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If anyone asks, it was all part of the plan to be captured.
Obi-Wan knows the question will be raised. Likely from Anakin. Definitely from Cody. Landing straight into the heart of Separatist battleground was not exactly part of the strategy, but not crashing into the giant mountain in front of him was just as strategic as any flight pattern he could have run.
The flock of assassin droids that have surrounded him give him a rough nudge that sends him toppling to his knees.
This is the last time I willingly take flight duty just to win a bet with Anakin.
Thinking of Anakin just raises Obi-Wan's blood pressure. By now they must have realized why the Separatists retreated so suddenly and Obi-Wan missed his check-in. Anakin will probably try to do something drastic like storm their flagship or something— and likely succeed in that endeavor based on his past records.
Obi-Wan isn't on the flagship, though.
"I trust your travel accommodations were less than adequate," Count Dooku's regal voice is the one that greets him with a subtle sneer in his otherwise blank expression.
"You mean the Force suppressants and durasteel box?" Obi-Wan rolls to a sitting position, his bound hands making him unable to push the hair out of his face. "Not the worst prisoner transport I've been in, actually."
Still, he probably looks like quite a mess from that metal box. Sweaty, disheveled, one-half of his tunics torn and scorched from the crash. He's quite unfit to be sitting in a Serenno noble house by usual etiquette and judging by the curl of the Count's lip.
"Charming."
"So I'm told."
"Though I must admit, you managed to get yourself captured much earlier than I anticipated," Obi-Wan's smugness vanishes at Dooku's words. Truth be told, he was a little curious why his capture led to such a sudden retreat... unless his capture was the plan all along? Obi-Wan slowly shuffles to his feet, an action Dooku doesn't seem to pay attention to as he walks deeper into the large parlor Obi-Wan was dumped into. "I haven't finished setting up."
He's about to question just what Dooku was setting up, but his question is answered as the Count sits down at a table with a square board checkered with black and white.
"Dejarik?"
Dooku sighs.
"Besides the fact the board is square, not circular, do you see a hologram generator anywhere?" The Count reaches into a small carrying case and pulls out a sleek black object the height of his pointer finger and as thick as his thumb. Dooku sets it down toward the center of his edge of the board.
"They don't teach chess at the Temple anymore, you know."
"I cited that as one of the reasons for my departure," Dooku says dryly before placing another piece beside the crown-wearing queen. "A much more dignified game than monsters and holographic violence. The Jedi continue to prove themselves a mockery."
Obi-Wan hovers while Dooku finishes setting up the board. One row of pawns and a second of rooks, knights, bishops, a queen, and a king. He's replicated this on the other side where a chair still remains empty.
"Sit," Dooku says, extending his hand to gesture toward the opposite seat.
"I don't understand." Dooku has gone through the trouble of capturing and containing him. Give it a few more hours and the Count very well may have the brunt of the GAR. All this effort and he wants to play a game of chess?
"There was a time when disputes were settled over games of strategy, not brawn."
"So, what? Best two out of three? Winner wins the war? Quite a gambit you're playing, Dooku."
The Count huffs. "I expect this insolence from your padawan, Kenobi. Though, I do suppose he had to learn it from somewhere."
Obi-Wan's fingers curl around the back of the chair. "Perhaps a lineage trait."
Dooku's mouth twitches downward. He moves his arm to reveal a small holoprojector disk and moves it to the center of the board.
"I would not be so insipid as to lay the stakes of the entire war on a game."
"Then what is the point?"
"If you sit, perhaps you will find out."
"How do I know this is not a trap?"
Dooku sighs and waves his hand. The bindings around Obi-Wan's wrists suddenly spring open and clatter to the ground.
"The only traps I may place will be within the game." Obi-Wan hesitantly sits down in front of the duel rows of white pieces. Dooku stares back at him with his hands patiently folded. They hold their hardened gazes until the Count clears his throat.
"It's your opening."
Right. Obi-Wan flippantly moves one of his pawns to e4 and then mimics Dooku's folded hands.
"I encourage you to consider your position here, Master Kenobi," he says as he decidedly shifts a pawn to c6. "You have been captured and displaced far from the troughs of your battlefield. If help is coming, it will not be anytime soon. I could be locking you in some deep dark hole."
