Hours later we still haven't spoken, still sopping wet in my cold ship. Unlike him I have other clothes onboard I can change into since it is my ship after all but I can't bring myself to remove his wet robe from around my shoulders that he placed in such tenderness before this mess.

He is angry, disappointed. With the hours that pass I truly can appreciate how he has become a master in these last years, for only a master can so perfectly master the silent treatment. I almost pity Anakin now. But, I do know that with Anakin as his padawan Obi-Wan has by sake of necessity become one of the most patient men in the galaxy and that he will put this aside for the sake of the mission once the emotions pass.

But still I cannot bear it, I cannot bear him being angry with me when I've been betrayed so brutally. I ache for his comfort even though I don't deserve it. I lied. I lied to the one person I knew I could trust with this and he's right, I did it to save my pride, but mostly out of fear of this exact situation.

My master has betrayed me, he hired the bounty hunter to kill Padme before I overheard the conversation with his own master, he'd already given the order before his master did.

My own father could never understand for a moment why I'd made the choices I had in leaving the order and in everything that came next. But Dooku did. As a child Dooku had paid a closer eye on me in supervising my clan's training as a youngling than my parents ever did after they let them take me. The bond I'd spent years trying to repair with my father, it was one I found early with Dooku despite the strict professionalism he kept in the training.

I needed a father, some wiser being to look up to, and that was Dooku.

All that is gone now. It was all a lie.

I can bear my sisters anger at being a separatist, we're sisters we fight and we get over it.

But not this.

At the start I was operating under the assumption I could hide it until the mission was done so he would never have to know but even then I knew that there is no done. Not with Obi-Wan and I.

Half of me expects Obi-Wan to come and sort this out, or at least to break this silence, but he doesn't. He's a patient man so this silent treatment may very well last until we reach Anakin and Padme and are forced to communicate.

But I'm not that patient and so when the tension becomes unbearable I leave my ships sleeping quarters to return to the cockpit, standing in the entrance and wait until he senses me before I dare to ask "Are you still angry with me?"

He sighs heavily, and from the moment he takes to compose himself before speaking it's clear the emotions haven't yet passed. At least it's some relief to know both of us are in pain.

"You were a Siths apprentice for the better part of a decade and you hid it from me knowing how important that very fact is to this mission," he says, laying it out logically as much as passive aggressively. "So yes, I am still angry with you."

But I know him better than that, I know it's the betrayal he can't move past no matter how much he tries to rationalise it in his own mind. That it's his emotions that have been hurt rather than the mission.

Knowing it can't get much worse I say "I wanted to tell you everything that first night and I was going to before the attack happened, when you said that no matter what it was that it's us and that all would be well."

He sighs again and looks back at me, the tension unmistakable. "Yes and I do mean that but Rhea, this is madness. You went to Count Dooku for training knowing he'd turned to the darkside."

"It was him who came to me," I remind Obi-Wan and try to resist the urge to become defensive. "And tell me Obi-Wan, you knew he was one of the lost but did you ever know he'd fallen to the darkside until I'd told you? Because I certainly didn't until I learned the hard way."

He clamps his mouth shut, he didn't know and I refuse to speak until he answers me. "No, I didn't know. I knew he was a misguided idealth but not this." He can't look at me as he says "I had thought the same about you. A maverick, never a Sith's apprentice."

Considering he can't exactly walk away whilst we're in hyperspace I try to explain myself before he can choose to leave me on Naboo.

"I believed he and I were two people who saw the truth in things, who viewed the force in a way beyond the code. He treated me with respect whilst everyone else in my life still saw me as a failure for not being accepted back into the order, he didn't. He believed as Jedi we could maintain attachments and that we shouldn't have to keep them hidden. That we can still love." He winces at those words. "I may have left that council meeting with my dignity but with the years grew anger, resentment. He told me it was justified and that people like us didn't have to suffer as outcasts for it. He took me under his wing and offered to complete my training, how could I have refused him? Who else was going to offer me that?"

"I would have," he tells me without missing a beat and I freeze, that thought, that possibility, having never crossed my mind despite going to the temple all those years ago. "If you wanted training I would have done it in a heartbeat without the permission of the council."

