fic: luminous beings are we (7/8, part two)
And part two.
Title: Luminous Beings Are We (chapter seven: more powerful than you can possibly imagine, part two) (chapter seven part one here) (chapter six here) (chapter five here) (chapter four here) (chapter three here) (chapter two here) (chapter one here)
Word Count: 8,848 for chapter seven
Rating: R at last, for night-before-ordeal sex!
Warnings: for mention of centuries-ago murder of children, and ghosts trying to get James to give up on everything
Summary: Star Wars fusion, more or less, in which Jedi Knight Michael Fassbender gets a new apprentice with extremely distracting beautiful blue eyes…
Notes: the fault of this interview, in which Michael wanted to be Yoda, and James concluded he’d be a “bi-curious Jedi”. Title and chapter titles all courtesy of Star Wars, of course! I haven't read my Expanded Universe novels in years, and even then they're all Timothy Zahn-era, but this is some sort of fusion with our future universe anyway, so we'll just handwave my failures of up-to-date SW knowledge, okay?
In this chapter: James faces the Academy graduation ordeals. Also, pre-ordeal sex.
He fed James breakfast, too. Starfruit and eggs and hot chocolate with mint. In bed. James nibbled fruit out of Michael’s fingers, laughed, said, “Will you stop acting like it’s my last day of existence,” and whacked him with a pillow. Michael laughed along, and then sighed.
They went down to the lower levels, the closed-off levels, the dim and gritty levels, hand in hand.
Patrick and Ian met them at the lift, expressions pensive but encouraging. Patrick offered a “Good morning;” Ian murmured, “Delightful morning, in fact, after last night-” and Patrick stepped on his foot but then put in the two cents of, “You two are aware you did something fundamental to the energy of the universe, everything got brighter, I’m certain you can tell?”
“Um,” Michael said, guiltily. He’d put that down to afterglow. Unbelievable, world-altering, beautiful afterglow.
“I like it,” James said. “Sort of new all over. Everyone feels like beginnings, in my head. Speaking of…”
“Yes, quite right.” They padded down a noiseless corridor. Memories hung in the quiet like unspeaking scars. A boy’s rage, and the power of the dark side, and decimation. Michael shivered; James leaned in under his arm.
The world down here wasn’t theirs, and simultaneously was. A reminder. What a good man could become. A scorch mark, a burn, never fully healed. Infused with suffering.
When he breathed, he imagined he could taste blood mixed in with the dust. Likely not real. He hoped.
Their footsteps might’ve made sound, but the heavy quiet ate up all the sound and tucked it away. Got fat on fear.
James started looking more pale as they neared the training room where most of the deaths had taken place. Some had been out in the corridor; the renegade Jedi-turned-Sith hadn’t let them escape. Michael’s heartbeat thumped in his ears. The dread wasn’t nameless. Had a lot of names. A Sith Lord, for one. A Jedi who loved too cruelly. A man Michael loved and might lose.
James stopped in front of the room. Touched the door almost unthinkingly, hand against wood, eyes distant. “I can feel it…”
“You’ll go in,” Ian said, “and come out. When you can.”
“I’d say that sounds uncomplicated, but I’m thoroughly sure it’s not.” James shrugged out of his cloak, leaving himself in light trousers and shirt; handed his lightsaber to Michael. “I take in whatever I take in with me, right? So no weapons?”
“Up to you,” Patrick said.
“Keep it for me,” James said to Michael. Michael said, “I love you,” and tried not to feel as if James had just given him a parting gift, a memorial, a good-bye.
James’s eyes softened, warmed, kindled: the same blue they’d been last night, only for him, only them in the world. “I love you, too. Be back before you know it. Sir.”
“I’ll be here,” Michael vowed, and tugged lightly at the link; it felt secure, that same silver-blue cord that’d never left since the day he’d shown James how to play with puzzle-balls, since they’d seen what they could do with him as an anchor for James’s power. Secure, like they’d never be truly apart. Never was a big word. “I’ll be watching. Ian and Patrick too, if you don’t mind.”
“The more the merrier,” James tossed back, with a wink that narrowly missed being its flirtatious self. “Come on.”
That sensation was an odd one: a lot like having both Academy Heads standing behind him and peeking over his shoulders, Michael decided. While he himself stepped ever-so-slightly out-of-body and followed James.
But this way he’d know the second anything went wrong. And all three of them could pull James out if they had to.
“Thanks for that,” James said, wryly but with a mental kiss that landed squarely on Michael’s lips, not shared with anyone else.
“We think you’ll be fine.”
“You’re strong enough for this.”
“May the Force be with you,” Michael said, and kissed him back, telepathically and physically and extremely passionately. Their Academy Heads didn’t even bother to look away.
“Definitely coming back for that,” James said when Michael let him go, and looked at the door again.
It swung open. Soundless. All on its own.
The room beyond looked exactly like a centuries-untouched trainee classroom. Dusty holoprojectors. Old shelves. Sealed-off windows. Might’ve been innocuous. Wasn’t.
James took two steps in. The door swung shut. The link stayed distinct and sharp and bright: they could see what James saw, feel what James felt. They couldn’t intervene.
James walked into the center of the Dark Room. Stopped, head cocked to one side-Michael felt the motion as if it were his-and listened.
James had no doubt heard the whispers before Michael, eavesdropping imperceptibly, ever could. He hovered in the back of James’s thoughts and prepared to throw a lifeline if need be.
“Hi,” James said to the air. “Coming out to chat, are you?”
The silence rustled. Skittered. Raced crawling legs up and down walls and spines. No mist, only darkness. Shadows where there shouldn’t be, and growing.
“Come on,” James invited, holding out a hand, and oh Michael’s heart twisted and coiled in on itself at the plainspoken kindness. “Don’t be shy, I can hear you.”
Not shy
We’re not shy
You should be afraid
James smiled, not mocking, only entertained. “You think I’m not?”
Stupid boy
Stupid boy coming in here
Stupid empath
We can kill you with a thought
Kill you the way we were killed
“Yes.” James turned, tracking the nearest crawling shadow. “I know. I’m so sorry.”
Sorry
You should be sorry
You should be sorry for yourself
Little witch-boy
“Ah.” James’s fingers curled in, hand drifting back to his side. “Thought that might come up. Ordeal, right?-ordeal away, then.”
Think you can be a Jedi
Think you deserve to be a Jedi
Killer
“I’m not.”
Killer from a line of killers- Images, dazzling and harsh as bitter day. High and eerie laughter. Rancors. Blood-streaked eyes. Death to anyone stumbling over the Nightsisters’ planet.
“That’s them,” James said. “Not me.”
You could
You know you could
Haven’t you wanted to
Haven’t you wanted to every time you heard those jokes those rumors those shocked mutters in the dark about what you are
Haven’t you wanted to lay waste to the galaxy, all those petty tiny creeping minds, so small, such pathetic boring ugly emotion
Haven’t you wanted to fix them all
Michael forgot how to inhale. No, no, please say no, please-
James laughed, sunshine-bright sound sweeping off graveyard clouds. “No. They’re all just people. Can’t fix people, can you, or people wouldn’t be people. If that sentence made any sense. Sorry.”
The ghosts seemed nonplussed for an instant. Michael gulped in air and thankfulness.
