Chapter Text
"Go," Master Qui-Gon growled, batting away blaster bolts as he shoved Obi-Wan and Satine towards a door, "get out of the city. Contact no one, I'll end this and find you."
Stop.
Rewind.
Let's replay that, shall we?
"Go," Master Qui-Gon growled, batting away blaster bolts as he shoved Obi-Wan and Satine towards a door,
Mistake the first, never split the party.
"get out of the city.
Mistake number two, outside the city is a desert, and they don't have supplies.
Contact no one,
Mistake C, contact is kinda necessary for two seventeen year olds being hunted. How else will they find help? Shelter? Supplies? You?
I'll end this and find you."
No. No, he won't.
***
Obi-Wan Kenobi was NOT angry. He was, however, incredibly frustrated. When they had gotten to Sundari, Satine had dragged him onto a solar sail and insisted on teaching him to fly one. He had just barely got the hang of the basic controls when his Master had called them off. The lecture that evening about "engaging in frivolous activity while on mission" was one for the record books. It also somehow wound up involving "showing proper gratitude to the Council for having let him off probation" and yet another lecture on "attachment."
Considering that escaping from Sundari required stealing two solar sails, as speeders and swoop bikes are easily tracked by their owners, then engaging in evasive manoeuvres, which required either far more than basic controls or relying heavily on the Force, it didn't seem so frivolous now. And hang the Council, anyway, it wasn't generosity that let him off probation, it was legality. They had no reason to keep him there; his time was up; it wasn't like he was let off early.
Okay, maybe he was a bit angry. They'd been walking through sand dunes for two days and he'd never claimed to be a saint. Even Master Yoda didn't claim that. Almost immediately after getting out of the dome, a sandstorm had knocked them off course, dropped them down a cliff and crashed their Sails. They had no supplies, no weapons but his still underpowered lightsaber, no transport, and orders not to contact anyone. Satine was whining again. He couldn't even blame her, because another day in the desert without food or water would likely mean their deaths. Which, saving your charge from assassins by letting them die from the elements does not count as accomplishing your mission, Qui-Gon. But the whining did not help the situation nor his ability to keep a level head.
Yes, Qui-Gon, I am whining, too. Even traveling by night and taking shelter under the sails scavenged from their crashed transports by day, they were running out of time. Whining, internally, was a legitimate means of releasing stress, thank you very much.
He spotted something on the horizon and breathed a sigh of relief. A bump, distinctly higher than the dunes around it, and, even in the dim light of dusk, noticeably a different color than the sand. Rocks, a cliff face, which would be the most likely spot to find vegetation, and more to the point, water. Even if it meant licking dew off the rocks, it would keep them alive a bit longer. He just hoped it was close enough to reach before sunrise.
***
They reached it before sunrise, just as the coldest part of the night settled in, in fact. Dew was just beginning to gather on the rocks, but some of the cacti growing in the lee of what turned out to be a fairly short mesa looked to be a variety he vaguely remembered being edible.
The whole area felt weird. Charged, tingling like just before a storm, but also like being watched. It didn’t feel dangerous though, as he prodded at the feeling, while he and Satine nibbled slowly on cactus leaves.
Obi-Wan carefully pried the needles off of the leaves and, no one around to comment on frivolous use of the Force, he used the Force to gather them all up into a small packet he made from a piece of sail. They might be stiff enough to pick locks with, and even if they weren’t, he could always dump them down inside someone’s armor as a distraction. They were lacking enough in supplies that he wasn’t throwing anything away any time soon. Everything could be useful when you don’t have anything, it just took some creativity to figure out how. He managed to catch enough insects and two small lizards to make something of a meal while the cacti provided them with water. Satine made a disgusted face and only ate the tiniest of bits from a lizard. Whatever, Obi-Wan thought, you can't afford to be picky about survival, and this isn't the worst thing I've eaten.
The worst thing he'd eaten was the partially decaying and unidentifiable carcass the Young had found in a rain gutter near one of the sewer entrances. They'd been so hungry, especially the eldest Young, who all sacrificed their own portions to keep the littlest ones fed as much as they could. The beast had been bigger than most of them, the victim of a broken leg from some accident that had staggered into the city and towards the water of the gutter to die. It had seemed a blessing, but even after roasting, the flesh had a sour taste and many of the Young had suffered cramps and loose bowels after. Obi-Wan had used the Force to purge the bacterial toxins from himself and then tried to do the same for his friends, but he wasn't a natural healing talent and had not badgered extra training modules out of the Temple healers yet. That had happened when he got back, one of the ways he filled the empty hours of his probation.
"We will rest here tonight," Satine declared, her diction crisper than actually felt natural, even though he knew she was forcing the same accent he had. He let it go, they all coped in their own ways.
"Actually, it will be safer and easier to travel by night," he pointed out. “We should keep going until sunrise.” Mandalore was a hot planet, a thin atmosphere meant the solar radiation of their star reached the surface more directly. Night was cooler, and they would be harder to see in the darkness, it would be easier to hide. He would worry about nocturnal predators, except that while his lightsaber wasn't ideal for sapient opponents, it could still burn an animal enough to scare it off. Or cook lizards on, as the case may be.
"I can't possibly continue on," Satine protested. In fact, she unpacked the carryall he had rigged of her solar sail to drape the shimmery material around herself, and laid down.
He clearly wasn't going to get her to move without resorting to Force Suggestion, and he did not share Qui-Gon’s relaxed attitude about that skill. While it may be considered a Light talent, it seemed unethical.
The Force whispered to him with confusing and conflicting messages.
The only thing Obi-Wan knew for sure was that staying here… was going to Change things.