"Oh, do you expect me to be grateful I'm not suspended by ray shields or being meticulously tortured by a droid programmed for pain?" Obi-Wan moves another pawn beside the first.
"I simply aim to point out there are more ways to get what we want than torture."
"Because torture has been so fruitful for you thus far," Obi-Wan quips as Dooku advances one of his pawns to the space in front of Obi-Wan's at d5.
"For one with the moniker, The Negotiator, you do very little of that these days."
Obi-Wan doesn't allow the frown to overtake his features. Dooku is right, though. It's been a lot of fighting and not very much resolution. Obi-Wan traces the carve marks of the knight’s smooth stone finish with the pad of his pointer finger. He scans the board and then places the piece at c3.
“If you have a declaration of peace you wish to bring about I would be happy to negotiate.”
“I am doubtful our definitions and terms of peace are the same.”
Dooku is swift to take his first pawn, casting the white piece aside with the Force. Obi-Wan meets his eye with an earnest shrug.
“You never know. Has there been a formal sit-down between Republic and Separatist leadership?”
“There has hardly been informal ones.”
Obi-Wan replaces Dooku's idling pawn with his white knight.
“I’m sure if the matter were pushed by—”
“Don’t you see?” Dooku grimaces and advances his opposite knight. “Therein lies the brunt of the problem. Peace is not a goal, it is a matter that must be reminded of.”
“We fight for peace.”
“You may fight for peace, but tell me, Kenobi, what is the Republic fighting for?”
Obi-Wan’s words catch on his tongue. Peace is what he wants to say, but it’s not an answer his body seems willing to give. Dooku’s hard brow relaxes.
“The Republic was a lost cause when it chose war over action to reduce the corruption within its ranks,” Dooku sighs harshly, revealing the first evidence of frustration Obi-Wan has seen thus far. “And the Jedi were a lost cause when they started answering to military titles.”
“The Republic I cannot speak for, but the Jedi are not lost,” Obi-Wan finally regains the strength in his voice. “We are doing everything we can for the people, not the politics. The reason I have not been negotiating lately is because I am out there trying to protect the citizens of the Republic and the Confederacy. We all have. We may fight on the side of the Republic, but we serve the Force. Can you still say the same, Dooku?”
Dooku does not reply. His gaze is indifferent but Obi-Wan knows from Qui-Gon’s stories it is not often he does not take the last word.
Obi-Wan shifts back to the game. He isn’t quite sure what the point of it is anymore, but he has a certain urge to finish it. The Jedi stares at the board for much longer than he has in any of his previous turns. Finally, Obi-Wan shifts his queen up behind the wall of white he's formed. It's an aggressive move— one that even Dooku raises an eyebrow at— but he leans back in his chair and waits for the Count's response.
He finds it strange sitting with Dooku in this way. Unbound. Noncombatant. There was a time when Master Dooku was Obi-Wan’s Grandmaster within the lineage. The man who trained Qui-Gon despite their polar personalities. Obi-Wan never spent much time with Dooku before he left the Order, but there were times that he wondered what their relationship might have been.
Strangely, he imagined it to be just like this. Sitting around playing chess and engaging in a test of wits.
“Why didn’t you come to his funeral?” Obi-Wan asks suddenly. Dooku’s hand is raised to move his piece, but it freezes as the Jedi’s words seem to hit him.
“What?”
“You weren’t at Qui-Gon’s funeral.”
Dooku resumes his move, thrusting his pawn to the center, adding to the cluster of their opposing forces and challenging Obi-Wan's original move.
“I regret that I was otherwise engaged.”
Obi-Wan isn’t sure if it makes it better or worse that Dooku actually sounds regretful. Obi-Wan takes Dooku's e5 pawn with a great deal of hesitancy.
“Would you have come? If you weren’t busy?”
Dooku's queen juts out of nowhere, finding its place at a5.
“Qui-Gon’s body was there, but his Life Force— the thing that made him Qui-Gon had already been released to the Force. I did not need to be there.”
For a few moments, the war melts away. Obi-Wan is not a High General and Dooku is not the head of the Separatists. They look at each other with subtle understanding that only they know how to spot in each other’s well-trained poker faces. For a few moments, they’re just Obi-Wan and Dooku playing a game of chess.