The darkness swung again, harder this time. Heavier weight, not holding back. Bigger weapons.
You feel too much
What will you do when you feel too much
When you’re afraid and alone and the feelings that aren’t yours seep in when your walls come down when you come apart in other people
Scared
So scared
We can feel it
How can you hope to do this
How can you hope to survive this
Go home
Go home to die
James did flinch at that. Michael felt it. Icicle-point through the heart, vicious and cold, the shard of a broken snowflake lodged between one beat and the next.
“You’re right.” James’s voice came out uneven. Shaken. “I’m scared. I’m still here. That’s my choice, isn’t it, and I’m making it.”
The universe won’t love you
They won’t ever love you
Who could love you, who could believe you, how could you believe him- The specter that loomed abruptly out of cobwebs and tragedy wore Michael’s face. How can you believe him when you know you could be making him feel
When you know someday you’ll be drawn to someone’s pain and you’ll give her back the pleasure in her body one more way to heal you won’t be able to not help and you know he’ll hate you for it
You know you could make him love you when he hates you
You know you could do it without even thinking
How do you know you haven’t already
When you fuck a lonely senator to give him one night’s reminder of joy and save that life, said the ghost wearing Michael’s eyes, this face will hate you
James was crying. Michael could feel it. Tears on his cheeks, stinging, splashing to the floor. “I know. I know. I…didn’t know vision ordeals said fuck, guess it’s not a surprise, though…my head, isn’t it…”
No! Michael tried to scream the words into the horrible bottomless deepening abyss. No, no, I love you, I swear I love you, whatever you have to do I know you’re doing it to give someone else solace, you’ll come home to me, I know you love me, that’s all that matters in the end, James, PLEASE-
Ian slammed a telepathic gag over his voice. Michael staggered physically from the shock. Nearly fell over right there in the hallway.
James swiped a hand over his face. His mouth tasted like blood; Michael, catching the copper and iron secondhand, realized that James must’ve bitten his own lip hard enough for that.
The pain cut through the cataclysm and got them both thinking more clearly, James directly, Michael by proxy. He wanted to cry too; thought he might be. Ian and Patrick had hands on his shoulders, holdng him up.
“I can live with him hating me,” James whispered. “I knew he might. How could he not, everything I am, what I could do to him…but that’s not the point, is it? He’s a Jedi and I’m a Jedi and he’ll be somewhere in the universe protecting innocents and teaching students and I’ll be…me…and we’ll fucking do the right thing, we’ll save lives, because that’s what we do.”
So many lives
So many lives in your head
Burn out like a star little empath drowning in other people and so alone
The onslaught knocked James to the ground. Rising wind, sheer terror, betrayal, agony, scorching flesh, memories memories memories of children screaming and trying to fight back and dying-
The Dark Room knew the feelings. Had drunk up one twisted boy’s glee at the act of slaughter. Poured that into James, the most powerful empath anyone’d ever known, now.
Patrick and Ian stirred uneasily. The lines of the Force rang and quivered, drawn taut with alarm. Michael tensed every muscle, ready to jump in; he didn’t care if that was technically failure on both sides, this was more than he’d gone through, more than anything anyone’d gone through since legendary days, and they couldn’t expect more-
James, crumpled onto the ground and bleeding-lip again, but also nose and ears and a palm where fingernails skewered flesh-panted, “I’m so sorry…”
You should be
You are
Of course you are
“Not for me…you aren’t listening…thought you could hear me.” James coughed, spit blood, tried again. “For you.”
For us
Stupid boy
You’re dying
“Yeah…got that…thanks. You’re not…telling me anything I don’t already…think about at night, y’know? And I might be dying…appreciate it if we could let up on that…by the way…but you’re already dead, aren’t you? You’re the children.”
Everything-the voices, the ghostly wind, the shuddering of Force-energy-went motionless.
In the hush, out in the hallway, Michael threw wild stares at Patrick and Ian, both of whom blinked blank surprise back.
“You are,” James said, and didn’t bother to get up, just coiled one leg under him and rested elbows on the other knee. “Everyone thinks you’re just the residue. The-the dark-side miasma, the leftovers, kind of, if you don’t mind being compared to my Gran’s meatloaf. Sorry. But you’re not. You’re not what happened. You’re who it happened to.”
Michael spotted Patrick mouthing what? in Ian’s direction. Ian made a wide-eyed I don’t know! expression in return.
He shook off their shock-relaxed grip and put a hand on the door. It didn’t react. Chilly and sealed shut by something unbreakable that wasn’t the lock.
“I’m so sorry,” James told the dark. “You’re hurting so much, I can hear it…I can help, I think. If you trust me.”
Trust
Trust you
Who are you?
“Exactly who you said I was.” One hand out, palm up, open. Angry red nail-crescents mute across calluses and lines. “You know me. Can I try? Can’t promise it’ll work, but I’m thinkin’ I’m the best you’ve got.”
Lonely
So many years
So many years afraid
Help?
“Everyone who comes down here’s afraid, I know.” James was searching out individual voices, picking out specific scampering shadows, focusing on each one in turn. “And you’re afraid-you’ve been afraid for centuries, and I’m so fuckin’ impressed that you’re talking to me, have I said that?-so all you ever get is fear, and that’s not your fault, it’s not, all right? You were kids. And what happened happened to you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Hurt people
Hurt you
People who come here sometimes they die sometimes they scream
“Still not your fault. The Jedi used you. They didn’t mean to-I don’t think they knew about you-but they did.” James kept his voice calm, steady, soothing, the way he might tempt a feral Alderaanian pittin off city streets and indoors for petting and a saucer of milk. Michael, witnessing every syllable and every stretch of empathic ability and every opened-up broadcast of welcome, thought: miracle.
A host of sleek black shadows drifted in. One by one at first. Then more. Then more, until ninety percent of the Dark Room gloomed in ordinary mundane grey and James’s spot on the floor was ringed by onyx eyeless curiosity.
“You were trainees,” James said. Blood lingered on his face, on his chin. Drying. “You died. Badly. And I’m going to feel that forever, and you are too, but you can-you can move on. The Force wants you. You can be free, you can be safe, you don’t need to be forgiven because you were the ones hurt. You know what I see? You were all Jedi. You are all Jedi.”
Jedi
No
Yes
How can you how are you
Us?
“Yeah, well.” A one-shouldered shrug, a wince; James must have bruises from the collision with the floor. “I know some things about being alone. And I know you don’t have to be. I said the Force wants you. The universe wants you. You’re alive and the universe is alive and it’s fucking beautiful, have you seen it? Everything out there just waiting for you, beyond these walls. Can I show you?”
We’re dead
Show us
“You’re dead Jedi,” James pointed out, and swiped at some of the blood with his sleeve. “Come on, then. Let me just try this…”
The universe blossomed. No other words. The Force billowing outward in great blue-white light, profusions of beckoning glory. Affirmation and possibilities and promise: other skies, other realms, spaces of existence beyond the earthly binaries of living and dead. Serenity, the kind enrobed in blazing joy.
The ghosts quivered. Yearned forward. Tentative ventures.
