Chapter Text
The mission had been going smoothly up until that moment.
The plan was simple. A first group of fighters would act as a distraction, trying to enter a weapons storage facility and destroy as many of them as possible while attracting the attention of the Elders away from the comms building.
Amongst the chaos, Obi-Wan and Nield would then attempt to sneak into the place, and reach the comms array without being spotted by the enemy. They wouldn't have a lot of time, and were relying on Obi-Wan’s jedi contacts actually listening to their message and taking it seriously, but it was the only plan they had, so they would make it work.
He felt unsteady without master Tahl's lightsaber in his hands. They'd carved out a hiding place for it, away from their camp, as remote as they could make it without being fully unable to access it again if needed. If the Jedi came, they didn't want them to find the weapon and associate it with Obi-Wan. If the Jedi didn't come, they needed the possibility to use it again - to use any weapons at their disposal to keep their people alive.
He'd been carrying it with him wherever he went for months now, even when he wasn't actively fighting. Being without it now was uncomfortable, like an itch he couldn't scratch, or the sense of someone watching him whenever his back was turned.
Still, he was doing his best to ignore the feeling of impending doom niggling at the back of his mind, and just focus on getting himself and Nield in and out of the communications building as safely as possible.
Which, in hindsight, might have been what prevented him from noticing the trap.
As they were making their way to the long-range comms array, avoiding any remaining Elders on their way with a little bit of Obi-Wan's mind tricks to hide their presence, he felt the warning in the force a second too late. Nield fell forward, feet caught up in a hidden tripwire set up across the entryway, narrowly catching himself before he hit the ground.
The two boys looked at each other warily. They weren't hearing any loud noises for the moment, but that didn't mean whoever had setup the tripwire didn't have a silent alarm going off somewhere, alerting them to the trespassers. Giving a hand to help his friend up, Obi-Wan signaled for him to move forward again, as quickly as possible. There was no time to waste.
Typing in the Temple's main helpline code - and thanking himself for having had the forethought to learn it by heart before he left on this mission with Master Jinn - Obi-Wan held his breath as he pressed the buttons to record their message.
The machine whirred loudly as it registered the localization of their intended recipient. Outside, the comms array's antenna readjusted itself, finding the optimal angle to send their distress message out into the stars.
“This is Nield, speaking for the Young on Melida/Daan”, said the other boy, repeating their prepared speech to the recording device. “We are requesting Jedi assistance on our planet. We are running out of food and medical supplies, and our enemies have poisoned our area's main water source in an effort to draw us out.”
Heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor - one or more Elders had noticed their presence. Someone was coming, running towards their location. They'd either heard an alarm, or seen the antenna readjust, but it didn't matter : the only thing of importance now was letting Nield send their plea for aid to the Jedi temple, and hope that someone would decide to act on it fast.
Looking around for something to block the way into the room, his eyes stopped for a second on a heavy-looking shelving unit. If he were to push it horizontally against the door, it might buy them enough time to complete their objective before their enemy burst in. Reaching out to the force, he tried to lift the piece of furniture high enough to move it without making too much noise - no need to make their pursuers hurry even more by being loud, after all.
This time, he could definitely feel that what he was calling on wasn’t light. He was reaching out with emotion, with a kind of desperation that the Dark seemed to be readily answering to, boosting his strength beyond what he knew himself to be capable of. It had been months since his last reasonable meal - he was half-starved, and definitely shouldn’t be able to use the force as extensively as he’d been doing. He could feel the Dark wrapping around his mind, recognizing his intention and just… doing it. Focusing on the task at hand, he slowly lifted the shelving unit and brought it to the entryway, dropping it in place as delicately as he could.
A loud banging noise resonated through the room when he pushed the metallic object flush to the walls on either side of the doorway. He winced - there was no way the Elders looking for them hadn’t heard that. Which meant they now knew where they were.
It was time to go.
“The message’s been sent, we need to move, now!” said Nield, stepping away from the console and back towards Obi-Wan.
