Possession

~Listen as the wind blows
From across the great divide.
Voices trapped in yearning
Memories trapped in time.
The night is my companion
And solitude my guide
Would I spend forever here and not be satisfied?
And I would be the one
To hold you down,
Kiss you so hard
I’ll take your breath away
And after I wipe away your tears,
Just close your eyes, dear.~

Adia stared out across the courtyard she knew to be full of flowers and trees but could not see them. The beautiful gardens her mother had started were completely hidden from view. The night seemed blacker than usual. Behind her in the bedroom, she could hear her husband snoring softly. Viceroy B’a’ru, a man roughly thirty years her senior, always snored. Some nights it drove her insane. Unable to take another moment, Adia closed the door to the balcony and returned to her reverie, back to the silence and darkness that so often became her refuge.

Her depthless blue eyes closed tight, shutting her off mentally from the nighttime world. Memories she had tried time and again to forgot swam into view. Memories of the first time she saw Obi-Wan. Their first kiss. The day he left. The day she married Viceroy B’a’ru. The day she left him standing on the launch pad with his Master. She had missed him every moment of every day since. And the nights were even worse.

Much as she needed him to know how she cared, Adia had cautioned herself not to write him, to leave him be and let the love he felt for her die. A painful death she knew. And she could not find a way to end her own longing for him. Still, the urge had been overwhelming. Despite an inner voice telling her not to, Adia wrote him. She had written a long letter, mostly talking about mundane, boring things like which emissaries she had most recently met with. And then had come the signature. Agonizing over what she should say, the young queen eventually decided on Love. She waited each day for the mail to arrive, hoping for a response. None had arrived.

She wondered if he would feel when reading the word the way she had felt when writing it. Every ounce of the repressed feelings of the past year was poured into the pen strokes. Adia’s eyes opened and she stared at her hands, the hands of a princess, the hands of one whose entire life had been spent learning how best to please everyone around her. She had done that. She had pleased everyone. Everyone except the two most important people, herself and Obi-Wan. Her father, before his death two months before, had approved and been thrilled with her marriage. Her husband was pleased as well. He gained a political ally in her planet and a young wife to give him an heir, not to mention the fact that he did seem to feel some genuine affection for her.

But it was Obi-Wan’s beautiful blue-green eyes that looked into hers every time she let her mind drift. It made waking up beside the Viceroy harder and harder. Each day Adia felt her emotions drawing a bit further inward. Sighing, Adia sank into the balcony’s sole chair and let her body melt into it’s body-conforming embrace. She let all of her memories and longings go, tried to clear her mind of any coherent thought. She wanted for a moment not to worry about anything at all. Not even herself.

~Through this world I've stumbled,
So many times betrayed,
Trying to find an honest word
To find the truth enslaved.
Oh you speak to me in riddles and
You speak to me in rhyme.
My body aches to breathe your breath,
Your words keep me alive.
And I would be the one
To hold you down,
Kiss you so hard
I'll take your breath away
And after I'd wipe away the tears
Just close your eyes, dear.~

Obi-Wan Kenobi sighed. Not even looking at the stars calmed him as it once had. His emotions ran the spectrum from elation to depression and back again. Adia’s letter rested, as it has since he received it, in the inside pocket of his loose tunic, right above his heart. He wanted very much to sit down and write a beautiful love letter to her and to tell her he loved her still, would always love her. But then he reminded himself that she was married. She had a life completely separate from his.

And, he reminded himself gently, that is how it should be. There had never been any real chance for them. Qui-Gon had done his best to make his Padawan see that when the two met, but it had done no good. Something about the young then-princess drew him like a magnet. It felt wrong not holding her. It felt even more wrong to be unable to communicate with her. Obi-Wan reasoned that surely there would be no harm in replying to the letter, no harm in one friend reaching out to another. He knew it was rationalization at its worst, but it did not matter.

Obi-Wan used real paper just as Adia had. He hoped that she would treasure the letter and keep it as he had hers. Perhaps they could no longer be together, but in the confining lines and phrases of the letters, their love lived on. The young Jedi resolved silently that he would write her always, no matter what happened, no matter who thought it was a bad idea. He owed it to himself. And to Adia.

