Star Wars fic: "Dirt in the Machine" (3)
Feb. 29th, 2012 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardIn which Anakin can't lie and Dooku and Obi-Wan both want something. Parts one and two, or here on the AO3. Thanks to dogstar for talking this through!
Dooku’s magnaguards deposit Obi-Wan back in the med room, holding her still so that the medical droid give her a shot of something that makes her nerve endings tingle, her mind sliding away from the familiar pathways of the Force as they seem to ice over, numbed by the drug. While they’ve been at dinner another cot has been moved in; Anakin had been sitting cross-legged on it, fiddling with a small droid of uncertain origin, but he leaps up when he sees her, scattering droid parts all over the floor.
“Are you all right, Master?” he demands, hovering until the medical droid has followed the magnaguards back out into the hallway, the door locking behind them. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” Obi-Wan says, sitting down on the side of the hospital bed to pull off her boots. She feels tired and a little ill, whatever painkillers they’d pumped her with starting to wear off so that her entire torso is starting to throb. She sheds the jerkin and pulls the undershirt off over her head, trying not wince as she does so, then starts to unpeel the layers of bandage wrapped around her torso.
Anakin comes over to stand in front of her. “Master, I don’t think –”
“I need to see it,” Obi-Wan says. “I can’t tell how bad it is.”
“It’s bad,” he insists. “Just believe me, okay? On a Republic cruiser they’d probably put you back in a bacta tank, but I told Dooku that you wouldn’t want that – to be helpless like that.”
“Thank you, you’re correct,” Obi-Wan says, because Anakin knows her far too well. “I do trust you, Anakin. I would just be more comfortable if I saw it for myself.”
“Then at least let me do that,” he says, reaching for the roll of bandage before she can agree. Obi-Wan relinquishes it, folding her hands in her lap. Anakin’s lightsaber-callused hands are quick and familiar, a light press against her skin. Obi-Wan doesn’t need the Force to guide her as she reaches for peace, letting her breathing even out so that she doesn’t flinch even when Anakin reaches the final layer of bandage, murmuring an apology as he peels it back from the wounds.
“I’m sorry, Master,” he says glumly, as Obi-Wan cranes her neck to see. “I should have been faster.”
“It’s not your fault, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, while Anakin grips the roll of used bandage and looks distressed. She looks down and rather wishes she hadn’t, counting four distinct blaster wounds on her torso. At least one of them should have broken her spine. A fifth shot had punched through the muscle on her left upper arm, which would explain the stiffness. A sixth had grazed her right thigh; a few inches to the left and it would have pierced her femoral artery. Well, she’s a Jedi Knight; she’s never even considered a life without scars.
“I’ll find some fresh bandages,” Anakin says suddenly, discarding the old ones and bouncing up to go inspect the row of cabinets alongside the back wall. Obi-Wan has no doubt that he’s already been through them – no doubt where he found the droid he was taking apart – and he comes back in less than a minute, bandages preceded by the familiar smell of bacta.
“Hold still, Master,” Anakin says, settling on the bed beside her, and Obi-Wan does. There isn’t anything special about this, because they’ve bandaged each other up a truly distressing number of times in the past. Somehow it feels different now, her skin sensitive to her Padawan’s touch as he presses bandage after bandage carefully against her stomach, to the wound below her right breast, to the wound that should have crippled her. She shivers a little, and Anakin looks up quickly. “Am I hurting you?”
“No, I’m quite all right,” Obi-Wan says. “The painkillers are wearing off, is all.”
Anakin chews on his lower lip, his face drawn tight with concentration as he places the last bandage. “They should have given you more.”
“I wasn’t about to ask,” Obi-Wan says, prodding the bandages gingerly. “Thank you, Anakin.”
He settles back, one leg drawn up in front of him, the other dangling off the side of the bed. “What did Count Dooku say to you, Master?”
Obi-Wan pulls the undershirt back on, slowly so that she doesn’t strain anything. “Nothing important,” she says.
Anakin stares at her, silent and stubborn, the unused bandages balanced on his knee. Not for the first time, Obi-Wan feels the familiar flare of anger at Qui-Gon for being so inconsiderate as to get himself murdered by a Sith Lord, leaving her saddled with a precocious Force-sensitive boy who had really been too old to join the Order and who has grown up into a still precocious Padawan whom Obi-Wan would prefer to have at her side over every other Jedi in the Order, up to and including Master Yoda and Master Windu.
“He doesn’t have anything on you, Master,” Anakin says, confident in his ignorance. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve got anything to –”
“He said you’re in love with me,” Obi-Wan says.
