same hour, watch him become a man, make him one. My hands knot in the back of his robe. No. No. No. I am still grieving for my little boy, my foolish, wayward, reckless Obi-Wan. This man who wants to take his place is wrong for me now. His lips part, and I am slow to discourage it. I savor the heat of his breath, the touch of his tongue as it prods gently between my lips. But then I stroke his shoulders, and push him away. The anger in his eyes startles me. I am forcing him away from me, refusing him something he needs from his master to feel strong. Just as Yoda did to me when he withheld his praise. Inside, I keen. Must these things always repeat themselves? Will it always be a master passing on his worst fears, an apprentice going astray because no one is calling him home? "Not yet," I say, hoping that he can see my rejection for what it is. "When?" "Patience, my apprentice." He pays that as much heed as I would have at his age. "*When?*" "There will be time." Stubborn, like his master, inclined to take only his own advice, Obi-Wan kisses me again, harder this time, trying to burn understanding into me. I am shocked by his intensity. How long has he been capable of this, this insistent seduction? How long has he harbored desires that go this far beyond aimless adolescent longing, desires that shake me, force me to doubt my judgement and my willpower? I reach out with the Force, testing him. Hoping to hear that he has harbored them all his life, that in some instinctive way he saw what I did in the very beginning. Hoping that, like me, he is just now coming to the shore of an ocean he has always known existed. There is nothing. Nothing. I am falling, both physically and spiritually. I land, in the first case, in the grass and soft dirt, Obi-Wan on top of me, pulling my head closer, resuming the kiss that shattered when we began our descent to earth. In the latter case, I think I must still be falling. No. No. No. I have gone through too much with this boy to be this to him. I push him away, roughly, because he is deaf to subtlety by now. "There is nothing of the Force in this, either," I grate out. "If you intend to make love the way you fight, then you have much to learn about both arts." His eyes narrow; he doesn't like this, but he won't speak openly against me. "Then why won't you teach me?" he asks, too strictly courteous. "Would you hone your skills with the lightsaber by dueling with the most dangerous man you know?" I let that sink in. He may be thinking through the implications of that for minutes, or years. With Obi-Wan, it is impossible to predict. At least he sits up, moving away from me enough to break the immediate tension. He turns his back to me, and draws his knees up to his chin. Thinking. He may act before he thinks, but Obi-Wan is more than capable of thinking when he feels the moment is right. I press up on one elbow. As tenderly as I can, I reach out and stroke his long, red-brown hair. "I will not break my word, my padawan. I promised you that there will be a time for this." "When?" He is not overwrought now, not speaking out of an agony of need. His voice is low, wistful. "You have been with me for the better part of your life, Obi-Wan, and there is no other who knows you so well. Give us both room." "Room? For what?" "For you to grow. Trust me, little one." He half-turns his head at that, the name I used to use, years ago, to needle him out of one of his fits of pique. "When you return from Yoda's, you will be...very different. I will seem different to you, as well." I trace my fingers up his curved spine. "Then we can become acquainted at our leisure." I feel the smile on my lips, hear it in my voice. He lands in the grass beside me with a little thud and a tiny sigh. "What you're asking isn't easy, you know. I'm ready now." "Obi-Wan, the hardest lesson I ever had to learn from Yoda was patience. I was eager to be a Jedi; I felt that when my trials were passed and I was a Knight, I could be alone and my life would begin at last." "Alone?" "The Force was company enough for me." Back then. We are nose to nose, scratched by blades of grass and breathing in a thin film of dust. His golden eyes are still opaque like stones, and he stares at me like a stranger. I wish I could feel him, but a part of me is glad he is too far away to feel my confusion. Where is he, behind those eyes? What is he looking for as he fixes so steadily on my unbeautiful face? "Did you love Yoda, Master?" he asks. I am a stone in the grass, a geode. Pretty image. Hard to keep the crystal on the inside, hard to stay this blank when I want to smash open for him. How does he do it, a mere boy as he is? It should be impossible. Like loving the Master who breaks you to the Jedi's yoke, it should be all but impossible. "No," I admit. "I eventually learned to respect him." Not while I was his apprentice, of course, or even during my years as a Jedi Knight. Only when I wanted to take my place among the other Masters, but I was still too jealous of my hard-won independence to have any use for an apprentice of my own. It was Yoda who intervened on my behalf, Yoda who smoothed the way for me and procured my dispensation from the Council. For the first time in twenty-five years, I thought it possible that Yoda might understand what was inside me. He is wise. He knew me well, and it made him the first to see Obi-Wan's potential. *Disagreeable, he is. Untrusting, like you. Teach each other you must, or your debt to me is still unpaid.