Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They didn’t even wait until his birthday.  Somehow that made it all hit harder.  There happened to be a ship heading to Bandomeer, and the Jedi Corps there was in need of a ploughman - and apparently since Obi-Wan hadn’t found the favor of a Jedi Master by the age of almost-thirteen, that was all he was good for.  

He wanted to say, “It’s not my fault that I fell behind!” but making excuses was against the Jedi code, he was pretty sure.  “I did poorly in training because I was exhausted from waking up with nightmares every night!” also felt like an excuse.  Or worse, the odd specificity of his nightmares would draw more ire than sympathy - his parents had started calling him ‘sorcerer’ when he’d dreamt that all of his skin was burning off and the next day their neighbour’s house had burnt down with said neighbour inside of it.  He didn’t want to be labelled a freak again after so recently being accepted.  He wanted to say, “I was just starting to feel like I belonged here!” but the strength of feelings behind those words would have been frowned upon.  He just couldn’t seem to help it.  Strong emotions were already something that Obi had been working very hard to contain and put into orderly boxes in his mind, a task that was honestly more difficult than harnessing the Force ever was.  

In fact, he was pretty sure that it was his unruly emotions that had ruined everything.  He still remembered Qui-Gon Jinn, a man whom he’d hoped would become his teacher and Master, watching him spar against another boy, Bruck Chun.  Master Yoda had set up the duel after catching the two of them fighting in the corridors, much to Obi-Wan’s shame.  Trying to forget how Chun had regularly made his life miserable, Obi had done his best to show off his control and his mastery of the Force instead of the hurt and anger inside of him.  Obi-Wan had fought with all he had, to the point where he was staggering, his body humming like a warning, a sign that he’d gone past the point of collapse long ago and was running on nothing but desperation and the Force now.  

But he still won, pushing himself past that point, until he was on his knees and trembling.  

And Master Jinn had looked at him with an expression of disapproval and maybe even alarm.  While Obi was still panting too hard to speak, Qui-Gon had declared calmly, “He’s too dangerous,” and had turned away.  

There had been no more prospective Masters after that.  

“An honourable path, this is,” Master Yoda had assured him, when he’d delivered the news about Bandomeer.  Well, when he’d delivered the news in person - word had already gotten around via the active Initiate rumour mill a full day before, so Obi was mostly just numb by the time the diminutive Jedi Master actually came to see him.  Maybe being numb was good, though.  Less chance of anger and despair breaking free.  Less chance of proving Qui-Gon Jinn right.  Obi-Wan didn’t think that he was dangerous, but people in his life kept saying it - Jinn wasn’t the first.  “In the Jedi Corps, good work you will do,” Master Yoda had gone on with a firm nod.  When Kenobi had been fished out of the river his mother had sought to drown her ‘sorcerer son’ in, they’d said that he’d do good work for the Jedi Council.  It was hard not to see this as a step down, a betrayal, even as Yoda sagely finished, “Focus your teachings on the Force within the land, you will.”

Feeling betrayed made Obi feel angry, which immediately afterwards made him feel wretched, because anger wasn’t something a good Jedi was supposed to feel.  He wrestled with those emotions while trying to keep a straight face and listen as Yoda instructed him to prepare for transport tomorrow.  Still wondering if his anger meant that he would have made a bad Jedi after all, Obi-Wan bowed deeply and thanked Master Yoda for setting everything up and passing on the information.  

That night when Obi Wan settled into his bed in the room he shared with four other Initiates, it took everything he had not to force-choke Bruck unconscious.  The fact that Bruck hadn’t been chosen by Qui Gon Jinn either was a small consolation prize, but didn’t do anything to change the fact that Obi-Wan was done . He wasn’t going to become a Jedi.  He was just going back out into the world where he’d once again be a freak with strange powers that kept him up at night and did nothing but make the people around him nervous.

That night Obi hoped to at least be spared dreams.  Instead he woke up hours before dawn sweating and filled with a nameless panic, his mind embroiled with strange images of a broken circle and the smell of burning flesh and hot metal.  Like every other nightmare he’d had since childhood, it was too fragmented to make any sense, but clung to him like tar and made him want to scream or cry.  Already knowing that his creche would be unsympathetic to his situation, Obi-Wan instead bit his tongue and turned over so that he could press his cheek against the coolness of the wall - because it somehow felt like the skin there was still on fire.  Usually, he kept quiet because then no one else would lose out on sleep like he did (even if his own lack of sleep often held up the whole class anyway, since their teachers insisted that a whole creche moved on as a team or not at all, and Obi-Wan made a subpar student when he was tired).  Now, he kept quiet just out of habit.  He wouldn’t be holding up anyone anymore, no matter how exhausted he was and no matter who woke up to him sobbing in a dream-induced panic.  

The strange images and terrifyingly tangible pain faded, but Obi stayed awake until dawn, only pretending to be asleep when everyone else got up.  Master Yoda had said he could sleep in until the transport came.  

~^~

There wasn’t much to pack besides his lightsaber.  Jedi were not encouraged to have worldly possessions, and therefore neither were Initiates - and even if they were a more worldly order, it wasn’t as if Obi-Wan had arrived with much.  His parents had been glad to be rid of him, and Obi had still been coughing up river-water when he’d been herded back to the visiting Jedi’s ship (a stop at home to collect things had clearly been out of the question).  Master Yoda had given Obi-Wan two sets of civilian clothes the night before, and he donned one set now, and refused to admit that he was shaking as he carefully folded up his temple clothing for the last time, leaving them on the bed.  He had no good memories in this room, but it had still represented hope to him. The thought of being turned away from another home - another potential family - rose up to nearly strangle him. 

Since Jedi weren’t supposed to have worldly attachments, it was unlikely that anyone would miss him.  From day one even his eagerness to please had seemed to offput people, as if he were just… too much.  A fire too hot, a fever, a starving thing that threatened to devour at an unhealthy pace.  Obi-Wan had been working on quashing those impulses, but it seemed that he hadn’t gotten the hang of it fast enough, and now he’d run out of chance. That thought was driven home as he made his way to the transport without even seeing Master Yoda again, although a few others from the Jedi temple were there to see him off.  It was a quiet affair.  Jedi weren’t supposed to form attachments, so Obi reminded himself that this was normal.  No need to make a fuss about it.  He kept repeating that to himself.  Jedi did not form attachments.

Then he saw Qui-Gon Jinn also heading towards the transport, and it was all Obi-Wan could do not to perk up like and run right up to the man.   As it was, he managed to contain himself until Jinn was almost up the ramp - and by then, it was inevitable that Obi follow, surely?  “Master Jinn,” Kenobi greeted, going for an ‘ I’m not even thinking about how you were my last shot at a Jedi Master but said no ’ tone.  “I didn’t realise that we’d be sharing a transport.  Are you also headed to Bandomeer?”

“I am indeed,” Master Jinn said, in a tone that managed unaffectedness far better than Obi-Wan’s.  As always, the Jedi Master sounded simply calm and polite, and Obi felt himself drawn in to the reassuring presence that the man had.  “I have been called to act as a Guardian of the Peace for some negotiations there, so it was fortunate that a transport was already heading there.”

Walking side-by-side, they entered the belly of the transport, hearing as other supplies were loaded up behind them.  Obi-Wan’s attention, however, was drawn to a piece of paper in Qui-Gon’s hands - it seemed to be distracting the man, something that stood out because Jedi in general were not oft-distracted individuals.  “Did someone send you a letter?” Obi-Wan couldn’t help but ask, folding his hands behind him and resisting the urge to peer.