The reason they never get sent on undercover missions is because, while Obi-Wan enjoys lying in both her personal and professional life (which are usually the same thing), Anakin can’t tell a falsehood to save his life. He can keep secrets, which Obi-Wan allows because her Padawan enjoys the illusion of privacy, but she’s never known him to lie to her with a straight face, if he can do it at all.
This time is no different. Anakin’s eyes go huge and horrified, every emotion he’s ever had naked on his face. His mouth opens and closes three times before he manages to squeak out, “Master – Obi-Wan – I –”
“I already knew,” Obi-Wan says, keeping her hands folded in her lap. She hurts; the bacta bandages are helping, but a day and a half in a bacta tank and a few bandages doesn’t make up for half a dozen blaster wounds that should have killed her. She isn’t used to healing without the Force to help her. The pain isn’t really helping.
Anakin looks slightly green, but he rallies himself to say, “I am in love with you, Obi-Wan. I have been for years. You’re a – we’re Jedi. I know it’s not…proper.” He meets her eyes with the same straightforward challenge with which he climbs into his starfighter, his mouth settling into stubbornness.
Qui-Gon had never really prepared her to train a Padawan. He’d certainly never prepared her for having this conversation. She doesn’t even have the Force to guide her, which would probably be the only advice Qui-Gon might have given her.
She swallows, wishing they were having this conversation anywhere else besides locked in a room on a Separatist stardestroyer crawling with battle droids, Count Dooku not far away and probably watching this on the security cameras, deep in enemy space and far away from the safe confines of the Temple and the Republic.
She’s silent for too long, because Anakin bursts out anxiously, “How did Dooku know? What does he want – what does he think that will do? It’s not going to – it doesn’t have to change anything.”
Anakin is being honest with her; Obi-Wan owes it to him to do the same. “Because,” she says, the words scraping raw against her throat, “he worked out that it was mutual.”
Anakin stares at her, anxiety melting into astonished joy, and makes an aborted motion towards her before he stops himself with a jerk. Obi-Wan watches him gather his distracted thoughts around himself before he says, “But why does it matter to Dooku?”
“Why do you think, Padawan?” Obi-Wan says. Whatever else they are, or aren’t, they are still Master and Padawan. She has a duty to him.
“I – he must think that you’d allow your emotions to trump your – everything else.” His words are scattered, as distracted as his mind probably is. “And me – that’s why I’m here? I’m blackmail?”
“That does appear to be his plan,” Obi-Wan concedes. She raises her hands to her hair, wincing as it strains at her wounds, and starts unpinning her hair for sleep.
Anakin picks gloomily at the bandages resting on his knee. “He doesn’t know you very well.”
“Apparently not.” She glances at the security cameras. “I need to meditate. You ought to do the same, Anakin.”
“I’d rather hotwire the door,” Anakin says. He’s still looking at her with that half-desperate look on his eyes, but he holds himself back. He moves with a jerk, like a broken droid, and starts gathering up the used bandages, his gaze flickering back to her every few seconds.
Obi-Wan looks down at her knees. She feels ripped open and raw; the whole evening had had a dreamlike quality to it from the moment that she’d woken up with the taste of bacta sickly sweet in her mouth to Dooku murmuring his accusation in her ear, pleased with his deductive skills. Until now – until Anakin. Anakin has a way of making the world around him seem more real, awfully and terrifyingly so.
“I’m surprised Dooku let you have a wrench and a screwdriver,” she makes herself say, raising her head, and folding her legs up onto the bed, rather gingerly.
“He didn’t. I found an unused sharp and some pliers in one of the drawers,” Anakin says over his shoulder, stuffing the used bandages into a bin.
“And the droid?”
“Cleaning droid. I thought about taking apart the medical droid, but I figured that would just annoy him. Well, maybe I should have.” He turns towards her, his back against the wall like it will keep him from running. “I’m sorry, Master. I really am. I tried not to be in love with you, but I couldn’t help it.”
Obi-Wan should say something to that: I’m sorry, my Padawan, I’ve failed you, I tried not to be either, I’ve failed the Order, but she can’t quite make the words leave her mouth. Instead she says, “It doesn’t change anything.”
“It doesn’t?”
In the past forty-eight hours Obi-Wan has been shot, captured, drugged, and had her apprentice tortured in front of her; she allows herself three heartbeats to close her eyes and breathe in, reaching for serenity, and then says, “It doesn’t. We’ll discuss it once this affair is taken care of, if you insist.”
“If you say so, Master.” Anakin stares at her, then seems to realize what he’s doing and lets his gaze flicker down.
Obi-Wan rests her hands on her knees, closing her eyes. “Clean up this mess,” she says, and folds herself in the familiar embrace of meditation. She doesn’t have the Force to ground her, and for a moment all she feels at the thought of all that emptiness is blank panic, but Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi; she lives and breathes the Force, and even if she can’t consciously reach out and touch it, she knows that it’s still there, waiting.