* At first I thought it was a supreme irony: Yoda in his generosity single-handedly sparing me from the duty to train an apprentice, then single-handedly shunting the worst prospect the Council had seen in years directly to me. Now I see it differently. Leave me be when I am sure of nothing, not even my own strength, and bring me a soulmate when I am growing grey and slow with loneliness. Oh, yes. I am learning to trust. "Trust me," I implore Obi-Wan; we are here in the grass to teach each other, after all. "Desire must never rule a Jedi. You are the master of your own passions, Obi-Wan." "I want you." When did he learn this language, this minimalist poetry, raw and lovely? My life-Force sings his name much too strongly to answer him with less than the truth. "And I want you. But I will want you still when the time is right." "Won't I?" "I don't know." Bright white strands of my own future, conducting my passion for Obi-Wan up and down the line like searing electricity. I see that. But his future is hidden from me. Yoda was right, as usual. He is as untrusting as I was, choking down his own life-Force, locking it up inside him so that not even I, reaching for him, can find it. Will he be as old as I am before he discovers that being open, not being alone, is the serene silence from which the voice of the Force proceeds? Must these things always repeat themselves? Will it always be a Master learning much too late that which he should have been teaching all along - an Apprentice surpassing his mentor in skill and forgetting the secret language they once shared? Boys grown up, men grown old. The Force growing sluggish and cool between the two who need each other most. *Untrusting, like you.* Yoda trusted me to go my lonely way. Then he went deeper, and he trusted me to teach Obi-Wan, and to learn from him, too. I give the old man that much. He found something in me to trust, and long before I stumbled across it myself. My fingers touch his face. Much power is concentrated in the hands. All Jedi know that. "Have faith, child." Amusement plays in his mossy, dark eyes, and a little pity for me. "Child? Am I a child to you, Ma- Qui-Gon?" Silky bravado. He is beginning to believe he can win this fight. He can, but like the first man you kill, the first man you bed is anything but what you expect. "You are my padawan learner. It is very like the relationship between a father and his child." The humor blossoms, and the pity becomes a backdrop of sad, untouchable wisdom. He finds me naive. I find him charming in his vanity. "You don't know my father." No. But I knew the son we took from him. I saw the bruises, the skittish glances, the bitterness that marred what should have been a small boy's ordinary face. I close my eyes and make a leap of faith, my hand passing against his cheek, spinning the threads of power. "I know he taught you a great deal." "Not to get hit." Obi-Wan chuckles, and sighs into my hand. It is another life for him. He has shed that skin, except for the knots deep inside him that bind up his Force and keep me from feeling what he feels as he lies inches from my face. "If you can't learn that lesson, none of the others matter." Obi-Wan's lips part to give voice to his light laugh, and we kiss. We kiss. We kiss. Hard to believe in this deep, blind happiness. I have been alone so long. He has become a brilliant young man overnight, leaving me shy and vulnerable before the changes in him. I love him. I am untrusting. He must leave me - so little time left to us now. For all of these reasons, or none of them, I am too frail to kiss Obi-Wan the way he deserves. I only yield up my mouth to him, letting him celebrate his first victory over his Master by feasting on my lips and tongue and teeth. He can maneuver the wraps and sashes of a Jedi's habit easily, as only a man who has worn one himself can. I can allow this, for the moment. Let him revel. Let him be the conqueror. Soon enough, he will learn his next lesson: that the seduction is merely a prelude to the work of being a lover. Still a nag lingers somewhere low in my throat. Is this strange, inappropriate, unwise? I was never told. Taking a padawan learner is meant to be a lesson for Master as well as Apprentice - am I failing, even as I give him what he wants, my hands sinking down inside the collar of his robe? Difficult to imagine most Jedi caught up in passion, never mind two of them. Obi-Wan and I were always different. In love, as in swordsmanship, there are many guiding principles, few iron-clad laws. One principle, which in my experience is always sound, is to begin with what has worked for you in the past. I cup Obi-Wan's face in my hands. He looks down at me, vaguely puzzled, vaguely pleased at my touch, mainly waiting to see what the next moment will bring. "When a child is born, he spends the first months becoming aware of his own senses. He learns to use his eyes and ears, and to understand that he can affect the motion first of his own body, and then of other objects around him." "Qui-Gon...." He trails off, giving me one last chance to make all this relevant. I smile a bit. He is so intense, even in his attempts at patience. There is no peace in him, only restraint, and shrewdness. "It was not so long ago, young padawan, that you were in the habit of calling me 'Master.'" He brushes his lips across mine. "Is that really the biggest thing you have on your mind right now?" "And after the child becomes aware of his physical surroundings, he begins to attune himself to the emotional fabric of his universe." "Qu--*Master.