James, holding the gateway open, crying again from effort and ecstasy and shared emotion, beckoned gently, “I’m still human, so you’re going to have to hurry up a bit, the Force is making it easier-told you someone wanted you-but I can’t keep this up forever…”
The shadows poured through in a rush. Each one turned into a blue-outlined shape-a Twi’lek girl, an Ithorian boy, a purple-skinned knot of tentacles Michael didn’t recognize-in the last second. Some of them waved. James waved back, winced, waved at the next one.
Near the end, one of them hesitated. You?
“Me what? I didn’t know I could do this, so for all I know I’m going right after.”
No you stay you be safe
“Nice of you to say, but I don’t think you can promise that.” James’s face was white under the blood. Michael pounded a hand against the uncaring doorway.
I stay, decided the shadow, and sat down firmly next to James’s right foot.
“You…what?”
Several of the other wispy bits of obsidian looked at the first one, and then came over and sat down too.
“Ah…” James looked from the portal to the collection of spirits at his side. “I appreciate the gesture, but…if you want to go, go now. I don’t know if I can ever do this again.”
What else
What else can we do
Help?
“Me?”
We’re Jedi
You said we were Jedi
Help you
Two last silken black ribbons dove into light. They glowed blue and rapturous, and vanished. The rest refused to move.
“You’ve got about five seconds,” James said, “I mean it, I’m going to either pass out or throw up on you or possibly, y’know, die…”
The first one, the first one that’d chosen to stay, hopped up right in front of his face and flung out dark streamers in every direction. James, startled by the attack of aggressively caring black-glowing blowfish, fell over. The portal snapped shut.
Michael tried kicking the door. Tried yanking at it with every drop of Force-enchanced strength. Patrick and Ian joined in, all three of them yelling James’s name.
Michael, seeing everything through the link, could feel the rush of dizziness, the disembodied eerie disorientation, the way James’s nose was bleeding anew, red on his shirt and his hand; the empty hollowness where there’d been luminous light, like withdrawal but an infinity worse…
Not empty. Warm. Strength from someplace else. Someone else. Freely given. Shared.
Someone who’d once known, who knew again, how to touch the Force. Untrained and clumsy and young, but healing.
Several someones. Not merely one.
James opened his eyes.
The ghost-echo that’d done most of the talking announced smugly, Help you!
“I…guess you did, at that. Thank you.” James pushed himself up on elbows, wobbly but inarguably alive. “That…thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
What do we do
What do we do now
Tell us
More help?
“Oh…all right…so I’m the older brother in this relationship…we’re not saying dad or I might have to rethink this, I’m not old enough to be your dad, you’ve got centuries on me…okay, give me a minute, I need to breathe.”
Michael also needed to breathe. Needed to fling arms around James and never let go. Never.
“You do need something to do,” James decided, giving up on the attempt to get any more vertical for the time being. “For one, you can finish your training, right? You were all students, and I’ve got no clue how that’s going to work when you can’t hold a lightsaber but you are Jedi so we’ll sort it out. And…I think…you might not be able to leave the Academy…I think you can, but you’re bound here, right, so if you go too far…that won’t work too well.”
Stay with us
“You know I can’t. You were in my head. I’ve got orders.”
Miss you, muttered the biggest one, one of the last to stay, sulkily.
“Yeah, I know, I’ll miss you too. I’ll come back and see you. I promise. Idea, though. You were doing this for centuries, right? Testing potential Jedi Knights?”
A ruffle of discontent ran around the room. The windows rattled their bones. Michael’s skin prickled.
James clarified hastily, “Not like what you were doing. Obviously. But the Academy needs a standard test for apprentices, and you know better than anyone the worst that an apprentice can feel…you got to me, and I have serious shields. If you wanted…we could think of it like a game. Not because you want to hurt anyone-and you won’t-but for fun. Playing with the trainees. Designing the tests. You could work with Patrick and Ian, you saw them in my head, they’re marvelous, you’d love them. And that can be part of your training, too.”
Teachers
We could be teachers
Games
Fun?
Mazes tag playtime no one hurt but fun?
“More or less. You can pretend to be scary, if you want.”
Good at scary!
“Extremely good at scary. I should know.”
The most daring ghost-shadow flickered around James’s hand, windy and insubstantial and worried. Hurt you sorry
“Ah, yeah, you did some. I’ll heal.” James flopped backwards onto the floor, knees bent, head resting on dusty once-polished wood. “It’s fine. Hey, you want to hear a really bad joke? Know where hurt people go on Hoth? A Hothpital.”
Spinning merriment. Giddy racing shadows. Up and down walls. A hint of pale sunshine through cracking window-seals.
The ghost-trainee that seemed to be the spokespirit bumped up against James’s arm a second time, thoughtful. Sorry
“Oh, no, it’s okay.” Nothing solid to pet, but James’s voice did it anyway. Rolling hillls and Highland heather and scratches behind ears. “We’re okay. I need something to call you, don’t I? You ever hear the stories about Lady Charlotte Xavier and her Merry X-Men?”
Heroes?
“Absolutely heroes. I can’t call you Charlie, ’cause that’s my ship, and that’d be frankly weird, calling you the name of my ship, but…Lady Charlie’s best friend was Sir Erika, the Lost Knight, right? And sometimes Erika did some pretty bad shit-oh, fuck, sorry-ah, you’ve probably heard worse-anyway, Erika did some very terrible things, and hurt a lot of people, but she did those things because she believed she was making the world safer for other people. Not sayin’ she was right, and she had a lot to make up for when she came home, but she did come home, and the way I heard that story, she and Charlie got to be friends again. So I’m thinking you can be an Erika, least until you figure out your own name, what do you think?”
Erka!
James laughed. “Close enough.”
Open up?
“Huh? Oh, the doors.” James draped an arm over his face. Across his eyes. “Sure. Let people in. Well-this is your place, you let people in if you want to talk to them, if you want them in, got it?”
You need people
Lonely
Hurting
“Stop that. ’s like talking to my grandmother, and that’s every kind of uncomfortable, especially if you start trying to set me up with the local cantina-owner’s son because he looks like a nice boy. Which, in fact, he was, not that he wasn’t also terrified of both Gran and me, so, y’know, so much for that. You can let people in, since you are, thanks for that.”
The doors popped open. A rush of air, centuries-stale, musty with past fear and pain and triumph and sweat and ordeal. Crumbling books and disused holocubes and the taste of time.
Michael only had eyes for James. Who was lying on his back with the friendliest shade-memory curled into a ball on his chest and two more around his shins. Three or four others, the ones who’d stayed, perched in splinters of light from peeling window-covers and regarded the newcomers warily.
He inched a foot closer. James didn’t move, not the bent knees or the arm over his eyes. His self-appointed defender sat up and hissed.
Patrick and Ian crowded in, tripping over each other and words. “James? Are you-”
“-all right, and how did you-we didn’t think this space could be-”
“Everyone said it would never be cleansed, and you-”
“I listened,” James said from under the arm. “That’s all.”
Patrick and Ian looked at each other. They were holding hands, Michael realized. The best Heads the Jedi Academy’d ever known, and they looked smaller and younger and in awe next to James.
Who sat up, and then stood up, coaxing miniature shadows off his chest and legs and into the air. “I’m okay. They’re okay too, but they’re going to need some friends, the ones who’re staying around. I told them they could help. They want to.”
