FicWad

Bail Organa is a man who is accustomed to being surrounded by all of the highly refined grace, extravagant beauty, and outright wealth and luxury that extreme prosperity and a highly enlightened culture can grant. As a citizen not only of the Galactic Republic but of Alderaan - a true gem of a planet, known as the "Shining Star" of the Core Worlds, rich not only in material wealth but also in beauty: its lands dominated by carefully preserved forests, wild grasslands, and ancient mountain ranges; its waterways crystal clear and teaming with life, from its brooks and streams and smallest rivers and lakes all the way up to its scattered inland seas and large oceans; and its people so aware of the beauty inherent in their planet's natural balance that they are very careful not to interfere with or to intrude upon nature any more than it is absolutely necessary to in order to build their homes and their cities, meaning that everything that they do, everything they create, is extremely carefully integrated with and respectful of their natural surroundings, in harmony with the planet - Bail, just like any other Alderaanian, is both familiar with and inclined towards embracing or even exemplifying certain things. Alderaan is well-known for its prosperity and a philosophy that not only diligently embraces seeking the understanding necessary to live peacefully in harmonious balance with all things, but which also embraces education and open-mindedness as the key to gaining such understanding. Thus, just as Alderaan itself is renown for its natural charm and beauty and rich natural resources, so, too, are the extremely prosperous and naturally peaceful Alderaanians known for their apparently effortless ability to create, bring out or accentuate, appreciate, and otherwise generously and peacefully share - not impose, but truly share - with others their seemingly unfailing inborn talent for understanding and even embodying beauty and grace.

Hence, Bail Organa is, for example, a peaceful man who believes strongly in the power of words and holds firm in his altruistic belief that all conflict stems from ignorance and that if the opposing sides in any given conflict can only be brought to speak honestly and forthrightly to one another long enough, then they will be able to reach a nonviolent resolution for their differences. He is also an enormously cultured and extremely well-read highly intelligent man, completely fluent in roughly two dozen languages, with absolutely exquisite manners, impeccable taste all around, and a wardrobe, private library, private art collection, and personal stock of fine liquor the likes of which are so elegant, rare, extensive, and exquisite that they are envied, aspired to, and imitated by Senators, nobles, the wealthy elite, and those who would like to join the ranks of the previous three categories all over the Republic. In short, Bail is most comfortable in a tranquil and refined setting of elegant, luxurious beauty. He has not been caught entirely off guard or even overly affected by the sight of something or someone beautiful in years - in decades, even. The last time Bail was caught so completely unprepared for the sight of beauty, he had managed both to recover his composure and cover his brief lapse by simply feigning nervousness. He had, after all, just been given an assignment as a relatively new junior Senator that had been expected by most to go to some extremely senior and very powerful Senator, and had just been introduced to perhaps the most famous current Master-Padawan Jedi pair in the galaxy. Nervousness had been expected of him just then.

Unfortunately, there is no such convenient expectation to save Bail now.

Bail is staring disgracefully, making a complete spectacle of himself. Worse, he's not sure if he'll ever be able to stop staring . . . nor, to tell the truth, does he really want to stop.

Bail has always felt an extremely powerful pull towards Obi-Wan Kenobi, a combination of strong curiosity and even more powerful attraction that can only partially be attributed to the Jedi's formidable natural charisma. Bail is well aware of the fact that, over the years - in truth, ever since he first met Obi-Wan - he has been far too consistently and obviously interested in the young Jedi, even for someone who is not only a respected ally of Obi-Wan's but is also just as close to being his friend as anyone who is not also a member of the Order could ever hope to be for someone who is a Jedi. Unfortunately, the Alderaanian Senator has simply never known what to do about his reaction to Obi-Wan. At turns entirely appalled, bemused, engrossed, confused, and simply ashamed of the depth of feeling and the sheer fascination that Obi-Wan so effortlessly inspires in him, Bail is relatively certain that he has been able to hide his incredibly inappropriate attachment to and interest in Obi-Wan from everyone - except, perhaps, for Qui-Gon Jinn, who had so often seemed to regard Bail with just a hint of otherwise inexplicable bemusement and sorrow that had often felt almost like regret - mainly because he is sure that if Obi-Wan ever even so much as suspected the actual extent of Bail's emotional investment in him, the young Jedi would either automatically seek to speak to Bail about it or else he would simply disassociate himself from the Senator entirely.

Yet, regardless of both the wholly unsuitable nature of his attachment and the very real constant risk that discovery of that attachment could, possibly, lose him his friendship with Obi-Wan entirely, Bail has never been able to truly curb, much less rid himself, of his emotions when it comes to Obi-Wan. However improper his growing and deepening love for Obi-Wan might be, Bail can no more free himself from his longing for the remarkable young Jedi than he can bring their relationship to the level of completion that he so desperately desires. Bail knows that it is beyond foolishness on his part, to constantly risk destroying the very trust and respect that has permitted him to gain the surprising amount of emotional intimacy that Obi-Wan does allow with him, but unfortunately Bail has an extremely wide romantic streak, and even though he knows that he cannot expect anything from Obi-Wan, since the man is, first and foremost, always a Jedi, Bail finds that he cannot bring himself to surrender either the hope for more - regardless of how ridiculously unrealistic it may be - or the immediate and very real pleasure that he gains just from being allowed and even invited to occasionally be near the incredibly dynamic and mesmeric young Jedi. For it is pleasurable, very much so, addictively so, in a world-ordering and galaxy-reorienting fashion that is both terrifying and exhilarating.

Bail loves his young wife. Although his marriage was essentially arranged by his parents and Breha's, he has known Breha her entire life, been friends with her for essentially the same amount of time, and Bail would not have married her if he hadn't been in love with the sweet natured, earnest, iron-willed young woman. They have been married almost six years now, and Bail would never willingly do anything to hurt her. However, his enchantment with Obi-Wan Kenobi precedes and predates his marriage to Breha Antilles, and the young Jedi challenges Bail constantly, in ways that make him feel much more alive than anyone or anything else in the galaxy ever could, effortlessly engaging and stimulating his mind and heart and senses on seemingly every possible level, with an almost unbearable intensity. So before he asked Breha to marry him, Bail had sat down with her and very calmly and carefully explained that while he loved her deeply, he had long ago given part of himself, of his heart, away to someone else, someone Bail has known and loved for many years, and even though Bail would be honored above all men if Breha would consider becoming his wife, he was afraid that his heart would never solely belong to her alone.