Master, she whispers into the echoing emptiness of her mind, where the Force should be, stretching out backwards and forwards into eternity, Master, what should I do?
She hardly expects Qui-Gon to answer, but Obi-Wan has always found it easier to think through her problems if she puts them into words, makes it a lesson like the ones she’d had as a Padawan.
Trust in the living Force, Obi-Wan.
I can’t. It’s against the Code.
The Force? Soft amusement, Qui-Gon chiding her for taking things too literally.
No, Master. My feelings for Anakin. We are Jedi and he is my Padawan. This is forbidden.
What would it change?
Everything. Nothing. We are Jedi, Master. If we deny that, then we are no different than Dooku and his Dark Jedi.
Trust in the Force, Obi-Wan. And do not let him win.
Obi-Wan opens her eyes. The room is dark now, the remains of the droid stuffed under Anakin’s cot. Her Padawan is sprawled out on it, various limbs protruding from beneath the tangled sheets. His snoring is soft and familiar, and Obi-Wan smiles a little, unfolding from her meditative pose and wrapping herself in the blankets.
“Thank you, Master,” she whispers at the ceiling, and closes her eyes.
*
She wakes up to the familiar sound of Anakin muttering to himself while futzing with the droid. Obi-Wan opens her eyes and stares at the durasteel ceiling, wincing at the pain in her ribs, the white hot score across her thigh, the throb in her upper arm. Two things are certain: Dooku’s bacta isn’t very good quality and the painkillers have worn off. She breathes in, grasping for the familiar Jedi tricks that control pain; they aren’t as effective without the Force, but they help enough that she can sit up, wincing.
Anakin looks up from where he’s sparking two wires together. “Master, are you all right? You look pale.”
“I’m quite all right,” Obi-Wan lies, and slides off the bed to limp into the ‘fresher. When she looks in the mirror, washing her hands and splashing water on her face, she finds that she looks pale and rather delicate, dark hollows under her eyes – a shadow of herself. No wonder Anakin is worried.
She depresses the control for the door and drags herself back out into the med room, where Anakin promptly corners her against the door.
“Anakin?” Obi-Wan blinks up at him. Her Padawan had surpassed her in height when he was fourteen, much to her distaste. Anakin uses his height as a weapon as much as he does his lightsaber, to corner and intimidate; it’s a weapon Obi-Wan has never been able to teach him to use, and one that he’s never used on her before.
“Obi-Wan,” he says. He looks worse than she does, closer inspection reveals: haunted and a little desperate, his hands trembling on the stray droid part he’s still gripping. He backs her against the now-closed door, one arm up to block her escape. She’s fairly certain that she could still get past him if she wanted to – she’s better at hand-to-hand than he is, even if he has height and weight and the advantage of not having five blaster wounds on her.
“Anakin,” she says again. “What are you doing?”
His gaze is fixed on hers, his eyes dark with frustration and desire. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.”
“About how I told you we’d discuss this after we returned to Coruscant?”
“Well, you know I’m not a very good listener.”
“But I see you remember the rest,” Obi-Wan sighs.
“The important part,” Anakin says. “Where you said you loved me.”
Obi-Wan closes her eyes, sighing. “The relevant part, where I said we’d discuss this after this affair had concluded.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“You’re going to have to,” Obi-Wan says firmly. She puts her hand on his chest to push him away, but he sets his feet and doesn’t move.
“Obi-Wan,” he says again.
“Get out of my way, my very young Padawan,” Obi-Wan says, which makes Anakin flinch and fall back, looking like Obi-Wan has just slapped him.
“What a charming tȇte-à-tȇte,” Count Dooku observes from the door. A medical droid approaches Anakin and Obi-Wan, gripping a pair of hypodermic needles in its hand.
“Is this really necessary, Count?” Obi-Wan sighs, submitting her arm to be stabbed. She glances aside and draws in her breath as the drug enters her system, damping down the little bit of the Force that had leaked through as her last dose faded. Anakin does the same, glaring at Dooku.
“Considering your reputation, forgive me if I don’t entirely trust you, Master Kenobi. Shall I have you cuffed as well?”
“No,” Obi-Wan says. “I remember what you said would happen if either of us resisted.”
He smiles a little. “Indeed. Have you given any thought to my offer?”
“I’m willing to present your offer to the Jedi Council,” Obi-Wan says. “I’m afraid I don’t have the authority to negotiate on their behalf, however.”
“There is one thing you can offer which they can’t,” Dooku invites.
Obi-Wan stares at him. “No.”
