Post by obiamidala on Jun 6, 2010 2:15:39 GMT -4
And here it is 
I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did. And take out your handkerchiefs, I definitely needed one 
By the time Obi-Wan’s head finally hit the pillow on his bed, the first rays of light had begun to stretch across the ceiling and walls from outside his hovel’s small windows. He must have spent hours at that vid-screen, staring at her face and wondering at her words. But as he lay on his bed, fully clothed and atop the coverlet, his mind slowly quieted. Through exhaustion and heavy-lidded eyes, the Jedi marveled at the dim morning light, spreading above him. At the deep orange and yellow hues all mixed, with one blending into the next.
And as Obi-Wan finally allowed sleep to claim him, he remembered seeing those colors before. In soft velvet fabric. The very first time he saw her.
It was on a small side-street in Theed, on a bright and clear day. The alley was far enough off the main street to make for a discreet exit. Or, in the case of the Noobian Queen and her entourage, it served as a means to be kidnapped and smuggled into a holding camp; without alerting the residency at large to her majesty’s plight.
The old stucco and stone walls were high, with arched windows and many floral accents. In fact the people of Naboo seemed to have quite a fondness for floral arrangements. There were plants and flowers almost growing out of the windows and walkways. Blooming ivy scaling the walls, potted and clustered rose bushes of bright red bordering the lowest windows.
Each side of the street was joined periodically by covered walkways. And it was from one of these elevated “bridges” that then-Padawan Kenobi and Master Qui-Gon Jinn (and Jar Jar Binks) had fallen upon the frightened group of humanoids and their robotic captors. They had saved her that day. They saved them all. Making short work of the hapless battle droids.
Obi-Wan could see it clearly in his mind. The small street, the overhangs, the walkway from which he had jumped. He could even smell the fragrance of the potted roses outside the windows. It was all so vibrant. The warmth of the sun on his face and the gentle breeze through his hair.
It was almost as if he were actually there. Everything felt so real, just as he remembered it.
He blinked into the sun soaring overhead. It was a clear and bright day. Taking in the scene around him, he realized just how quiet and peaceful this part of the city was. Really quite lovely with a sort of old-world charm that he particularly liked. It really was too bad that he hadn’t found more time to spend on Naboo in the years since the Trade Federation’s invasion there.
But while it was quiet, it also felt empty. There were no battle droids to fight, no innocents to rescue. And, inevitably, no Padmé. He was alone, even here.
“You seem sad, Jedi.”
Obi-Wan exhaled sharply at the words. They came from somewhere behind him and resonated in an all too familiar tone to his ears.
But he couldn’t look back. It would hurt too badly. His mind needed rest from her. Why must his memories continue to haunt him, even here?
“Obi-Wan?” she pressed gently.
“It’s because you’re gone, Padmé,” he answered finally with a deep sigh, “And because, despite all I have done to come to terms with that, to face the pain of your loss . . . I cannot. Even now, as I lay dreaming, it’s you I dream of. And to what end?”
“I’m here for you, Obi-Wan. Because so much was left unfinished and unsaid between us . . . I’m just glad that Bail was able to get my message to you.”
There was a long pause after she finished speaking. Obi-Wan now half tempted to finally turn, fully expecting whatever image he had unwillingly conjured of her to be gone. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.
It seemed his subconscious had other ideas however. He started suddenly at the feeling of a small, delicate touch on his shoulder. The tactile pressure took him off-guard, his breath now emerging ragged and shaky. Why was his mind tormenting him so? There had already been so much pain.
The hand on his shoulder compressed and released over his robes, trying to comfort and put him at ease. “Ben,” she said breathlessly, in a voice that now resounded from his back, “Please turn around. I-I need to see you . . . and I need you to see me.”
His eyes snapped shut reflexively at hearing her voice now so close. This wasn’t some disembodied voice in a dream, nor was it a hollow sound emanating from the speakers of his holo-vid terminal. This was something else entirely. More tangible and real than anything he’d felt in quite some time.
Yet, even as he turned toward the voice, he kept his eyes closed. What would be there? Though perhaps what worried him the most was what wouldn’t be there should he chose to look.
The hand on his shoulder remained. It was warm and firm. And soon another hand hesitantly rose to caress his cheek. Obi-Wan nervously shifted upon his feet at the contact. The warmth of her hand quickly settled into his skin and spread through his body.
He heard a small gasp, followed by a sigh, the moist breath from it falling unexpectedly upon his lips. “Oh Obi-Wan, I so love your face.” Padmé’s voice, choked with emotion, struck a note in him. It resonated exactly as it did on the video she had hidden for him. “Please open your eyes,” she pleaded softly.
“Padmé, I can’t. I’m . . . sorry.”
The hands that touched him, on his face and his shoulder, retreated slowly. “Why?” she asked.