Breha had listened to him quietly, gravely, and then explained to him that she has always known that a part of him rests in the hands of one who does not comprehend what he has been given, that this knowledge has never kept her from loving Bail, and that she would be honored to become his wife, if he would allow her the honor of allowing her into the rest of his heart and his life. So Bail had married Breha, making the young Minister of Education the Queen of Alderaan as well, and he has been completely faithful to her, in word and in deed, ever since that day, though his thoughts, like his heart, have remained constantly fixed on another. Even though Obi-Wan is, for Bail, like some tantalizing specter from another dimension - in the world but not of it, forever just beyond his grasp - Bail's feelings for the Jedi are now so much a part of who he is that Bail is not certain he would be able to function without them, without Obi-Wan, in his life. The Prince of Alderaan is not a man given to exaggerations, but the simple truth of the matter is that he would rather die than live without Obi-Wan's presence in his life, however rare and increasingly irregular that presence might be. When Obi-Wan had been presumed killed after the Battle of Jabiim, Bail had been the only one, besides Anakin Skywalker, who had believed otherwise and stubbornly refused to give up hope. And he would have gladly given up his soul in exchange for the young Jedi Master's safe return.

Bail has never been able to pinpoint just precisely what it is that makes Obi-Wan Kenobi so beautiful, not merely mundanely handsome or simply pretty but actually genuinely, luminously beautiful. Yet, Bail is nonetheless certain that nothing short of a cataclysmic injury would ever be able to rob Obi-Wan of the grace and beauty he always so effortlessly wears, just as comfortably and naturally as his own skin. The young Jedi is a surprisingly small man - especially to Bail, who is taller even than Anakin Skywalker, nearly as tall as Master Qui-Gon was (is?) - lean and hard-muscled, slender and compact in a way that had accentuated his youth enormously while he was still a Padawan, making him appear boyishly charming and artlessly lovely and illegally young, as if he were a stripling barely old enough to qualify as an adolescent, even when he had actually been hovering on the edge of adulthood.

The first time Bail had laid eyes upon Obi-Wan Kenobi, he honestly had not been able to tell if he'd been looking upon an extremely youthful man or a teenager so young that he was barely out of childhood. Obi-Wan's poise had hinted at maturity and age, but his face and his form had suggested a youth that would have been more appropriate for one who was just getting ready to enter into the secondary school system. Regardless of his own confusion, Bail had been utterly captivated by Obi-Wan. At the time, Bail had been both Crown Prince and First Chairman of Alderaan for less than two years and a Senator for Alderaan for even a little less time than that, and the senior Alderaanian Senator, Bail Antilles (who later would also become Bail Organa's father by marriage), had been in the midst of secretly arranging a place for Bail on an extremely prominent treaty negotiation that promised, if all went well, to bring an alliance of six Outer Rim planets into the body of the Republic proper. It had already been decided that the Republic's delegation would be headed by a Jedi Master-Padawan team, and Senator Antilles had not wished to have it known beforehand that he wished to have Senator Organa (rather than himself) on the delegation as well, and so he had essentially snuck Bail into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, to introduce him to Master Yoda and, hopefully, win his approval and agreement for Bail Organa to take part in the treaty negotiations.

Bail remembers the circumstances surrounding his brief first sight of Obi-Wan Kenobi very well, though he is positive that Obi-Wan has never suspected that the individual he briefly met that day in the Temple corridors was actually him, Bail Organa of Alderaan. Bail's parents had never attempted to hide from him - or anyone else - the fact that the only reason he had not been given over to the Jedi as a child had been the unclear nature of the line of ascendency and Bail's undeniable proximity to the throne of Alderaan, and their honesty, as well as his family's overall close relationship to the Jedi, had seen to it that Bail had been quite familiar with the Jedi Alderaanian chapterhouse and its residents, from the time he was a very young boy. His penchant for honestly listening to and seeking to truly understand and even aid the Jedi in their work on Alderaan had resulted in Bail's been invited to the Temple at Coruscant hard upon the heels of his acknowledgment as Alderaan's Crown Prince and his acceptance by the Senate as Alderaan's most junior Senator. Bail had been to the Temple many times since then and had already been well on the way to becoming acquainted with and accepted by its ruling High Council of Masters when Senator Antilles had seized upon the notion of winning Senator Organa more than mere acceptance among the Senate by winning him the chance to truly prove his worth, by representing the Republic among the delegation for the upcoming treaty negotiations.

Thus, though it had not, by any means, been Bail Organa's first visit to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, nor his first private meeting with a Jedi of import, it had been a meeting of vital and calculated importance for him, personally, as well as his first planned and essentially solitary meeting with the highly venerated unacknowledged head of the entire Jedi Order, Master Yoda. He had been a little bit nervous, but mostly he had simply been entirely focused upon repaying Senator Antilles' trust in him by making it to the meeting and making a favorable impression. It had been Senator Antilles' idea to keep both the meeting and the possibility of Bail Organa's appointment to the delegation a secret, but Master Yoda had not objected, and so Bail had found himself accompanying Senator Antilles into the Temple in the guise of a pilgrim from outside the Republic proper. His identity so throughly hidden beneath layers upon layers of thick black veils, voluminous robes, and heavy gloves that covered every square centimeter of his body from view that it was impossible even to tell for sure what species he was simply from looking upon him, Bail had followed Senator Antilles into the Temple from a docking bay entrance located directly across the Temple structure from the public center through which most visitors to the Temple enter, in the north wing, between the spires for the Reassignment Council and the Council of First Knowledge. Having been led in to an area of the Temple he was not, as yet, overly familiar with, through what amounted to a side or even back door - a smaller, more private entrance in the south wing, situated among the training facilities and the outer bounds of the Healers' quarters - Bail had been silently following Senator Antilles, trusting that the man's greater familiarity with the Temple would eventually see them safely ensconced in Master Yoda's private quarters, when a figure had come rushing around a sharp bend in the hallways and almost barreled into them.