“No?” He glances at Anakin pointedly. “I can be considerably more persuasive if you’d like.”
Trust in the living Force. “You don’t want me that way,” Obi-Wan says. “You want me to say yes and mean it.”
“Jedi or not, Master Kenobi, I could make you mean it.” He lets his gaze flicker up and down over her body, appreciative. “Come with me.”
“Where are you taking her?” Anakin demands, taking half a step forwards before one of Dooku’s bodyguards gets in his way. He stops, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“To meet some old friends,” Dooku says, glancing at the mess Anakin’s made of the cleaning droid. “I’ll have a real toolkit brought to you, though what you’ve accomplished with makeshifts is quite impressive. If you do fail the Trials, I see that you’ll have a promising career as a mechanic.”
“What?” Anakin snarls at him, outraged.
“Anakin!” Obi-Wan snaps.
“Charming,” Dooku observes. “Master Kenobi?”
She sits down on the edge of the bed to pull her boots on, then the leather jerkin, pinning her hair up by touch in four looping braids at the back of her head. Anakin, trapped by the magnaguard, watches with his arms crossed over his chest. “If you hurt her –”
“You’ll hunt me down and rend the flesh from my bones. Hardly a fitting threat for a Jedi, even a Padawan.” He sounds bored more than anything else. “Come, Master Kenobi.”
Obi-Wan straightens up. “I am not one of your Dark Jedi to be summoned like a pet.”
“Not yet.”
She follows him anyway, aware of the last magnaguard falling in line behind her and Anakin staring glumly at her back. It would have been so easy to let him, Obi-Wan thinks distantly, distractedly. Let him kiss her, let this – whatever this is, or could be – happen. It wouldn’t be the first time. Jedi are only people, and Master and Padawan live in each others’ pockets day-in and day-out for years. Not many Jedi leave the order, but more than half of those who do leave it for love, and no few of those are, or were, Master and Padawan. Obi-Wan is sure that she’d had her fair share of fantasies about Qui-Gon when she’d been Anakin’s age, and even more embarrassingly, fairly certain that Qui-Gon had known, but she’d never acted on it – never would have. She may have spent all but the first year and a half of her life in the Order, but even as a Padawan – especially as a Padawan – she never would have chanced doing anything that might jeopardize her position, not when she knew what was at stake.
“Why me?” Obi-Wan asks of the back of Dooku’s head. “I’m just another Jedi. There’s nothing special about me.” Not like Anakin. Whether or not Anakin is the Chosen One, which is a Jedi myth that Obi-Wan isn’t particularly sure she believes in from day to day, there is something special about him. Not that she’ll ever admit as much to Anakin.
“Such a good Jedi to be so modest,” Dooku murmurs. “You are in fact more than ‘just another Jedi,’ as you so charmingly put it, Master Kenobi. You are the only living Jedi to have destroyed a Sith Lord – and you did it when you were only a Padawan. Don’t you think that makes you remarkable?”
“The Force was with me that day.”
“As it was not with your master Qui-Gon Jinn? You are twice the Jedi that Qui-Gon ever was.”
Stung, Obi-Wan snaps, “Qui-Gon Jinn was loyal to the Order and to the Republic, which is more than I can say for his master!”
Dooku smiles. “You know, Master Kenobi, there are other arguments I might use on another Jedi. I could talk about the corruption of the Republic, the disorder in the Jedi, the power of the Dark Side, but I suspect that you wouldn’t be interested in any of that. You know it all already, and you don’t care. But there are two things you want: you want your Padawan to live and you want the war to end. And I can give you both.”
“Perhaps I don’t want you to,” Obi-Wan says coldly.
“Oh, I doubt you do, Master Kenobi. But pride isn’t very fitting for a Jedi Knight: will you risk the Republic for it?”
“I will never join the Sith, Count.”
“So you say now, Master Kenobi.” He gives her a thoughtful look. “You are a strange one. The power of the Dark Side doesn’t tempt you; you’ve touched it before, but it has never touched you. I suspect that you could walk in the shadows of the Sith tombs on Korriban and emerge unscathed. Few Jedi could.”
“And you want to corrupt me?” Obi-Wan says. “I am a Jedi Knight, Dooku. I cannot be so easily undone as all that.”
“Say yes, Master Kenobi. Save the Jedi. Save the Republic. Save that foolish Padawan of yours. I am certain that given time, I can convince you of the wisdom of my ways. Of the ways of the Sith.”
“I am willing to present your proposal to the Council,” Obi-Wan repeats stubbornly. “I do not have the authority to negotiate on their behalf on a matter of this importance.”
“And if the Council agrees to my terms?” says Dooku, sounding faintly amused. “All of them?”