“Because I – If I were to open them and not see you standing before me . . . Padmé I’ve been able to face much sadness in the recent past. But this? This I’m afraid I was ill prepared for.”
“You fear I am little more than a dream,” she affirmed, apparently understanding his apprehension.
But he didn’t have time to answer her. One of his hands was currently being enfolded in a smaller, more elegant one and lifted into the air. When the pads of his fingers met the soft, smooth skin of her cheek, fingertips brushing against ringlet curls, he could not suppress the shudder that shook him from head to toe. Could this really be happening? She had visited him in a dream not too long ago. And that certainly had had real and tangible consequences. Perhaps all this was something similar.
He moved his thumb downward, allowing it to graze across the moist, full lips he found there. And she parted them slightly to remove any resistance. “I am no dream, Obi-Wan,” she whispered against him, “You may be dreaming . . . but I am really here with you. I promise.”
So what if she were simply a dream? Did it matter? Why would he deny himself even the chance to look upon her? One last time. Besides, fear, especially for a Jedi, was certainly not a good enough reason to refuse her simple request.
And so, bracing himself with a deep breath, he slowly opened his eyes to face what lay beyond.
He had been prepared for her not to be there. Prepared to feel his heart ache again with longing and loss.
But there she was. Standing before him. She was wearing a long, white flowing gown that almost seemed to glow in the sunlight. There were hints of blues and pinks and pale yellows within the fabric. But just how that was achieved, Obi-Wan wasn’t sure. Her lovely shoulders were all but bare, the dress cut low with sheer white fabric encasing her graceful and slender arms.
A small smile slowly spread across her lips and he blinked in disbelief. His eyes darted around her lovely face, trying to see as much of her as he could at one time. The elegant arch of her eyebrows, the mole on the alabaster skin of her left cheek, luscious pink lips and her eyes . . . those haunting chocolate orbs that pierced into him even now.
Eyes which, he noticed, were now shedding tears. Tears that spilled silently over the hand she continued to hold against her face with such tenderness. “Why do you cry, My Lady,” Obi-Wan asked her, his other hand coming to join the first, resting on the other side of her face.
“I just can’t believe it. Part of me didn’t think I’d actually be able to . . .,” she paused, looking up at him with the same wonder he felt within himself. “I crossed another plane of existence Obi-Wan . . . just to look into your eyes one last time.”
His heart began to pound and he quickly pulled her close, wrapping her petite body in his arms, secure within the folds of his robes. And the lady responded, nuzzling into his neck and winding her arms around his waist. It felt like the most natural thing in the entire galaxy. More right than anything in his recent memory. The soft silky feel of her hair, brushing against his face. Her moist breath warming the sensitive skin of his neck. And the pounding of her heart against his chest, even through their clothing. It beat firmly, along with his own.
But then it hit him, like a two ton speeder, and involuntarily his body tensed around hers. How could this be real? He’d been there when her heart had beat its last. He’d heard the life-monitors die as she did. Padmé, as real and soft and comforting as she felt in his arms right now, was still dead. She’d been gone for over a year, and thus there was no way this could be any kind of reality.
He felt her eyelashes flutter lightly against his skin as she moved out of his embrace to face him. By the concerned look in her eyes, Obi-Wan could tell that she had felt the change in him. “Still thinking with your mind and your logic, I see . . . Not with your heart,” she said with not a little disappointment, pained eyes searching his and making him feel ashamed.
But he could not look at her. Because it was true. She was right. “My biggest failing,” he sighed, “My greatest regret. Especially with regard to you, Padmé.”
“I never blamed you, Obi-Wan. For anything. You did all you could.”
“But I blamed myself,” he insisted, meeting her gaze again, “Blamed myself for Anakin’s fall as well as the numerous ‘what-ifs’ that remained between us after . . . after you left.”
“Oh Ben,” she said, shaking her head sadly, “I never meant for my message to bring up such pain and uncertainty for you. I guess it was selfish of me to tell you the way I did. Simply for the sake of your knowing the truth.”
The air around the pair grew somewhat chill, the warm sun having dipped precariously low, almost behind the buildings now. And an uncertain silence stretched between them, like a bottomless chasm which kept them apart on either side. Even as he stood there before her, actually in front of her, he could feel her presence fading, the light within her dimming. Just like before, when he lost her for the first time.
‘No,’ he resolved, ‘Not this time.’ This opportunity would not be squandered like so many others that he’d had over the years. Not when it was finally just the two of them. With nothing standing in between . . . nothing but this self-imposed wall of silence.
Obi-Wan’s hand found her face again, slowly brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Padme? If either of us was selfish, it was me. You were right when you said that I didn’t really see you. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t allow myself to.”
The lady gazed up at him silently, with sympathy in her eyes, allowing him whatever freedom he needed to unburden his heart. Just as she had years ago on Naboo, after Qui-Gon’s funeral.