Obi-Wan advances his bishop into the center pot.
Dooku’s queen sweeps from the side to the center, taking the pawn just in front of Obi-Wan's knight.
“It is the anniversary today,” Dooku says as he casts the pawn aside, “isn’t it?”
Obi-Wan looks at the board, at Dooku's expectant gaze, and then back to the board. Letting out a soft sigh, he shifts the king two squares to the side, and places his left hand rook to d1.
“I suppose it is.”
Obi-Wan supposes nothing. It is the anniversary of his late master’s death. He knew it when he woke up and hew as just as aware of it when his ship crashed down in Separatist territory.
He’s surprised that Dooku remembered. Dooku, who was notoriously stringent about the rules of no attachments. Dooku, whose statue in the Temple bears the same cold stare because even as a Jedi master he remained masked behind diplomacy. Dooku, who did not attend his own former padawan’s funeral, yet apparently still thinks about his death these eleven years later.
Dooku, who has unexpectedly allowed his emotions to cloud his mind and takes the bait. His knight captures Obi-Wan's. It’s a mistake he has not yet realized, but the Jedi wastes no time in advancing his queen into the empty space between Dooku's bishop and king. A spot of white in his seemingly solid sea of darkness. A spot that does not last long as Dooku takes his queen.
It is a necessary sacrifice.
Obi-Wan's bishop goes to g5.
"Check," he says, unable to hide the surprise in his voice. He didn't think it would work and yet he not only has a check but a double check by his calculations.
Dooku's king to c7. With that space clear, Obi-Wan can slip his bishop to the opposite end of the board.
He does not need to physically capture Dooku's king in order to win this match.
"Checkmate."
Count Dooku is not a man of expression, which makes Obi-Wan's satisfaction soar when his eyes widen as he examines the board.
"Did you not say you don't play?"
"You're right, I didn't say that. I believe my words were, the Temple does not teach it anymore." Obi-Wan smirks as he slowly stands from the table. "There was still a club, though."
A flash of something crosses Dooku’s face. Too quick for Obi-Wan to fully process, but he swears it is the semblance of a smirk. The Jedi has to actively hold himself back from flinching when Dooku’s hand suddenly raises toward him. A dozen different scenarios for how this is Dooku’s trap to catch him off guard runs through Obi-Wan’s mind, but in the end he takes the Count’s hand and gives it a firm shake. Because Dooku is a lot of things, but the type to diverge from etiquette and tradition is not one.
“If you fought dueled like you play chess you might have left Geonosis with your pride.”
“That’s almost a compliment,” Obi-Wan wags his eyebrows, and Dooku’s annoyed stare returns in full Force.
“Merely an observation.”
“An astute one, at that. Now, what have I won?”
“Won?”
“I quite doubt you went through the trouble of capturing me to come beat you at chess, Dooku.”
“Ah,” he clicks his tongue and stands from the table. Obi-Wan’s guard immediately rises when the Count nods his head toward the other end of the room and the double doors crash open.
“Your little game finally through?” Ventress’ voice is like nails dragging across sandpaper with the undertones of a misplaced tooka purr. She’s backed by a whole hoard of battle droids that already have their weapons trained directly on him. Obi-Wan goes to stand, but his body is pressed into the chair with the Force. She sneers when they make eye contact. A familiar sight that makes his stomach feel like it’s filled with maggots.
“One day you will understand the value of patience,” Dooku says with a stern look at the Sith acolyte.
“He’s right, Ventress,” Obi-Wan says breathlessly through the invisible tightness across his chest. “Foreplay is actually quite essential.”
“Now look what you’ve done,” Ventress pulls a dagger from her belt and applies light pressure as the back of the blade drags across his jawline. “Winning your silly game has given him a big head.”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to take care of that.”
Her eyes narrow with the stretch of her smile. “Oh, I have a list. Shall we go in order of least to most painful like the last time?”
“Oh don’t be a bore, Ventress, let’s mix it up.”
The acolyte smirks and flips the blade with a sudden flick in her wrist. It’s so sharp that Obi-Wan hardly feels more than a slight sting as it embeds into his cheek. Then a warm trail running down his neck and pooling at his collar.
“Alphabetical order it is.”