Even though Kenobi had made no move to sneak a peek at the paper, Jinn immediately folded it up and stuffed it into a pocket of his robes.  He cast Obi-Wan a censuring look that stung, because it hadn’t felt like a particularly prying question.  “It is just a greeting from an old acquaintance,” Jinn said.

For some reason, Obi-Wan didn’t believe him, but pressing the issue definitely didn’t seem like a good idea.  They walked for a while in silence, heading towards their seats.  It wasn’t until they were sitting down and strapping themselves in that Obi worked up the courage to ask, “Do you think you might need some assistance?  I’d be more than happy to help you on your mission.  In an ancillary capacity, of course.”  He made sure to put on his most polite voice, something that he’d learned back when he’d still lived with his parents, where politeness had been a kind of armour against their hatred for him.  Sometimes they forgot he was their freak son if he was perfectly behaved.  

Obi-Wan knew the moment the words left his mouth what response he was going to get. Qui-Gon drew in a breath that was destined to become a sigh, his expression grew resigned in a way that turned quickly to pity, and he just turned and looked at the ex-Initiate for a moment in silence.  In that moment, Obi-Wan felt as if he were stripped naked, and he’d never wanted to sink through the floor or spontaneously combust more in his life.  He was unable to meet Jinn’s eyes as he was forced to endure the patient, mildly chiding response, “We all have our own paths, Obi-Wan.  Railing against the way set before us can end only in anger and disappointment.”

Because Obi was already feeling anger and disappointment, he didn’t say anything other than his most polite, quiet, “Of course, Master Jinn.  My apologies,” and was glad that the engines turned on then.  It was not a quiet ship, so it made for a good excuse to not say anything more, at least for take-off.  They struck up conversation later, but it was all just small-talk, and Obi-Wan did his best to reply as if the earlier things he’d said had never left his mouth.  

~^~

The flight was uneventful and fairly long, although by the end of it Obi-Wan felt less awkward and was even starting to forget that he was leaving the Jedi temple more or less in disgrace (no matter what Master Yoda said about the honourable path of the Jedi Corps, all Obi-Wan could think was that he hadn’t been good enough to become a Jedi).  Qui-Gon had told him a bit more about the business on Bandomeer (something about brokering a peaceful deal between the local government and the oft-problematic Offworld Mining Company), and it felt good to be included and trusted with that information.  Master Jinn even seemed to listen when Kenobi voiced tentative opinions on the matter, hawklike profile thoughtful as he nodded along with the ex-Initiate’s words.  

When they arrived on Bandomeer it was late, and instead of immediately sending Obi-Wan off to find his way, Jinn placed a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place.  “I have rooms at the Capital - room enough for us both,” he said graciously, “It’s late, and there’s no need for you to be wandering around in the dark.”

Obi-Wan could sense anxiety around the Jedi Master, although he couldn’t sense more than that without getting nosy.  Still, the opportunity to spend more time with Qui-Gon wasn’t something he was going to pass up, so after a brief frown of bemusement, Kenobi nodded.  “Of course.  Thank you.  Better than trying to hunt up a guide at this hour, certainly.”

Jinn relaxed a bit at that, although he glanced around them with the wariness of a man expecting trouble, which in turn put Kenobi on edge.  On the transport, they’d discussed the Offworld Mining Company in some detail - and how they were likely to try and pull some tricks to gain the upper hand in the upcoming negotiations.  Bandomeer had potential both with its mines and, with the help of the Agri-Corps, would hopefully have agricultural bounties in time, too, although it remained to be seen if the Bandomeerin natives would remain in control of their world’s worth.  The Offworld Mining Company was notorious for its long reach and predatory trading practices.  Perhaps that was why Qui-Gon was on edge.

So long as it made him eager to keep Kenobi close rather than immediately shooing him off like some unwanted pest… Obi-Wan wasn’t going to complain.

Their room was simple, although it felt lavish by Jedi standards, and the daybed was more than big enough for the two of them to settle in with room to spare.  Used to sharing cramped quarters with multiple Initiates, Obi actually found it rather reassuring to be sharing the space, even as he had a momentary panic at the realisation that now his nightmares might wake up a full Jedi Master instead of a room full of pre-teens.  Lying on his back in his sleep-clothes while Master Jinn settled with his back to Obi-Wan on the other half of the bed, the young human stared at the ceiling and felt his stomach tie itself up in knots.  

“Go to sleep, Obi-Won,” the low timbre of Jinn’s voice startled Kenobi; he’d thought for sure that the adult Force-user was already sleeping.  “Tomorrow will bring what it will regardless of whether you sleep or not - but you will be better able to face it if you are rested.”

‘ You mean I’m going to the Agri-Corps tomorrow whether I like it or not ,’ Kenobi thought with a sudden burst of sullenness, then a beat later felt the familiar wave of repentance over the negative thought.  Chewing his lip, he considered for the millionth time that he probably was unfit to be a Jedi, considering how impulsive and angry his thoughts were.  Contrite, Obi-Wan folded his hands over the blankets atop his stomach and murmured, “Of course, Master Jinn.”

There was a pause in which Qui-Gon continued to breathe just as evenly as if he were sleeping, but then a pause before he added, more hopefully than before, “You might also attempt meditation.  Even a shallow trance might help you slip into sleep.”

Meditation had never seemed helpful in stopping the nightmares, but Jinn did have a point otherwise.  Besides, it wasn’t like Kenobi’s overactive subconscious woke him up every night… just most nights.  “I’ll try that.  Thank you,” he said obediently, while praying to every deity he’d ever heard of that he wouldn’t wake up crying or screaming and have Qui-Gon Jinn think he was a freak as well as dangerous .  

~^~

The night’s quiet lasted almost to dawn before it was broken by a nightmare.

The only surprising thing about that was that it was Qui-Gon who had the nightmare, not Obi.

The bed jolted.  That’s what woke him, with a bit of a start, opening his eyes to blink fuzzily at Jinn’s tensed, curled back a second before Qui-Gon threw back the blankets and stood up.  Blinking fuzzily but coming awake as fast as he could, Obi could hear that the Jedi was breathing hard, and the Force rippled with anxiety like before - but tenfold more raw and intense now.  Kenobi sat up, the last of his sleep disappearing as if by magic as he belatedly remembered that he wasn’t the only person in creation capable of nightmares.  

“Are you okay?” he asked, uncertain if that was the right thing to say because he didn’t have any memories of people being all that comforting to him when he’d had his bad dreams.  

Jinn twisted around (he’d been facing the closed balcony windows), as if startled to find someone else in the room.  Obi-Wan noted with some alarm that the man even reached in the direction of his lightsaber, although he didn’t call it to his hand and quickly relaxed.  The moonlight reflected off a sheen of sweat across one cheekbone.  “Obi-Wan,” he said, as if naming the boy reminded Jinn that there was no threat, “I’m sorry to have woken you.”

“It’s okay.”  Shifting a bit to sit more comfortably, Obi folded his hands in his lap and made himself be calm as he took a risk and asked, “Were you woken by a nightmare?”  Somewhere in the back of his mind, deep beneath the calm expression he was wearing and polite, attentive smile, there was a voice screaming, ‘ Yes!  Please!  Let someone else have these terrors like I do! ’  Wishing his issues on someone else was a truly horrible thing, but at that point Obi-Wan was willing to wish for at least one horrible thing if it meant a possibility of being understood… and maybe even kept, instead of being sent away.

“It was just a dream, nothing more,” Jinn’s response dampened Kenobi’s hopes a bit, although he bit the inside of his cheek so as not to show it.  