Bail had been so shocked by the oddity - firstly, of someone all but running in the Jedi Temple; and secondly, of someone clothed in Jedi robes in such a blind hurry that haste had all but rendered that individual blind to the not only close but converging presence of others - that he had shied violently backwards, almost falling as he managed to so entangle his feet in his unfamiliar garb that he nearly succeeded in tripping himself. Senator Antilles - who most likely would have been missed by everything except perhaps the left elbow or arm of this rapidly striding individual, even if that person hadn't realized, at virtually the last possible instant, that there were people coming up the hallway towards him from the other direction, and come to a complete and shockingly graceful halt - managed to react with much more ease and aplomb than Bail, veering suddenly to the side, towards the wall, and throwing out an arm to catch Bail as he stumbled, snagging him in an effort not only to keep him from falling but also to pull him back out of the way of the - Jedi? Jedi trainee? Jedi Healer? - hasty individual. Discombobulated by the sudden appearance of a figure in pale Jedi robes all but flying straight towards him and his own entirely unusual lack of grace, given the encumbrance of so many unfamiliar layers of robes and veils, Bail had not immediately gotten a good look at the person who had almost run him over. It was only as the person had spoken - in shockingly melodic rolling tones - that Bail had looked up and focused on the person he'd nearly collided with . . . and immediately fallen.

The slight figure of the Jedi Bendu - Bendu Padawan, a small voice within his mind had whispered, noting the slender braid trailing over the right shoulder - had been looking directly at Bail. Still off-balance, he had automatically boldly met that gaze . . . and for a long moment in his awareness there had been nothing - absolutely nothing else in existence - but the worlds confined within that pale gaze. Within those predominantly blue eyes, Bail had seen innocence. Absolute, stark, terrifying innocence. He had moved without thinking, flinching backwards in shock until he fell against the wall, where he hung, stunned all but senseless, pinned by those eyes and holding fast onto his next breath. A natural-born citizen of Alderaan, Bail Organa had most assuredly not been accustomed to being so moved by the mere sight of anyone, and his instinct was to be vexed with himself, not only for betraying his interest but for being struck with such an overpowering feeling of - recognition? Possessiveness? Desire? - need to acknowledge the power of those eyes, and the person they belonged to, by responding. Momentarily overtaken by a series of shockingly random thoughts - Power. Of course. Yes. And beauty. Always, beauty. Fascinating. Perfect. Yes. Lovely light. Brightly burnished burning beautiful Bendu. I want this, I want to touch, to know, all of this. Yes. - he had simply stood, staring, feeling no threat in the gaze that was locked upon him, only an uncanny, helpless attraction towards the Jedi giving it, an interest and yearning that was all but physical, unprecedented, yes, and wholly intimate, so acute that he felt exposed in the very motion of his heart. Bail Organa had never before been so set aback in his life, and so he was afraid, as this Jedi seemed afraid, this . . . youth, this . . . man, this . . . this . . .

Bail Organa had known no way to name what he felt or what he saw; he had no reckoning even of how much time had passed in the Jedi's act of looking up, shaking his hood back slightly from his face - eventually freeing his loose and disheveled hair - and meeting him stare for stare. But he knew that there would be no way of holding him, if this bedraggled, fragile, glorious creature should decide to simply continue on his way. Could it be that Senator Antilles truly did not see it, that he should seemingly remain so utterly unmoved? The young Jedi gazed at him with that intimate and terrifying stare, as if somehow - although he could not possibly - he knew secrets about Bail that would damn his soul. The impression was so strong that almost he would have spoken out, almost he would have ordered Antilles away from him, for fear of the youth speaking too much, or bringing up some business worth lives - and he did not even know if he owned any such dreadful secrets, Crown Prince of Alderaan or no! There was no rational reason for such a fear, and the youth, besides, seemed weak and uncertain on his feet, perhaps even apt to tumble to the marble floor. Yet, still there was that overwhelming sense of peril and moment to every move the young Jedi made, every move he might make - not acute, no, and perhaps not entirely inescapable, but there, unmistakably so. An instant or an eternity his thoughts raced, scurrying like mice, this way and that, desperately looking for an approach to this . . . this conundrum. The Jedi simply looked at him with an overwhelming force of expectation - yes, that's what it was, precisely: expectation. Unmitigated. Unquestioning. Faith. Appalling, utter faith, and directed at him, by the Force's merciful Light, he who was not at all accustomed to such imposition. Such intense, unbearable innocence - so appalling and so unprecedented that Bail was drawn to keep looking, keep on staring back at him, wishing to be sure, from heartbeat to heartbeat, that it was truly there or had ever even been there to begin with . . .

He could not think. He stared, instead. The Jedi youth was speaking, something arranged to a tune of apology - golden, rounded, frisson-inducing, lightly accented musical tones, strung together to form a symphony of emotion, of intent - and it was only fitting, for there was a music to him that touched every nerve in Bail's body, a bright song that came forth from him and was tied to and grounded in the world around him, and the youth must have been a Jedi of enormous power or potential or both, for although Bail himself knew almost nothing of the artistry and uses of the Force, the skilled and beautiful weaving of its energy flows, having not been trained to use his Force-sensitivity, to be a Force-adept, he was, nevertheless, fully cognizant of the power that lay within it, the way it shone and vibrated in and throughout those who were skilled and strong in its ways, and it only made him crave to touch, to understand, to know, even more deeply, more completely, more forcefully, than before. And then, as though acknowledgment of that song, of that brightness and warmth, as of the corona of a tangible light, were the only thing that had been lacking, that had been holding him back from a fuller understanding, a more complete knowing, before, Bail's awareness, the latent power from his own raw Force-sensitivity, had broken open, spilling out of him in such a manner that he could not have ceased from staring at the Jedi youth even if would have truly wished to.

It was like nothing else Bail had ever felt before. It began like a rapid boiling in the pit of his stomach, awareness suddenly rising with the temperature of his skin and the frequency of his respiration, rushing forth to strain against the bonds of his flesh, pushing at the boundaries, the limits, of his merely human senses, fighting to win free, to emerge from underneath them. Then, like the ringing repercussion of a bowl of finest crystal falling onto unforgivingly cobbled stone, shattering in a final, terminal reverberation of shivering sound, clarity of sight and sound and mind followed, dilating his pupils and making his skin over into a superconductor of powerful electrical impulses of increasing frequency, energy gathered in from seemingly every direction - the shifting fire of the softly colored opaline stone behind and against him, the smoothly polished pale marble beneath his feet, even the air surrounding him - to focus itself upon and within him. His very blood surged, primed for discovery, and his muscles knotted all throughout his body to withstand the rush of this newly unleashed power, this newly dominant nature. Then the power roared forth, consuming him from the inside outward, taking the reins of control entirely away. With a mind and senses born of the elemental energy that is woven all throughout the fabric of the universe, it boosted and expanded and deepened Bail's awareness to the outward limits of its reach, making note of all things within a five-kilometer radius, from the most obvious of features down to the most infinitesimal of details.

