Chapter Text
“This should be the last of the hidden rooms,” Sargent Vlissper said, attaching the master key maker to the door’s pad.
Obi-Wan gave a short hum of acknowledgement.
The safety force hadn’t seemed to enjoy talking to him, despite calling for a Jedi to come after the judge had ordered all of the former governor’s possessions confiscated and a force artifact had blown up during said confiscation. But it seemed like most people on Galidraan were fairly grumpy, so perhaps the safety force just didn’t like talking, instead of disliking talking to him in particular.
The door opened with a hiss, letting a stream of clearly artificially chilled air out into the hallway.
Obi-Wan stepped in first. Nothing in the Force warned him of danger, after all, and he certainly had enough layers on to not care about the cold.
The others followed him in, slower, wary.
There were sculptures, a few made of plasmas or magnetic fluids that Obi-Wan recognized, many more of substances he couldn’t identify at first glance. None of them were noteworthy in the Force.
Tapestries and books – all actual paper and fabric – were displayed as well, all looking like they belonged in a museum behind glass.
Obi-Wan kept moving along past the now exposed trophies. Now that he was almost certain there was no danger in this room, he found himself drifting through the large room.
There was… something. Not danger, not warning. But something in the Force, nearby. It was vague, and the more he focused on it the less sense it seemed to make. It felt like trying to wipe away moisture trapped under his datapad’s screen by blowing on it.
He didn’t really know what he was supposed to do with that.
Obi-Wan couldn’t really remember the last time the Force wasn’t screaming a warning at him or ambiently quiet on a mission. Of course this would happen on his first solo mission as a senior padawan.
He moved towards the odd spot in the Force, following the vague sensation through the rows of collected prizes.
He startled as he turned around the corner of a large painted vase made of some sort of wood, only to almost walk into a person. He felt himself freeze as much as the person in front of him when he realized the person was another unmoving display, and the source of the odd feeling in the Force.
A preserved, taxidermied body? The person was in Mandalorian armor, rearranged so that their helmet was resting against their cocked hip. Obi-Wan could see a bit of clear thread wrapped around the helmet’s antenna to sew it to the nearby sleeves.
They looked young, eyes closed as if resting peacefully, only two small scars on their smooth face.
What the kriff had Galidraan’s governor gotten up to?
Obi-Wan walked around the… body, he supposed, trying to figure them out both visually and in the Force. It took only a few moments – now that he knew what he was actually noticing – to realize, his limbs freezing again, that the odd presence in the Force was still a living being.
“Sargent Vlissper!” he yelled.
Obi-Wan walked into the medbay and almost curled his nose as the smell hit him.
Would it kill antiseptic manufacturers to work on a few products that didn’t make his feel like he’d snorted pepper? Then maybe trips to the medic would actually be pleasant, injuries aside.
“How are they?” he asked, walking over to the medic by the found-in-the-governor’s-collection person’s bed.
Despite his fear from being called down here, it had to be good news. There were hardly any machines connected to them.
“They’re dead,” the medic responded, blunt.
That brought Obi-Wan up short.
“Pardon?”
“They’re dead. No pulse, no breath, no brainwaves, no cellular growth. They’re dead,” the medic said, clearly annoyed in the Force.
But in the Force, Obi-Wan could still feel the person’s life, their soul and presence. A dead person, a corpse, couldn’t have that, even with the odd twisting of the Force around them.
Or could they? What was the odd cover to their presence?
But even if the presence was clinging to a dead body, it was still the presence of life, was it not?
“But the Force-” he began.
“Look, medically, they’re dead. Very very dead. I don’t care what your magic voices say, as far my training and equipment and abilities are concerned, they’re dead. You can take them if you think they’re alive so badly, otherwise I’m getting the coroner’s runners” the medic interrupted, clearly annoyed and already turning away from the bed.
Obi-Wan glanced at the person. They looked young, youthful in a way that spoke of a future, of possibilities, not a morgue.
They looked like they were just sleeping, felt alive like they were sleeping, not non-extant as if they were dead.
“And what paperwork do I need to fill out, to take custody of this body the Jedi consider alive?” he hurried out before the medic could walk away.
They really did look like they were sleeping, Obi-Wan couldn’t help but notice again.
Their eyes were closed, face neutral. They didn’t look red in the face or pale.
Obi-Wan sat down next to the bed, somewhat glad he didn’t have much choice in picking a polite distance to be from someone stuck in a mysterious Force coma. His ship had assigned on the assumption that he alone was going to be using it, after all.
He readjusted his stool before closing his eyes, settling himself and blocking out the physical plane.
He focused on his breathing, letting the rumbling sound and sensation of the ship slip away. He focused on his breathing, letting the sensation of sitting on a hard stool fall away next. He focused on his breathing, following the Force presence inside him as it thrummed in time with his breath.
The Force was thin, out here in the vacuum of space. In many ways, that just made it easier to focus.
It… really did feel odd, whatever had happened to the Mandalorian’s Force presence.