Obi-Wan swallows, feeling faintly sick. “Then you’ll have your Jedi pet, Count.”
*
tbc
read chapter 4.
dogstar for talking this through!Dooku’s magnaguards deposit Obi-Wan back in the med room, holding her still so that the medical droid give her a shot of something that makes her nerve endings tingle, her mind sliding away from the familiar pathways of the Force as they seem to ice over, numbed by the drug. While they’ve been at dinner another cot has been moved in; Anakin had been sitting cross-legged on it, fiddling with a small droid of uncertain origin, but he leaps up when he sees her, scattering droid parts all over the floor.
“Are you all right, Master?” he demands, hovering until the medical droid has followed the magnaguards back out into the hallway, the door locking behind them. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” Obi-Wan says, sitting down on the side of the hospital bed to pull off her boots. She feels tired and a little ill, whatever painkillers they’d pumped her with starting to wear off so that her entire torso is starting to throb. She sheds the jerkin and pulls the undershirt off over her head, trying not wince as she does so, then starts to unpeel the layers of bandage wrapped around her torso.
Anakin comes over to stand in front of her. “Master, I don’t think –”
“I need to see it,” Obi-Wan says. “I can’t tell how bad it is.”
“It’s bad,” he insists. “Just believe me, okay? On a Republic cruiser they’d probably put you back in a bacta tank, but I told Dooku that you wouldn’t want that – to be helpless like that.”
“Thank you, you’re correct,” Obi-Wan says, because Anakin knows her far too well. “I do trust you, Anakin. I would just be more comfortable if I saw it for myself.”
“Then at least let me do that,” he says, reaching for the roll of bandage before she can agree. Obi-Wan relinquishes it, folding her hands in her lap. Anakin’s lightsaber-callused hands are quick and familiar, a light press against her skin. Obi-Wan doesn’t need the Force to guide her as she reaches for peace, letting her breathing even out so that she doesn’t flinch even when Anakin reaches the final layer of bandage, murmuring an apology as he peels it back from the wounds.
“I’m sorry, Master,” he says glumly, as Obi-Wan cranes her neck to see. “I should have been faster.”
“It’s not your fault, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, while Anakin grips the roll of used bandage and looks distressed. She looks down and rather wishes she hadn’t, counting four distinct blaster wounds on her torso. At least one of them should have broken her spine. A fifth shot had punched through the muscle on her left upper arm, which would explain the stiffness. A sixth had grazed her right thigh; a few inches to the left and it would have pierced her femoral artery. Well, she’s a Jedi Knight; she’s never even considered a life without scars.
“I’ll find some fresh bandages,” Anakin says suddenly, discarding the old ones and bouncing up to go inspect the row of cabinets alongside the back wall. Obi-Wan has no doubt that he’s already been through them – no doubt where he found the droid he was taking apart – and he comes back in less than a minute, bandages preceded by the familiar smell of bacta.
“Hold still, Master,” Anakin says, settling on the bed beside her, and Obi-Wan does. There isn’t anything special about this, because they’ve bandaged each other up a truly distressing number of times in the past. Somehow it feels different now, her skin sensitive to her Padawan’s touch as he presses bandage after bandage carefully against her stomach, to the wound below her right breast, to the wound that should have crippled her. She shivers a little, and Anakin looks up quickly. “Am I hurting you?”
“No, I’m quite all right,” Obi-Wan says. “The painkillers are wearing off, is all.”
Anakin chews on his lower lip, his face drawn tight with concentration as he places the last bandage. “They should have given you more.”
“I wasn’t about to ask,” Obi-Wan says, prodding the bandages gingerly. “Thank you, Anakin.”
He settles back, one leg drawn up in front of him, the other dangling off the side of the bed. “What did Count Dooku say to you, Master?”
Obi-Wan pulls the undershirt back on, slowly so that she doesn’t strain anything. “Nothing important,” she says.
Anakin stares at her, silent and stubborn, the unused bandages balanced on his knee. Not for the first time, Obi-Wan feels the familiar flare of anger at Qui-Gon for being so inconsiderate as to get himself murdered by a Sith Lord, leaving her saddled with a precocious Force-sensitive boy who had really been too old to join the Order and who has grown up into a still precocious Padawan whom Obi-Wan would prefer to have at her side over every other Jedi in the Order, up to and including Master Yoda and Master Windu.
“He doesn’t have anything on you, Master,” Anakin says, confident in his ignorance. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve got anything to –”
“He said you’re in love with me,” Obi-Wan says.
The reason they never get sent on undercover missions is because, while Obi-Wan enjoys lying in both her personal and professional life (which are usually the same thing), Anakin can’t tell a falsehood to save his life. He can keep secrets, which Obi-Wan allows because her Padawan enjoys the illusion of privacy, but she’s never known him to lie to her with a straight face, if he can do it at all.