Change.
Disrupt.
Fight.
Love.
Build.
Undo.
Endure.
Survive.
The whispers were eerie and unsettling, but without any other options, he settled into an uneasy meditation for the night's watch.
***
He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He had meant to stay in light meditation so as to conserve his energy and forestall exhaustion and hunger from their inevitable hold on the crude matter of his body.
The crude matter had other ideas.
He realized he was dreaming when Cerasi sat up from Satine’s bedroll, interrupting his fitful attempts to meditate on how to use his knowledge and experience to improve their chances against Death Watch. She lurched forward in a mirror of her death fall, and vomited on their fire. Even knowing she wasn’t real, was dead, that he was asleep, he couldn’t help the urge to reach out and send a soothing touch of the Force to her, using the skills he hadn’t had when she was alive to ease her pain. She looked up at him, wide watery eyes half hidden behind a red curtain of hair.
"Fight," she hissed at him, her lips snarled in a way he barely recognized. "Ben, you have to fight."
"Cerasi… what about peace?" he asked, his heart aching. "All you wanted was peace."
"Is this peace?" she laughed, a bitter, broken sound as blood bubbled over her lips. "It doesn't feel like it. It feels like death. When the peace is tainted with pain, when it comes at the cost of justice and honor and family, the peace is no better than war. Pointless war is toxic, but so is peace at the end of a blaster."
"I don't understand," Obi-Wan said slowly.
"Sorry, out of order," she said sheepishly. "Got my whens mixed up. This is harder than it looks. Just a second."
He was going to ask what she meant when the sand opened up and swallowed him, his life flashing past his eyes in reverse. The Death Watch, the Duke's people in the city with their careful cubical minimalism and faked Core World accents, Bant and Tahl learning how to work around the Master's blindness while he studied medical techniques in their apartment, Quin and Tholme at dinner and the painful realization that Qui-Gon would never be like that with him. The Young and their fight, the faces of children with the eyes of soldiers, ribs visible under bandoliers of ammunition, bodies light enough to be lifted by wasted arms stacked like cordwood in the vault they'd claimed to hide their dead, obscure their losses. Bandomeer's mines and the feel of the collar on his neck and the surety he would die, the need for that death to at least be useful instead of worthless, like his life had been.
He pulled up short and struggled to catch his breath as he opened his eyes from his nightmare. Cerasi was gone, Satine slept across the fire. He swept his senses over her to check, and dread plunged through him as he felt nothing. Hollowness, echoing like a struck drum, a hiss like sand pouring from a hole in one of the heavy bags in the Temple training rooms. He staggered to his feet and was taken to the ground by Death Watch fighters. He lashed out at them, his strikes flowing off them like water, his saber a useless child's toy. They laughed as they held him down and poured sand in his open, screaming mouth.
"Poor little Oafy-Wan," one taunted, and Obi-Wan stilled. That name was dead. "Still not getting it? You can't win some fights with kindness and nice words. Some fights are won with fists and strength and the will to make yourself powerful enough that those words stick."
"I won't fall," Obi-Wan said calmly as the beskar'gam melted off Bruck's body, now the child he'd been when Obi-Wan had killed him. "That's the Dark Side and I won't fall."
"I never asked you to," the thing with Bruck's face said flatly. It was the lack of sneer that gave it away. That placid calm had no place on that face. "I asked you to fight. When the darkness chokes you, suffocating you, collaring you, will you fight it? Will you fight if it chokes her?"
" Leave Satine alone," Obi-Wan growled, and launched himself at Fake Bruck. The boy laughed with Mawat's laugh, harsh and cawing.
"More like it! You do know what to fight for. That matters. Not dark or light, just why you fight."
"I…"
"This. This is why you fight," Bruck's mouth spat in Neild's voice.
Then Obi-Wan fell into some Sith Hell, a mash of every battle field he'd ever seen, every body, every person he couldn’t save, every hope he'd tried to defend.
He screamed, and knew no one could hear it.
***
Maxim watched as the Padawan and his charge who had stumbled to the base of their Temple slowly drifted to sleep. He eased the Padawan from his watchful meditation, the boy needed sleep before they urged the pair out of their territory, and nothing bothered with this area anyway. Most things could feel the Ghosts watching, even without the Manda whispering to them.
Flickers of dreams broke through almost immediately. It took everything Maxim had not to reel in offense at what he saw in them. Corpses of
ad’e
littering the ground, explosions and blaster bolts,
demagolkase
adults hunting children through derelict cities, an army of ad’e and ikaad’e hiding in tunnels and sewers, sickness, injury,
hunger.
A shift, and the adults went from some unknown pair of species to wearing Mandalorian armor, children seemed older, but no less children. He hissed in outrage. That had
better not
be more memories. He slipped, almost on instinct, between the boy and his nightmares. It wouldn’t do for the boy to wake early and without rest.
He looked to Camora standing next to him. Well. If they were going to decide what to do with the younglings on their step, they had to know what they were dealing with anyway, and there would not be a better time. Camora nodded to him, and as one, they moved to the pair, beginning to sift softly through their memories.
Osik. A decision was definitely going to be needed. They could not allow this to continue without interference.
He approached the place the Council of the Jetii’Manda Temple tended to spend their time, carrying the gathered memories with him. Camora was grumbling under her breath something about definitions as she did the same beside him.
They let the memories go, pouring them out to the Council and their gathered brethren. Maxim spoke into the horrified silence. “I’m adopting him, what else we do about this utter disaster is up for discussion, but this Jinn needs to be balanced out, before he ruins a perfectly good ad further.”