Obi-Wan was assuming they were Mandalorian, at least. They had the armor, and the medical testing done on Galidraan had revealed they were about 1/16 jawa, 1/8 twi’lek, 1/8 togruta and 11/16 human, which wasn’t an unusual sort of mixture for those from Mandalorian space. He’d sent a request to the archives for any records they had regarding Mandalorian activity around Galidraan, but he might have to track down the former governor’s individual trails to try to identify the person in full.
They were a person though, an alive one, as far as the Force was concerned, even if they indeed had not heartbeat or breath. The Force was thrumming through them, in them, making Obi-Wan more and more certain of their vitality the more he explored their Force presence.
It was still strange though, whatever had been done to them. It felt like a fog on their presence, perhaps even through their presence.
It wasn’t a compulsion, it wasn’t a meditation, although threads in the shroud looked like parts of such things.
Obi-Wan came out of his meditation, still uncertain what was going on with the Mandalorian as he massaged his stiff thighs.
Glacial lava. Thousands of shards of ice flowing through his veins, heat of friction and coldness unrelentingly marching through. An overwhelming, desperate, despairing anger.
Obi-Wan came out of the meditation with a gasp.
He had to take several moments, practicing controlled breathing to calm himself down.
He had gotten, finally, through enough of the fog, or gotten used to it enough, that he could find and explore more of the person. He’d finally been able to tap into their emotions.
He hadn’t felt this sort of grief since he was with the Young.
Obi-Wan looked at the Mandalorian still sleeping on his bed. What had they gone through?
It was compulsion and meditation and something like a spell, Obi-Wan and Master Nu and Healer Blive had decided, once he could describe what the situation was enough and they had time to research, keeping them almost frozen in time. It was likely inflicted on them by a fallen Jedi, given that the Mandalorian wasn’t Force sensitive. It was likely reversible as well.
Obi-Wan could slowly work on testing and unravelling the fog, loosening the hold of it on the person. He knew how to do that well enough for Healer Blive to trust him, and xe made it quite clear that it would be fine no matter how much or little progress he managed to make while coming back to the temple.
Obi-Wan settled into another meditation, sinking into the Mandalorian’s presence easily. He’d become fairly familiar with them over the past few days.
They were angry, grieving – emotions stuck in time with whatever event they’d gone through before they’d been put into this state.
It was odd, honestly, to rummage around their Force presence, their emotions. There were no variations, no fluctuations like should happen with anyone. The person was a frozen frame that Obi-Wan could explore in depth like an exhibition keeping an artifact perfectly preserved, artificially keeping it out of time even as other wove around in paths of normal, living time.
Obi-Wan felt cold again as he came out of his meditation, like he had also frozen while attempting to interact with the frozen person.
Parts of the fog were so tight, like they had been riveted onto the person’s Force presence. Obi-Wan had taken to focusing on loosening the fog there.
He’d made good progress. Most of the rivets were gone, the fog still tangled around the person but loose now. As if, once he managed to get the last rivets gone, he could just rinse the fog away, like loose gauze against a hose.
Obi-Wan focused on another tight spot, prying under and up to break where the spell was holding onto the person’s presence.
It had become easier and easier as he did it, as he got more and more familiar with the person. He was fairly certain he knew the person’s presence in the Force – the ins and outs, each nook and cranny – better than he knew anyone save himself.
He pried against the spell, digging himself in between it and the person. He dug against the points of connection, where the spell clawed into them and kept their Force presence captive.
Once it was loose, not able to hold onto the person properly with Obi-Wan in between, it only took some mental effort to force the rivet out of the person’s Force presence.
He moved onto the next rivet.
It was pried out, slowly and forcefully, and came out like a door groaning as it was finally made to open like it was supposed to after being sealed shut, like all the others had.
He moved onto the next rivet.
Obi-Wan got through the remaining rivets he’d found this time, had started to move on to searching for more, when the fog seemed to crash in on itself.
There’s a flood all around him as the fog is swept away, twisting and crumbling into nothing, familiar and overwhelming. An overwhelming, desperate, despairing anger. A glacial lava of thousands of shards of ice flowing through his veins, heat of friction and coldness unrelentingly barreling through him. And shock, pure, adrenalized shock that froze Obi-Wan in the middle of the caldera.
When he became aware of anything but emotion again, it was to his own panting breath that he came back.
Next was the blunted sensation of something on his neck.
Obi-Wan centered himself, forcing his breath to calm and grounding himself back down to the present and tangible.
He opened his eyes to a now familiar face gnarled with desperate, angry lines that he hadn’t seen on the smooth, calm face before. The eyes were cloudy and squinted. The mouth hung open a bit like they were trying to catch their breath but didn’t have the energy to properly breathe.
The person, the probably-Mandalorian Obi-Wan had been taking care of for over a week, was also trying to choke him.
Their hands had technically made it to his neck, but one was already slipping down, and the other’s fingers were bluntly digging into his skin, just trying to stay on instead of managing any actual choking.
“Osik- Jetii-,” the Mandalorian pushed out, voice weak and feeble despite all the spirit they were clearly trying to put into the words.
Well, this was going to be troublesome, wasn’t it?