“Oh,” Patrick said, “oh, yes, of course, we’d love to meet them…”
Michael didn’t know how to move. How to speak. He stood there next to Ian and Patrick and watched James hold out a hand and introduce the scourge of apprentice nightmares to the Academy Heads; watched Ian inquire with grave compassion how Miss Erika might feel about exploring the rest of the Academy, newly-built wings and unfurling libraries.
James glanced at Michael once, very quickly, when introducing him in turn. Master Fassbender. Excellent with new trainees, anyone needing help settling in, anyone needing a friend.
Michael said all the right words of welcome and kept staring at James. Who had walked into the Dark Room and come out leading children into the light. Who’d told them terrible jokes about hospitals and who moved as if some equally terrible wound kept him from reaching out, raw torn edges shifting and stretching with every breath or transference of weight.
“James,” Ian was saying, “of course there’ll be a ceremony later-if you’d like, only if you’d like-but I think we can all agree that not only did you get through your ordeal, dear boy, but-above and beyond, really, I should think. So we may as well recognize that now.”
Patrick finished, “Jedi Knight James McAvoy, then, how does that sound?”
“Like everything I wanted,” James said.
“Here, we brought your cloak-oh, and your lightsaber-”
A few of the little shadows stirred restlessly at the sight of the weapon. James soothed them with a backwards glance, a caress of fingertips from across the room. “Thank you. I mean for everything. I mean it. The two of you gave me a home.”
Michael said desperately, “Congratulations,” and hated himself. Wasn’t what he’d meant to say.
Blue eyes flicked his direction. Wavered. Came back with more resolute certainty. “Thank you, sir. And-thank you, too. About home-Michael, I-I’m actually really fuckin’ tired right now, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh…no, of course you would…back to our room, or…”
James said, not to Michael but to the ink-splash phantom of Erika hovering worriedly at his shoulder, “I’ve got some things to do, a mission to get ready for-oh, come on, don’t make that face at me, you were in training here too-yes, I’ll come back and see you before I leave. I swear. Right now I have to go, though, so you and everybody stay here and talk to Ian and Patrick for a while?”
“James,” Michael attempted. Broken glass over his tongue. In his throat.
“Take the night,” Patrick said. “Take a few nights. A week. We’ll set up a celebration-nothing big, but maybe your family could make the trip, and your friends here.”
“People will need to know,” James agreed. “Press conferences…the media…”
Patrick raised admonishing eyebrows. “I meant friends.”
And James smiled, crooked and real. A stray bit of Coruscant sunlight found his cheekbone and painted freckles in butter-yellow and white cream. “A week, then.”
“Go rest,” Patrick said, holding his gaze. Michael couldn’t hear the unspoken words, but could very nearly see them, anguish and understanding carried through the Force.
James’s smile got a hairsbreadth wider and more rueful. “I’ll try.”
“Do or do not,” Ian said from the floor, where he’d been gleefully mobbed by insubstantial Force-adept children.
“Am I allowed to tell my Masters to fuck off, now,” James said, but he was laughing. “And stop giving me fatherly advice. I’ll think about it. I am thinking about it. Just give me space, first.”
“Go on,” Ian said. “Jedi Knight.”
James laughed again, very softly, almost to himself, and tipped his head in Michael’s direction. “Come on.”
Out in the hall the air was lighter, less fraught with ancient horror and newfound hope, though no easier to breathe. Michael put one hand on the closest wall just for something to touch. He couldn’t touch James. Not when James was looking at him, looking away from him, like this.
He touched their link, invisibly. It was present but thin; he could tell that James was alive and near him, but everything else’d been pulled so far back he couldn’t find it. No clue how James was feeling, other than overwhelmingly crushingly tired.
“I know you saw that,” James said, gaze landing someplace around Michael’s collarbone. “You were in there. Watching.”
“You were incredible-”
“Don’t.” James did look up. The blood clung to his face where he’d not managed to scrub it off. The dried tear-lines along his cheeks shouldn’t’ve been visible, but were. Salt over freckles. That irrevocable wound. “It hurts too much to hear you think that. Not now.”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know.” With a lip-lick, an awful fractional shrug. “I knew it’d be rough. Not supposed to be easy, is it, the ordeal.”
“Most people don’t end up cleansing the Academy of the worst blasphemy in existence, either…no one except for you…I think you’re sort of an adoptive parent now, they adore you…I adore you. I love you. Does that help?”
“Some. Imagine the family reunions. So, Gran, I’ve brought formerly murderous Jedi ghost children home for supper, oh, maybe five or six of them, but it’s fine, no need to throw lightning-bolts, we can handle them.”
“We,” Michael said.
“I…did say that, didn’t I.” James dropped his gaze to the floor. The once-expensive imported Bakuran teak evidently provided no answers, because his head came up again. “I don’t know. That’s even worse, isn’t it?-ghost babies, and then your parents with their wonderfully normal restaurant, me and my Gran with witch-blood, paparazzi in the background taking pictures of your sister, and you stuck someplace in the middle trying to say you love me.”
“I do.”
“And we’ll make it work, and the ending’ll be full of rainbows and Ewok campfire songs and everybody learning to get along.” Back to scrutinizing the floor, the join where wood met wall, the unhappy dust-bunnies missed by cleaning droids who never came this far down. “I’ll believe it later. I think I can believe it, later.”
Michael took a step forward. “James-”
James held up a hand. Not angry; almost instinctive. A defense mechanism. Between them.
“James,” he whispered again, because that was all he could say.
“I know,” James told him. “I know it wasn’t you in there. I just-I need time. Please.”
He couldn’t breathe. Galaxies collapsing around him. Stars fuzzing in front of his vision. “How-how long-no, never mind, don’t-as long as you need. I’ll be here.”
James’s smile was a frayed ribbon of hope, tattered and carried on a breath. “I know.”
“What they said,” Michael choked out, “what they said, about me-”
“You don’t have to-”
“They’re wrong, they’re fucking wrong, James, I love you, I don’t care what you do or what you share with anyone as long as you come home to me, you’re a Jedi and I’m a Jedi and we help people and you’re a better healer than I am and if you need to heal people-I love you, you amaze me, I love you.” He stopped. Pleaded brokenly, “I mean it. Tell me when you’re ready. I’m here.”
He thought the hope might be less tattered this time. Couldn’t be sure. James ran a hand through his own hair, and Michael’d never seen blue eyes look so devastated, and the devastation reached into his chest and ripped his heart and lungs and spine out with iron hands.
“I’ll let you know.” Gutted, bruised, beautiful: a Jedi Knight, and the other half of Michael’s soul, forever. “I think…I hope…it won’t be long. I just-I need to not look at you right now. Not only you. Anyone. People.” One more hand through the hair; tiny tremors in fingertips. “I know I love you. I just can’t yet. Soon.”
Michael had to nod. No other answer, not if he wanted James to come back, not if he loved James, and he did, he loved James, he would love James forever, no until or unless or limits or boundaries.
James walked away, five steps, countable steps, one-two-three-four-five, and got into the closest lift and didn’t look back. The doors closed. Took Michael’s heart away inside them.
The wall flattened itself coldly against his back. Wood, he knew. Logically shouldn’t feel like death. It did.
The cold didn’t matter. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and tried to remember how to exhale or cry or move, but he couldn’t, not until all his limbs gave way and he ended up sitting on the floor in an abandoned Academy hallway, hugging his knees to his chest and shivering without sound.
