meggory84:

davaia:

Forever and a day ago, I took a few angsty, QuiObi dialogue prompts (too lazy to find the post), then my work schedule went bananas, and they got moved to the back-burner. But here’s one! For @meggory84: “I didn’t mean to love you this much,” with specific instructions to Bring the Pain. Standard disclaimers: not beta’d or super heavily proofread.

…But we all know what flower petals mean!!

It takes six weeks for Obi-Wan to remember he’d actually seen it. Somewhere between killing the Sith, the smell of burnt flesh and ozone, and curling himself around Qui-Gon Jinn’s mostly dead body on the floor of Theed’s power generator. He’d seen and registered one inky-blue petal crushed beneath his knee, thought vaguely what a strange thing that was, and then forgotten it completely as the medics descended on them. 

It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know what it meant at the time. Couldn’t have known.

After Naboo, Obi-Wan spends two weeks at his comatose master’s bedside, a persistent irritation at the back of his throat, before he’s deployed on his first solo mission; it takes four weeks for a councilwoman on Setti-IV to overhear his stifled coughing fit, look at him with sad eyes and say, bafflingly, It’s a noble death, Knight Kenobi; five weeks when he thinks he’s choking on a piece of muja, only to spit back up a mass of blue petals onto his breakfast plate. Five weeks and three hours when he’s taken off active field duty, indefinitely, and admitted to the Halls of Healing, also indefinitely.

Hanahaki. Hanahaki.

“It’s Qui-Gon,” Obi-Wan tells Vokara, voice flat, hands folded primly in his lap where he’s seated on the exam table. Her composure wavers the moment it takes for the implications of that to set in, and he sees her swallow. “Quite,” he agrees with a faint, wry smile. 

Obi-Wan’s affliction seems to know it’s been acknowledged, and progresses rapidly after that. His cough grows wetter, the clumps of petals thicker, bigger, his throat perpetually raw from his reflexive swallowing against it all.

Qui-Gon’s condition stays the same.

At six weeks, Obi-Wan collects his growing pile of crumpled flower petals and leaves his med room for Qui-Gon’s. He settles into the visitor’s chair with an extra blanket, a mug of hot frostmint tea meant to soothe the pain, and pulls up the Archive’s botanical database on his reader. “Asmeru Indigo Laceleaf,” he reads aloud, then gets to the next sentence down and barks out a laugh with a sharp, almost manic edge to it. “With—thorns?” he huffs, eyes beginning to sting, throat tightening in some automatic, defensive response to the idea of that. “Honestly, Qui-Gon, that’s rather much, even for you.”

Hanahaki is an excruciating death, thorns or no. It’s a slow-motion suffocation that will shred his lung tissue and throat and leave him choking on his own love and blood. Unless…

Unless.

Bant begs him to get it removed. Have the affliction surgically cut out of him. And along with it, every mote of joy, of love and pride and adoration he’s ever felt—or would feel—for Qui-Gon Jinn. The number of patients who lose their ability to feel anything at all, for the rest of their lives, is small but statistically significant. Empty people with empty eyes living empty lives.

No. That won’t do, he decides. Obi-Wan had fought too long and hard for all those pieces of Qui-Gon Jinn, just to have them cut right back out of him. He says as much, and it almost does the disease’s work for it, to sit there and watch her cry and beg for him to spare his life from himself.

I’ll be dead either way. Don’t you understand that?

Bant doesn’t. He tries comfort her, but only makes it worse when he smiles and doesn’t realize he has blood in his teeth.

Master Windu is a surprise, though.

It’s a privilege afforded to few of us, to die on our own terms, and for those whom we love most. You won’t be alone with this, Knight Kenobi.

It’s a gross lapse of decorum for Obi-Wan to stare the way he does, slack-jawed in the face of Mace’s quiet understanding and lack of judgment. The moment really goes to pot after that, though, when Obi-Wan cracks and devolves into uncontrollable, ugly sobbing—into hoarse coughing spasms—into vomiting globs of slimy, bloody laceleaf petals all over the Council member’s sleeve.

At four months in, Obi-Wan can feel the leaceleaf’s stems every waking minute, lodged in his ribcage and creeping up his throat like spindly fingers—the terror of that keeps him awake at night, makes him want to claw his chest open and crawl out of his own skin. He can bear it during the daylight and with enough distraction, but with the darkness and silence of night, he can’t escape it. Obi-Wan endures this alone until one of the healers finds him screaming his horror and panic at what he’s becoming into the pillow, shaking hard enough to rattle the bed frame. It’s the first night they sedate him.

Vokara chides Obi-Wan gently, advances her prognosis by two months, and moves him into Qui-Gon’s room. Permanently.

“Hello there,” Obi-Wan whispers into Qui-Gon’s ear one night, curled fetal under the thin blanket with him, his own bed empty and cold. “I love you. I’m in love with you. Please wake up, so I can tell you.” Unspoken, don’t leave me to die like this. Please wake up—please wake up.

Qui-Gon doesn’t.

At six months, the medical staff just push their beds together. It’s the least they can do—Obi-Wan’s a palliative patient now. He can’t sit up anymore; any movement could be the one that tears his lungs open. He hasn’t been able to eat solids for weeks, he’s lost any weight he could spare and is still losing it, and his breath bubbles in his mouth, popping and gurgling around petals that taste like iron. He rolls his head to the side and spits them up into a bucket next to his bed. A healer empties it twice a day. Obi-Wan stains his pillow pink when he wipes his cheek against it. He doesn’t talk much anymore, but he never lets go of Qui-Gon’s hand.

Seven months. Vokara’s got Obi-Wan on intravenous drips for saline, nutrients, mild sedatives, antibiotics. She’d settled for a nasal cannula after the full oxygen mask had just filled with gore and blood spatter to quickly to keep it clean. Once they finally, collectively accept that Obi-Wan won’t budge in his decision, the Healers rally around him, unified in their vow to give him the softest death they can.

Eight months, and it’s near now. Obi-Wan can feel it beyond just the physical. He shifts over in bed to close the space between his body and Qui-Gon’s, and gently arranges Qui-Gon’s limp arms around himself into the mimicry of a lover’s embrace; his head is tucked into his Master’s shoulder, Qui-Gon’s right arm pulled to rest over Obi-Wan’s waist. The irony isn’t lost on Obi-Wan, that he should want to die in Qui-Gon’s arms when he’d refused to let Qui-Gon die in his.

Speaking hurts, he stopped bothering a long time ago, but Obi-Wan thinks this is the sort of thing that should be said out loud. Blood speckles the sheets, smears down his chin when he does. “’m so sorry, Master,” he rasps, threading his fingers through Qui-Gon’s long hair. He strokes his thumb back and forth over one stark cheekbone, his expression soft with adoration, regret, and grief. Maybe even acceptance. 

I didn’t mean to love you this much. You weren’t meant to be loved like this. Never like this. 

He lets himself drift in Qui-Gon’s muted, still presence, shuts his eyes. Thinks this might be the day he’s too tired to open them again.

Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan.

“Obi-Wan.”

THANK YOU THIS IS HORRIBLY DELIGHTFUL AND I’M SOBBING