The total number of fire-souled beings of Light within the Temple unfolded before him, knowledge blossoming like a flower of fire, individual petal-sparks easily numbered and known, noted and recorded in such detail that a three-dimensional glowing representation of the entirety of the Temple complex - including the Temple itself, a kilometer-high central ziggurat formed from the totality of many smaller nesting jewel-box buildings, with five slender towers and four protruding wings, and the extensive Temple Precinct, with its extensive docking space and vastly sprawling elaborate mosaic of support buildings and infrastructure housing, gradually bleeding over at the edges into the highly exclusive and expensive shops and manses of the absolute elite of the crafting world and the ornate towering monuments and extensive public pleasure grounds and museums for a thousand, thousand, thousand worlds - was burned indelibly into his memory. Details were so precisely inset, so deliberately incised, that the total number of lenses in the eyes of the ants trawling within the cracks of the pathways winding through the rooftop gardens of the Temple complex was as evident to him as the state of the weather - clear and surprisingly warm for early spring. No sooner had Bail grasped the full import of what he was sensing, what he was seeing, then that awareness contracted until it was centered upon the youth before him, to the exclusion of everything else, seeking to find and define the source or at least the nature of the strange magnetic power that emanated from him, an oddly balanced mix of energy, of power, so singularly different from the simple bright light burning palely at the core of most of the Temple residents - Jedi and Jedi trainees or Force-sensitive acolytes, in the majority - so uniquely complex that it was difficult to believe this youth might merely be another simple Force-adept and resident of the Temple.

Bail tasted the chill nothingness of essentially empty space, the void of night that roots in the depths of near absolute-zero; he heard the busy snapping crackle of fire, timed the supernova-brilliant explosions of flaring light to that energetic snapping hum; he smelled the richly green damp and heathered prismatic sun-dapple of growing life; he felt the pressing touch of the time, a brisk wind blowing out over and throughout him; and, more than anything else, he saw and could not turn away from the knowledge of a power so great, a potential so vast, that it dwarfed him to an insignificant tinier and even less perceptible than that of the multiple lenses of the eyes of the insects active in the Temple gardens. Frustrated and humbled in his attempt to understand, to catalogue and comprehend the youth's power, Bail instinctively drew back, just the barest bit, until he was looking at the youth, the tangible form of the young Jedi, instead of the exquisite blend of confusing and unknown energies making up the core of his being. The youth's material form was a jubilee of observations, in and of itself. The outer edges of Bail's senses swept over him, unabashedly drinking in all the information Bail could receive about his physical makeup, the heavy cloaking layer of the outer robe by which he shielded his body from the eyes of the public as irrelevant to Bail as the rest of his clothes, of note only because the largely palely neutral hued and slightly tattering clothing formed the uniform of a Jedi or Jedi trainee.

The poisonous residue of exhaustion clung like an oily taint to the youth's musculature, weakening him; dark shadows of almost-breaks overlaid more than half the bones of his ribs and far too much of the delicate ivory lacework of bones in his left hand and wrist; and also, at the extreme edges of sensation, Bail caught the fleeting sign of some lingering stress or strain, as of a long ago bout with some monstrously damaging disease or other form of violence - perhaps even abuse of some kind - twisting all throughout the bright jointed threads of his being in occasional dark spangles of negative fire, a flaw that ever so slightly undermined and limited the soundness of the youth's health, the solidity and strength of the foundations underlaying his power. Other than that, though, the young Jedi was robustly healthy - surprisingly so, even, given the hurts shadowing much of his torso, his exhaustion, and that strangely sapping lingering strain or stress shot all throughout him, an echo of some serious, if long ended, damage or deprivation or both. The overall signature flowing from the youth's physical form swelled with life and energy and a surprising muscularity, given his size and stature. He was small and quite slight and obviously not yet quite done growing - tiny, compared to Bail - and yet his body still somehow managed to be long and willowy, giving him a sense of height he did not merit and most likely never would, even once he had reached the limit of his height and his bones had set themselves to that mark. The lines of his figure were neat and lithe and slender; he was perfectly apportioned, with narrow hips and a chest that widened upwards into generous shoulders and long arms, those slim hips letting out onto even longer and exquisitely turned legs, the incredible beauty and power of which not even the thick wool of trousers and heavy leather of tall boots could quite contain or conceal.

In addition to those proportionately long (for his overall height), sleek legs, the youth's torso was long and slender, as was the slim, muscular column of his neck. Bail found himself staring at the curving indentation at the hollow of the Jedi's throat, a concave cavity beneath the convex curvature of his Adam's apple, oddly so overpoweringly tempting that Bail could not keep from imagining working his way down that smooth column, tongue sliding down that bobbing apple to rest upon that hollow, caressing it with warm, lazy kisses, pausing there and breathing in all the warm musk and spice and shocking sweetness of him. The explicitness of the desire - in swiftly flickering but relentlessly detailed images of teeth and tongue and lips, all working and worrying at that lovely pale smooth skin - shocked Bail utterly. Having never, in all honesty, been a very carnal man - being, by nature, a romantic and an esthete - the sudden overwhelming strength of this desire - this complete and utter need for touch, for skin on skin contact, felt as a burning in his lips, when he imagined kissing the hollow of the youth's throat, and a stinging in his fingers, at the thought of grasping hold of and caressing the narrow span of his waist, running over the flat hardness of his tautly muscled abdomen - didn't just surprise him. It frightened him. It might even have terrified him, if he had not already been catapulted to a place far beyond fear by the sudden strangeness of his Force-sensitivity blossoming and bursting to life like an abruptly kindled flame. It felt like being possessed, being taken over, by some alien impulse, something entirely extrinsic to Bail's nature, enough so that he began to try fighting it. It was only with great difficulty, though, that he stopped the progression of his heightened senses before they could swing around behind the youth, and only because he was so afraid of what might happen if he allowed himself to continue that it jarred his concentration.

In an attempt to keep himself from becoming more entranced with the young Jedi than he already was, Bail had searched for flaws, any imperfection that would prove the youth was real, actual flesh and blood, and not just some otherworldly, unreal vision brought on by the madness of this strange and suddenly triggered Force-sense of his. He found it first in the youth's hands. They were well-formed but hardened and slightly blunted with thick calluses, the kind that owe their existence to years of weapons' practice and bladework of an entirely serious nature - the kind that Jedi receive from learning the use of their lightsabers. Of course. But it was the only imperfection, the only true flaw, that he could find. If it could even truly be called a flaw, which given the youth's profession seemed a bit . . . harsh. So he had continued to look, with increasing desperation. The Padawan's chin was cleft and Bail could see the tell-tale signs of dimples in his cheeks, but these were not really flaws. There was a beauty-mark high up on his right cheekbone, riding perhaps the width of a large man's finger beneath his right eye, at the outmost corner, and a larger mark (some might have said it was a mole, but Bail could not see it as anything other than a larger beauty-mark) rode at about the same distance over his left eye, at the corner nearest the center of his face. The two marks balanced, in some strange way that Bail could not quite put into words, though it was impossible to deny the simple truth of that harmony, either.