“Looking past all that you are was much easier when you were queen, of course,” he explained, “Though I could hardly deny the friendship we forged on Naboo, our respective ages, and my position within the Order – I simply couldn’t think of you as anything more . . . Not that I didn’t care for you.”
She nodded deeply, understanding, “I was a child.”
“In years of age only, Padmé,” he smiled.
And she smiled in return. A beautiful and bright action that Obi-Wan deemed powerful enough to almost stop his heart. As he looked at her, he felt the tears sting at the corners of his eyes.
“What is it, Ben?” she asked with rising worry.
“I was selfish. Instead of recognizing what I felt and dealing with it, I pushed it all – pushed you – aside.” He breathed deeply. It was difficult to voice his innermost thoughts aloud, much less to her. The last thing he wanted was to cause her pain. “You said you felt you were below me somehow,” he recalled from her message, “But I felt that it was just the opposite. I had nothing to offer a woman of grace and substance like you. Not even love.”
Obi-Wan’s eyelashes darkened with the moisture of unshed tears, his sadness beginning to break through. He pulled her to him again, his arms winding around her waist, hands resting on the small of her back, and his forehead laying atop hers. “It took me so long, Padmé,” he said, “You had to be dying for me to realize all that you had meant to my life . . . and even then, as you slipped away, I said nothing.”
She held him in return, still saying nothing. Her hands at the back of his neck, her slender fingers running through the short hair they found there. It calmed and comforted him.
He had been with women before, of course. Though many may have viewed him as reserved, he was hardly a prude, and enjoyed sex very much. Sex, for the sake of sex, and without forbidden attachment was not at all frowned upon by the Council. Sexual desire was, after all, as natural a process for humanoids as was the need to eat or drink. But this? Standing with Padmé like this. It was intimacy on a level he had never before shared with another person. Far deeper than sex. He was bare before her, for the first time in fourteen years, his heart and soul lay completely open. No Order to hold him back from his own desires or from her. No duty or obligation of any kind . . . No Anakin.
Not even death, it seemed, could ever truly part them now.
The sun continued to set somewhere in the distance, the light growing pink in the sky and dim between them. Obi-Wan pulled back to meet her eyes, seeing the fire and strength in them that he had always admired. “I’m sorry, Padmé,” he admitted, “I couldn’t love you . . . even though I did.”
The rate of Padmé’s breathing increased; her exhales came shallow and fluttered against his neck and face. Her eyelids fell shut, a small tear dropping from either eye to roll slowly down her porcelain skin. And she smiled, full and open. Only for him. The light inside her returning.
“Padmé?” he asked gently, tracing her jaw line with a thumb and tilting her chin upward toward him, “I do love you. And I have missed you, my friend. So much.”
Before she could reply, he leaned in. Close to her. Closer than he’d ever allowed himself to get. Close enough to breathe in her exhale and make himself lightheaded. His nose brushed hers, experimenting, simply enjoying even the smallest of contact with her. He also quite enjoyed also the small sigh of contentment that escaped her trembling lips at feeling his tiny touch.
Those lips, which had always looked so soft and pink from across the expanse that had existed between them, now seemed unimaginably close. A temptation that not even he could resist any longer. With but one final breath his mouth descended, his lips at last capturing hers. His touch was gentle and unhurried, less a measure of indecision and more a desire to draw out the moment.
But Padmé, as always, was a decisive woman, well aware of what she wanted and was not content to stand idly by and simply be kissed. With her hands still on his neck, she pulled his head firmly against her, fingers now massaging his scalp. Her lips moved against his. They were even more full and enticing now than before, swollen as they were from the pressure and excitement of their kiss.
She pursed against him and then drew his lips between her own. It became a delicious and exceedingly erotic battle. The years of tension between them finally freed to find expression. And they each fought for their own brand of control. Padmé, impulsive and fiery, gave herself over to the moment, trying to accelerate their situation. Obi-Wan, tactical and thoughtful, planned and executed each small movement and with pinpoint accuracy. He slowed their pace, consuming her breath for breath.
And he couldn’t stop himself. Not even for oxygen. His hands roamed the cloth covered expanse of her back and waist. He kneaded the flesh underneath, eliciting a moan from Padmé which was quickly lost between their lips.
To him, she smelled of the very air around them, laced with the scent of the roses that bloomed to their right and left. And she tasted like clean, fresh water. As if he had been dying of thirst and was suddenly able to gorge himself. In essence, she was saving his life with her very presence.
He knew that, after this, he’d never be able to take another breath without first tasting her on his lips.
Only when he was dizzy, almost to the point of passing out, did he finally pry himself from her. Good thing too. Padmé stood before him, panting and flushed, trembling slightly in his embrace. She gripped his shoulders firmly in attempt to brace herself and keep her balance . . . The Jedi suddenly felt rather pleased with himself.
“Obi-Wan? . . . I . . . love you too,” she said quickly between pants.