Of course he would have, he had Anakin, but still he would have defied them for me just as he was willing to defy them in far greater ways. Sadness fills me at the thought of what could have been if I'd gone to him in those moments I was lost. If I'd gone to him that day in the temple and told him I regretted walking away from him, that I regretted not fighting harder. 

"And if I knew that I would have taken up that offer in a heartbeat," I tell him, and now I'm truly in pain. "But when I found Dooku it had been three years. Any faith I had left in us was slipping and I needed guidance, and I was not going to risk pulling you away from your duty to Anakin." He's quiet now as I tell him. "I thought Dooku was a rogue Jedi like myself who wanted to make a change for the better through the Separatist cause and I believed in his faith in me, that his desire to take me as an apprentice was out of generosity, or at the very least a genuine desire for a likeminded protege. I could never have guessed he was a Sith lord. If for a moment that thought had ever crossed my mind in those few years I would have run and never looked back. I was desperate for someone to have faith in me, and I fell into his trap."

It's the betrayal that I'd go to a man who was all but a stranger instead of him that rings clear in his voice. "Why didn't you come to me after everything we went through together with Darth Maul? Even if it had been years, just as it's been now, I would have done anything for you." I have to look away at those words. "If you could trust no one else, I would have thought after everything you would have been able to trust me. Just as I thought you'd be able to trust me with this."

"I did-"

"If you came to me-"

"I did!" I finally cry out and he stares in shock at the tears that fill my eyes. "I did come to you."

He shakes his head "No, you never-"

But I did and there is no point hiding my lapse of resolve anymore, not whilst I'm prepared to abandon my last shred of grace for him.

"The very day after Dooku asked me to be his apprentice I came to the temple," I tell him and he falls utterly silent. "I was on Coruscant for a damn senate meeting but the first place I went was to you. I knew I'd gone mad as I snuck inside, I didn't let anyone see me and I found you."

"No," he says, searching his memories as I sit down in the copilot's seat across from him. "You never-"

"You never saw me," I say, remembering it like yesterday. "You were in the garden training with Anakin. Your hair was longer, I remember it because I hadn't realised it had such orange in it before then." I have to resist the urge to reach out and touch it now. "Anakin was throwing a fit because he didn't want to do his training, he asked you if Qui-Gon made you do that same training and said he missed him." Slowly in his eyes I see the memory dawn on him. "Anakin said he missed Padme and asked if you missed me."

"Rhea," he breathes and I don't know who'll reach for who first.

"I heard all of it," I whisper. "I saw the pain you were still in. All I wanted in that moment was to go to you, to tell you all of it."

"Why didn't you?" he asks me, as if it would have made a difference. "You were right there and I never-"

"Because I loved you too much to throw myself back into your life and screw it up again," I tell him but see the pain in his eyes in this moment. "But it seems I did that anyways."

He shakes his head and takes my face in his hands, the touch forcing the air from my lungs. "Rhea- that day the council asked me to follow you."

My voice is thin, not having expected a revelation of his own. "What?"

"They were worried there'd be a riot when you spoke in the senate, and they were right of course," he says with a heartbreaking fondness. "I stayed where you couldn't see me but I remember the moment you were in the corridor just outside of the senate hall fighting with Naboo's senator. You were dressed in this great big red gown and looked more like royalty than yourself." He traces my face now whilst I'm utterly still. "You had two red dots on your cheeks, and a line of red lipstick here." I'm trembling under his touch as his thumb drags down my lower lip. "You were scolding the senator and I just wanted to kiss you, you've always been an intimidating force to be reckoned with and I remembered in that moment just what it felt like to be on the other side of it."

He was there and I never knew, he was right there the moment I needed him most and yet twice he slipped from my grasp. "Why- why didn't you show yourself?"

"Because I knew you needed to keep your head about you and a reunion would have only compromised us both," he answers and I can feel the undercurrent of remorse. "I watched the show you put on from the gallery, I thought after the things Palpatine said you'd crash and burn but you did the opposite. I was awestruck and when you walked out I tried to chase after you." I feel my eyes widen at those words. "I ran through that entire damn senate building trying to find you without a thought in my mind what I'd do once I did, I just knew something wasn't right."