“Quite a dream,” he dared to press, the darkness of the room making him bold perhaps, “to have woken you so suddenly. I didn’t know that Jedi had such dreams.”  ‘ Please say that they do.  That at least some of them do.  That at least someone other than me does .’

“Many species dream, and some are more troubling than others,” Qui-Gon allowed, and Kenobi leaned forward without realising it, hoping for something but not even knowing what anymore.  Unfortunately, he was not hoping for Jinn to look at him and then say sternly, “Dreams are often random energy.  Nothing more.  A Jedi should treat a dream as he does unstable ground - there is nothing intrinsically trustworthy to be found there.”

Inside, Kenobi wilted.  So he really was a freak, unnatural even amidst the strangeness of Force-users.  Outwardly, he managed to keep his face the same, and with effort kept his shoulders from sagging.  He did feel suddenly very tired, though, and maybe a bit like he suddenly wanted to cry.  “Good to know!” he chirped, fashioning a smile and a sunny voice - anything to distract from his own internal misery.  “So are you and your ‘random energy’ going to go back to sleep then, or is the whole bed mine now?”

Jinn snorted and cracked a smile, a sure sign that Obi-Wan had successfully kept the Jedi Master from looking too closely at what lay beneath the teasing response.  It was a trick that Obi had started really getting good at during his training at the temple, when his creche had already been furious at him for holding them up, and then one of their teachers had asked if Obi-Wan was all right and if they needed to slow down further.  Smiling and joking meant that people stopped asking the wrong questions and life could return to normal, no matter how horrible that normal was.  

Still looking a bit restless and distracted, Jinn’s voice was nonetheless a mixture of wryness and warmth as he responded, “I see now what truly motivates you, boy.  But yes, the bed is yours.  I’m going to stay awake and meditate for a while.”  Jinn looked back out the window again, as if his eyes could somehow pierce the darkness there.  “It seems my advice to you earlier was advice I should have heeded myself.”

Obi-Wan gave a little snicker and then flopped back on the bed, making a bit of a production of it because he knew it would amuse the man.  Making a show of snuggling back under the covers was also a good excuse to quickly hide his face from sight, as the smile crumpled like sand beneath a wave.  Kenobi ended up meditating a bit, too, but only enough so that he didn’t have to worry about his misery bleeding out through the Force and disturbing anyone nearby.

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon parted ways in the morning.  It was no longer too dark to see, escorts were easy to find, and Jinn seemed to have lost the wary energy from the day before - perhaps his meditation had really done him some lasting good.  When Kenobi woke up that morning, the Jedi was sitting cross-legged by the window, looking as calm and unassailable as when Obi-Wan had first seen him at the temple.  When Obi cracked a few jokes, Jinn smiled and returned the banter in kind, but very pointedly, skillfully, and stubbornly avoided the topic of what had happened the night before.  Obi-Wan stopped trying to bring it up pretty quickly, to be fair - partly because he didn’t want to be accused of being a general busybody and partly because he didn’t want his interest to seem suspicious, now that Jinn’s disapproving view on dreams had been made clear.  

The two of them parted ways with a cordial bow, and with only his small pack of belongings and his lightsaber to remind him (perhaps cruelly) that his time at the temple had been real, Obi-Wan was led away to his new job helping with Bandomeer’s Enrichment Zones.  

~^~

4 Days Later

~^~

It was the day before Obi-Wan’s birthday so of course he had one of his worst nightmares in months.  Thankfully he had his own room, because he woke up so violently that he fell right out of bed, the harsh impact of his knees on the floor barely enough to jar him out of the dream.  Kenobi hadn’t been sleeping well since entering the Enrichment Zone - it wasn’t anything strange or suspicious, just the fact that apparently he was more used to sleeping with company than he’d thought.  Lacking the sounds of breathing around him, the hum of other nearby life-forces, the sense that he was instead within an empty room apparently made it hard for him to sleep more than a few hours at a time.  Thankfully, this broken sleep schedule had thus far meant that he didn’t have very active dreams - until now.  

Wide-eyed and panting, Obi-Wan scrambled for the lights, needing to dispel the images before his eyes.  He stumbled and made clumsy work of his task because one of his hands was needed to rub at his throat - in his dream, a native Meerian he didn’t know had extended a hand to greet him, only to keep reaching until there were fingers constricting around Kenobi’s throat.  He could still feel the phantom sensation of pressure all the way around, as well as a remembrance of almost icy coldness that made… well, about as much sense as his dreams usually made.  His neck had been constricted by an icy hand while the stranger had smiled at him mildly.  The rest of the dream was foggy and scrambled, and even after Obi got the lights on and collapsed to sit on the edge of his bed, he didn’t feel like delving too deeply into it.  A wall that had shuddered and withdrawn beneath his touch; a room with boxes in it but one small box that had filled him with an uncontrollable terror; a broken circle so dark it had been like a contorted black hole, threatening to suck him in.  It all seemed so benign when Kenobi laid out the pieces in his head, yet his subconscious had tangled up the entire experience with absolutely choking levels of fear and the sensation of being grabbed by the neck.  

Swearing quietly to himself, Obi-Wan got up to find his lightsaber.  Maybe if he went outside (it seemed to be early pre-dawn, not quite black out) and practised a bit, he’d be able to shake the last of the dream so that he could stop shaking.  His clothing was already stuck to him with sweat, so why not add a bit more through exercise?  He’d shower when he was done, and then go about his day like the inside of his head wasn’t a madhouse at night. 

~^~

Working as a part of the Agricultural Corps wasn’t terrible.  It was just boring.  Kenobi’s day to day tasks changed depending on where he was needed, however, which at least broke up the tedium - sometimes they actually needed him as a Force-user, to focus on the life-force of some delicate plant they were hoping to grow, sometimes they needed him to levitate a piece of heavy machinery, and sometimes they needed him to roll up his sleeves and get dirty when another piece of machinery just wouldn't’ get the job done as well as many hands would.  Sometimes Obi-Wan felt like a Jedi and sometimes he felt like a ploughman.  And no matter what he was doing, there was a 50/50 chance that someone was going to stare at him like some sort of zoo exhibit, because Force-users weren’t common on Bandomeer apparently.  

He hadn’t a clue how things were going with Qui-Gon Jinn and the Offworld Mining Company negotiations.  Kenobi had already made a number of passing friends in the Enrichment Zone, and he was good at making small talk, but they didn’t know much details about the capital either - except that the talks were still ongoing and the Jedi Master hadn’t left yet.  If Obi asked too many questions about that, someone inevitably asked why Obi-Wan wasn’t there, too, because wasn’t he a Jedi like Qui-Gon Jinn?  Obi-Wan would usually laugh it off and say he’d washed out of Jedi school, and then find a way to quietly disengage from the conversation and leave.  

He’d just wriggled loose of one such conversation when suddenly someone called out to him.  The sun was in Obi-Wan’s eyes, so it wasn’t until he was fairly close to the speaker - just stepping under the edges of a fruit tree - that he had a moment of nearly heart-stopping recognition.  

The individual who had called out to him, and who was now blinking benignly at him, was the Meerian from his dream.  

Natives of Bandomeer were not very intimidating - not even two metres tall and wiry, they were often similar in size to a pre-teen like Kenobi, and Kenobi was the one with a lightsaber.  Yet with his dream rearing up like a shot of adrenaline right to his heart, Obi-Wan felt like he was suddenly facing down a monster, even as the silver-haired Meerian spoke to him calmly as if nothing at all were amiss.  It took a beat for Obi-Wan’s brain to register that he was being spoken to: “-Wants to speak with you.”