He couldn’t help but chuckle at that. At their current situation and the completely glazed and sated look in her eyes as she blinked up at him. “Is that what you were really trying to say to me,” he smiled at her, “with your message?”
She giggled lightly, “What do you mean ‘trying’? I thought I was quite eloquent. And perfectly clear.”
“Oh you were, my dear,” he teased, “Right up to the moment that you said, ‘Obi-Wan, I lo – . . . and then you stopped.”
Padmé groaned and dropped her forehead to his chest in frustration. “Damn,” she said, her voice all but completely muffled by his thick robes, “It was Anakin. I didn’t want anyone to see that message to you. Least of all him.” When she finally looked back at him she did so grimacing, wearing a sour expression. “I’m sorry that I didn’t have the time to say it then. As it was the entire point of the message in the first place.”
He smiled gently, “It doesn’t matter now . . . Though while it is one thing to infer a meaning from an entire message, hearing it in person, from your beautiful lips is quite another.”
She nodded, smiling at him tenderly. But her expression quickly grew somber as she looked to the still fading sun. It seemed to have almost completely disappeared behind the buildings now, the first stars dimly emerging in the sky above them. It was dusk, and their time together was growing short . . . Obi-Wan could see it, in the way she now refused to meet his eyes.
“Padmé I don’t know if I can lose you again.”
“Nothing can stop that now,” she said sadly, “There are always consequences. And I knew this would hurt both of us.”
Looking at him once again, her face now serene, she placed a hand on his chest, over his heart. “We’re not gone, Obi-Wan. Not really,” she explained, “We’re just elsewhere . . . Hey! You’re a Jedi don’t you already know that? Becoming ‘one with the Force,’ etcetera?”
Padmé grinned at him flirtatiously, but while he rewarded her wit with a small smile, the Jedi didn’t rise to her playful bait. He was far more curious about something else she had said. “Is that a specific ‘we’ or a general usage of the word?”
Mischief began to sparkle in her lovely eyes. “You don’t think I could have managed all this Force manipulation on my own did you? . . . He met me here, on this side. Helped me use the connection you and I have always shared to reach you.”
“He?” Obi-Wan asked expectantly.
“Master Qui-Gon,” she said, “he wanted us to finish that which we had never been given the chance to begin.”
The Jedi breathed deeply up into the sky, a wave of gratitude and relief washing over him. Things looked clearer now, the events of the last few weeks finally making more sense. No one had ever known him better than his Master. And he’d often felt the man’s presence after his death. Qui-Gon must have known. Known Obi-Wan’s feelings for Padmé long before he did himself. He had always watched over his old Padawan. Perhaps Master Qui-Gon had done the same for Padmé as well.
Without warning Padmé quickly halted his musings, placing a tender kiss upon his cheek. He blinked in surprise, pressing her to him tightly, burying his face in her neck and planting several soft kisses of his own there.
She burst into a fit of giggles, and pushed him away lightheartedly, “Obi-Wan! Your beard tickles!”
He looked at her lovingly, her glistening eyes and smiling face making his heart skip. ‘Some things never change,’ he thought.
“How can I ever thank you, Padmé? For all that you’ve given me.”
“I think you just have, Ben,” she whispered.
He nodded, refusing to tear himself from her eyes until the last possible moment. “Goodbye Padmé.”
“Never goodbye, love,” she said shaking her head defiantly, chin raised, “I’m always around . . . in one form or another. I’ve looked in on you often. Just as I do Luke and Leia.”
He wanted to say something else, anything to keep her with him. If only by the sheer force of his will. Though, just as before, after the birth of her children, he knew he could not. Besides there was really nothing left to be said. And the sun was now gone.
“Close your eyes, Obi-Wan.”
He raised a curious, teasing eyebrow at her, but did as requested nonetheless.
“It’s time to go back to sleep,” she whispered,
“. . . I love you.”
~~
“Padmé, I – ”
But when he opened his eyes again, a plain stone ceiling greeted him. Daylight now fully filtering in. He was back. Far on the outer rim, back in his hovel on Tatooine, out beyond the Dune Sea.
Though it was much more probable that he’d never actually left in the first place. The most logical, though disappointing, conclusion being that it was all just a dream. But just as he had begun to resign himself to that fact, he caught a whiff of something in the air above him. What could it be? He could almost place it, the memory laying just on the edge of his consciousness.
Flowers.
Fresh red roses.
One of many varieties that bloom on Naboo, often used as floral accents in front of the buildings in the older parts of Theed.
Obi-Wan breathed the scent in deeply, allowing his eyes to fall shut again. He relaxed into the pad of his simple bedroll and felt at complete peace. The once familiar sadness, the cold ache for her in his chest, now significantly lightened, if not totally gone.
“I love you too,” he said to the space around him.
He was no longer alone.