"It wasn't," I quake. "That was the moment I decided to join Dooku. That was the moment I lost faith in the Republic." Finally he understands, if he was there he has to. "In my gut I knew I was making the wrong choice but I was so angry I didn't care."

"By the time I found you," he continues. "You were surrounded by armed guards and getting into your ship, I called out to you from the crowd, you heard me but you never saw me."

"I did, I did hear you," I tell him, realising it wasn't just some twisted sign, it was him. My last call to the light. "I thought I was going mad, as if hearing your voice was something in the force trying to tell me no and I- if I'd just seen you then I wouldn't have done what I did."

He searches my eyes now, thumb stroking my cheek as he tells me "When I saw you leave I was as devastated as I was relieved, because I knew if I had found you, if I could have touched you I would have kissed you." His words are shockingly shameless and just like that I lose all sense, all reservation, all grace. "Because you- the moment you are near all sense, all self control, it disappears. I am a Jedi, I shouldn't feel the things I feel for you but..."

It's only then I realise his eyes are on my lips and we're gravitating towards each other helpless against what can only be the pull of the force itself.

"I love you," I confess without thought or hesitation and watch his eyes widen at those forbidden words, and that's all it takes before I feel his lips on mine and the only thought in my mind is a resounding finally.

His bearded face is rough on mine and his lips soft, every glance, every word, every touch, all leading up to this moment of pure inhibition. The moment I gasp into his mouth at the feeling of his tongue I'm being pulled out of my chair and we're blindly stumbling into the back of the ship as he tugs my braid apart until he can bury his hand in my hair, using the leverage to tilt my jaw up and deepen the kiss as I find my back against the cold wall of the ship.

"Rhea," he breathes between kisses, and groans when my lips find his neck, the map of him I traced so long ago still imprinted in my mind and he curses as my lips drag along his jawline before roughly pulling them back to his.

Suddenly every touch is hot and desperate, hands moving with a heaviness that never existed before. We aren't two kids anymore, we aren't padawans, there is no false innocence left for us to pretend this won't end one way. It's as his hands come to grasp my waist tight and I'm gasping into his mouth he warns me "We shouldn't-"

"I know," I say, maker do I know but it does little to deter either of us as I search his blue eyes darkened with lust and we both know we've gone too far across that forbidden line to go back now.

He pulls my body flush to his, his voice is guttural as he commands "Say you want this."

"I want this," I say but it's not enough for him until I'm tugging him to me knowing there's only one way in which we get any closer than this, my hands fisted in his robes and staring into his hungry eyes. "I want you." I don't expect my voice to quake in pure heartache as I declare "I need you."

I gasp out as he lifts me up, my legs around his waist and fingers buried in his hair as his lips find my own and for a moment I'm fighting tears at how my heart itself cries after all these years without him and I feel his hand cover my heart, telling me he feels it too. He carries me with ease across the hall but only making several feet before my back hits a wall and his mouth is hot beneath my jaw, the scratch of his beard pure heaven and feel him moan into my flesh as my fingers tug at his locks and we're stumbling back into my sleeping quarters.

As he sets me down on the bed all of me yearns to be one with his, my body, my heart, my soul and it's him who asks me "Can you feel it?"

The irresistible pull of the force that's been there since the very first time we laid eyes on one another, stronger than it ever was then and I know then there is no escaping it again.

"Yes."

It's the strongest thing I've ever felt.

His lips hover over mine and remain there as I look up into his eyes, but it's not until I move to kiss him and when he stops me I see the pure pain in them and feel him slip from between my fingers.

"Obi-" I begin but I'm left cold as he pulls back, the horror of what we've done dawning on him and my head falls back in frustration against the cot as he gets to his feet.

"I can't," he says, unable to look at me. "We can't."

"We can," I find myself daring to say as I sit up and look at him, a mess on the mattress. "Obi-Wan-"

"Rhea," he interrupts, his voice filled with remorse. "I should have stopped this all those years before it ever reached the point it did but I was too weak to resist you. I can't make the same mistake twice."

