#tahlgon

***

Qui-Gon is flung back to consciousness in a cold sweat, heart pounding, adrenaline flooding icily through him, hand pressed over his own mouth to stifle a scream of horror and despair. After a few moments to find himself again – I’m home. In my quarters. I’m a Jedi Master, not a Padawan. It’s the middle of the night – he gets up, throws on his cloak over the chones he was sleeping in, and goes to the Archives.

Tahl is waiting for him at the main doorway, yawning, dishevelled, and impossibly lovely.

“What was it this time?” she asks sleepily, but doesn’t insist on a response until after he has pulled her into a tight hug, where he can feel her, warm and solid and undeniably real, against him, and kissed her. Her mouth tastes bitter with sleep, but that just confirms that this – Tahl alive, Tahl safe, Tahl home in her beloved Archives, Tahl in his arms – isn’t a dream.

“You –“ Qui-Gon manages.

“I died again?” This has become almost routine since they came back. Some nights, he wakes as she is dying and then can’t go back for her; some nights, he finds her just as she melts into the Force and is left wandering alone in the darkness. Always, when the dreams come, he cannot sleep again until he has seen her, until he is sure she is safe.

“Yes, but a new one. It felt real.”

“Come to bed and tell me about it.”

In Tahl’s bed, with Tahl warming her icy feet against his legs – a minor annoyance usually, a welcome tether to reality now – he slowly untangles the dream.

“You went to a place called New Apsolon. It was...” some of the finer details are fading, but the last part is horribly vivid. “I tried to find you, but I was too late. I think you were poisoned somehow. You died, in a medcenter there.”

Tahl has a strange look on her face, and she shivers, pulling him closer.

“You know I’m going to Apsolon, actual Apsolon, tomorrow – I mean later this morning? New Apsolon isn’t a real place.”

“I didn’t. Please...” don’t go. But he won’t ask that of her, won’t ask that she shy away from danger. It’s not the Jedi way. “Are you taking anyone with you?”

“I wasn’t going to. It’s just invigilating an election, checking their systems to make sure everyone is satisfied that it’s fair.  But...” but dreams that feel real are sometimes visions, sometimes premonitions, sometimes just dreams, and it is not worth the risk.

“Please don’t go alone, Tahl.”

“Are you free? If not I can get –“

“I’m free.”