I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did. And take out your handkerchiefs, I definitely needed one 
By the time Obi-Wan’s head finally hit the pillow on his bed, the first rays of light had begun to stretch across the ceiling and walls from outside his hovel’s small windows. He must have spent hours at that vid-screen, staring at her face and wondering at her words. But as he lay on his bed, fully clothed and atop the coverlet, his mind slowly quieted. Through exhaustion and heavy-lidded eyes, the Jedi marveled at the dim morning light, spreading above him. At the deep orange and yellow hues all mixed, with one blending into the next.
And as Obi-Wan finally allowed sleep to claim him, he remembered seeing those colors before. In soft velvet fabric. The very first time he saw her.
It was on a small side-street in Theed, on a bright and clear day. The alley was far enough off the main street to make for a discreet exit. Or, in the case of the Noobian Queen and her entourage, it served as a means to be kidnapped and smuggled into a holding camp; without alerting the residency at large to her majesty’s plight.
The old stucco and stone walls were high, with arched windows and many floral accents. In fact the people of Naboo seemed to have quite a fondness for floral arrangements. There were plants and flowers almost growing out of the windows and walkways. Blooming ivy scaling the walls, potted and clustered rose bushes of bright red bordering the lowest windows.
Each side of the street was joined periodically by covered walkways. And it was from one of these elevated “bridges” that then-Padawan Kenobi and Master Qui-Gon Jinn (and Jar Jar Binks) had fallen upon the frightened group of humanoids and their robotic captors. They had saved her that day. They saved them all. Making short work of the hapless battle droids.
Obi-Wan could see it clearly in his mind. The small street, the overhangs, the walkway from which he had jumped. He could even smell the fragrance of the potted roses outside the windows. It was all so vibrant. The warmth of the sun on his face and the gentle breeze through his hair.
It was almost as if he were actually there. Everything felt so real, just as he remembered it.
He blinked into the sun soaring overhead. It was a clear and bright day. Taking in the scene around him, he realized just how quiet and peaceful this part of the city was. Really quite lovely with a sort of old-world charm that he particularly liked. It really was too bad that he hadn’t found more time to spend on Naboo in the years since the Trade Federation’s invasion there.
But while it was quiet, it also felt empty. There were no battle droids to fight, no innocents to rescue. And, inevitably, no Padmé. He was alone, even here.
“You seem sad, Jedi.”
Obi-Wan exhaled sharply at the words. They came from somewhere behind him and resonated in an all too familiar tone to his ears.
But he couldn’t look back. It would hurt too badly. His mind needed rest from her. Why must his memories continue to haunt him, even here?
“Obi-Wan?” she pressed gently.
“It’s because you’re gone, Padmé,” he answered finally with a deep sigh, “And because, despite all I have done to come to terms with that, to face the pain of your loss . . . I cannot. Even now, as I lay dreaming, it’s you I dream of. And to what end?”
“I’m here for you, Obi-Wan. Because so much was left unfinished and unsaid between us . . . I’m just glad that Bail was able to get my message to you.”
There was a long pause after she finished speaking. Obi-Wan now half tempted to finally turn, fully expecting whatever image he had unwillingly conjured of her to be gone. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.
It seemed his subconscious had other ideas however. He started suddenly at the feeling of a small, delicate touch on his shoulder. The tactile pressure took him off-guard, his breath now emerging ragged and shaky. Why was his mind tormenting him so? There had already been so much pain.
The hand on his shoulder compressed and released over his robes, trying to comfort and put him at ease. “Ben,” she said breathlessly, in a voice that now resounded from his back, “Please turn around. I-I need to see you . . . and I need you to see me.”
His eyes snapped shut reflexively at hearing her voice now so close. This wasn’t some disembodied voice in a dream, nor was it a hollow sound emanating from the speakers of his holo-vid terminal. This was something else entirely. More tangible and real than anything he’d felt in quite some time.
Yet, even as he turned toward the voice, he kept his eyes closed. What would be there? Though perhaps what worried him the most was what wouldn’t be there should he chose to look.
The hand on his shoulder remained. It was warm and firm. And soon another hand hesitantly rose to caress his cheek. Obi-Wan nervously shifted upon his feet at the contact. The warmth of her hand quickly settled into his skin and spread through his body.
He heard a small gasp, followed by a sigh, the moist breath from it falling unexpectedly upon his lips. “Oh Obi-Wan, I so love your face.” Padmé’s voice, choked with emotion, struck a note in him. It resonated exactly as it did on the video she had hidden for him. “Please open your eyes,” she pleaded softly.
“Padmé, I can’t. I’m . . . sorry.”
The hands that touched him, on his face and his shoulder, retreated slowly. “Why?” she asked.
“Because I – If I were to open them and not see you standing before me . . . Padmé I’ve been able to face much sadness in the recent past. But this? This I’m afraid I was ill prepared for.”