"Too weak to resist me?" I repeat, frustration meeting his guilt. "Is that what I am Obi-Wan, a temptation, a test of your discipline?"

"Yes," he answers as if he wasn't my willing accomplice. "And I will not give into you again."

"Tell me," I ask him as I get out of the bed. "Ten years ago, who was it that took me into your room in the temple and kissed me? Who did the same just now!"

He sighs, both of us flushed red and at our wits end "You know exactly what it is you do to me Rhea."

"And what do you think you do to me?" My voice trembles with a decades worth of pain and his eyes close as I touch his face, running my fingertips along his bearded cheek, his bruised lips. "Do you think you're the only one who's become mad?" I look up into his eyes as they finally open and tell him "The greatest regret of my life was not fighting harder for us and now- now I know I'll live the rest of my life in regret if I do not do that now."

Slowly he removes my hands from his face and in trying to rationalise every reason why this could break us he says the worst thing he possibly can. "We can't keep longing for a brief love that was a decade ago."

I back away, the space between us turning volatile at those words. "Is that all this is Obi-Wan?" He stiffens now as I taunt with tears in my eyes. "Longing for a brief love a decade ago?"

"Rhea-" His voice is rough as he reaches me, quickly backtracking. "No- I'm sorry, we both know it is not."

"Then say it," I challenge, refusing to accept anything other than the truth. "Say that despite all the years the noble Jedi's great flaw is still his heart. That the moment you laid eyes on me it all came rushing back!"

"I have never hidden that," he argues quietly, trying his very best to be gentle with his words as if you can soften a dagger to the heart. "But I cannot compromise my judgement for the sake of a memory, no matter how vivid it is." 

"No," I protest quietly before my voice raises, not willing to leave with grace this time. "We'd be lying to ourselves if we pretended we haven't lived ten years in agony and I am not doing that again!"

It's then he holds my hands in his and gets down on his knees for me, I could be mistaken in thinking this was a proposal if not for the pure agony in his eyes. "Rhea."

"Obi-Wan, don't."

"You're stronger than I ever have been and ever will be," he tells me with the purest reverence in his voice. "Which is why I know if we fight you'll win. We both know what we have to do, we both know that no matter how much we ache for each other-"

"I love you," I tell him, the tears I've so desperately fought making their way down my cheeks. "I've always loved you and I love you now." Still he tries to pretend he isn't cursed with the same affliction and I grasp his hands tight, refusing to let them go. "Tell me you don't love me."

Something behind his eyes breaks "Rhea-"

"Tell me you aren't in love with me and I'll stop," I whisper, knowing the truth in his heart.

"I can't," he breathes hoarsely. "Which is why you need to walk away."

My defiance is unshaken. "No."

"Please Rhea," he pleads with me, still more composed than I could ever be. "I'm on my knees, don't make me beg also."

And so I get down on my knees as well, damning my dignity, damning grace, damning everything but my love for him.

"We're both on our knees, Obi-wan," I tell him as I decide "I can't be the one to walk away this time, I can't." I'm choking on my words now, hating this, hating feeling so weak after so many years of trying to be strong but I can't lie to myself like he can. "I'm not that strong anymore, so don't you dare make me do it again."

"Rhea-"

"No!" I grit out, shaking my head. "Don't you dare make me live with that guilt again, I won't!"

"Rae," he whispers, holding my face. "Darling... it would destroy us."

Tears stain my face and my voice breaks "It already has."

Or at least destroyed me.

His voice is filled with pain as he breathes my name "Rhea..."

"I love you," I say again after ten years of wishing I said it, even if it falls on deaf ears. "I did then when I walked away, and I do now. Obi-Wan if this is so impossible please do me that mercy now." He can't look at me and I say the words I know I shouldn't "But if you love me, if you still want to fight-" He lets go of me and agony replaces his touch as he stands and I'm looking up at him from my knees, putting every last bit of fight I have left in me into my last words. "I'm asking if you can love me now, despite my mistakes, despite the years." He stands there, still somehow looking on in disbelief and I cry out "Damnit Obi-Wan asking you to forgive me, to love each other as we are now."