~Into this night I wander
It's morning that I dread,
Another day of knowing
Of the path I fear to tread.
Oh into the sea of waking dreams
I follow without pride.
Nothing stands between us here
And I won't be denied.
And I would be the one
To hold you down,
Kiss you so hard I'll take your breath away
And after I'd wipe away the tears
Just close your eyes...~

The moment Adia got Obi-Wan’s letter, she booked passage for Coruscant, telling her husband that there was a symposium on population growth that she wished to attend. There was indeed a gathering on the subject, but Adia had no intention of attending. The viceroy, never one to deny his wife, consented. Once she boarded the shuttle, Adia prayed she had made the right decision. As the ship landed not two city blocks from the Jedi Temple, she knew she had. Adia could all but feel his presence calling to her. She dismissed her guards with little difficulty. Though sworn to protect her, they knew she would be in no danger in a symposium, especially when no one was aware of here whereabouts.

As soon as she dared, Adia slipped from the building they had landed next to and headed for the Jedi Temple. She realized with a start that the closer she came to Obi-Wan’s door, the more often she forgot to breathe. She pressed the door chime and forced herself to calm down, then forced herself not to jump in surprise as the door slid open. “Hello.” He looked even more handsome than she remembered.

“Adia.” Obi-Wan’s beautiful eyes devoured the image before him, a vision of sublime beauty. He took a moment to steady his voice before continuing. “I had no idea you were coming . . .”

She seemed for a moment unsure how to answer. Her eyes fell to the floor and she bit her lower lip. “Oh. I know. I . . . I didn’t exactly plan it in advance. When I got your letter, I just came. I wanted to know . . . In the letter, you said that you still feel the way that you felt in the garden the night we met.” Adia raised her eyes to his, knowing his next words would determine whether she left Coruscant alone and miserable as soon as the pilot could start the engines of her ship or stayed and spent the night for the first time with the man she had come to love so dearly. “Do you?”

Obi-Wan’s hand reached out, gently cupping her chin. The contact was electric, sending pleasant chills through his entire body. “Adia, I love you now as I did then. I will always love you.” Then he kissed her, gently at first, then crushing her lips--and her body--against his. He felt her hands, one running through his hair, the other snaking inside his tunic and pressing against his chest. Leaving her lips for a moment, Obi-Wan’s kisses trailed down her neck, then back again.

“Please...” she whispered, hands already loosening the belt that held his tunic closed. More than anything, she wanted him. It might be the last time they had so much time together again, and Adia knew exactly how she wanted to spend the hours left them. Lips finding his again, Adia sent, Is this what you want, love?

Yes. He moaned, hands working at the buttons along the back of her elaborate dress. It fell from her shoulders with surprising ease. She stepped back and allowed it to travel the rest of the way to the floor, then stepped out of the dress and closer to Obi-Wan.

You’re sure?

I have never been so sure of anything. I love you.

Adia smiled began tugging her lover towards his bed. That’s all I wanted to hear.

That evening, Adia forced herself to crawl out of bed and begin finding the clothes she had discarded with such abandon hours before. Her heart was torn between extreme joy and sorrow. Making love to Obi-Wan had completed her in a way she could not express. Leaving him again hurt more than words could ever say. Especially when she felt his arms snake around her waist, pulling her half-clothed body against his naked one. “Mmm...” For a moment, Adia let herself be lost in the moment, in him. She memorized his smell, the way his skin felt, the way his lips gently brushed against her shoulder. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“And I don’t want you to leave.”

Adia sighed. “But that doesn’t matter, does it? In the grand scheme of things, what we want counts for exactly nothing.” She turned, looking up into his exquisite eyes. “What matters is that I love you. I’ll always love you. No one else.” Tears threatened to overtake her, but she fought them back. “I will always carry you with me.”

“Yes, you will.” He kissed her softly. “You will always carry me with you, because you will always hold my heart.”

Adia quickly finished dressing, then sat quietly as Obi-Wan rebraided her hair. When he finished, she caught his hands in hers and kissed them before rising from the edge of the bed. “I have to go.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

For the final time, Adia held him. She held him until she could feel the countours of his body even through the constraints of her dress. She held him until she finished memorizing his body. She held him until she had to leave. And then she did.