Identity Crisis

by Lorrie Wood (lwood@snugharbor.com)

Archive: MA (if youse want it) me (eventually)

Category: Pick one. Pre-Slash for sure.

Rating: G (More naked hair! Barenaked EYEBALLS!)

Warning: Still no sex. Not even a little. I'll learn to write erotica one of these days...

Spoilers: No.

Summary: Obi-Wan wonders about several of his salient attributes.

Feedback: Please, list, may I have some more?

Disclaimer: All your Jedi are belong to George.

Dedication: To Jessica McGeary, former college roommate. Details below.

Notation: /Thoughts./ This story is a telepathy-free zone, known as a 'grey curb' by California state law.

"Master?"

Qui-Gon looked up from his reader, "Yes, Padawan?"

The Padawan held his braid up in front of his face, staring at it fixedly. He waggled it at his Master and asked, "What color is my hair?"

Qui-Gon took in a breath, paused a beat as his reply changed tacks, and asked in reply, "Why do you ask, Obi-Wan?"

"Welll..." The young man slowly crossed his eyes, his focus intent on the slender braid, "I'm trying to decide if it's red or blond."

"And why is that important?"

"Because*," Obi-Wan pointed out in a tone that implied he was using Small Words for the Clue Impaired, "everyone knows redheads have bad tempers. So if I'm a redhead, I have to take care that I won't turn to the Dark Side when I get older."

The Master mulled that for a moment, "That's something we all have to worry about, my Padawan." The question answered as far as he was concerned, he turned his attention back to the reader.

"Master!" Obi-Wan's voice revealed hints of unJedi-like exasperation, "You didn't answer me! What color is my hair? Help me decide!"

/Did I give Yoda this much trouble? I couldn't have./ Qui-Gon looked up again, and made a show of scrutinizing his Padawan's hair for a long moment. It really was neither truly blond nor truly red, but some of both. He returned once more to the reader in his hands, hiding all tracd of puckishness in his response, "It's hair-colored hair."

"What kind of answer is that?!" Well, Obi-Wan's redheaded temper was surely coming through, even if his hair wasn't.

"It's the answer you get when I won't make up your mind for you. Your hair is fine, Obi-Wan. It's the color your parents and the Force made it." /There. That's a nice, affirming, Masterly sort of answer. And I will not ask Yoda how difficult I was. Not unless I'm masochistic enough to want a three-hour lecture, punctuated with gimer stick pokes and the occasional giggle about how the Force pays back debts./

"Ohhhh!" The young Padawan stalked off to the 'fresher in his pique, obviously to give the matter more study, which was fine enough by Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan wasn't about to give him a long respite, though, and his voice was soon to be heard, reflected off the tile. "What are you reading, anyway?"

"Okichapian poetry. We've been asked to mediate a dispute between two groups, something about farming rights."

"Aren't those those giant snails?"

Qui-Gon allowed himself another quiet moment to ponder the future of his patience and sanity, "They are gastropodal in nature, yes."

The Padawan wandered back out of the 'fresher, his braid still an object of intense scrutiny, "And they have poetry?" He circled the room, winding up standing behind the couch on which his Master sat.

"Yes," Qui-Gon said, pretending to an absent tone, "rather a lot about lettuces, actually. This one's called 'Meditations on a Leaf.'" He looked up at his Padawan's changeable eyes and liminal hair, and deduced that the last subject had not yet been definitively tabled, "Yes, Obi-Wan?"

"Hair-colored hair?"

"Yes, Obi-Wan."

The young Jedi pouted a little, "I suppose, if I asked you what color to describe my eyes as, you'd say..."

Qui-Gon humored his charge with a smile and said in chorus with him, "Eye-colored." After a pause, he shrugged gently with another smile, "I would, yes. So now you don't have to."

Obi-Wan sighed heavily, if a bit dramatically, "I suppose I should meditate on this?"

"Far be it from me to instruct you to go counter to the prompting of your instincts, my Padawan." He winked.

Jedi do not stomp. Obi-Wan merely 'walked heavily' to the bedroom and was gone for some time, and that did effectively table the conversation, forwhen he had emerged the young man was quite over his pet.

It became a running gag, though, over the next few months: Obi-Wan's gentle good humor, might, in private but stressful moments, cause him to bring it up: "What color is my hair, Master?"

Always, Qui-Gon would always chuckle and answer, "Hair-colored, Padawan."

It leavened some moments that sorely needed it for several months, as did the "eye-colored eyes" variant. Overall, it made Qui-Gon pay more attention to the quality of his Padawan's hair as it was struck by the light of different stars, of the different ships' approximations of different stars -- by starlight and moonlight, by coruscating borealis, by oil-lamp and, once, by a purple-glowing fungus.

Similarly, the Master began to take note of his Padawan's eyes through all their changes, and how they were very like the sea: stormy grey through pacific blue and on through into inviting, living green.

By and by, it occurred to him that these might, in their way, be the errant seedlings of romantic thoughts, but Qui-Gon always thinned those seedlings, plucking them before they were quite started. Obi-Wan would come to him in his own time if he were to come at all, which wouldn't be before he was self-assured enough to accept himself as himself.

... a self-image which included his hair and eye color.

Some months, perhaps years, later, Obi-Wan peered up at his master, "You know, Master?"

The moment was a private one; Qui-Gon allowed himself a bit of humor. "I know many things, Padawan, that's why I'm the Master." Young Kenobi half-frowned, and silently, the elder Jedi chided himself, "What is it?"

"I think I like having hair-colored hair. It suits me."

Qui-Gon mulled that for a moment, "Excellent. Accepting oneself as one is is key to a thorough grounding in the Force." He paused, "And your eyes?"

"The Force," his charge pointed out, "is hardly static." Then he puffed up slightly, "Eye-colored eyes are considered quite charming in some circles."

"Oh, really?"

Now an impish smile perked a corner of Obi-Wan's lips, "So I'm told."

"I see."

"There's just one thing, though."

"Yes, Padawan?"

"Now that I've accepted hair-colored hair and eye-colored eyes, tell me: what color are they really?"

It took most of Qui-Gon's training not to gape like a fish, and he blessed decades of diplomatic training for keeping him light on his mental feet. Still, it all failed him, "I-- I'm sorry, Padawan. I'm afraid I'm stuck thinking of it as hair-colored hair!"

Obi-Wan's light-hearted, rich laughter bounced off the walls, and after a moment, his Master joined him.

"I was hoping something else, Master," Obi-Wan said when they both stopped laughing.

"Hm?"

"I was hoping that one of the circles that found eye-colored eyes charming was yours."

And for the second time in five minutes, Qui-Gon Jinn once again found himself at a loss for words.

In several more, they were no longer necessary.

-- End --

Note on the Dedication: Jessica was the first to come up with the concept of "hair-colored hair," but why spoil the joke early? ;)

-- Lorrie