Overall, the Jedi's face was so smooth and youthful, crafted as though by an expert and sublimely skilled sculptor lovingly working a lifetime on a masterpiece that would one day be finished and then just as lovingly offered up, reverently presented for the edification of all, his features all in such perfect harmony with one another - with the possible exception of those huge, enormously expressive, deep-set, blue-green-gray-silver-violet-indigo-azure eyes, fringed with long, thick, luxuriantly curling lashes of dark red-gold and so intense in their colors, the whites very white indeed against the kaleidoscopic whirl of their mostly blue contrast, that they sparkled with a light of their own, so incredibly hypnotic that it was almost impossible to look away from them - that Bail was absolutely certain he was undeniably looking upon the most beautiful face, the most exquisitely radiant being, he had ever before had the fortune to see. Others, perhaps, might have thought that the youth's lips were too thin, or his eyes too large, or his cheekbones, like his chin, too sharply prominent, or perhaps even that his face was too perfectly, pliantly smooth (save, of course, for the inset dents from those adorable dimples, that gorgeously cleft chin). But no, each feature of his face was in perfect harmonic balance with every other feature, and taken together, as a whole, they formed a face so enormously expressive, alight with such vitality and good nature, that the sheer beauty of it took Bail's breath away. It took several long moments for Bail to recover enough for his need to search the entirety of the youth's form to grow great enough to draw his attention away from that face - especially those incredible eyes - and on to the rest of the Jedi.

Beneath the concealing drape of his robe's hood, with the power of Bail's eyes alone it had at first been difficult to truly make out any of the Jedi's features, aside from the ubiquitous Padawan braid and those shockingly innocent eyes. Then, when his awareness had suddenly tumbled open to the power of his own latent Force-sensitivity, Bail had been distracted by other things, concentrating first on the young Jedi's strange power and then the shocking glory that was his face. While he had been busy being confused and frustrated by the unfamiliar quality of the youth's power and then delving into the secrets of the young Jedi's physical form, though, that muffling hood had slipped backwards, sliding down about the youth's shoulders, revealing that his incredibly thick hair was, aside from the braid, rapidly growing out of a spikily short cut. Although his hair had then appeared, at first, to be a slightly bland color perhaps half a shade or so darker than wheat when it was not yet quite ripe - a darker, duller, earthier tone than that of antique gold, the hue wheat normally takes on just as it is ready to be cut - only an instant later the light had caught it, just so, and it had flared to life, in a corona of fiery magnificence that gleamed like purely refined copper ore in the intense heat of a smelting fire. The Jedi was crowned in flame, and Bail's heart had seized within his chest utterly at the sight. The sight of him, of this bright and shining and undeniably - if somewhat inexplicably - powerful and flame-crowned Jedi youth, with his all too expressive not quite entirely blue eyes and his smoothly pliant skin and his calloused hands and his beautifully formed and brightly animated harmonious features, shattered something within Bail, something that had not been shaken loose even when his own latent ability and power in the Force had spilled out of him.

In seeing the totality of the young Jedi, it was as if . . . Bail recognized the face and form of someone well-known, someone beloved, someone he had been seeing - in his dreams, if not in his waking reality - his entire life, though Bail knew very well, logically, that he'd never seen this figure ever before in his life. The Bendu Padawan was no one Bail recognized, and yet there was familiarity. Like a scent from childhood that isn't even recalled until it is smelled again, and then absolutely everything about that long ago day will come flooding back. If someone had told Bail, at that very second, that this flame-crowned and brightly burnished youth was the other half of his soul or his long-lost twin, separated at birth and raised within the Jedi Temple as Bail would have been, under different circumstances, then he would have believed it, utterly and instantly. Never mind the obvious difference in their ages (at least a decade's worth of difference, though it was hard to tell for sure, given the youth's incredible poise and the depths of maturity in those bright eyes) or the fact that the two of them looked nothing alike. There was something there. Relation. What he was to Bail . . . what Bail was to him . . . because whatever it was, he felt something of it, too. Bail could see it in his eyes, although the distraction that had originally driven the young Jedi to such haste as to send him all but running through the Temple hallways, almost barreling into Bail and Senator Antilles, was so great that it obviously all but overwhelmed every other consideration, though it could not quite keep the spark of recognition or the cold fog of confusion from showing in his eyes. Bail felt as if he could read every feeling in the young Jedi's soul just as if they were his own. Like he was born to it. Like it was his right.

It wasn't anything nearly so simple as love at first sight, though that was there, assuredly. It wasn't just understanding, nor was it mere friendship, or even the call of blood, of family, though it certainly also felt like all of these things. Bail didn't know what it was - once again, he had no words to describe what he was seeing or what he was feeling - but for all that he had ever seen, for all that he'd done and been forced to do, he had never before believed in fate. He had never before believed in destiny, until just then, that day, that moment, when he followed Bail Antilles into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, walked into that corridor, clapped eyes upon this one small, slender, smooth-skinned, bright-souled Jedi youth, and had known that, regardless of the coincidences and circumstances that had conspired to move them both there, the two of them being at that place, at that time, was as inevitable as the slow expansion of the universe, as certain as a drop of rain's return to the sea. This youth, this Padawan, this beautiful being, this luminous soul, this was his destiny. This was his fate. Bail knew it with the same unshakeable certainty that he knew that imagination is stronger than wisdom, that myth is more potent than history, that dreams are more powerful than facts, that belief is more influential than knowledge, that hope always triumphs over experience, that laughter is the only cure for grief, that love is and ever will be stronger and surer and more lasting than death . . . and that the Light will eternally trump the Darkness, no matter how dark or how bleak or how hopeless or how long or how powerfully the night may seem to have grown.