“Help me look for a way out - Hannah said there was a ventilation system here that should be just about big enough for us to get through, but we need to find the entrance before the Elders get here or they’ll catch up with us before we can leave the building.” he answered, looking around the room for any signs of the promised passage. Hannah’s mother had worked in this building when the young girl still lived with her parents, and the child remembered bits and pieces of the place’s layout - it had helped them come up with this last ditch plan, and they hoped her knowledge would once again prove useful in getting them out of here as unharmed as possible.
“Here! Behind that desk!” called Nield to his right.
At the same time, someone began pounding at the door. The Elders were trying to force their way in. The boys had no more time to lose.
They made quick work of moving the desk and removing the vent cover, before squeezing into the floor-height ventilation shaft one after the other. Using the force once again, he pulled the desk back to its original place after getting in, hoping it would buy them a little more time as the Elders tried to figure out their escape route.
As silently as they could, they began their long crawl through the vents, away from their pursuers.
***
Overall, the mission had been a resounding success.
Amongst the “diversion” group, only a handful of children had been seriously harmed - two of them with broken bones, and one with a slugthrower wound to the arm. Most of the other injuries were light : a few scrapes here and there, a twisted ankle, a couple of concussions, but nothing life threatening. Obi-Wan set himself to help as much as he could - prioritizing the slugthrower wound, as Cerasi helped set the broken bones with the limited supplies stolen during this latest raid.
He reached out to the force again, trying to communicate his need to get the metal out of the wound so they could try to mend the flesh and skin back together, and bandage the kid’s arm. It would give him a chance to heal - not a large one, but more than what he had right now. The kid - Tomas, he remembered - had his hand clamped over his left arm as tight as he could, blood sluggishly trickling out between his fingers.
The Dark joyfully answered his call.
No matter how often he practiced, healing was one of the only force abilities that never became easier. Privately, Obi-Wan wondered if there was something wrong in the way he was approaching the issue : it seemed that every time he tried to heal someone, he lost his strength in the process, getting progressively weaker injury after injury. Still, it was something he could do, and so, he would .
Pulling out the metal pieces took all his focus. The slug had broken into small shards, ripping the flesh around as it went through, and he took extra care to avoid damaging Tomas’ muscle even more than it already was. Gently, slowly, he tugged on the shards one by one, setting them aside on a wooden plate while he made sure not to miss any smaller pieces that could have shifted further in during the fight.
“Here,” he told the kid, handing him a dim flashlight. “Hold this for me, please? I have to use both my hands, and I need the light to see.”
Tomas grabbed it quickly, eager to have something to do to take his eyes off his other arm. Good, Obi-Wan thought, at least that would help the kid focus on something else while he tried the next part.
Feeling with the force the edges of the ripped flesh, he followed the path of destruction wrought by the slugthrower, pushing what felt like his own strength into Tomas’ body to fast-track the healing process. Finally, after what felt like an eternity - but was probably closer to a couple of minutes, judging by how fast these things tended to tire him out - he managed to encourage the tissues to reattach themselves enough for the child to be able to heal the rest of the way on his own.
“Obi, I need your help around here!” called Cerasi, somewhere behind him.
Kark.
One of the broken bones that she’d been trying to set was apparently worse than they’d thought, and the teenager on the cot behind her was losing a lot of blood at an alarming rate. He rushed to her side, blinking rapidly to chase the vertigo away, and took in the situation : the girl’s left leg looked like it’d broken badly and ruptured multiple large blood vessels while the bone pierced the skin. The Young’s “medics” - Cerasi and two others who had the most medical experience out of everyone else - had managed to set the bone back in place, but couldn’t reduce the bleeding fast enough to close up the wound the best they could and apply a makeshift splint.
The teenage girl had already passed out from blood loss. Obi-Wan looked up, and met his friend’s panicked gaze.
“Can you stop the bleeding? I can give her stitches, and we can immobilize her leg, but…” she trailed off, not wanting to put into words what they all feared would happen.
“I’ll try”, he said.
He took hold of the force once more, her question still fresh in his mind. The darkness, still close to him from his intense use on Tomas mere moments ago, surged to the surface of his mind like an alien presence. A feeling of confidence - authority - strength washed over him as he started working on the broken femur - something his tired brain interpreted into words more easily understood.