“I beg your pardon?” the ex-Initiate scrambled, suddenly realised that he was acting very rudely on the basis of just one crazy nightmare.  Meerian culture didn’t even include handshakes, and this one certainly hadn’t tried to strangle him.  

Looking a bit put-out but otherwise still non-threatening, the Meerian replied, “Please listen, young Master.  I said that there is someone who wishes to speak with you.  He says that he’s a friend of Master Jinn’s - the Jedi who arrived here with you.”  Then suddenly the Meerian reached out to him - not to shake his hand, but to beckon him.  It was the same motion, though.  “Come.  He’s in the main dome.”

Kenobi’s heart was beating out a painful rhythm behind his breastone, and he couldn’t find a way to slow it, or stop the unreasonable fear rising up again.  “I… I need to do something first.  I forgot something.  An important task,” the words tumbled out of his mouth, sounding muffled to his own ears.  He was staring at the Meerian’s hand as if it were a hungry Hssiss.  Giving himself an internal shake, he forced something like his usual bright smile on his face and added, “It’ll only take me a second - then I’ll be right there.  You said this… friend… was at the main dome?”  Said location was visible in the distance.  

The Meerian narrowed his eyes, but ultimately shrugged and then nodded.  “I’ll inform him that you’ll be along momentarily - he seemed a patient sort, but do not doddle!” the Meerian chided, and when he next moved his hands it was only to place his hands palm-down in the common Meerian signal that the conversation was over.  Obi-Wan, realising that he’d probably missed the matching signal of greeting, was quick to mime the gesture, earning him a slightly more impressed nod from the Meerian.  

They parted ways, and Kenobi found himself walking off briskly in the other direction.

As soon as he was out of sight, near one of the fields, he started running . 

Chapter Text

It was like he’d fallen asleep and the dream had taken over again; he didn’t know why he was running or where, only that it felt like he had death on his heels.  If anyone had seen him, they’d have thought his heels were on fire, or that he was insane - and honestly, the latter felt about right.  It wasn’t until his lungs and muscles were burning from exertion that sense started to seep back in again, and by then he’d cut right through a field of something, and before he knew it he’d come upon a steep hill at the field’s edge.  He had just enough time to gasp a quick, “Fuck!” before he was overbalancing and tumbling down said hill, all of his usual Jedi nimbleness forgotten.  He fetched up against a stone outcropping at the base of the hill, groaning and winded and feeling abruptly stupid instead of scared.  

“Nice going, Kenobi,” he muttered to himself between breaths as he got his wind back.  Wincing and clutching his hip where he was sure he had a bruise forming already, he braced his other hand against the rock to lever himself to his feet.

And out of the corner of his eye, saw the rockface... flicker.

His earlier panic forgotten in favor of curiosity, Kenobi straightened to investigate the wall of stone in more detail.  It was smooth and unremarkable, like many rock formations on Bandomeer, but it felt almost unnaturally cool beneath Obi’s palm - like metal. And when he drew his hand away, for just the briefest of moments, it was as if the surface were transparent.  It only lasted for a millisecond, easy to miss, but Jedi training had made Obi-Wan observant.  Again the dream floated back to him, more quietly than before: the wall that had disappeared beneath his hands.  This one wasn’t disappearing, but as Obi-Wan walked alongside it, dragging his hand against the surface, it shimmered in the wake of his touch.  Then his fingers caught upon a thin seam, and he realised with certainty that this was not a simple rock formation but some sort of cunning metal door.  

Closing his eyes, Kenobi reached out with the Force, feeling everything around him for a moment before focusing in on this strange metal and pushing .  He felt a fingernail slip deeper into the crack as it widened, and by the time he opened his eyes, the entire space in front of him was transparent - showing a room within, filled with boxes - and an electronic beep proceeding the opening of the door.  After a moment of hesitation, Obi-Wan slipped inside, because his dream had included a room full of boxes.  When the door closed behind him, it immediately went opaque again, leaving him with no company but mounds and mounds of boxes with a familiar label on them - the symbol for the Offworld Mining Company, which was quite suspicious, because unless the negotiations had ended almost immediately in favor of Offworld, they shouldn’t have been involved in the Enrichment Zones.  Kenobi didn’t sense any other living beings in the vicinity, so he let his curiosity get the better of him and began to investigate.  None of this boded well, even though the boxes themselves seemed only to be filled with farming supplies.  Just when Obi-Wan decided that he’d seen enough, he caught sight of another, smaller box, tucked away in the back… and felt that echo of fear again.  

The box was marked, not with Offworld’s sigil, but with nothing more than a broken circle.  

Offworld wasn’t the type to just generously help out unless there was something in it for them, and all Kenobi knew about the other box was that the broken-circle mark filled him with a nameless dread - so much so that he couldn’t bring himself to touch it.  So with the surety that something was awry here, Kenobi slipped back out again and made a beeline for his rooms - he had a comm system there.  

He had to call Jinn and tell him what he’d found.

So focused on this was Obi-Wan that he forgot entirely about the supposed ‘friend’ of Jinn’s who was waiting for him in the main dome.  

~^~

“I have to return to negotiations soon, but you said this was important, Obi-Wan?” Master Jinn asked, his voice and the miniature hologram of him indicating no impatience despite the comment about his schedule.  As always, the Jedi was perfectly appropriate and calm.  

Kenobi, meanwhile, was doing his best not to jitter with nervous energy.  “Yes!” he answered immediately, “I think that Offworld is meddling in Agri-Corps business - or at least influencing the Enrichment Zone here already.  You haven’t made any sort of deal with them, have you?”

The Jedi frowned.  His hologram wavered then solidified as the channel flickered.  “We’re still in the midst of talks, so no - no concessions or agreements have been made yet.  Where are these accusations coming from?”

Realising that he sounded like a lunatic with a vendetta rather than a Force-user with Jedi training, Obi-Wan backed up mentally and redoubled his efforts to at least appear calm and relaxed.  More slowly and thoughtfully now, he described the strange wall of stone that had turned out to be a doorway, and the boxes beyond.  Before he could get further, Jinn asked a bit more about the doorway, muttering something about ‘transparisteel’ that meant nothing to Kenobi and honestly seemed rather beside the point.  

“So… what are you going to do?” he pressed.  

“At present?”  One of Jinn’s eyebrows rose fractionally.  “I’m going to return to negotiations.  I can’t do anything without real proof.”

Obi-Wan felt as if someone had dumped water on his head.  “Real proof-?!” he started to explode.

Qui-Gon cut him off, his hologram raising a belaying hand and his voice coming through more sternly than before, “The information you have given me is interesting, nothing more. You have seen one point of data and are extrapolating beyond its reach - and you are certainly acting outside of your purview.”  Qui-Gon paused pointedly, then went on, “You are to assist with the progress of the Enrichment Zone.  It is not your job to investigate the actions, real or otherwise, of the Offworld Mining Company.”

Kenobi was starting to feel about a centimetre tall now, and there was a wretched hollowness in his stomach as he realised that he not only wasn’t being believed, but that he’d clearly gained Master Jinn’s disappointment rather than his approval.  That realisation set off something akin to panic in his veins, at the thought of his last Jedi connection being displeased with him.  “What if I told you there was another box in that room - a box… a box marked with a broken circle?” he blurted without quite knowing why.  That piece of information felt more relevant to his dream than reality.  

At that sentence, Qui-Gon Jinn went very still.  For a moment Kenobi feared that the comm system had frozen up.  Then, in a voice that had finally slipped from stern to harsh, Jinn said, “I would say that it is wrong for respectable young Force-users to spy on other people’s letters.”

Bewildered by that response, Kenobi flinched back as if smacked in the face.  “What?”