Another man might have thought it all - from the initial powerful fascination with this youth to the inexplicable stirring of Bail's untrained Force-sensitivity to the soul-shaking surety of recognition, of fated meeting, of destiny, that followed so swiftly upon the heels of seeking, with that newly awakened power, to understand the cause of that sudden fascination - no more than the fevered ramblings and imaginings of a confused mind, brought on by some sort of crises of self or of conscience. But Bail Organa knew better. Somehow. Someway. He could not have explained it, in mere words alone, not even to save his soul. Yet, it was nevertheless just as plain to him as the certainty with which he regarded the one he had come to believe was fated to make or to otherwise be the whole of his destiny. This young Jedi - Bendu Padawan, as the small voice in the back of his head insisted - was his, Bail Organa's, in some strange way that equated to the ownership of him, body and mind and heart and soul, by this youth. This slender, small, strangely powerful, bright young man somehow represented the sum total of Bail's destiny. And whether he realized it now entirely or not - indeed, whether he ever came to realize it - the fact remained that he owned Bail, just as surely as the bright power of the Force owned him. Bail could have no more denied the truth of that than he could have denied the truth of his own nature, his own being. And so he didn't even try. Instead, Bail Organa accepted.

And with that easy acceptance, the strength of Force-sensitivity abated, his power sliding back down into latency, all of his Force-enhanced senses abating. Those beautiful, mostly blue eyes were still staring at him, and it came to Bail, suddenly, that Senator Antilles had just said something, something that he had missed entirely, and the youth was speaking, was apologizing for almost running them over, explaining that he had been called for suddenly, that his presence was needed in the Healers' Wing, and that he had been in such a hurry to answer the call that he had not thought to watch for others who might cross his path - an oversight for which, again, he apologized, most profusely.

Bail was still trying to sort out what it was that he had missed when Senator Antilles gave the Padawan an elegant half bow - causing those mesmeric and slightly confused eyes to shift away from Bail and focus on the Senator, who he seemed to know - and quietly assured him, "Of course, young one. We understand completely. There's no need to apologize. The usual nature of your missions is well known. Your Master needs you and you wish to go to him. It is entirely natural and right that you should be there for him. Please, don't let us delay you. I should hate risking the fury of your Master's wrath being directed towards me."

"Many thanks, Senator Antilles. I know that my Master was planning to meet with you after our return to the Temple, but he is currently indisposed. If you should wish to call in a few days, though, I am sure that Master will have driven the Healers thoroughly insane and they shall be pleased to release him so that he might entertain company." A small smile hovered about the young Jedi's mouth as he said this, one that intimated that the Padawan would, as well, be ready for the distraction of a visitor by that time. Then those eyes flicked back towards Bail, almost as though drawn back to him against the Jedi's will, and the smile slipped away towards a frown as a crease formed between the youth's eyes and he ever so politely asked, "Sir? I do hope you will accept my apologies. I am normally not so foolish as to run in the Temple. I fear my concern for my Master has simply overridden my good sense - well, what little there is of it remaining, after the mission we've had. I am sorry. You should not take my foolishness or my clumsy haste as examples of typical Jedi behavior. I fear I am terribly lacking in certain respects, and therefore cannot be taken as a fair representation of the Order. I feel certain that whoever Senator Antilles is taking you to meet will be a much more accurate model for proper Jedi behavior than I could ever be. Whatever you have come to the Temple for, I hope that you find what you seek. May the Force be with you in your endeavor." The youth had bowed, then, expectantly, and so Bail had done the only thing he could think to do.

He silently professed his unworthiness and yet accepted the young Bendu's blessing by kneeling and pressing his forehead silently to the marble less than half a handbreadth from the youth's brown boots.

The youth had seemed dismayed. "Sir - !"

But Senator Antilles had easily, gracefully, intervened. "You must forgive my eccentric friend, young one. He has come to the Temple today as a pilgrim, and your blessings give him such great honor that he wishes to honor you in return. It is an archaic ritual, but heartfelt. Rest assured, he takes no offense from you or your worry for your Master. If anything, he is sorry - as am I - that we have delayed you in your journey to your Master's side. Please, don't give it another thought. And don't let us delay you further! Ease your heart and go to your Master. You are a gift to this Order and to your Master, and you may tell him that I have said so. And tell him that I shall be looking forward to seeing him, in another three days!"

"Ah. Yes. Of course, Senator. I shall tell him so, for you. Good day, Senator. Sir." Although the Padawan's forehead was still creased in confusion, he had nevertheless taken Senator's Antilles response for what it was - a kindly declaration that all was well and a gentle shooing to move him along, so that the Senator could get back on his own way again - and had half bowed to each of them, politely, before hurrying on his way - though not nearly as quickly as he had been moving, before.

Dazed, Bail had climbed back to his feet again after the young Jedi was gone, and allowed Senator Antilles to continue steering them on their way to Master Yoda's chambers. Afterwards, most of the remainder of the day passed by in a blur of sudden complete yet utterly contented exhaustion, though he must have made a favorable impression on Master Yoda, regardless, for he had found himself summarily approved for the treaty negotiations. It hadn't even occurred to him until the next day that he had no idea who the young Jedi Padawan was, though he'd had little enough time to wonder. A few weeks later, the delegation had been assembled and sent off to the Outer Rim for the express purpose of hopefully winning the addition of a six-planet alliance to the systems roster of the Republic. The first night they were away, Bail went in to the first formal meal, prepared to meet and sound out his fellow Senator and the Master-Padawan team assigned to the delegation, and found himself face to face with a radiantly healthy, freshly scrubbed, newly reshorn Padawan and his far more robust and toweringly tall Master, being introduced to the living legend that was the team of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and Padawan apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi. Stunned once again by a feeling of recognition and of belonging that had only grown when he looked upon both the Master and the Padawan together, Bail had been gripped hard by an epiphany.

Primarily, what he felt for Obi-Wan was recognition, belonging, and love, a love so strong that he longed to touch him - not out of any foolish need to possess, but instead out of a very real desire to be marked, to carry away something of Obi-Wan upon him so that others would know that Bail belonged to this young man. What he felt for Qui-Gon, primarily, was the same sense of recognition and belonging, but in lieu of that desperately brightly burning love, there was instead a sense of admiration that bordered upon awe, respect that was almost reverence, a trust so total that it felt like faith, and need not for touch but rather for smiles and nods and other such signs of approval. Bail Organa felt as if he belonged to Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he also felt as if he belonged with Qui-Gon Jinn. The love was more powerful than admiration and respect, but it did not in any way diminish his feelings of trust for Master Jinn. And Bail had became certain, in that moment, that his parents' choice to keep him on Alderaan to wait and see how the ascendency was decided rather than give him up to the Temple had been horribly wrong, and that their decision had somehow made things so terribly awry. The research that he conducted upon the matter later that evening, after retiring fairly early to the privacy of his assigned quarters, only served to reinforce this certainty. The story of Xanatos' fall merely cinched it. All the proof he needed was there, in the records.