Yes, you can. You will.
***
“Woah, sit down, Obi, you look like you’re going to pass out too!”
Listening to Nield, for once, Obi-Wan stumbled clumsily towards his own threadbare cot on their side of the encampment. He’d worked on the wounded children well into the night, feeling his energy diminish with each passing minute, but he’d done it : everyone was on their way to recovery, even the most urgent cases. It had been touch-and-go for a while, for the girl with the broken leg - he didn’t remember her name, but she had woken up halfway through the medics tying a splint around her mangled limb, and had screamed so loudly he’d had to force-suggest her to go back to unconsciousness. Still, she was out of the woods, at least for now. They could only wait, now, and hope infection didn’t set in and ruin all their hard work.
He shivered, getting closer to Nield to share some warmth while they waited for the last member of their trio to join them.
“Thank you, for what you did, earlier” said his friend, breaking the comfortable silence between them. “It bought me enough time to finish sending our message. We made it, Obi. Our plan worked.”
“Hopefully, they’ll bring enough medical supplies since you told them we had none left. Poor Anya might not last long if we don’t get some antibiotics for her, even with Obi’s miraculous save.” murmured Cerasi, sitting down right next to them.
“What happened during your diversion? Did you manage to grab anything useful?” asked Nield, careful not to move so he wouldn’t jostle Obi-Wan too much.
“Enough food to last us a couple more days, at least, and Tomas’ group made it out with an extra crate of blasters they took from the Melida. The Elders had slugthrowers, though, so they had to run like hell to avoid getting hit.”
“How's he holding up, by the way?”
“Good, Obi's done miracles on his arm. It looks like it was shot weeks ago already.”
Listening to his friends quietly catching up on what the other groups had done, Obi-Wan closed his eyes for a moment, and allowed himself a few minutes of rest.
With their call for help sent, it was only a matter of time before the Jedi came. And when they did, he would need to be unremarkable again, to blend in with the mass of hungry, tired children.
Have you ever been unremarkable, bright child? Have you?
Steeling himself, he sunk into a deep meditation and tried to focus. He had work to do.
Finding the place where his training bond with Master Jinn was held wasn’t that difficult : he’s done it multiple times, with and without his Master, while trying to understand how training bonds worked and how to use them to be an efficient master-padawan duo. The bond was still there, faint, but firmly attached.
Brick by brick, he started building a wall around its base, to better shield his emotions from his Master upon his return. Because Qui-Gon would return - of that he was certain. And when he did, Obi-Wan would need to project the image of a model padawan, inside and out.
He could not afford for his Master (or was it ex-Master? Would Qui-Gon take him back, if he came to Melida/Daan again?) to realize that he’d been right about him from the start : he’d been too rash, too angry to be well-suited for the life of a Jedi, too prone to Falling to be trained. And as soon as he’d lost the guidance of his Master, that was exactly what he’d done. In a way, he was pretty sure he’d fallen even further than Xanatos - who he really hoped he’d never see again, thank you very much.
No, he needed to show anyone who ever tried to look at him a bit too closely that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. He needed to project the image of an earnest, if somewhat misguided, jedi padawan, who followed his Master’s teachings and protected the innocent to the best of his ability - not the jaded survivor and darksider he’d become in order to survive down here.
Nield’s voice brought him out of meditation a few hours later.
“Obi? Are you okay there?”
He opened his eyes slowly, feeling a little more settled, more at peace than he’d been before. Cerasi was fast asleep a few feet away, laying on her side with her head propped up on Nield’s jacket like a pillow. The camp was quiet, the only sounds around them being the soft snores of the younger children, and the occasional shuffling of someone trying to find a better position to sleep in.
Timidly reaching for the force around him, he almost jumped in surprise. The shields he’d erected while meditating were holding steady. Looking at his smiling friend next to him, he didn’t need Nield’s confirmation to know what had happened : he’d successfully partitioned his use of the dark side from the parts of him he could show the rest of the world. His eyes were blue again.
Now, he only had to hold onto hope, and wait for the Jedi to come.