Title: Luminous Beings Are We (chapter seven: more powerful than you can possibly imagine, part two) (chapter seven part one here) (chapter six here) (chapter five here) (chapter four here) (chapter three here) (chapter two here) (chapter one here)
Word Count: 8,848 for chapter seven
Rating: R at last, for night-before-ordeal sex!
Warnings: for mention of centuries-ago murder of children, and ghosts trying to get James to give up on everything
Summary: Star Wars fusion, more or less, in which Jedi Knight Michael Fassbender gets a new apprentice with extremely distracting beautiful blue eyes…
Notes: the fault of this interview, in which Michael wanted to be Yoda, and James concluded he’d be a “bi-curious Jedi”. Title and chapter titles all courtesy of Star Wars, of course! I haven't read my Expanded Universe novels in years, and even then they're all Timothy Zahn-era, but this is some sort of fusion with our future universe anyway, so we'll just handwave my failures of up-to-date SW knowledge, okay?
In this chapter: James faces the Academy graduation ordeals. Also, pre-ordeal sex.
He fed James breakfast, too. Starfruit and eggs and hot chocolate with mint. In bed. James nibbled fruit out of Michael’s fingers, laughed, said, “Will you stop acting like it’s my last day of existence,” and whacked him with a pillow. Michael laughed along, and then sighed.
They went down to the lower levels, the closed-off levels, the dim and gritty levels, hand in hand.
Patrick and Ian met them at the lift, expressions pensive but encouraging. Patrick offered a “Good morning;” Ian murmured, “Delightful morning, in fact, after last night-” and Patrick stepped on his foot but then put in the two cents of, “You two are aware you did something fundamental to the energy of the universe, everything got brighter, I’m certain you can tell?”
“Um,” Michael said, guiltily. He’d put that down to afterglow. Unbelievable, world-altering, beautiful afterglow.
“I like it,” James said. “Sort of new all over. Everyone feels like beginnings, in my head. Speaking of…”
“Yes, quite right.” They padded down a noiseless corridor. Memories hung in the quiet like unspeaking scars. A boy’s rage, and the power of the dark side, and decimation. Michael shivered; James leaned in under his arm.
The world down here wasn’t theirs, and simultaneously was. A reminder. What a good man could become. A scorch mark, a burn, never fully healed. Infused with suffering.
When he breathed, he imagined he could taste blood mixed in with the dust. Likely not real. He hoped.
Their footsteps might’ve made sound, but the heavy quiet ate up all the sound and tucked it away. Got fat on fear.
James started looking more pale as they neared the training room where most of the deaths had taken place. Some had been out in the corridor; the renegade Jedi-turned-Sith hadn’t let them escape. Michael’s heartbeat thumped in his ears. The dread wasn’t nameless. Had a lot of names. A Sith Lord, for one. A Jedi who loved too cruelly. A man Michael loved and might lose.
James stopped in front of the room. Touched the door almost unthinkingly, hand against wood, eyes distant. “I can feel it…”
“You’ll go in,” Ian said, “and come out. When you can.”
“I’d say that sounds uncomplicated, but I’m thoroughly sure it’s not.” James shrugged out of his cloak, leaving himself in light trousers and shirt; handed his lightsaber to Michael. “I take in whatever I take in with me, right? So no weapons?”
“Up to you,” Patrick said.
“Keep it for me,” James said to Michael. Michael said, “I love you,” and tried not to feel as if James had just given him a parting gift, a memorial, a good-bye.
James’s eyes softened, warmed, kindled: the same blue they’d been last night, only for him, only them in the world. “I love you, too. Be back before you know it. Sir.”
“I’ll be here,” Michael vowed, and tugged lightly at the link; it felt secure, that same silver-blue cord that’d never left since the day he’d shown James how to play with puzzle-balls, since they’d seen what they could do with him as an anchor for James’s power. Secure, like they’d never be truly apart. Never was a big word. “I’ll be watching. Ian and Patrick too, if you don’t mind.”
“The more the merrier,” James tossed back, with a wink that narrowly missed being its flirtatious self. “Come on.”
That sensation was an odd one: a lot like having both Academy Heads standing behind him and peeking over his shoulders, Michael decided. While he himself stepped ever-so-slightly out-of-body and followed James.
But this way he’d know the second anything went wrong. And all three of them could pull James out if they had to.
“Thanks for that,” James said, wryly but with a mental kiss that landed squarely on Michael’s lips, not shared with anyone else.
“We think you’ll be fine.”
“You’re strong enough for this.”
“May the Force be with you,” Michael said, and kissed him back, telepathically and physically and extremely passionately. Their Academy Heads didn’t even bother to look away.
“Definitely coming back for that,” James said when Michael let him go, and looked at the door again.
It swung open. Soundless. All on its own.
The room beyond looked exactly like a centuries-untouched trainee classroom. Dusty holoprojectors. Old shelves. Sealed-off windows. Might’ve been innocuous. Wasn’t.
James took two steps in. The door swung shut. The link stayed distinct and sharp and bright: they could see what James saw, feel what James felt. They couldn’t intervene.
James walked into the center of the Dark Room. Stopped, head cocked to one side-Michael felt the motion as if it were his-and listened.
James had no doubt heard the whispers before Michael, eavesdropping imperceptibly, ever could. He hovered in the back of James’s thoughts and prepared to throw a lifeline if need be.
“Hi,” James said to the air. “Coming out to chat, are you?”
The silence rustled. Skittered. Raced crawling legs up and down walls and spines. No mist, only darkness. Shadows where there shouldn’t be, and growing.
“Come on,” James invited, holding out a hand, and oh Michael’s heart twisted and coiled in on itself at the plainspoken kindness. “Don’t be shy, I can hear you.”
Not shy
We’re not shy
You should be afraid
James smiled, not mocking, only entertained. “You think I’m not?”
Stupid boy
Stupid boy coming in here
Stupid empath
We can kill you with a thought
Kill you the way we were killed
“Yes.” James turned, tracking the nearest crawling shadow. “I know. I’m so sorry.”
Sorry
You should be sorry
You should be sorry for yourself
Little witch-boy
“Ah.” James’s fingers curled in, hand drifting back to his side. “Thought that might come up. Ordeal, right?-ordeal away, then.”
Think you can be a Jedi
Think you deserve to be a Jedi
Killer
“I’m not.”
Killer from a line of killers- Images, dazzling and harsh as bitter day. High and eerie laughter. Rancors. Blood-streaked eyes. Death to anyone stumbling over the Nightsisters’ planet.
“That’s them,” James said. “Not me.”
You could
You know you could
Haven’t you wanted to
Haven’t you wanted to every time you heard those jokes those rumors those shocked mutters in the dark about what you are
Haven’t you wanted to lay waste to the galaxy, all those petty tiny creeping minds, so small, such pathetic boring ugly emotion
Haven’t you wanted to fix them all
Michael forgot how to inhale. No, no, please say no, please-
James laughed, sunshine-bright sound sweeping off graveyard clouds. “No. They’re all just people. Can’t fix people, can you, or people wouldn’t be people. If that sentence made any sense. Sorry.”
The ghosts seemed nonplussed for an instant. Michael gulped in air and thankfulness.
The darkness swung again, harder this time. Heavier weight, not holding back. Bigger weapons.