*" "As before, he first becomes aware of his own nonphysical relationship to his environment - happiness, frustration, loneliness, love - and then progresses, gaining an ability to interpret those nonphysical needs in others." His kisses contain desperation now, and my only hope is to keep him from blocking my mouth. I guide his lips to my neck instead. "The third stage in a child's growth is an understanding of the social reality, of the external expectations his family and society place on him. He becomes able to recognize--" "Stop." He presses his fingers to my lips, and I have no instant desire to push them away. "Just stop talking. You're making me nervous." I kiss lightly. There is a stirring of the Force in him suddenly, as though for the first time he knows I am Qui-Gon Jinn, his Jedi Master, his friend, and suddenly he is calling out, searching for me. I extend, putting out a light to lead him in. "No reason to feel anxious, my apprentice. This is just a brief theoretical introduction to our discussion of the role of sexuality in the maturation of a young Jedi Knight." The expression on Obi-Wan's face revolves slowly from baffled to appalled to bemused. "Master. You are the most handsome man I've ever seen, and you mean everything to me. On the other hand, I can't imagine anyone but you making sex sound this boring." "I hope you will not find the practice so much so as the theory." "The practice never seems half so boring as the theory." A little shiver runs through me, and into Obi-Wan, as the thought occurs to me: if he moves in my arms the way he moves when we duel, I may not survive this. I notice that while Obi-Wan is holding quite still, I am the one moving in his arms. Our robes have landed in a ring of their component parts, and I am rocking back and forth against his chest, letting our nipples brush against each other in a slow rhythm. "May I finish?" "Will it wait?" "About as well as you do." He bites me under the ear, trying to pretend it was an accident. Now his life-Force is sneaking out of him in tendrils, testing around my borders, feeling the shape of my own aura. He wants to trust. He wants in. I choose to reward his risk with another kiss, less desperate than before, even more probing. "Now," I continue, raising my volume just enough to let him know that I am serious about this. "Training a Jedi is much like raising a child. Counter-intuitively, however, it seems that the stages must be approached in the reverse order. The first stage is to teach proper comportment - self-discipline and self- control, respect for your elders and *patience* as well. Only then can you move to an increased awareness of your own inner states, the first step toward accessing the greater Force, since, as you know, all of your understanding of the Force as it affects the universe and the flow of time--" "Grows out of my ability to understand the voice of the living Force within me. If you know that I know it, why are you telling--" "Obi-Wan." His hands slide up my arms, elbows to shoulders. "Just make love to me." "I am trying--" "Yes, I follow. Social maturity, spiritual maturity, physical maturity." I feel the first barbs sinking into me, Obi-Wan anchoring to my life-Force, shifting and nestling up against me in more than just body. Strike, and I am open to it this time. I sit up, pushing him forward with me, my hands raking possessively over his smooth back, my lips drawn back to his. His eyes close this time, and he is becoming more and more still in my arms. "If this is going to make you even more disrespectful--" He nestles closer to me, until I can feel his breath, heartbeat, even the slight rumbling of his stomach vibrating against my body. His mouth, warm and wet, traces softly over my ear. "I'm ready." Indeed. I lean him back underneath me and reach for his erection; my own is pressed comfortably against his hip. His tongue rolls lazily inside my mouth, and his touch on my hair is sure. He should be nervous, but I can find no evidence of it. I am. I am his Master, trusted by the Jedi Council to do his worrying for him, to be older and wiser and seasoned by hard experience. For once, the Council can be proud of me. I am older, wiser, experienced, and terrified. "Hush, hmm, hush." Nonsense, music, sleight-of-mouth to disguise the fact that I am without a plan and without faith. Blood burns through the fine skin of his inner thigh as I track my hand upward. "Mmm, little