Qui-Gon Jinn, once the Padawan of Dooku (hereditary Count of Serenno, though he had renounced the title in pursuing his own training within the Jedi Order), had brought Xanatos to the Jedi Temple for training from Telos, though the boy's father, Crion, did not truly desire his son to be raised as a Jedi, since he could not then inherit Crion's regime over the people of Telos. Qui-Gon had not truly been certain that he was ready for a Padawan learner of his own and there had been doubts expressed by others, as well, as to the boy's actual fitness for the Jedi Order. Nevertheless, though, because the boy had great potential in the Force and there were no others who seemed willing to take him on as a Padawan - though interestingly enough, Qui-Gon's own former Master had been interested in the boy and would have been willing to take him on as his Padawan, if he had not thought that Qui-Gon truly desired to be the boy's Master - Qui-Gon Jinn eventually took Xanatos on as his Padawan learner - with disastrous results. Crion would not let him go and the boy fell to the Dark Side before the time of his Trials could be set. Because of the hurt dealt to him by Xanatos' betrayal, Qui-Gon Jinn thereafter cut ties with the majority of his friends at the Temple and steadfastly refused to take on another Padawan learner - even initially refusing to take on Obi-Wan Kenobi, who he had also located and brought to the Temple for training. Obi-Wan eventually became Qui-Gon's Padawan, but only after he had given up hope and agreed to retire from the Temple to Bandomeer and the Agri-Corps. Their relationship had, therefore, been more strained than is usual between a Master and a Padawan pair, since Qui-Gon's initial refusal and coldness towards Obi-Wan had initially taught him that he could neither trust nor love the Jedi Master.

And Bail Organa was of an age that, if he had been given over to the Temple as he should have been, but for the Sith-cursed question of ascendency, his mere presence could have kept the entire terrible tragedy from happening. Before he had been able to slam the door shut on that train of thought, it had arrived, with all whistles blowing. He was of the proper age. If he had been in the Temple, Qui-Gon would have known him and that feeling of recognition would have been met in the proper context. Dooku would have taken Xanatos to Padawan and Qui-Gon would have taken Bail. And with Dooku as his Master, a man who could understand and help turn away from the lure of a familial inheritance, Xanatos would not have fallen. When Obi-Wan came of age, it would have been a toss-up, as to whose Padawan he would have become. But if Bail had come to his Trials relatively early, as Dooku and Qui-Gon both had, then it was entirely possible that it might have been Bail himself who would have become Obi-Wan's Master. And if not Bail, then Qui-Gon, surely - a Qui-Gon unscarred and unembittered by the failure of a fallen Padawan. It fit. Any way he looked upon it, it fit. He stared at holopics of Dooku and Xanatos for hours that night, wracked by echoing feelings of recognition, of respect bordering upon reverence, and of a friendship that felt like brotherhood, feelings similar to but not quite as strong as what he felt for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. So it fit. It was the only thing that made sense. He had been meant to be the first Padawan learner of Qui-Gon Jinn while Xanatos had been meant for Dooku, but because Bail's parents had decided to refrain from giving him to the Temple - despite a midi-chlorian count that would have easily seen him accepted into the Jedi Order for training - Qui-Gon had taken on Xanatos instead, and, as a consequence of that action, terrible things had occurred and quite possibly were still happening. And it was all his fault. Everything that had happened, every hurt taken by Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan because of his absence in their lives, could be laid directly at his feet.

That realization was the most painful and inevitable conclusion he had ever come to in his life. It was so painful, in fact, that, as he continued to read about the somewhat rocky history of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's relationship, both as a bonded Master-Padawan pair and in their time together leading up to their bonding, his respect and admiration of Qui-Gon had wavered until his emotions kindled to anger. It was so obvious, to him, how badly Qui-Gon's refusal must have hurt Obi-Wan! Why else would someone obviously so powerful in the Force have ever been tempted to abandon the Order and his training, only months after being accepted as a Padawan learner? Indignant for Obi-Wan's sake and increasingly horrified as he continued to read about the incredibly dangerous missions Qui-Gon had apparently blithely agreed to take on, even with Obi-Wan as his Padawan, Bail had slapped off the computer, bringing the stream of data to a sudden halt, and lurched from his chair. Pacing, he envisioned Obi-Wan as he had seen him, earlier in the evening: a Padawan with deceptively nondescript hair that flared like brightly burnished copper when it caught the light - shining like something that had been crafted by a master smith and making Bail wonder it if was gossamer-soft, as the delicacy of its strands suggested, or hard and wiry, as its metallic sheen insisted - and startlingly beautiful and alien eyes that were not quite simply blue, a youth who hadn't quite yet reached his full height, one so small, so slender, so deceptively fragile looking, that it was entirely possible to take him for a child . . . right up until the point one looked into his eyes and saw the incredible depths of maturity they held. Still, Obi-Wan was so terribly delicate looking . . . how much could he actually defend himself, callused hands (from working so much with a lightsaber) or not?

Incensed, Bail had strode boldly from his chambers and made a point of seeking out Qui-Gon Jinn - who, thankfully, was alone and still up and about, apparently uploading some more information to the ship's databanks - so that he could ask him if the Jedi Order made a habit of sending children on the kinds of missions that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were best known for. The Jedi Master had simply blinked at him, startled, before quietly informing Bail that Obi-Wan was eighteen years old and that he had, since becoming Qui-Gon's Padawan at the age of thirteen, managed to save Qui-Gon's life more times than the Master could easily recall. He had then gone on to explain to Bail that the power of the Force sees to it that a Jedi's actual strength has very little to do with his or her actual body mass or height, and described, in great detail, how Obi-Wan had once simply automatically reached out and caught and then held a Corellian Corvette whose engines had stalled after takeoff, saving the ship from crashing in the midst of a busy, extremely crowded spaceport.