This time is no different. Anakin’s eyes go huge and horrified, every emotion he’s ever had naked on his face. His mouth opens and closes three times before he manages to squeak out, “Master – Obi-Wan – I –”
“I already knew,” Obi-Wan says, keeping her hands folded in her lap. She hurts; the bacta bandages are helping, but a day and a half in a bacta tank and a few bandages doesn’t make up for half a dozen blaster wounds that should have killed her. She isn’t used to healing without the Force to help her. The pain isn’t really helping.
Anakin looks slightly green, but he rallies himself to say, “I am in love with you, Obi-Wan. I have been for years. You’re a – we’re Jedi. I know it’s not…proper.” He meets her eyes with the same straightforward challenge with which he climbs into his starfighter, his mouth settling into stubbornness.
Qui-Gon had never really prepared her to train a Padawan. He’d certainly never prepared her for having this conversation. She doesn’t even have the Force to guide her, which would probably be the only advice Qui-Gon might have given her.
She swallows, wishing they were having this conversation anywhere else besides locked in a room on a Separatist stardestroyer crawling with battle droids, Count Dooku not far away and probably watching this on the security cameras, deep in enemy space and far away from the safe confines of the Temple and the Republic.
She’s silent for too long, because Anakin bursts out anxiously, “How did Dooku know? What does he want – what does he think that will do? It’s not going to – it doesn’t have to change anything.”
Anakin is being honest with her; Obi-Wan owes it to him to do the same. “Because,” she says, the words scraping raw against her throat, “he worked out that it was mutual.”
Anakin stares at her, anxiety melting into astonished joy, and makes an aborted motion towards her before he stops himself with a jerk. Obi-Wan watches him gather his distracted thoughts around himself before he says, “But why does it matter to Dooku?”
“Why do you think, Padawan?” Obi-Wan says. Whatever else they are, or aren’t, they are still Master and Padawan. She has a duty to him.
“I – he must think that you’d allow your emotions to trump your – everything else.” His words are scattered, as distracted as his mind probably is. “And me – that’s why I’m here? I’m blackmail?”
“That does appear to be his plan,” Obi-Wan concedes. She raises her hands to her hair, wincing as it strains at her wounds, and starts unpinning her hair for sleep.
Anakin picks gloomily at the bandages resting on his knee. “He doesn’t know you very well.”
“Apparently not.” She glances at the security cameras. “I need to meditate. You ought to do the same, Anakin.”
“I’d rather hotwire the door,” Anakin says. He’s still looking at her with that half-desperate look on his eyes, but he holds himself back. He moves with a jerk, like a broken droid, and starts gathering up the used bandages, his gaze flickering back to her every few seconds.
Obi-Wan looks down at her knees. She feels ripped open and raw; the whole evening had had a dreamlike quality to it from the moment that she’d woken up with the taste of bacta sickly sweet in her mouth to Dooku murmuring his accusation in her ear, pleased with his deductive skills. Until now – until Anakin. Anakin has a way of making the world around him seem more real, awfully and terrifyingly so.
“I’m surprised Dooku let you have a wrench and a screwdriver,” she makes herself say, raising her head, and folding her legs up onto the bed, rather gingerly.
“He didn’t. I found an unused sharp and some pliers in one of the drawers,” Anakin says over his shoulder, stuffing the used bandages into a bin.
“And the droid?”
“Cleaning droid. I thought about taking apart the medical droid, but I figured that would just annoy him. Well, maybe I should have.” He turns towards her, his back against the wall like it will keep him from running. “I’m sorry, Master. I really am. I tried not to be in love with you, but I couldn’t help it.”
Obi-Wan should say something to that: I’m sorry, my Padawan, I’ve failed you, I tried not to be either, I’ve failed the Order, but she can’t quite make the words leave her mouth. Instead she says, “It doesn’t change anything.”
“It doesn’t?”
In the past forty-eight hours Obi-Wan has been shot, captured, drugged, and had her apprentice tortured in front of her; she allows herself three heartbeats to close her eyes and breathe in, reaching for serenity, and then says, “It doesn’t. We’ll discuss it once this affair is taken care of, if you insist.”
“If you say so, Master.” Anakin stares at her, then seems to realize what he’s doing and lets his gaze flicker down.
Obi-Wan rests her hands on her knees, closing her eyes. “Clean up this mess,” she says, and folds herself in the familiar embrace of meditation. She doesn’t have the Force to ground her, and for a moment all she feels at the thought of all that emptiness is blank panic, but Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi; she lives and breathes the Force, and even if she can’t consciously reach out and touch it, she knows that it’s still there, waiting.