But all he can give me is an apology.

"I am sorry Rhea," he says, both our hearts breaking. "I am sorry for all the pain I have caused you. I-" His eyes meet mine and he hesitates before telling me "I have loved you from the first breath I ever took when I set eyes on you and I will love you until my very last, but love my darling isn't enough."

For the first time I find myself with no words left to say as I feel the strongest love I've ever felt be torn from my hands once again and he opens his mouth with tears in his own eyes but leaves before he can say anything more and I break down on the floor as I haven't since I left him on Naboo all those years ago, clutching my breaking heart and cursing myself for believing it could ever end any differently.

~

Obi-Wan

The cockpit is somehow colder than it was before. I've loved and I've lost, but nothing compares to the sheer agony of walking away from her. It doesn't help that I can feel her own pain as sharply as my own. I want to go to her, I want to dry her tears and hold her until the pain is a distant memory but I can't. Not without wounding her more than I already have.

Never did I realise how deeply walking away wounded her, never did I realise the guilt she's had in her heart for so many years and only now as I hear her choked gasps do I truly feel it, do I understand that guilt.

I love her. Despite all she's told me I still only love her. I want to force myself to believe the worst, but it would only be a lie. She was manipulated by Dooku from the start, and I understand why she made the decision she did after witnessing that day in the senate myself. I only wish she trusted me enough to tell me all of it from the start, I know she wanted to but the mess she's found herself in is truly darker than anything I could have ever conceived.

Apprenticing for a Sith lord.

I've searched for darkness within her and found none, a primordial anger perhaps, but nothing close to what I sensed in Maul. I've felt greater darkness in my own apprentice than in her. 

She is passionate with the capacity for great love and great hate, she is everything a Sith would target, and yet her love and loyalty is greater than any thirst for power. Love, the very thing I've been taught only leads to darkness is what has led her to resist it. She has always destroyed everything I've ever believed in, and now is no exception. 

From the start I justified my feelings through the belief I could bring her back to the Order, that it was why the force had brought us together, that it was the will of the force itself to return with her. I believed if that happened we could keep it a secret, that if us being drawn together was the will of the force all else would fall into place.

I no longer have any misconceptions about the possibility of this, to be with her is utterly impossible, and yet trying to walk away still feels as if I'm fighting against the current of the force. Tears wet my hand as I drag it over my face, unable to ignore now the feelings I've forced aside for so many years. A great sadness that I've told myself is tolerable, or rather that I've forced myself to tolerate. 

The fate of a Jedi is to dedicate one's life to something greater than themselves, in my case it has been Anakin. A boy I've raised, who I love as my own brother and only now do I understand Rhea's hesitation to leave Padme all those years ago. I can call it duty, but the truth is that I've come to love Anakin, I would die for him. He is my brother and the closest thing I will ever have to a son. I have always known that if he left the order I would follow him, that I would go against the council and abandon everything I have ever known not out of duty, but out of love.

It would not be the first time I have contemplated it, if Satine had asked it of me I would have done it but that was before I had a duty to my padawan, a padawan who will soon be knighted.

But what is duty compared to a woman's love, compared to the sun itself?

In this short time I've been reunited with her I've felt more alive than I have in years, perhaps ever, and every second I spend in her presence only makes the thought of being without her unliveable.

 I cannot do it again. I meant it when I told her I would love her until my last breath, but I know all too well the truth that love is not enough, not without sacrifice.

A sacrifice that I may just make, and I hold my saber in my hands as I contemplate what I am prepared to do.

If I do this, I do it absolutely. If I decide to be with her that is a commitment for life itself. A commitment greater than my commitment to the Jedi. If I do this I will marry her, I will devote myself to her entirely. 

Once before I was prepared to do this, when I was far younger with far less to lose, but it is Rhea I have loved and longed for these many years, a decade now. If I allow myself to fall then there will be no second guessing, no backing out.

I will love her, and I will love her entirely.

Anakin... I know Anakin would understand. I dare to imagine he would even smile. 