“Return to your tasks, Kenobi.  If you find proof of definite wrong-doing, contact me immediately - but otherwise, leave Offworld to me, and stay out of trouble,” Jinn said with a flatness to his tone that very clearly spoke of finality.  He also sounded tired - like he was utterly done with this one boy’s shenanigans.  

Hurt, Obi-Wan tried, “Qui-Gon-”

“Did you hear me, Kenobi?” Qui-Gon cut him off.

Recognizing for the first time that he’d definitely been relegated from the familiar ‘Obi-Wan’ to the more formal ‘Kenobi,’ the ex-Initiate shrank back a bit.  “Yes,” he replied obediently.  

Jinn nodded in approval of the response.  “Good.  Then I must return to my business.  Keep me informed.”  That last sentence sounded tacked on and insincere, and then the hologram disappeared, the connection ended.

Kenobi just sat and started at the comm system for about five desolate minutes, feeling like he was gathering the pieces of himself.  Then he stood sharply, wiped his fingers across his eyes because he was not crying, and strode determinedly for the door.  If Qui-Gon Jinn wouldn’t listen without real proof, then Obi-Wan was going to get him real proof .  And then he’d ask him what the fuck the broken circle symbol had to do with that damn letter, because that was the only explanation that Kenobi could think of for Jinn’s spying-on-letters comment.

~^~

It was hard to believe that this was still the same day, but evening was only just setting in by the time Obi-Wan snuck his way back through the field and to the transparisteel door.  He was pretty sure that he would be in trouble later for shirking multiple duties, but he just knew that something was wrong here - his dream hadn’t made a lot of sense, but the feelings of fear and dread hadn’t needed any translation or clarification.  Konobi had also spent so much of his life just accepting that his dreams meant nothing that now that one made at least a little bit of sense… he just couldn’t drop it.  For the first time his nighttime terror felt like it was for a greater purpose, and he clung to that like a lifeline in a storm even as he once again pressed against the door with the Force, finding the seam again and sliding inside as soon as he could.  Once more it was empty (he’d stretched out his senses beforehand to assure himself of that) save for the boxes, but now he forced himself to move forward more confidently.  

He made a beeline for the box with the broken circle.  When he reached it, he felt the same aversion as before, but forced himself to trace the mark with a finger.  The mark from his dream… and perhaps from the letter that Jinn had hidden so quickly when Kenobi had noticed it.  Clearly, whatever was in that letter, Jin hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but Obi-Wan was going to get some answers now, one way or another.

Just as he began to search for a way to open the box, however, he heard a noise behind him.  When he spun around, he was startled that he still couldn’t sense anything with the Force, not even as he noticed a figure in a shiny black cloak standing a ways behind him.  Kenobi’s hand went for his lightsaber, incredibly glad that he’d gotten into a habit of carrying it - even when he ran off on impulsive excursions like this.  

“I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to startle you,” a low, masculine voice said.  Two hands appeared, open in a sign of harmlessness for a moment before lifting to lower the hood.  Arresting blue eyes watched Kenobi from beneath a fall of jet-black hair, and the man smiled kindly.  “You’re Obi-Wan Kenobi, yes?”  When Obi-Wan’s first reaction was to narrow his eyes and tense up warily, the black-haired young man spread his hands again and added, “Don’t worry, I’m an old friend of Qui-Gon’s.”

A memory from earlier in the day flashed to life in Kenobi’s head, and his eyes widened even as his stance slackened.  “You’re the person I was supposed to meet at the main dome,” he blurted.

The other’s smile became a bit wry.  “Yes, you were indeed.  But it seems that you were up to far more adventurous things, weren’t you?”  He gestured to the room around them, raising an eyebrow.  Obi-Wan flushed, embarrassed at being caught snooping, and the newcomer laughed brightly.  “No harm done - I appear to have found you, so we can talk.  That’s what matters.”

Obi was torn between asking ‘How did you find me?’ and ‘How does one become a friend of Qui-Gon Jinn? ’ but figured that the first would lead to more discussion about where he was and why… and the second would reveal too much about how desperate he was to be wanted by someone.  So instead the young Force-user asked, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Actually-” the older youth sat down on the nearest box, “-I wanted to talk about Jinn.  You and I are quite alike, really, in our relationship with him.”

If Obi-Wan had had more mobile ears, they would have perked up alertly.  He took a few steps closely, entirely involuntarily, “Really? What do you mean?”

“Well, I was his Padawan.”

“His Pada-?” Obi-Wan started, caught off-guard.  He gave his head a physical shake as if to clear it, trying to make sense of the answer even as he replied, “I’m not his Padawan.”  That part hurt to admit, so he was quick to add, “And I heard that his last Padawan died.”

“Oh really?  Everyone says that poor young Xanatos is dead?”  Now the newcomer - Xanatos? - was starting to sound condescending, and there was a new edge on his smile that was more xyresic than before.  

“That’s what everyone says.”

“Of course they would,” Xanatos scoffed, looking away for a moment and shaking his head. “It’s much more palatable than the truth - I’m sure that the Jedi Order doesn’t want anyone to think poorly of Mast Qui-Gon Jinn, one of the brightest gems of Jedi-kind.”  Now there was definitely some vicious humour slipping in, and all the kindness was gone from the handsome smile.  “The story of how Master Jinn let his Padawan down and then betrayed him definitely isn’t exactly the best story, is it?”

Alarmed and angry now in a confusing rush of emotion, Obi-Wan just blinked for a moment before snapping back, “What are you talking about?  Master Jinn-”

“Has let you down, too, admit it,” Xanatos leaned forward to cut him off.

“No.”  The word came after too long a pause.  It didn’t hold the same fervour of his last sentence, and sounded woefully fake even in Obi’s own ears.  

Xanatos’ smile showed more teeth.  For the first time, the angle of his head allowed Kenobi to see both sides of his face - enough to notice a scar on one cheek, an incomplete ring burnt into the flesh.  While Obi-Wan had a moment of shock and confusion over that, unsure how to handle real-life and his dreams crashing together again so many times in one day, Xanatos went on relentlessly, “Don’t defend him - because he won’t defend you.  He’s seen as a saint because he’s good at building people up, for a time.  That’s what he did for me.  Helped me reach the highest of peaks only so that my fall at the end was that much more steep.”  

Obi-Wan dragged his eyes away from the broken-circle scar (the same as the one on the box behind him, the same from his dreams, that he’d felt burned into his own skin like a brand) and forced his mind back to the conversation.  “Jinn wouldn’t do that.” 

“Wouldn’t he?”  Xanatos raised one sharp dark brow.  “Then why are you here?”

“I’m here in the Enrichment Zone because the Agri Corps-”

Kenobi barely got a chance to start before Xanatos was waving his words off with one hand.  “No, I mean here, in this room.  Don’t tell me that you don’t plan on reporting this all back to Jinn - to win his favor, yes?”

That struck too close to the truth, but Obi-Wan still managed to clench his jaw for a moment and then go on with something that was truthful, “He needs to know that Offworld is meddling in Agri Corps business.”

Instead of looking convinced, Xanatos was smiling in a pitying way, elbow now propped on one knee and chin on his palm.  “He’s strung you along like a little pet, hasn’t he?” was how he chose to translate Obi-Wan’s words.  When Kenobi just gaped at him, furious but also feeling his cheeks heat up in inexplicable shame, Xanatos went on, “Jinn’s an incredibly observant man, you know - he’s a Jedi, after all.  There’s no way he can miss how much you want to be his Padawan.  So the fact that you’re here instead of with him means you must be a real fuck-up.”

Kenobi’s heart gave a painful twist in his chest as he involuntarily remembered his dreams, which were indeed very fucked-up.  