“You fear I am little more than a dream,” she affirmed, apparently understanding his apprehension.
But he didn’t have time to answer her. One of his hands was currently being enfolded in a smaller, more elegant one and lifted into the air. When the pads of his fingers met the soft, smooth skin of her cheek, fingertips brushing against ringlet curls, he could not suppress the shudder that shook him from head to toe. Could this really be happening? She had visited him in a dream not too long ago. And that certainly had had real and tangible consequences. Perhaps all this was something similar.
He moved his thumb downward, allowing it to graze across the moist, full lips he found there. And she parted them slightly to remove any resistance. “I am no dream, Obi-Wan,” she whispered against him, “You may be dreaming . . . but I am really here with you. I promise.”
So what if she were simply a dream? Did it matter? Why would he deny himself even the chance to look upon her? One last time. Besides, fear, especially for a Jedi, was certainly not a good enough reason to refuse her simple request.
And so, bracing himself with a deep breath, he slowly opened his eyes to face what lay beyond.
He had been prepared for her not to be there. Prepared to feel his heart ache again with longing and loss.
But there she was. Standing before him. She was wearing a long, white flowing gown that almost seemed to glow in the sunlight. There were hints of blues and pinks and pale yellows within the fabric. But just how that was achieved, Obi-Wan wasn’t sure. Her lovely shoulders were all but bare, the dress cut low with sheer white fabric encasing her graceful and slender arms.
A small smile slowly spread across her lips and he blinked in disbelief. His eyes darted around her lovely face, trying to see as much of her as he could at one time. The elegant arch of her eyebrows, the mole on the alabaster skin of her left cheek, luscious pink lips and her eyes . . . those haunting chocolate orbs that pierced into him even now.
Eyes which, he noticed, were now shedding tears. Tears that spilled silently over the hand she continued to hold against her face with such tenderness. “Why do you cry, My Lady,” Obi-Wan asked her, his other hand coming to join the first, resting on the other side of her face.
“I just can’t believe it. Part of me didn’t think I’d actually be able to . . .,” she paused, looking up at him with the same wonder he felt within himself. “I crossed another plane of existence Obi-Wan . . . just to look into your eyes one last time.”
His heart began to pound and he quickly pulled her close, wrapping her petite body in his arms, secure within the folds of his robes. And the lady responded, nuzzling into his neck and winding her arms around his waist. It felt like the most natural thing in the entire galaxy. More right than anything in his recent memory. The soft silky feel of her hair, brushing against his face. Her moist breath warming the sensitive skin of his neck. And the pounding of her heart against his chest, even through their clothing. It beat firmly, along with his own.
But then it hit him, like a two ton speeder, and involuntarily his body tensed around hers. How could this be real? He’d been there when her heart had beat its last. He’d heard the life-monitors die as she did. Padmé, as real and soft and comforting as she felt in his arms right now, was still dead. She’d been gone for over a year, and thus there was no way this could be any kind of reality.
He felt her eyelashes flutter lightly against his skin as she moved out of his embrace to face him. By the concerned look in her eyes, Obi-Wan could tell that she had felt the change in him. “Still thinking with your mind and your logic, I see . . . Not with your heart,” she said with not a little disappointment, pained eyes searching his and making him feel ashamed.
But he could not look at her. Because it was true. She was right. “My biggest failing,” he sighed, “My greatest regret. Especially with regard to you, Padmé.”
“I never blamed you, Obi-Wan. For anything. You did all you could.”
“But I blamed myself,” he insisted, meeting her gaze again, “Blamed myself for Anakin’s fall as well as the numerous ‘what-ifs’ that remained between us after . . . after you left.”
“Oh Ben,” she said, shaking her head sadly, “I never meant for my message to bring up such pain and uncertainty for you. I guess it was selfish of me to tell you the way I did. Simply for the sake of your knowing the truth.”
The air around the pair grew somewhat chill, the warm sun having dipped precariously low, almost behind the buildings now. And an uncertain silence stretched between them, like a bottomless chasm which kept them apart on either side. Even as he stood there before her, actually in front of her, he could feel her presence fading, the light within her dimming. Just like before, when he lost her for the first time.
‘No,’ he resolved, ‘Not this time.’ This opportunity would not be squandered like so many others that he’d had over the years. Not when it was finally just the two of them. With nothing standing in between . . . nothing but this self-imposed wall of silence.
Obi-Wan’s hand found her face again, slowly brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Padme? If either of us was selfish, it was me. You were right when you said that I didn’t really see you. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t allow myself to.”
The lady gazed up at him silently, with sympathy in her eyes, allowing him whatever freedom he needed to unburden his heart. Just as she had years ago on Naboo, after Qui-Gon’s funeral.
“Looking past all that you are was much easier when you were queen, of course,” he explained, “Though I could hardly deny the friendship we forged on Naboo, our respective ages, and my position within the Order – I simply couldn’t think of you as anything more . . . Not that I didn’t care for you.”