Master, she whispers into the echoing emptiness of her mind, where the Force should be, stretching out backwards and forwards into eternity, Master, what should I do?
She hardly expects Qui-Gon to answer, but Obi-Wan has always found it easier to think through her problems if she puts them into words, makes it a lesson like the ones she’d had as a Padawan.
Trust in the living Force, Obi-Wan.
I can’t. It’s against the Code.
The Force? Soft amusement, Qui-Gon chiding her for taking things too literally.
No, Master. My feelings for Anakin. We are Jedi and he is my Padawan. This is forbidden.
What would it change?
Everything. Nothing. We are Jedi, Master. If we deny that, then we are no different than Dooku and his Dark Jedi.
Trust in the Force, Obi-Wan. And do not let him win.
Obi-Wan opens her eyes. The room is dark now, the remains of the droid stuffed under Anakin’s cot. Her Padawan is sprawled out on it, various limbs protruding from beneath the tangled sheets. His snoring is soft and familiar, and Obi-Wan smiles a little, unfolding from her meditative pose and wrapping herself in the blankets.
“Thank you, Master,” she whispers at the ceiling, and closes her eyes.
*
She wakes up to the familiar sound of Anakin muttering to himself while futzing with the droid. Obi-Wan opens her eyes and stares at the durasteel ceiling, wincing at the pain in her ribs, the white hot score across her thigh, the throb in her upper arm. Two things are certain: Dooku’s bacta isn’t very good quality and the painkillers have worn off. She breathes in, grasping for the familiar Jedi tricks that control pain; they aren’t as effective without the Force, but they help enough that she can sit up, wincing.
Anakin looks up from where he’s sparking two wires together. “Master, are you all right? You look pale.”
“I’m quite all right,” Obi-Wan lies, and slides off the bed to limp into the ‘fresher. When she looks in the mirror, washing her hands and splashing water on her face, she finds that she looks pale and rather delicate, dark hollows under her eyes – a shadow of herself. No wonder Anakin is worried.
She depresses the control for the door and drags herself back out into the med room, where Anakin promptly corners her against the door.
“Anakin?” Obi-Wan blinks up at him. Her Padawan had surpassed her in height when he was fourteen, much to her distaste. Anakin uses his height as a weapon as much as he does his lightsaber, to corner and intimidate; it’s a weapon Obi-Wan has never been able to teach him to use, and one that he’s never used on her before.
“Obi-Wan,” he says. He looks worse than she does, closer inspection reveals: haunted and a little desperate, his hands trembling on the stray droid part he’s still gripping. He backs her against the now-closed door, one arm up to block her escape. She’s fairly certain that she could still get past him if she wanted to – she’s better at hand-to-hand than he is, even if he has height and weight and the advantage of not having five blaster wounds on her.
“Anakin,” she says again. “What are you doing?”
His gaze is fixed on hers, his eyes dark with frustration and desire. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.”
“About how I told you we’d discuss this after we returned to Coruscant?”
“Well, you know I’m not a very good listener.”
“But I see you remember the rest,” Obi-Wan sighs.
“The important part,” Anakin says. “Where you said you loved me.”
Obi-Wan closes her eyes, sighing. “The relevant part, where I said we’d discuss this after this affair had concluded.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“You’re going to have to,” Obi-Wan says firmly. She puts her hand on his chest to push him away, but he sets his feet and doesn’t move.
“Obi-Wan,” he says again.
“Get out of my way, my very young Padawan,” Obi-Wan says, which makes Anakin flinch and fall back, looking like Obi-Wan has just slapped him.
“What a charming tȇte-à-tȇte,” Count Dooku observes from the door. A medical droid approaches Anakin and Obi-Wan, gripping a pair of hypodermic needles in its hand.
“Is this really necessary, Count?” Obi-Wan sighs, submitting her arm to be stabbed. She glances aside and draws in her breath as the drug enters her system, damping down the little bit of the Force that had leaked through as her last dose faded. Anakin does the same, glaring at Dooku.
“Considering your reputation, forgive me if I don’t entirely trust you, Master Kenobi. Shall I have you cuffed as well?”
“No,” Obi-Wan says. “I remember what you said would happen if either of us resisted.”
He smiles a little. “Indeed. Have you given any thought to my offer?”
“I’m willing to present your offer to the Jedi Council,” Obi-Wan says. “I’m afraid I don’t have the authority to negotiate on their behalf, however.”
“There is one thing you can offer which they can’t,” Dooku invites.
Obi-Wan stares at him. “No.”
“No?” He glances at Anakin pointedly. “I can be considerably more persuasive if you’d like.”