Xanatos went on without any need for further input from the boy, “Don’t worry - it’s probably for the best.  Better to be a failure here than under Jinn’s wing.  He’d destroy what little there was of you, like he tried to do to me.  Do you know that he murdered my father right in front of me?”  

Despite how blandly Xanatos said that, there was something hot and wild behind the blueness of his eyes.  Struggling to hope with all of the information (and insults) being continuously thrown at him, Obi-Wan was only able to shake his head and deny, “Qui-Gon wouldn’t do that.  There must be more to the story.”

“Oh, like the part about me being dead?” Xanatos scoffed, “Sure there’s more, but it’s all lies made up by the Jedi Order to make themselves feel better.  Gods, I bet Jinn didn’t even tell them everything.”

“Why are you telling me all of this then?” Kenobi finally demanded, struggling to keep a level head.

“Because despite how Jinn has pushed you aside, I think that he must nonetheless care about you,” Xanatos surprised Obi-Wan by saying.  Just as Kenobi’s mood started to lift, something hopeful stirring from beneath the pain in his breast, Xanatos’ smile turned cruel again and he went on like a crashing ship, “and I figured you may as well understand my side of things, since I plan to use that connection he has to you.”  The ex-Jedi stood up and brushed back his cloak, lightsaber coming instantly to his hand with a flicker of the Force that set Obi-Wan’s teeth on edge with its absentminded strength.  The saber flashed to life with an ominous hiss, the red light of it making his smile suddenly bestial.  He finished at a low coo, “You’re going to be a key piece in my revenge, boy.  Think of it this way: you’ll finally be useful for something.”

Whereas Obi-Wan hadn’t even been able to sense Xanatos earlier, now the very air hummed with the Force - dark and vicious, tasting like clotted blood in the back of Obi-Wan’s throat.  It was hard not to gag, and to instead put all of his speed into reaching for his own lightsaber, drawing and activating it just in time to deflect Xanatos’ first blow.  It was just a quick snap of Xanatos’ wrist - an almost idle gesture as he clearly tested the ex-Initiate’s guard.  The next two strikes came harder, and Kenobi kept up only by backing up.  Then he ended up backing up even further as Xantos thrust a hand outwards without warning, a blast of Force energy sending Obi-Wan skidding.  He kept his feet, though, and even managed to keep his lightsaber up to intercept another slash of red light.  

“Huh, you’re surprisingly not terrible,” Xanatos opined, backing off with a few artful twirls, his movements confident but playful, “You’re no match for me, of course, but if you had more training you might actually become rather good.”  Xanatos snapped the fingers of his free hand inexplicably, then actually lowered his sabre even as he added with a sardonically pitying smile, “Too bad you had to fall in with Qui-Gon.  Now your destiny is about to become quite different.”

The reason for the finger-snap was soon clear as guards poured into the room, all wearing Offworld Mining Company logos.  As much as Obi-Wan wanted to take advantage of Xanatos’ lowered guard, he suddenly couldn’t, as blaster-fire was aimed his way.  While Xanatos stepped back, laughing loudly enough to be heard above the chaos, Kenobi put all of his Jedi training (however short it had been) into deflecting the angry bolts of energy, hearing the hiss and sizzle of them as they again and again came too close for comfort.  He was lucky that the room was small and cluttered with boxes, but just when he manoeuvred himself to jump behind cover, Xanatos was there.  Obi-Wan gasped in pain as he avoided Xanatos’ lightsaber by such a small margin that the pure heat of it washed over his wrist like a sunburn.  If it had touched, he’d have likely been minus a hand.  

The most terrifying part, though, was that he didn’t know if Xanatos had pulled back at the last second or if Obi-Wan had legitimately been able to parry him.  

With the dawning realisation that he couldn’t fight his way out of this one, Obi-Wan focused on just staying alive.  

Xanatos was relentless and horrifically fast.  Even ignoring the immense power of the Force that Kenobi could feel from him, Jinn’s ex-Padawan clearly had lightsaber skills that were nothing short of prodigious.  Obi-Wan was no slouch himself, but the fact was that he was not even thirteen yet, and Xanatos had stacked the odds in his own favor.  Too busy trying not to lose a limb to a lightsaber, Obi-Wan didn’t even see the first guard to make it around the pile of boxes - he just felt a sudden explosion of pain in his shoulder as a blaster shot winged him.  The impact was more than he’d expected, nearly spinning him around, and it was only through the Force that he sensed Xanatos’ last blow still coming at him.  Clutching his shoulder, Kenobi gathered the Force around him and sprung upwards, barely managing a manoeuvre that had him landing clumsily atop the highest box, above everyone’s heads.  He nearly took three more blaster shots instantly, but deflected two and dodged the third by jumping back down again into a new location.  He heard shocked exclamations, showing that he’d at least impressed a few people by how high a Force-user could jump - that stack of boxes was over twice Kenobi’s height.

Unfortunately, the moment that Obi-Wan landed (clumsily, as the pain in his arm was still a new shock to his system), something hit him hard in the back of the head.  He felt his limbs go weak even as his brain flicked off for a moment, the impact dazing him.  He still kept hold of his lightsaber, though, and heard someone swear loudly as he swiped it in a desperate arc.  His legs failed to hold him.  Shakily on his knees, he still managed to Force-shove something - maybe a person, maybe just boxes.  Unfortunately, he was seeing three of everything and barely staying upright when an electro-jabber appeared seemingly out of nowhere to hit him in the ribs.  

It was like being lit on fire and swallowing a lightning bolt all at once; he couldn’t even scream because his muscles locked up, sending him thrashing to the floor even as the guard held the jabber in place for far longer than was necessary.  Anything to keep the lightsaber-wielding kid down, though, right?  Some part of Obi-Wan’s brain was somehow still functional despite the blow to the head and the electro-jabber to the ribs, and noted that it was actually a bit flattering to be treated so seriously.  Fucking painful, but flattering.  

“That’s enough - I think he’s done,” he heard Xanatos say, and the jabber was finally retracted.  The damage had been done, however; Kenobi could barely remember how to wheeze air in and out of his lungs, much less get up and fight back anymore.  He was vaguely aware of a cloak rustling the floor in front of his face, and the sensation of his powered-down sabre being removed from his nerveless fingers.  A helpless keen squeeze its way up his throat without his consent, quiet and barely-there thankfully.  He’d fallen on his left side, and the blaster to his left shoulder was sparking bright notes of pain in counterpoint to the burning throb all down the right side of his ribs; the pounding of his headache could barely compete.

“Hand me the collar,” was the last thing he heard Xanatos say from above him, before everything faded to black.

~^~

The Meerian’s hand was around his neck again, eerily cold to the point where it felt like it was spreading ice into him - slowing his thoughts, his movements.  And no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t get the Meerian to let go.  

Only now the Meerian had blue eyes.  

And a broken-circle scar on one cheek .

Obi-Wan woke up gasping, the last of the dream trailing like wisps of fog across his brain.  Even as he was breaking away from his subconscious, though, his physical body made itself known: pain struck him from three points, leaving him breathless for whole new reasons.  With a groan, Kenobi lifted a hand shakily to his throbbing left shoulder, wincing as the back of his skull and right side of his ribcage protested even the small movement.  Thankfully, despite the raging pain, he didn’t find a ragged stump for an arm - in fact, his seeking fingers found bandages, and when he pried his eyelids open it was to find that he’d been stripped to the waist, and bandages had been wrapped around his chest and shoulder haphazardly.  With a groan, Obi closed his eyes and slouched back against the cot he seemed to be lying on, abruptly remembering what had happened: the secret room with Offworld boxes, the broken circle.  Xanatos.  The cutting truths he’d kept repeating until Kenobi didn’t know what to think anymore.  The guards with blasters and electro-jabbers and the blow to the back of his head.  