While Bail was still trying to process this information, Qui-Gon had quietly added that although most Jedi trainees are brought to the Order within a year and a half of birth and are in perfect health when they arrive at the Temple, certain superstitious or else seemingly just soulless individuals will try to find a way to force the Force out of the children before they give up and give the babies over to the Order. Unfortunately, if a child has been mistreated and malnourished badly enough during such an attempt, not even the unimaginable power of the Force can undo all of the damage, and that child's physical growth - and, unfortunately, also sometimes his or her mental and spiritual growth - will be stunted. Before Bail could do more than open his mouth, Qui-Gon had gone on to explain that the records of such children are sealed and labeled "child of Coruscant" after they are taken in by the Temple, and that Obi-Wan's records bear this label and do not go any further back than his first childhood illness within the Temple crèche. While Bail was resisting a violent urge to be sick to his stomach, Qui-Gon had gravely remarked that even though Obi-Wan learned the habit of restraint at a very young age - doubtlessly out of a very real need to be able to hide the extent of his abilities with the Force from people who were determined to break him of his Force-sensitivity - and has never quite managed to break entirely free of that habitual restraint since then, Obi-Wan nevertheless could still potentially become a far more powerful Jedi than the vast majority of the current members of the Order. Qui-Gon had also gently explained that since there is, unfortunately, nothing that can be done to change Obi-Wan's past, he prefers not to dwell overmuch on what Obi-Wan would have been like, what he might have been capable of doing, if he had not been a "child of Coruscant."

It seems very likely, at the moment, that one of the two beings Bail is currently staring at is the realization of just such an occurrence - an Obi-Wan who was not a "child of Coruscant" - for although it is undeniably Obi-Wan Kenobi, it is not the Obi-Wan Kenobi Bail knows. The first thing Obi-Wan had done after Master Qui-Gon had died and Obi-Wan had been Knighted and given Anakin as his Padawan learner had been to grown a full - if usually both neatly and rather closely cropped - beard and moustache, to obscure or to hide outright his smooth-cheeked boyishness and flashing dimples and that irresistible cleft in his chin. Moreover, for as long as Bail has known him, Obi-Wan has kept his hair cut rather short - always well above his shoulders, except for one time that Bail knows of, near the beginning of the war, when it had gotten away from him over the course of a long reconnaissance mission - and styled simply and pragmatically. This Obi-Wan has thick masses of softly tumbling brightly burnished hair, spilling extravagantly over his shoulders and down his back and feathering loosely around his face, hanging about him like some heavy mantle of richly woven red-gold silken threads, and, from what Bail can see, except for the sweeping arcs of his eyebrows and the luxuriantly long fringe of his eyelashes, his skin is just as smooth and seemingly pliant as a child's, as a baby's.

Bail Organa is well aware of the fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi had, while still a Padawan, inspired one of the most commonly repeated clichés ever to circulate (and continue to perpetually go the rounds) through the Senate, a cliché that has followed the young Jedi relentlessly - if, apparently, also entirely unknowingly to its subject - throughout the term of his apprenticeship and his Knighthood and which continues to follow him even now, during his Mastership, the cliché spilling out into the galaxy at large first to pursue and then to precede him as Obi-Wan has moved around within, about, and even beyond the boundaries of the Galactic Republic proper, completing various missions for the Jedi Order. Although the syntax and indeed even the actual comparisons making up the cliché have, at times, understandably varied slightly over the years, depending on the venue, the overall circumstances, and the actual beings passing the cliché along on its endless rounds, the meaning behind those words and comparisons has never really changed: Obi-Wan Kenobi has the mind of a genius, the heart of a diplomat, the body of a warrior, the grace of a dancer, the visage and voice of an angel . . . and the blatantly sensuous, alluring, swaying graceful gait of a high-class pleasure-worker. This Obi-Wan, though . . .

This Obi-Wan Kenobi is part of a matched set, standing with an Anakin Skywalker whose beauty is just like Obi-Wan's, refined to a pure clarity that is hampered only a little bit by the bonds of the flesh. Bail's senses reel to the beauty of their grace, their beauty so great that it is as breath-stopping as a blow, stopping his breath just as a dagger plunged to the heart would. Music is in every gesture that they make, a flowing, singing grace that makes the heart ache with the sheer loveliness of a cliché rendered suddenly and inexplicably true, for their every movement is pure poetry in motion, and the loveliness of that motion makes Bail's heart contract suddenly, painfully, and the blood pound in his ears, roaring. Their sweet, intolerably clear voices seem purposefully modulated to send little velvety burrs and shattering shivers along the nerves of anyone who might be listening, the sounds so musical, blending so perfectly together, that the two Jedi might as well have been singing together - note upon crystalline note in some maddeningly alluring complex interweaving of chords - rather than speaking, for all the actual sense Bail's befuddled brain can initially make out of the siren sweet musical lure of the point and counterpoint melody of their voices.

Shockingly, yet somehow also wholly fittingly, Obi-Wan and Anakin's eyes are entirely innocent of the knowledge of the effect that they have on others, of the fact that they are beauty incarnate, physically and tangibly, heartbreakingly pure. They are exquisite, beyond even the finest vision of divinity, all graceful longs limbs and sweet curves and highly refined polished planes and angles, like some faultlessly sculpted piece of absolutely flawless art, some impossible dream of perfection, fitted together in such a way that they are obviously a set, despite or perhaps because of the slight (perfectly contrasting) differences in height and coloring and shape. Their beauty is like a living flame, a heat so intense, a light so bright, that it almost overwhelms their fragile bones and exquisitely graceful slender bodies. It isn't just some static presentation of carefully arranged, artificial loveliness. It is a completely natural and changeful beauty easily consisting of billions upon billions of tiny details of infinitesimal particular shadings of colors and movements and shapes and scents and a sense of soul-basking warmth that are somehow all so precisely and elegantly combined that they continuously harmonize so delicately, so variously, that their beauty seems to always be evolving, to always be in the process of changing, of becoming, like some exotic flower forever in the process of opening or a butterfly eternally unfolding out of its cocoon, only increasing the more Bail studies them and tries to puzzle out a clear understanding of their beauty. It is an impossible puzzle: their beauty only becomes more and more impossible to pin down and fit together with any kind of label as he searches for its beginnings, its limitations. And that beauty brands his soul.

He cannot resist it. He cannot resist them. In truth, it never truly occurs to him, that he might try to resist. It is like seeing Obi-Wan for the first time, all over again, only magnified, by a power of thousand or more. It is like seeing Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, together, for the first time, and knowing them, knowing who they are, only magnified by a power of a million or more. It is the pain of realizing, for the first time, what he had been fated for, whom he had been fated for, but for the mistake of his all too well-meaning parents, only magnified by a power so great that he has no way of comprehending it.

He has no choice but to surrender.

And so he does.

***