Perhaps in Qui-Gon's spirit I would stand before the council with her by my side and give them an ultimatum. It was not always so impossible. I've heard stories of marriage and children between Jedi in the days of old, thousands of years in the past perhaps it was not always so forbidden. There are also the rumours of Master Mundi and his five wives but I can hardly claim extinction of our species as a special exception. 

I do not want to leave the Order, but I know I cannot leave her. 

She would never ask me to leave, but she's as distraught as I am to the point of getting down on her knees and all but asking me to stay with her and I may just be selfish enough to. She must believe that somehow I could live in secret with her whilst remaining part of the order, but I know better than that. I've devoted my entire life, more than thirty years now, to the order and yet I still do not find myself contented with it. 

The question remains in my mind if I would find that contentment with Rhea or if we would crash and burn the moment we try to run. There is no ignoring our temperaments could just as easily grate as they could complement but what I do know is that whatever our differences they come together as one. Two jagged halves that shouldn't fit together but do.

Choosing the order would be the easier path, but I know I will regret it until my last breath if I do not try, except in this instance as Master Yoda would say, do or do not, there is no try.

Whilst my mind battles between possibilities, my heart is made up.

It's her's if she'll still have it.

And so I put down my saber and quietly go to her sleeping compartment and placed a hand on the closed door, it's quiet now and I gently call out her name "Rhea?" There's no answer and I suspect she's pretending to be asleep and so I tell her "I'm about to land on Naboo, should I land in Theed?"

Still no answer, not even to order me about and that's how I know it is truly bad. I was cruel in saying it was a brief love a decade ago, even if she knew the words were a lie the moment I saw the shocked pain in her eyes it felt as if I'd turned a dagger upon my own heart. 

I'd done as she'd asked and done the mercy of leaving so she would not have to, except I'm not as strong as she is, I'm not strong enough to not turn back and run into her arms.

But whilst my own heart is made up, the matter of hers is another. She could very well change her mind, she could decide it is not worth the risks, the sacrifice. She had made that decision before and she could very well make it again. 

Even so, she deserves to know just how I feel, how deep my love for her runs. That it is unlike any other I have ever felt and know I ever will feel. She bared her heart to me and whilst I've attempted to keep mine guarded she sees right through me and I cannot lie to her any longer.

"I'm sorry, for all of it," I tell her and there's no reply but I can feel her listening and know she has far greater worries on her mind than this. Her master ordered her sister to be murdered, and stopping Dooku must come first. "We will finish this mission and make sure your sister is safe, I promise."

With those words I step away from the door only to turn back as it opens and she stands there as defiant as ever, having changed out of her wet clothes into a flowing dress in an attempt to look composed even if her hair is still dripping, even if I can tell she had wiped away tears before opening the door and the moment I meet her eyes I know that no matter what is going through her mind her heart is the same as mine.

It always has been and always will be.

And like that, my decision is made.

~

Rhea

He looks at me differently now, as if he wants to change his mind but I don't let myself be foolish enough to believe it. I only opened the door for the sake of finding even enough ground to continue this mission, reminding myself Padme's life is at stake and I need him with me to end this mess. 

But I can't find words and roughly I push past him to the cockpit to find we're entering the atmosphere, my hair still sopping wet and body aching from Kamino. Not wanting to have to air this out in the middle of Theed I head down towards the empty fields of the Lake Country where there are no humans or Gungans for miles. 

I feel him standing in the entrance and eye his saber on the seat beside me, able to feel both our minds moving as if in hyperdrive but find his heart calm, a calmness that hurts knowing his decision has left mine in shreds even if we both know there is no other way, not without asking him to do what we both know he cannot. 

Even then I wonder if it is possible, for him to not have to sacrifice everything, for there to be another way but there isn't, not if he is to remain a true Jedi. The moment the ship lands I'm moving with an urgency that stuns him, keeping my head down as I move past him and almost stumble out of the ship in my desperation to breathe and upon feeling the Naboo sun on my skin it's suddenly less difficult. Not easy, but I can look up at the sun and feel something other than this pain. 

I can feel his eyes on me as he disembarks the ship, but I could never have anticipated that he has the audacity to continue the torture. "I meant what I said."