You feel too much
What will you do when you feel too much
When you’re afraid and alone and the feelings that aren’t yours seep in when your walls come down when you come apart in other people
Scared
So scared
We can feel it
How can you hope to do this
How can you hope to survive this
Go home
Go home to die
James did flinch at that. Michael felt it. Icicle-point through the heart, vicious and cold, the shard of a broken snowflake lodged between one beat and the next.
“You’re right.” James’s voice came out uneven. Shaken. “I’m scared. I’m still here. That’s my choice, isn’t it, and I’m making it.”
The universe won’t love you
They won’t ever love you
Who could love you, who could believe you, how could you believe him- The specter that loomed abruptly out of cobwebs and tragedy wore Michael’s face. How can you believe him when you know you could be making him feel
When you know someday you’ll be drawn to someone’s pain and you’ll give her back the pleasure in her body one more way to heal you won’t be able to not help and you know he’ll hate you for it
You know you could make him love you when he hates you
You know you could do it without even thinking
How do you know you haven’t already
When you fuck a lonely senator to give him one night’s reminder of joy and save that life, said the ghost wearing Michael’s eyes, this face will hate you
James was crying. Michael could feel it. Tears on his cheeks, stinging, splashing to the floor. “I know. I know. I…didn’t know vision ordeals said fuck, guess it’s not a surprise, though…my head, isn’t it…”
No! Michael tried to scream the words into the horrible bottomless deepening abyss. No, no, I love you, I swear I love you, whatever you have to do I know you’re doing it to give someone else solace, you’ll come home to me, I know you love me, that’s all that matters in the end, James, PLEASE-
Ian slammed a telepathic gag over his voice. Michael staggered physically from the shock. Nearly fell over right there in the hallway.
James swiped a hand over his face. His mouth tasted like blood; Michael, catching the copper and iron secondhand, realized that James must’ve bitten his own lip hard enough for that.
The pain cut through the cataclysm and got them both thinking more clearly, James directly, Michael by proxy. He wanted to cry too; thought he might be. Ian and Patrick had hands on his shoulders, holdng him up.
“I can live with him hating me,” James whispered. “I knew he might. How could he not, everything I am, what I could do to him…but that’s not the point, is it? He’s a Jedi and I’m a Jedi and he’ll be somewhere in the universe protecting innocents and teaching students and I’ll be…me…and we’ll fucking do the right thing, we’ll save lives, because that’s what we do.”
So many lives
So many lives in your head
Burn out like a star little empath drowning in other people and so alone
The onslaught knocked James to the ground. Rising wind, sheer terror, betrayal, agony, scorching flesh, memories memories memories of children screaming and trying to fight back and dying-
The Dark Room knew the feelings. Had drunk up one twisted boy’s glee at the act of slaughter. Poured that into James, the most powerful empath anyone’d ever known, now.
Patrick and Ian stirred uneasily. The lines of the Force rang and quivered, drawn taut with alarm. Michael tensed every muscle, ready to jump in; he didn’t care if that was technically failure on both sides, this was more than he’d gone through, more than anything anyone’d gone through since legendary days, and they couldn’t expect more-
James, crumpled onto the ground and bleeding-lip again, but also nose and ears and a palm where fingernails skewered flesh-panted, “I’m so sorry…”
You should be
You are
Of course you are
“Not for me…you aren’t listening…thought you could hear me.” James coughed, spit blood, tried again. “For you.”
For us
Stupid boy
You’re dying
“Yeah…got that…thanks. You’re not…telling me anything I don’t already…think about at night, y’know? And I might be dying…appreciate it if we could let up on that…by the way…but you’re already dead, aren’t you? You’re the children.”
Everything-the voices, the ghostly wind, the shuddering of Force-energy-went motionless.
In the hush, out in the hallway, Michael threw wild stares at Patrick and Ian, both of whom blinked blank surprise back.
“You are,” James said, and didn’t bother to get up, just coiled one leg under him and rested elbows on the other knee. “Everyone thinks you’re just the residue. The-the dark-side miasma, the leftovers, kind of, if you don’t mind being compared to my Gran’s meatloaf. Sorry. But you’re not. You’re not what happened. You’re who it happened to.”
Michael spotted Patrick mouthing what? in Ian’s direction. Ian made a wide-eyed I don’t know! expression in return.
He shook off their shock-relaxed grip and put a hand on the door. It didn’t react. Chilly and sealed shut by something unbreakable that wasn’t the lock.
“I’m so sorry,” James told the dark. “You’re hurting so much, I can hear it…I can help, I think. If you trust me.”
Trust
Trust you
Who are you?
“Exactly who you said I was.” One hand out, palm up, open. Angry red nail-crescents mute across calluses and lines. “You know me. Can I try? Can’t promise it’ll work, but I’m thinkin’ I’m the best you’ve got.”
Lonely
So many years
So many years afraid
Help?
“Everyone who comes down here’s afraid, I know.” James was searching out individual voices, picking out specific scampering shadows, focusing on each one in turn. “And you’re afraid-you’ve been afraid for centuries, and I’m so fuckin’ impressed that you’re talking to me, have I said that?-so all you ever get is fear, and that’s not your fault, it’s not, all right? You were kids. And what happened happened to you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Hurt people
Hurt you
People who come here sometimes they die sometimes they scream
“Still not your fault. The Jedi used you. They didn’t mean to-I don’t think they knew about you-but they did.” James kept his voice calm, steady, soothing, the way he might tempt a feral Alderaanian pittin off city streets and indoors for petting and a saucer of milk. Michael, witnessing every syllable and every stretch of empathic ability and every opened-up broadcast of welcome, thought: miracle.
A host of sleek black shadows drifted in. One by one at first. Then more. Then more, until ninety percent of the Dark Room gloomed in ordinary mundane grey and James’s spot on the floor was ringed by onyx eyeless curiosity.
“You were trainees,” James said. Blood lingered on his face, on his chin. Drying. “You died. Badly. And I’m going to feel that forever, and you are too, but you can-you can move on. The Force wants you. You can be free, you can be safe, you don’t need to be forgiven because you were the ones hurt. You know what I see? You were all Jedi. You are all Jedi.”
Jedi
No
Yes
How can you how are you
Us?
“Yeah, well.” A one-shouldered shrug, a wince; James must have bruises from the collision with the floor. “I know some things about being alone. And I know you don’t have to be. I said the Force wants you. The universe wants you. You’re alive and the universe is alive and it’s fucking beautiful, have you seen it? Everything out there just waiting for you, beyond these walls. Can I show you?”
We’re dead
Show us
“You’re dead Jedi,” James pointed out, and swiped at some of the blood with his sleeve. “Come on, then. Let me just try this…”
The universe blossomed. No other words. The Force billowing outward in great blue-white light, profusions of beckoning glory. Affirmation and possibilities and promise: other skies, other realms, spaces of existence beyond the earthly binaries of living and dead. Serenity, the kind enrobed in blazing joy.
The ghosts quivered. Yearned forward. Tentative ventures.
James, holding the gateway open, crying again from effort and ecstasy and shared emotion, beckoned gently, “I’m still human, so you’re going to have to hurry up a bit, the Force is making it easier-told you someone wanted you-but I can’t keep this up forever…”
The shadows poured through in a rush. Each one turned into a blue-outlined shape-a Twi’lek girl, an Ithorian boy, a purple-skinned knot of tentacles Michael didn’t recognize-in the last second. Some of them waved. James waved back, winced, waved at the next one.