Obi-Wan got his heavy eyes to open again, taking in the room. It looked like an exceedingly crude medbay, and there was a faint roaring like heavy wind - or lots of water - filtering through the walls.  With a crawling sensation of dread, he realised he didn’t have the faintest idea where he was.  

Injured and confused, Kenobi struggled into a sitting position only to realise that he had another problem: the cold sensation of the hand around his neck hadn’t gone away when the dream had faded.  When his hands flew automatically to his neck, he swore - firstly because his left shoulder didn’t enjoy the fast movement and secondly because his fingers came into contact with hard, smooth metal.  It was almost unnaturally cold - or, rather, numbing , he recognized belatedly.  He couldn’t figure out more about it because it felt like his thoughts were moving more slowly, sluggish and frozen in his head.  

He also couldn’t figure out more because he didn’t have any more time: the door swung open, emitting a massive Imbat.  The creature’s small eyes fixed on him immediately.  “Human boy.  Come,” it demanded in a voice like a gargled snarl, deep and rough.  

Obi-Wan’s fingertips were numb where he’d been seeking an opening to the collar.  It seemed to open at the front, where it curved forward almost elegantly to allow for a metal ring.  He couldn’t feel any locking mechanism, though, and for the first time Kenobi truly understood how naked he felt without either his shirt or his lightsaber.  He hadn’t been without the weapon in so long that it was like travelling back in time - it made him remember home.  The seeping coldness of the collar made him remember the river.

Standing shakily and trying to look unintimidated despite the fact that the Imbat was over two and a half metres tall and many, many times Obi’s mass in muscle, the ex-Initiate demanded to know, “Where am I?”

The Imbat was all muscle and drooping ears, the latter of which gave a little twitch that might have been tolerant amusement.  “Bandomeer,” it said, which was a relief - Obi-Wan was still on the same planet.  The next grunted words shattered that kernel of reassurance, “Deepsea mines.”  The creature’s leathery face split into what might have been generously termed as a grin, revealing clustered yellowed fangs, “Where you will die.”

Denying the bubbling panic that was starting to grow like a pressure in his chest, Kenobi replied as steadily as he could, “No.  I don’t belong here.  I was kidnapped.”

The Imbat just laughed.  Or at least the shaking of its broad shoulders seemed akin to a laugh, and the baring of its teeth continued.  

“I’m not a miner,” Obi-Wan insisted, voice rising as if to drown out the voice in his head that was telling him this wasn’t just some mistake that, if he explained it well enough, would all be fixed.  “You can’t just keep me here.”

“You work ,” the Imbat insisted, and when Obi-Wan opened his mouth to argue again, the beast matched his volume and then surpassed it in a gravelly roar, “You work.  You do as told.  Maybe you eat.  Then you die.”  It stepped forward on muscular legs easily bigger around than Kenobi was.  The boy backed up, only to almost immediately bump into the bed.  The Imbat finished, “ Not do as told.  Die sooner.”  

At that point, Obi-Wan accepted the reality of the situation: this was neither a nightmare nor a temporary misunderstanding.  That realisation both flooded him with fear but also galvanised him into action.  He could channel fear.  Even as his heart was hammering with terror in his chest, he reached out for the Force - first to leap away and then to drag the bed up between them like a battering ram.  

Instead, he was struck by the most sudden, frigid coldness that he’d ever encountered.  Seemingly in equal measure to his grab for the Force, the chilliness of the collar pushed back, spreading outwards through his very veins until he collapsed with a choked little noise.  Eyes wide with shock, he was half-surprised that his breath wasn’t frosting in front of him. When he brought his hands before his eyes, they were shaking, but surprisingly not blue with frostbite either.

The Imbat above him released that gravelly laugh again.  “Stupid Jedi,” it grunted, while Kenobi knelt and shook, in shock.  The cold was receding, but it left in its wake the stunning realisation that he’d just been blocked off from the Force.  Suddenly the loss of his lightsaber seemed a small thing in comparison to this total disarming of his person.  “We were prepared for you.”  A blunt-fingered paw of a hand reached down, and Obi-Wan felt a claw trace slowly against one side of his collar, the scritch of it sending vibrations down his spine.  Feeling like the whole world had been ripped out from under him, the ex-Initiate (and now ex-Force-user, so long as this collar was on) could only stare up at the Imbat looming above him.  “All slaves at the mines.  All wear collars,” the Imbat went on, the words clearly a struggle but the results worth it, if the gloating tone was any indicator.  The claw on Kenobi’s collar slid up his throat to catch beneath his chin.  “Only you get special.  But do not think…”  The Imbat paused as if to chew the words over, finding the right ones even as the tip of its claw forced Obi-Wan’s head back.  “...You will get special treatment,” the Imbat finally found the end it wanted for its sentence.  Then with a quick movement that Obi wasn’t expecting from such a ponderously sized creature, the Imbat’s hand moved so that instead of threatening to pierce the underside of his jaw, the Imbat was grabbing him by the hair and yanking him up.  The earlier blow to his head awoke with a fierce pulse of pain, and Kenobi couldn’t keep himself from briefly crying out.  He hadn’t realised how much he naturally felt the world around him through the Force, or how that affected his nimbleness, as he stumbled now and just barely found his feet.  The Imbat released him once he was standing.  When Obi-Wan brought a hand up to the back of his head, he could feel how his hair was matted with dried blood there.

“Work clothes.  Then work,” the Imbat demanded, coming up behind Kenobi fast and herding him out the door.  

Once he was dressed for the position of a deepsea miner, Kenobi was then chivied out onto the platform - seeing the outside world for the first time since his disastrous meeting with Qui-Gon’s old Padawan.  There wasn’t much to see, save the sea crashing against the metal mining platform.  There was no land in sight, and everywhere were more workers like him - more slaves, he corrected, seeing their collars, too - toiling away beneath a stormy sky.  

Squinting against the sleet coming down, Kenobi could just see a bit of red on the horizon - the only colour in this grey place.  A hint of what looked like a sunrise or a sunset.  Considering how late in the day he’d been knocked unconscious… this had to be the next day either beginning or ending.

“Happy birthday, Obi,” he murmured to himself listlessly, shortly before he was pushed towards one of the mine shafts.  He’d already been warned that the last shaft had flooded without warning, killing all the workers.  The one kernel of hope he held onto was that Qui-Gon Jinn would notice him missing, and do better by him than the Jedi Master had done by Xanatos.

It would take a week of toiling away on a deepsea mining platform before Obi-Wan’s hope would start to crumble into doubt.

Chapter Text

Xanatos set his ship to autopilot and moved to the comms, rolling his right shoulder with a grimace.  Playing cat and mouse with his old Master was fun, but damn could Jinn hit hard.  They’d both avoided major injuries, but only by the barest of margins, and Xanatos rather suspected that Jinn wanted him dead as much as Xanatos wanted Jinn dead by this point.

Well.  Not dead yet.  

He wanted Jinn to suffer significantly more first.  

Which was why he was currently contacting some recent friends that he’d made - friends who had seemed like powerful allies before this point, but who now seemed like the perfect co-conspirators in Xanatos’ intricate plans to make Qui-Gon face his own failures.

The connection went through, and a miniature hologram flickered into place before Xanatos’ eyes.  Darth Maul, looking formidable despite the minute and ethereal way he was being represented.  Even sitting with one elbow propped on his knee and his chin in one palm, he looked intimidating and capable.  “You said you wished a favor of me?”  The Dathomirian Zabrak’s voice crackled a bit as it was transmitted, but somehow that only made it sound more like a growl.