She nodded deeply, understanding, “I was a child.”
“In years of age only, Padmé,” he smiled.
And she smiled in return. A beautiful and bright action that Obi-Wan deemed powerful enough to almost stop his heart. As he looked at her, he felt the tears sting at the corners of his eyes.
“What is it, Ben?” she asked with rising worry.
“I was selfish. Instead of recognizing what I felt and dealing with it, I pushed it all – pushed you – aside.” He breathed deeply. It was difficult to voice his innermost thoughts aloud, much less to her. The last thing he wanted was to cause her pain. “You said you felt you were below me somehow,” he recalled from her message, “But I felt that it was just the opposite. I had nothing to offer a woman of grace and substance like you. Not even love.”
Obi-Wan’s eyelashes darkened with the moisture of unshed tears, his sadness beginning to break through. He pulled her to him again, his arms winding around her waist, hands resting on the small of her back, and his forehead laying atop hers. “It took me so long, Padmé,” he said, “You had to be dying for me to realize all that you had meant to my life . . . and even then, as you slipped away, I said nothing.”
She held him in return, still saying nothing. Her hands at the back of his neck, her slender fingers running through the short hair they found there. It calmed and comforted him.
He had been with women before, of course. Though many may have viewed him as reserved, he was hardly a prude, and enjoyed sex very much. Sex, for the sake of sex, and without forbidden attachment was not at all frowned upon by the Council. Sexual desire was, after all, as natural a process for humanoids as was the need to eat or drink. But this? Standing with Padmé like this. It was intimacy on a level he had never before shared with another person. Far deeper than sex. He was bare before her, for the first time in fourteen years, his heart and soul lay completely open. No Order to hold him back from his own desires or from her. No duty or obligation of any kind . . . No Anakin.
Not even death, it seemed, could ever truly part them now.
The sun continued to set somewhere in the distance, the light growing pink in the sky and dim between them. Obi-Wan pulled back to meet her eyes, seeing the fire and strength in them that he had always admired. “I’m sorry, Padmé,” he admitted, “I couldn’t love you . . . even though I did.”
The rate of Padmé’s breathing increased; her exhales came shallow and fluttered against his neck and face. Her eyelids fell shut, a small tear dropping from either eye to roll slowly down her porcelain skin. And she smiled, full and open. Only for him. The light inside her returning.
“Padmé?” he asked gently, tracing her jaw line with a thumb and tilting her chin upward toward him, “I do love you. And I have missed you, my friend. So much.”
Before she could reply, he leaned in. Close to her. Closer than he’d ever allowed himself to get. Close enough to breathe in her exhale and make himself lightheaded. His nose brushed hers, experimenting, simply enjoying even the smallest of contact with her. He also quite enjoyed also the small sigh of contentment that escaped her trembling lips at feeling his tiny touch.
Those lips, which had always looked so soft and pink from across the expanse that had existed between them, now seemed unimaginably close. A temptation that not even he could resist any longer. With but one final breath his mouth descended, his lips at last capturing hers. His touch was gentle and unhurried, less a measure of indecision and more a desire to draw out the moment.
But Padmé, as always, was a decisive woman, well aware of what she wanted and was not content to stand idly by and simply be kissed. With her hands still on his neck, she pulled his head firmly against her, fingers now massaging his scalp. Her lips moved against his. They were even more full and enticing now than before, swollen as they were from the pressure and excitement of their kiss.
She pursed against him and then drew his lips between her own. It became a delicious and exceedingly erotic battle. The years of tension between them finally freed to find expression. And they each fought for their own brand of control. Padmé, impulsive and fiery, gave herself over to the moment, trying to accelerate their situation. Obi-Wan, tactical and thoughtful, planned and executed each small movement and with pinpoint accuracy. He slowed their pace, consuming her breath for breath.
And he couldn’t stop himself. Not even for oxygen. His hands roamed the cloth covered expanse of her back and waist. He kneaded the flesh underneath, eliciting a moan from Padmé which was quickly lost between their lips.
To him, she smelled of the very air around them, laced with the scent of the roses that bloomed to their right and left. And she tasted like clean, fresh water. As if he had been dying of thirst and was suddenly able to gorge himself. In essence, she was saving his life with her very presence.
He knew that, after this, he’d never be able to take another breath without first tasting her on his lips.
Only when he was dizzy, almost to the point of passing out, did he finally pry himself from her. Good thing too. Padmé stood before him, panting and flushed, trembling slightly in his embrace. She gripped his shoulders firmly in attempt to brace herself and keep her balance . . . The Jedi suddenly felt rather pleased with himself.
“Obi-Wan? . . . I . . . love you too,” she said quickly between pants.
He couldn’t help but chuckle at that. At their current situation and the completely glazed and sated look in her eyes as she blinked up at him. “Is that what you were really trying to say to me,” he smiled at her, “with your message?”