I shake my head, not wanting to hear it, unable to hear it again.

"Don't be cruel," I whisper. "Anything but that."

I expect him to reiterate why it's impossible, why it's terrible, why it would destroy us and yet he tells me "I love you."

The context of the words enrages me and leaves me in no state to care for self preservation and so I look at him with little left to lose, wanting to yell but only a weak plea comes out instead.

"Please, don't. You said everything you needed to." We need to finish this mission, and it's for Padme's sake I'm keeping any grace. "This is impossible and we're both fools for believing any different so let's leave it there. I won't bring it up again but I'm asking you to do the same."

He steps forward with determination in his eyes as he tells me "I meant it when I said love isn't enough-"

"Don't," I warn but he doesn't listen.

"I loved you so fiercely all those years ago that I was prepared to fight without care of consequence," he begins. "But I know now that whatever we choose there will be consequences."

I blink at him now in disbelief at what he insinuates, at the slight hope he gives me. "We've made our choice, that a brief love a decade ago isn't worth it. That it would destroy us."

There's pain in his eyes at those words and he repeats my own "It already has, and in those ten years not a day's gone by where I haven't felt the loss of you, as if half my heart has been missing and I know now that it has been."

"Obi-Wan," I whisper, unable to do this again.

"You asked me if I can still love you despite your mistakes, despite the years," he says and I can't breathe. "To love each other as we are now."

He holds my gaze, he can feel my desperation, the deep aching. I loved him all those years ago, but it's not the memory of him that I cling to now, it's the fact I've been falling in love with him all over again since the moment he came back into my life and I do not want to let him slip between my fingers again.

"I'm afraid I don't have a choice in that matter," he continues and I turn my back on him before I can do something I regret, walking away only to feel him grab my wrist and pull me back to him and I'm standing there trembling as his hand brushes my cheek. "Because I do love you as you are now, and perhaps that's why I haven't been able to say it, why I've used this fight as an excuse to end this." My walls begin to crumble as he lays himself out as vulnerable as I am. "But I know now there is no ending this because this bond between us is stronger than anything I have ever felt and here I am now, a Jedi Master, prepared to risk everything for a love I still cannot understand."

I let out a ragged breath and reach for his hand, holding it to my cheek with tears in my eyes. "Obi-Wan..."

"And even now after everything you've told me, all I feel when you touch me is hope," he confesses to me. "Because you are not the only one who's felt alone these past years." There's tears in both our eyes now. "Ever since the moment we parted I have felt that all I am destined for is infinite sadness, and then you come back into my life and again destroy everything I have ever believed in and make me question everything I have devoted my life to, my duty, one touch from you and I want to abandon it all."

And there is the truth and I confess my own "The moment I saw you again, I knew my heart had never stopped waiting for yours."

He lets out a sigh of relief as he nods and his voice breaks "I know darling. I can't understand it. Trying to understand it is like trying to understand the force itself."

I let out an exhausted breath as we stand there, as broken and maddened as one another. "I'm tired of trying to understand it, I just want you."

"And I want you," he tells me, holding my hands in his, but it's with the next words I find myself speechless. "I want to fight for you."

"Obi-"

"I want to fight for us," he declares and I watch now as he once again gets to his knees and looks up at me, time itself seems to stop at what was impossible suddenly becoming real. "I've devoted my life to the order, but I know I'll only live the rest of it in regret if I don't spend the years I have left with you."

"The order," I immediately begin but fall silent at the look in his eyes and realise he truly has made his decision.

"I know you'll never ask it of me, but it is a sacrifice I am prepared to make," he reveals and tears slip down my face as he says "My heart is yours if you'll have it."

I fall down to my knees to take his face in my hands, trembling now as I look at the man I love. "Yes."

That's when he kisses me, both of us succumbing to this madness, the frustration and the longing erupting within us simultaneously in desperate kisses and grasping hands the next thing I know we're on the ground by the ship where there is no one in sight.

"I love you," he confesses to me, my face in his hands. "I love you as you are now, right in front of me, and I can't let you walk away again."