one...." So many years alone, sleeping on the cool, hard ground, cradling my own head on my folded arms while I half-remembered the days of my earliest childhood - my mother's singsong voice, my father's enormous, calloused hands, my grandmother's milky-blue eyes set deep, like mine, into a tanned face. I wrap my arms around his head, protecting it from the earth. With his forehead touching mine, I try to feed him those bittersweet memories, no different from feeding him mashed fruit and bread when he was ten and too sick with walking pneumonia to eat on his own. Slowly, I give him one: her voice. It drops into his mind like a loose stone down the shaft of a mine. A thin, reedy breath of air rises from the darkness - his answer. My voice, lilting and strong. No words, just a sound, a flat, dark plain of noise like thunder rolling unimpeded over a prairie. I hear what he knows. I hear the Force as it speaks to Obi-Wan in my voice, and there is no separating us now. I am his Master, his fate, his truth, his peace. I am all his memories, and all his faith. My appetite for intimacy whetted, I toss down another stone, another memory of my own that haunted and sustained me through those lean years: his hands. Even before I receive Obi-Wan's reply, I cup my hand around his groin, leaving my mark inside his thighs, making him aware of his present, my presence. His answer, his end of the liquid, living dialogue blossoming between us. His own father's hands, battering him to the ground with open palms. Obi-Wan's head striking the kitchen wall with a resounding crack, the distant sensation of pain. I stroke my hand through his hair, with a sense that I can feel the welt raised on his head, the one wound that stands out in his mind as a symbol of five years of pain and anger. We kiss, we kiss, his hair parts in rivulets to allow my fingers through, he shivers and draws his legs up around mine, we groan into each other's mouths, driven down against each other by the sudden weight of this much trust. The moisture of my arousal is smearing indiscriminately across his skin and mine. Seek - with Force and phallus and fingertips. Find - his heat, his texture, his tension. Strike - he expects the pain, he almost seems to relish it, he sinks his teeth deeply into my shoulder. His legs fall wide open, and he reaches for my hands, clutching at them and pulling them back up to his hair. His awareness is whipping like wind through both of us, a ghost river of old hurts and small favors, words and smiles and fears and conquests. I cannot even separate what he remembers from what I know. My hand slides down his warm, youthfully narrow chest, a fond gesture that seems much more under my conscious control than the quick, erratic motion of my hips. We kiss, and our teeth click lightly together. He makes an anguished sound against my cheek, his back arching, and I hold his face tight between my forehead and my hand. The other hand tears up soil and grass above his shoulder. "Ben," I call him, and it must come from his mind, because I have never known him as Ben. I am not aware of whatever thoughts and memories I may be transmitting, but he must be hearing something, just as I am. "Trust me," he murmurs - his feelings, or mine? How long must a master and apprentice spend together before there is no more need for that question? Minutes more. Seconds more. It is almost upon us, the instant when my trust demands his trust, and his conquest confirms my success. From now on, our fortunes rise and fall together, just as our breathing has settled into a pattern and we both know when to ask and offer a kiss. Minutes more. Seconds more. A heartbeat, two, and three. His cry. My hand pressing hard against his cheek, leaving red prints on his face. Little one, my apprentice, Ben, young padawan - Obi-Wan, a Jedi, my partner, my lover, the man locked against me in the grip of our intertwined orgasms. Feebly, I pet his hair back, finger his braid, mingle the sweat and dirt and fragments of local flora on my palm with the sweat on his forehead. Peace, the two of us lying undefended in the twilight, hands still hungry for the shape of each other, but otherwise drained to exhaustion. I taste his lips again, and now that the flavor is familiar it is only that much more addictive. He rolls over, one elbow braced casually over my ribs. "The practice was much less boring." "I must remedy that. Learning should always be dull." "Repetition..." he hints, feigning innocence. I rest my hand comfortably on the back of his neck. My anxiety is gone, but only because I am blind to the future; for now, there is only the living Force, and the two of us. This I do know about my future - not by any Jedi arts, but simply because it is the kind of thing a man cannot help but know: Years from now, when I am as old and wizened as Yoda, I will never recall the day or the hour that Obi-Wan first defeated me with the lightsaber - but I will never be unable to taste his mouth against mine and smell the dampness of grass and sweat on his skin, and I will always know how it felt to fall from high solitude into true humanity for no reason greater than that he asked me to.