Trust in the living Force. “You don’t want me that way,” Obi-Wan says. “You want me to say yes and mean it.”
“Jedi or not, Master Kenobi, I could make you mean it.” He lets his gaze flicker up and down over her body, appreciative. “Come with me.”
“Where are you taking her?” Anakin demands, taking half a step forwards before one of Dooku’s bodyguards gets in his way. He stops, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“To meet some old friends,” Dooku says, glancing at the mess Anakin’s made of the cleaning droid. “I’ll have a real toolkit brought to you, though what you’ve accomplished with makeshifts is quite impressive. If you do fail the Trials, I see that you’ll have a promising career as a mechanic.”
“What?” Anakin snarls at him, outraged.
“Anakin!” Obi-Wan snaps.
“Charming,” Dooku observes. “Master Kenobi?”
She sits down on the edge of the bed to pull her boots on, then the leather jerkin, pinning her hair up by touch in four looping braids at the back of her head. Anakin, trapped by the magnaguard, watches with his arms crossed over his chest. “If you hurt her –”
“You’ll hunt me down and rend the flesh from my bones. Hardly a fitting threat for a Jedi, even a Padawan.” He sounds bored more than anything else. “Come, Master Kenobi.”
Obi-Wan straightens up. “I am not one of your Dark Jedi to be summoned like a pet.”
“Not yet.”
She follows him anyway, aware of the last magnaguard falling in line behind her and Anakin staring glumly at her back. It would have been so easy to let him, Obi-Wan thinks distantly, distractedly. Let him kiss her, let this – whatever this is, or could be – happen. It wouldn’t be the first time. Jedi are only people, and Master and Padawan live in each others’ pockets day-in and day-out for years. Not many Jedi leave the order, but more than half of those who do leave it for love, and no few of those are, or were, Master and Padawan. Obi-Wan is sure that she’d had her fair share of fantasies about Qui-Gon when she’d been Anakin’s age, and even more embarrassingly, fairly certain that Qui-Gon had known, but she’d never acted on it – never would have. She may have spent all but the first year and a half of her life in the Order, but even as a Padawan – especially as a Padawan – she never would have chanced doing anything that might jeopardize her position, not when she knew what was at stake.
“Why me?” Obi-Wan asks of the back of Dooku’s head. “I’m just another Jedi. There’s nothing special about me.” Not like Anakin. Whether or not Anakin is the Chosen One, which is a Jedi myth that Obi-Wan isn’t particularly sure she believes in from day to day, there is something special about him. Not that she’ll ever admit as much to Anakin.
“Such a good Jedi to be so modest,” Dooku murmurs. “You are in fact more than ‘just another Jedi,’ as you so charmingly put it, Master Kenobi. You are the only living Jedi to have destroyed a Sith Lord – and you did it when you were only a Padawan. Don’t you think that makes you remarkable?”
“The Force was with me that day.”
“As it was not with your master Qui-Gon Jinn? You are twice the Jedi that Qui-Gon ever was.”
Stung, Obi-Wan snaps, “Qui-Gon Jinn was loyal to the Order and to the Republic, which is more than I can say for his master!”
Dooku smiles. “You know, Master Kenobi, there are other arguments I might use on another Jedi. I could talk about the corruption of the Republic, the disorder in the Jedi, the power of the Dark Side, but I suspect that you wouldn’t be interested in any of that. You know it all already, and you don’t care. But there are two things you want: you want your Padawan to live and you want the war to end. And I can give you both.”
“Perhaps I don’t want you to,” Obi-Wan says coldly.
“Oh, I doubt you do, Master Kenobi. But pride isn’t very fitting for a Jedi Knight: will you risk the Republic for it?”
“I will never join the Sith, Count.”
“So you say now, Master Kenobi.” He gives her a thoughtful look. “You are a strange one. The power of the Dark Side doesn’t tempt you; you’ve touched it before, but it has never touched you. I suspect that you could walk in the shadows of the Sith tombs on Korriban and emerge unscathed. Few Jedi could.”
“And you want to corrupt me?” Obi-Wan says. “I am a Jedi Knight, Dooku. I cannot be so easily undone as all that.”
“Say yes, Master Kenobi. Save the Jedi. Save the Republic. Save that foolish Padawan of yours. I am certain that given time, I can convince you of the wisdom of my ways. Of the ways of the Sith.”
“I am willing to present your proposal to the Council,” Obi-Wan repeats stubbornly. “I do not have the authority to negotiate on their behalf on a matter of this importance.”
“And if the Council agrees to my terms?” says Dooku, sounding faintly amused. “All of them?”
Obi-Wan swallows, feeling faintly sick. “Then you’ll have your Jedi pet, Count.”
*
tbc
read chapter 4.