"I love you too," I breathe, exhausted and exhilarated, finally after all these years confessing what we have always known. "It's always been you, it will only ever be you." I search his eyes finally resolute, knowing things I never could have at nineteen. "And I'm not walking away again."

"Neither am I," he swears to me and he brings my lips to his, my fingers knotting in his hair as he groans into my mouth, aching to be as close to him in body and soul as I can be as I'm laid down in a field of flowers with him between my legs, needing me just as I need him. 

I'm breathless as he pulls his robes off over the top of his head so I can feel him, my fingers digging into his warm familiar flesh as his lips find my neck. The touch of him maddening as his fingers work at the laces holding the top of my dress together and let it fall open, hands nowhere near as shy as they used to be as they immediately reach for me and I'm gasping as his calloused hand scrapes over my nipple. My dress ends up somewhere around my hips as my legs come up around his waist, pulling him flush against me and his hand skims the skin of my thigh that's been exposed.

"Please," I breathe, kissing his jaw, able to feel his pulse throbbing. "Please Obi-Wan."

Ten years. Ten years of aching for him. Ten years where no one else's touch could ever come close to his. And finally he's here.

"I'm yours," he swears as his lips find mine. "I've always been yours."

I return the kiss with the same desperation, needing him like oxygen, and I'm suddenly very glad I had enough foresight to choose somewhere completely isolated to land, although I'd assumed it would be for arguing, not this. 

He slips my panties down with far more grace than I give his trousers, the two of us too desperate to even undress fully as he brings my leg up around his waist, grabbing my hand and lacing his fingers with mine, grasping it tight as I help guide him inside of me, more than ready for him. I've been ready for ten years.

He groans as he fills me and my head falls back as I have to adjust to the size of him, at nineteen I might not have realised how well endowed he is but I sure as hell haven't felt anything like it since and from the way he curses in my ear it's clear he hasn't felt anything at all. 

"Language dear," I tease and he laughs breathlessly as I kiss him, only now having slowed down enough to truly take each other in, and he's beautiful. "I've missed you."

"I've missed you too darling," he says and kisses me, fingers laced with mine as he makes love to me in a field of flowers, both of us unravelling in each other's embrace and it's only then it all makes sense. This isn't like it was ten years ago, two young people slowly and gently experiencing each other for the first time, no this is ten years of pain and longing finally working its way to the surface with each thrust of his hips and grinding of our bodies and sinful sound.

Raw passion in it's most forbidden form.

And what we cannot put into words we feel as we come undone together, seeing stars and feeling the true wonder of the force as the bond that's laid dormant for so many years comes alive moreso than it ever was before.

His head rests on my shoulder, his breathing ragged as he places slow kisses along my collarbone and props himself up on his elbows, hair dishevelled, looking at me in blissful disbelief that we've once again fallen into this trap.

But this time we laugh, knowing it was inevitable.

"Well, here we are again."

"Here we are indeed."

And lying here together in a field of flowers in such bliss I wish we could stay here forever.

We almost do until he reminds me "As much as I just want to stay here with you, I'm afraid we still have a mission sweetheart."

"I know," I say, still breathless at being with him like this. "When this is over, you and me, we aren't leaving bed for days."

He chuckles, kissing me. "You have no argument from me there darling."

He slowly sits us up, brushing the flowers out of my hair as I lace up the front of my dress and pull it back down before helping him with his robes, both of us laughing at the dishevelled mess we've left each other.

I'm smiling as I attempt to tidy his hair, his cheeks so beautifully flushed beneath his beard and he says "It seems we are the mad ones after all."

"When haven't we been?" I ask him, unable to pull myself away from his bright eyes.

"Well my dear I'm only mad when you're involved," he teases, pulling me into his arms as he kisses me with a passion I don't expect, holding me tight as he murmurs "I don't want to let you go."

"We have time," I promise him knowing Padmé isn't going anywhere and we're smiling in each other's arms as I suggest. "Surely we can spare another hour..."

I'm looking into his bright eyes as if they're light incarnate. There are so many unspoken questions but none of that matters now as he kisses me and the bond between us has been reforged into something stronger than our duty, and potentially more dangerous than we can fathom.