She giggled lightly, “What do you mean ‘trying’? I thought I was quite eloquent. And perfectly clear.”
“Oh you were, my dear,” he teased, “Right up to the moment that you said, ‘Obi-Wan, I lo – . . . and then you stopped.”
Padmé groaned and dropped her forehead to his chest in frustration. “Damn,” she said, her voice all but completely muffled by his thick robes, “It was Anakin. I didn’t want anyone to see that message to you. Least of all him.” When she finally looked back at him she did so grimacing, wearing a sour expression. “I’m sorry that I didn’t have the time to say it then. As it was the entire point of the message in the first place.”
He smiled gently, “It doesn’t matter now . . . Though while it is one thing to infer a meaning from an entire message, hearing it in person, from your beautiful lips is quite another.”
She nodded, smiling at him tenderly. But her expression quickly grew somber as she looked to the still fading sun. It seemed to have almost completely disappeared behind the buildings now, the first stars dimly emerging in the sky above them. It was dusk, and their time together was growing short . . . Obi-Wan could see it, in the way she now refused to meet his eyes.
“Padmé I don’t know if I can lose you again.”
“Nothing can stop that now,” she said sadly, “There are always consequences. And I knew this would hurt both of us.”
Looking at him once again, her face now serene, she placed a hand on his chest, over his heart. “We’re not gone, Obi-Wan. Not really,” she explained, “We’re just elsewhere . . . Hey! You’re a Jedi don’t you already know that? Becoming ‘one with the Force,’ etcetera?”
Padmé grinned at him flirtatiously, but while he rewarded her wit with a small smile, the Jedi didn’t rise to her playful bait. He was far more curious about something else she had said. “Is that a specific ‘we’ or a general usage of the word?”
Mischief began to sparkle in her lovely eyes. “You don’t think I could have managed all this Force manipulation on my own did you? . . . He met me here, on this side. Helped me use the connection you and I have always shared to reach you.”
“He?” Obi-Wan asked expectantly.
“Master Qui-Gon,” she said, “he wanted us to finish that which we had never been given the chance to begin.”
The Jedi breathed deeply up into the sky, a wave of gratitude and relief washing over him. Things looked clearer now, the events of the last few weeks finally making more sense. No one had ever known him better than his Master. And he’d often felt the man’s presence after his death. Qui-Gon must have known. Known Obi-Wan’s feelings for Padmé long before he did himself. He had always watched over his old Padawan. Perhaps Master Qui-Gon had done the same for Padmé as well.
Without warning Padmé quickly halted his musings, placing a tender kiss upon his cheek. He blinked in surprise, pressing her to him tightly, burying his face in her neck and planting several soft kisses of his own there.
She burst into a fit of giggles, and pushed him away lightheartedly, “Obi-Wan! Your beard tickles!”
He looked at her lovingly, her glistening eyes and smiling face making his heart skip. ‘Some things never change,’ he thought.
“How can I ever thank you, Padmé? For all that you’ve given me.”
“I think you just have, Ben,” she whispered.
He nodded, refusing to tear himself from her eyes until the last possible moment. “Goodbye Padmé.”
“Never goodbye, love,” she said shaking her head defiantly, chin raised, “I’m always around . . . in one form or another. I’ve looked in on you often. Just as I do Luke and Leia.”
He wanted to say something else, anything to keep her with him. If only by the sheer force of his will. Though, just as before, after the birth of her children, he knew he could not. Besides there was really nothing left to be said. And the sun was now gone.
“Close your eyes, Obi-Wan.”
He raised a curious, teasing eyebrow at her, but did as requested nonetheless.
“It’s time to go back to sleep,” she whispered,
“. . . I love you.”
~~
“Padmé, I – ”
But when he opened his eyes again, a plain stone ceiling greeted him. Daylight now fully filtering in. He was back. Far on the outer rim, back in his hovel on Tatooine, out beyond the Dune Sea.
Though it was much more probable that he’d never actually left in the first place. The most logical, though disappointing, conclusion being that it was all just a dream. But just as he had begun to resign himself to that fact, he caught a whiff of something in the air above him. What could it be? He could almost place it, the memory laying just on the edge of his consciousness.
Flowers.
Fresh red roses.
One of many varieties that bloom on Naboo, often used as floral accents in front of the buildings in the older parts of Theed.
Obi-Wan breathed the scent in deeply, allowing his eyes to fall shut again. He relaxed into the pad of his simple bedroll and felt at complete peace. The once familiar sadness, the cold ache for her in his chest, now significantly lightened, if not totally gone.
“I love you too,” he said to the space around him.
He was no longer alone.
And you blended the sadness and romance together perfectly. Great job! 
Your descriptions were quite colorful and you added just the right amount of them. Again, you represented our favorite characters superbly. Great story, bravo!! 