Near the end, one of them hesitated. You?
“Me what? I didn’t know I could do this, so for all I know I’m going right after.”
No you stay you be safe
“Nice of you to say, but I don’t think you can promise that.” James’s face was white under the blood. Michael pounded a hand against the uncaring doorway.
I stay, decided the shadow, and sat down firmly next to James’s right foot.
“You…what?”
Several of the other wispy bits of obsidian looked at the first one, and then came over and sat down too.
“Ah…” James looked from the portal to the collection of spirits at his side. “I appreciate the gesture, but…if you want to go, go now. I don’t know if I can ever do this again.”
What else
What else can we do
Help?
“Me?”
We’re Jedi
You said we were Jedi
Help you
Two last silken black ribbons dove into light. They glowed blue and rapturous, and vanished. The rest refused to move.
“You’ve got about five seconds,” James said, “I mean it, I’m going to either pass out or throw up on you or possibly, y’know, die…”
The first one, the first one that’d chosen to stay, hopped up right in front of his face and flung out dark streamers in every direction. James, startled by the attack of aggressively caring black-glowing blowfish, fell over. The portal snapped shut.
Michael tried kicking the door. Tried yanking at it with every drop of Force-enchanced strength. Patrick and Ian joined in, all three of them yelling James’s name.
Michael, seeing everything through the link, could feel the rush of dizziness, the disembodied eerie disorientation, the way James’s nose was bleeding anew, red on his shirt and his hand; the empty hollowness where there’d been luminous light, like withdrawal but an infinity worse…
Not empty. Warm. Strength from someplace else. Someone else. Freely given. Shared.
Someone who’d once known, who knew again, how to touch the Force. Untrained and clumsy and young, but healing.
Several someones. Not merely one.
James opened his eyes.
The ghost-echo that’d done most of the talking announced smugly, Help you!
“I…guess you did, at that. Thank you.” James pushed himself up on elbows, wobbly but inarguably alive. “That…thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
What do we do
What do we do now
Tell us
More help?
“Oh…all right…so I’m the older brother in this relationship…we’re not saying dad or I might have to rethink this, I’m not old enough to be your dad, you’ve got centuries on me…okay, give me a minute, I need to breathe.”
Michael also needed to breathe. Needed to fling arms around James and never let go. Never.
“You do need something to do,” James decided, giving up on the attempt to get any more vertical for the time being. “For one, you can finish your training, right? You were all students, and I’ve got no clue how that’s going to work when you can’t hold a lightsaber but you are Jedi so we’ll sort it out. And…I think…you might not be able to leave the Academy…I think you can, but you’re bound here, right, so if you go too far…that won’t work too well.”
Stay with us
“You know I can’t. You were in my head. I’ve got orders.”
Miss you, muttered the biggest one, one of the last to stay, sulkily.
“Yeah, I know, I’ll miss you too. I’ll come back and see you. I promise. Idea, though. You were doing this for centuries, right? Testing potential Jedi Knights?”
A ruffle of discontent ran around the room. The windows rattled their bones. Michael’s skin prickled.
James clarified hastily, “Not like what you were doing. Obviously. But the Academy needs a standard test for apprentices, and you know better than anyone the worst that an apprentice can feel…you got to me, and I have serious shields. If you wanted…we could think of it like a game. Not because you want to hurt anyone-and you won’t-but for fun. Playing with the trainees. Designing the tests. You could work with Patrick and Ian, you saw them in my head, they’re marvelous, you’d love them. And that can be part of your training, too.”
Teachers
We could be teachers
Games
Fun?
Mazes tag playtime no one hurt but fun?
“More or less. You can pretend to be scary, if you want.”
Good at scary!
“Extremely good at scary. I should know.”
The most daring ghost-shadow flickered around James’s hand, windy and insubstantial and worried. Hurt you sorry
“Ah, yeah, you did some. I’ll heal.” James flopped backwards onto the floor, knees bent, head resting on dusty once-polished wood. “It’s fine. Hey, you want to hear a really bad joke? Know where hurt people go on Hoth? A Hothpital.”
Spinning merriment. Giddy racing shadows. Up and down walls. A hint of pale sunshine through cracking window-seals.
The ghost-trainee that seemed to be the spokespirit bumped up against James’s arm a second time, thoughtful. Sorry
“Oh, no, it’s okay.” Nothing solid to pet, but James’s voice did it anyway. Rolling hillls and Highland heather and scratches behind ears. “We’re okay. I need something to call you, don’t I? You ever hear the stories about Lady Charlotte Xavier and her Merry X-Men?”
Heroes?
“Absolutely heroes. I can’t call you Charlie, ’cause that’s my ship, and that’d be frankly weird, calling you the name of my ship, but…Lady Charlie’s best friend was Sir Erika, the Lost Knight, right? And sometimes Erika did some pretty bad shit-oh, fuck, sorry-ah, you’ve probably heard worse-anyway, Erika did some very terrible things, and hurt a lot of people, but she did those things because she believed she was making the world safer for other people. Not sayin’ she was right, and she had a lot to make up for when she came home, but she did come home, and the way I heard that story, she and Charlie got to be friends again. So I’m thinking you can be an Erika, least until you figure out your own name, what do you think?”
Erka!
James laughed. “Close enough.”
Open up?
“Huh? Oh, the doors.” James draped an arm over his face. Across his eyes. “Sure. Let people in. Well-this is your place, you let people in if you want to talk to them, if you want them in, got it?”
You need people
Lonely
Hurting
“Stop that. ’s like talking to my grandmother, and that’s every kind of uncomfortable, especially if you start trying to set me up with the local cantina-owner’s son because he looks like a nice boy. Which, in fact, he was, not that he wasn’t also terrified of both Gran and me, so, y’know, so much for that. You can let people in, since you are, thanks for that.”
The doors popped open. A rush of air, centuries-stale, musty with past fear and pain and triumph and sweat and ordeal. Crumbling books and disused holocubes and the taste of time.
Michael only had eyes for James. Who was lying on his back with the friendliest shade-memory curled into a ball on his chest and two more around his shins. Three or four others, the ones who’d stayed, perched in splinters of light from peeling window-covers and regarded the newcomers warily.
He inched a foot closer. James didn’t move, not the bent knees or the arm over his eyes. His self-appointed defender sat up and hissed.
Patrick and Ian crowded in, tripping over each other and words. “James? Are you-”
“-all right, and how did you-we didn’t think this space could be-”
“Everyone said it would never be cleansed, and you-”
“I listened,” James said from under the arm. “That’s all.”
Patrick and Ian looked at each other. They were holding hands, Michael realized. The best Heads the Jedi Academy’d ever known, and they looked smaller and younger and in awe next to James.
Who sat up, and then stood up, coaxing miniature shadows off his chest and legs and into the air. “I’m okay. They’re okay too, but they’re going to need some friends, the ones who’re staying around. I told them they could help. They want to.”
