darththalia (darththalia) wrote in tpm_flashback, @ 2005-03-28 09:41:00 |
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Original poster: emila_wan
Title: Bonds of Choice
Author: HiperBunny
Rating: NC-17 (depends on the part)
Pairing: mostly Q/O
Warnings: none
Author's e-mail: ?
Link to story: http://www.furholt.net/chezbunny/TPM.ht
Summary: ?
Reasons for recommending: If this has been rec'd before, I apologize, but I couldn't find it on the history list and BOY, if ever there is something in the Q/O fandom that everyone should read, it is this.
First, I have to warn you that this is a WIP. However, I believe the next part is in beta (Fox?) and even if it never gets finished (::sob::) it's more than worth reading. It's a LONG series. I just re-read it, for like the tenth time, and it took me about 8 hours -- and I read fast. Even so, I can't really recommend just part of it.
Why do I and many others love this fic? For one, it's an AU that is so very rich in ideas and characters, it's created its own snip-off series. I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around just WHY this series is so good. I'll just list a few things I find fascinating about it and trust the rest of you to add comments. *G*
Imagine an AU where Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are "high potentials" -- Jedi savants with amazing abilities, extreme longevity, and a host of quirks/weaknesses (kind of like the GT Jedi). Imagine they are members of a semi-secret society of Jedi called the Order of the Left Hand, first formed millennia ago to combat and put down the Sith, who study the Dark Side and are trained to understand and work in the Grey. Imagine a group of amazingly wonderful Jedi Original Characters ranging from a tortured musician to an artist whose precognition spills out of her at odd moments to a 200-year-old shapeshifter assassin. Imagine an Obi-Wan who discovers his greatest enemy is his own feelings of unworthiness, who knows hundreds of languages, who develops secret codes using songs, and who is prophesied to be The One, but nobody quite knows what that means. Imagine a Qui-Gon who keeps a stiletto in a box as a memento of the time he learned just how much pleasure there is in pain, and who dances to rock-n-roll music when Obi-Wan isn't looking.
I could go on and on, but really, there is no way I can do this thing justice. It's just too huge and complicated and dense.
And if you like the series, check out the spin-off stories about the character Kourt Crowe: http://www.squidge.org/~foxsden/kcfc/kc
Quote from
story:
Obi-Wan followed his master back down to one of the boarding vehicles, onto the Arata and into their quarters in silence. Qui-Gon had hot tea on the table between them before they spoke.
"All right, tell me what happened," he opened.
Obi-Wan drew in a breath. Making sure his voice would be steady, he collected his thoughts. He opened his lips to reply, but a small choking sound was all he could manage. He looked at his master closely for the first time in many days. The gentle hands, the purposeful gaze, the soft lips and thick hair came into sharp focus. A man of peace, a man of justice, a man of purity and light looked back at him through his master's eyes.
*Too beautiful,* Obi-Wan thought. It was too beautiful, when so much ugliness had just surrounded him, so he closed his eyes for a moment. There, in the darkness, the images of the battle came back, more clearly than he had seen them in the moment they had occurred. The ugly mayhem he had brought into being, using the skills his gentle teacher had so carefully given him. He smelled again the cauterized flesh of a once living being, saw the torso separate as life was destroyed. Within him the echoes of screams, the smell of offal as dead bodies voided, tasted his own blood from where he had accidentally bitten his own lip. The faces of those he had killed, their bodies fallen around him. These people, he knew, had families, comrades who would miss them. These beings had been loved or hated but were now, because of him, just dead. He opened his eyes again, then folded his arms on the table and put his head down.
Qui-Gon held him while he wept.