“Oh,” Patrick said, “oh, yes, of course, we’d love to meet them…”
Michael didn’t know how to move. How to speak. He stood there next to Ian and Patrick and watched James hold out a hand and introduce the scourge of apprentice nightmares to the Academy Heads; watched Ian inquire with grave compassion how Miss Erika might feel about exploring the rest of the Academy, newly-built wings and unfurling libraries.
James glanced at Michael once, very quickly, when introducing him in turn. Master Fassbender. Excellent with new trainees, anyone needing help settling in, anyone needing a friend.
Michael said all the right words of welcome and kept staring at James. Who had walked into the Dark Room and come out leading children into the light. Who’d told them terrible jokes about hospitals and who moved as if some equally terrible wound kept him from reaching out, raw torn edges shifting and stretching with every breath or transference of weight.
“James,” Ian was saying, “of course there’ll be a ceremony later-if you’d like, only if you’d like-but I think we can all agree that not only did you get through your ordeal, dear boy, but-above and beyond, really, I should think. So we may as well recognize that now.”
Patrick finished, “Jedi Knight James McAvoy, then, how does that sound?”
“Like everything I wanted,” James said.
“Here, we brought your cloak-oh, and your lightsaber-”
A few of the little shadows stirred restlessly at the sight of the weapon. James soothed them with a backwards glance, a caress of fingertips from across the room. “Thank you. I mean for everything. I mean it. The two of you gave me a home.”
Michael said desperately, “Congratulations,” and hated himself. Wasn’t what he’d meant to say.
Blue eyes flicked his direction. Wavered. Came back with more resolute certainty. “Thank you, sir. And-thank you, too. About home-Michael, I-I’m actually really fuckin’ tired right now, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh…no, of course you would…back to our room, or…”
James said, not to Michael but to the ink-splash phantom of Erika hovering worriedly at his shoulder, “I’ve got some things to do, a mission to get ready for-oh, come on, don’t make that face at me, you were in training here too-yes, I’ll come back and see you before I leave. I swear. Right now I have to go, though, so you and everybody stay here and talk to Ian and Patrick for a while?”
“James,” Michael attempted. Broken glass over his tongue. In his throat.
“Take the night,” Patrick said. “Take a few nights. A week. We’ll set up a celebration-nothing big, but maybe your family could make the trip, and your friends here.”
“People will need to know,” James agreed. “Press conferences…the media…”
Patrick raised admonishing eyebrows. “I meant friends.”
And James smiled, crooked and real. A stray bit of Coruscant sunlight found his cheekbone and painted freckles in butter-yellow and white cream. “A week, then.”
“Go rest,” Patrick said, holding his gaze. Michael couldn’t hear the unspoken words, but could very nearly see them, anguish and understanding carried through the Force.
James’s smile got a hairsbreadth wider and more rueful. “I’ll try.”
“Do or do not,” Ian said from the floor, where he’d been gleefully mobbed by insubstantial Force-adept children.
“Am I allowed to tell my Masters to fuck off, now,” James said, but he was laughing. “And stop giving me fatherly advice. I’ll think about it. I am thinking about it. Just give me space, first.”
“Go on,” Ian said. “Jedi Knight.”
James laughed again, very softly, almost to himself, and tipped his head in Michael’s direction. “Come on.”
Out in the hall the air was lighter, less fraught with ancient horror and newfound hope, though no easier to breathe. Michael put one hand on the closest wall just for something to touch. He couldn’t touch James. Not when James was looking at him, looking away from him, like this.
He touched their link, invisibly. It was present but thin; he could tell that James was alive and near him, but everything else’d been pulled so far back he couldn’t find it. No clue how James was feeling, other than overwhelmingly crushingly tired.
“I know you saw that,” James said, gaze landing someplace around Michael’s collarbone. “You were in there. Watching.”
“You were incredible-”
“Don’t.” James did look up. The blood clung to his face where he’d not managed to scrub it off. The dried tear-lines along his cheeks shouldn’t’ve been visible, but were. Salt over freckles. That irrevocable wound. “It hurts too much to hear you think that. Not now.”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know.” With a lip-lick, an awful fractional shrug. “I knew it’d be rough. Not supposed to be easy, is it, the ordeal.”
“Most people don’t end up cleansing the Academy of the worst blasphemy in existence, either…no one except for you…I think you’re sort of an adoptive parent now, they adore you…I adore you. I love you. Does that help?”
“Some. Imagine the family reunions. So, Gran, I’ve brought formerly murderous Jedi ghost children home for supper, oh, maybe five or six of them, but it’s fine, no need to throw lightning-bolts, we can handle them.”
“We,” Michael said.
“I…did say that, didn’t I.” James dropped his gaze to the floor. The once-expensive imported Bakuran teak evidently provided no answers, because his head came up again. “I don’t know. That’s even worse, isn’t it?-ghost babies, and then your parents with their wonderfully normal restaurant, me and my Gran with witch-blood, paparazzi in the background taking pictures of your sister, and you stuck someplace in the middle trying to say you love me.”
“I do.”
“And we’ll make it work, and the ending’ll be full of rainbows and Ewok campfire songs and everybody learning to get along.” Back to scrutinizing the floor, the join where wood met wall, the unhappy dust-bunnies missed by cleaning droids who never came this far down. “I’ll believe it later. I think I can believe it, later.”
Michael took a step forward. “James-”
James held up a hand. Not angry; almost instinctive. A defense mechanism. Between them.
“James,” he whispered again, because that was all he could say.
“I know,” James told him. “I know it wasn’t you in there. I just-I need time. Please.”
He couldn’t breathe. Galaxies collapsing around him. Stars fuzzing in front of his vision. “How-how long-no, never mind, don’t-as long as you need. I’ll be here.”
James’s smile was a frayed ribbon of hope, tattered and carried on a breath. “I know.”
“What they said,” Michael choked out, “what they said, about me-”
“You don’t have to-”
“They’re wrong, they’re fucking wrong, James, I love you, I don’t care what you do or what you share with anyone as long as you come home to me, you’re a Jedi and I’m a Jedi and we help people and you’re a better healer than I am and if you need to heal people-I love you, you amaze me, I love you.” He stopped. Pleaded brokenly, “I mean it. Tell me when you’re ready. I’m here.”
He thought the hope might be less tattered this time. Couldn’t be sure. James ran a hand through his own hair, and Michael’d never seen blue eyes look so devastated, and the devastation reached into his chest and ripped his heart and lungs and spine out with iron hands.
“I’ll let you know.” Gutted, bruised, beautiful: a Jedi Knight, and the other half of Michael’s soul, forever. “I think…I hope…it won’t be long. I just-I need to not look at you right now. Not only you. Anyone. People.” One more hand through the hair; tiny tremors in fingertips. “I know I love you. I just can’t yet. Soon.”
Michael had to nod. No other answer, not if he wanted James to come back, not if he loved James, and he did, he loved James, he would love James forever, no until or unless or limits or boundaries.
James walked away, five steps, countable steps, one-two-three-four-five, and got into the closest lift and didn’t look back. The doors closed. Took Michael’s heart away inside them.
The wall flattened itself coldly against his back. Wood, he knew. Logically shouldn’t feel like death. It did.
The cold didn’t matter. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and tried to remember how to exhale or cry or move, but he couldn’t, not until all his limbs gave way and he ended up sitting on the floor in an abandoned Academy hallway, hugging his knees to his chest and shivering without sound.