Always getting a bit of a thrill from working with the Sith, Xanatos didn’t bother to fight back his delighted smile.  “I do indeed - but I think that it’s a favor that you will enjoy,” he replied, “Do you recall me talking about my old Master, the Jedi that I plan to wipe from existence?”

“Yes.  Are you needing help to finish him?” Maul answered levelly.  The downside to the miniature hologram was that it was harder for Xanatos to get a read on the Zabrak’s mood - it was only because of previous encounters that Xanatos knew with certainty that Maul was enthusiastic about the idea of killing Jedi.  It was arguably the foundation of their relationship.  They’d met by chance about half a year ago, and Xanatos still found it thrilling to be in an accord - however loose - with one of the only Sith in the galaxy.  Of course, Maul didn’t seem quite as eager to play with his food as Xanatos was.  But then again, Maul didn’t have the history with Jinn that Xanatos did.

Therefore, Xanatos lifted a belaying hand, replying, “Not quite yet.”  When this time Maul’s impatience was actively visible (the patterns of his face shifted into a glower, golden eyes narrowing, horned head lowering slightly between powerful shoulders), Xanatos went on quickly, “But the favor I ask of you just might tide you over, and I promise, the end of Qui-Gon Jinn is nigh - and I’ll let you take part in that as well.”  The last part was a lie, but just a small one; Darth Maul and his hulking companion could watch Xanatos kill Jinn, but he wouldn’t tolerate anyone else sharing the kill with him.  

Maul’s eyes were still narrowed, but now his head was cocked to one side in wary interest.  “Speak this favor then.  I might consider it.”  There was a flicker on the hologram behind Maul; since the Zabrak didn’t so much as twitch, it was likely a sign of the other Dathomirian standing nearby, listening as well.  Good.  This was a task that Xanatos was glad to share with both of those monsters.  

The glee of it all had him grinning wider before he even began his explanation, “While the pieces are not in place yet for me to offer you a Jedi, I can give you the next best thing: a Padawan.”  ‘Padawan’ was stretching it a bit, Xanatos realised - the boy Kenobi hadn’t technically achieved that title.  Calling him a Padawan was close enough to the truth, however, and already the word seemed to be catching the Sith’s interest as Maul lifted his chin from his hand.  Xanatos went on, quickly warming to his topic, “You see, a week ago I lured Jinn to Bandomeer - and his Padawan with him.”  Another lie, but close enough.  Xanatos had enough spies to know that Kenobi had come closer to being Jinn’s apprentice than anyone since Xanatos.  “It was entirely too easy to snatch up the boy.”

Maul was sitting up now, and while his expression remained guarded, Xanatos knew that he had the Zabrak’s attention.  “And you’ve been using the welp as bait ever since?”

“Not quite,” Xanatos admitted, pausing a little for effect before elaborating, “I actually stashed him on one of Bandomeer’s offshore mining rigs.”

A second hologram flickered into existence as the second Zabrak - Savage? Xanatos hadn’t really bothered to learn the other’s name, but it was too fitting for him to easily forget it - stepped forward fully to comment, “The Jedi must be mad with frustration, not knowing the location of his charge.”

Xanatos couldn’t help it; he giggled.  Ah, but his plan was so much more twisted than that…  “Actually, when Jinn didn’t find out where his Padawan was by the second day, I told him - but here’s the thing about Qui-Gon Jinn.”  Xanatos felt his smile twist into a snarl, the words setting off something ugly in his chest, “The Jedi would have you think that he’s a saint amongst men, but having been his Padawan myself, I know better.”

Maul turned his head just enough to share an unreadable look with Savage - perhaps a glare to remind him not to interrupt again.  When the Zabrak faced Xanatos once more, spearing him with those intense, predatory eyes, the Sith commanded, “Explain.”

“I made Jinn choose,” Xanatos said simply, feeling how his own smile settled like a gash across his face, wicked and sharp, “He could either try and fulfil his civic duty by chasing me down, or else he could save his precious Padawan from being worked to the bone on the mines.  I planned accordingly for what I thought he’d choose, and I was right.”  Another pause for effect; Xanatos figured that he’d earned the right to some melodrama, considering all the time and effort that had gone into this revenge.  “He chose me.”

Both Savage and Maul looked mildly startled, although the latter hid it more quickly.  The bigger, yellow-toned Zabrak was the one to voice his puzzlement, “The Jedi simply left his protege behind?”

“Of course,” Xanatos said, letting his voice get a bit lackadaisical as he made fun of Jinn’s so-called logic, “After all, he knew where his Padawan was - so it was like… leaving him with a babysitter.  Jinn couldn’t waste time collecting the boy, not when he knew how quickly I could disappear on him.”

“Strategic,” Maul admitted slowly, although it was clear that he was seeing the sarcasm for what it was.  He’d settled his chin back on his palm again and was looking restless.  “I do not yet see what this has to do with us.”

“Well, I’ve had Jinn chasing me around the surrounding star systems for days,” Xanatos went on, giving his hand an airy flip and trying not to wince as his sore shoulder pulled.  That ‘chasing’ had involved a fair bit of fighting, whenever Jinn had caught up.  The Jedi truly was dangerous, Xanatos had to admit.  “But I think that it’s time for him to realise the folly of his actions.”

“Go on,” Maul coaxed, flicking his free hand in a ‘get on with it’ gesture that Xanatos would have found demanding and annoying if he weren’t having so much fun.  

“I just shook him off my tail.  Once he realises that his quarry has truly escaped him, I imagine that his sense of duty will belatedly kick in again - and drive him back to his hapless apprentice on Bandomeer.”

“What do you want us to do?”  Maul was clearly growing impatient now.  There was a definite growl in his words, teeth flashing.  

Xanatos spread his arms beautifically and finally laid out the next stage of his plan to destroy Jinn from the inside out.  “I want you to beat him to it.  I’m already nearly back to Bandomeer myself, and last I checked, your ship is even closer.  Go to Bandomeer and fetch the Padawan before Qui-Gon can.”  

Maul had gone very still, but it was the stillness of a predator before it pounced, and Xanatos felt no nervousness as the silence stretched.  He knew that he had the Sith’s attention, and just as he’d known what Jinn would do, he knew what these Zabraks would do.  They couldn’t easily get their hands on a Jedi, but they wouldn’t be able to resist the offering of a Jedi-in-training.  The fact that Kenobi was actually a reject from the program was something they didn’t need to know.  

“You wish to torment your old Master further, with the knowledge that his Padawan was snatched from him while he was elsewhere,” Darth Maul summed up, tasting the words carefully. 

Xanatos smirked and nodded; that was pretty much the gist of it.  Jinn was always so sure of himself, that his plans were best, but now his plan to leave Kenobi was going to backfire spectacularly.  ‘ You were already a heartless bastard for knowingly leaving him on an offshore mining platform ,’ Xanatos thought viciously at his old teacher, who had so betrayed him, ‘ You thought that it would cost him merely a week or so of temporary suffering.  How wrong you are, Qui-Gon.  How wrong you are.  It’s going to cost that brat far more than that. ’  “I’ll arrive on Bandomeer when you do - not only to make sure you find the boy without trouble, but also to be there when Jinn eventually returns,” Xanatos clarified with all the pleasantness of honeyed poison, “I want to be there when he watches the security footage, and hears the tales, and learns that his charge was taken by two Dathomirian Sith - just days before he returned.”  And Xanatos would make sure that it was just days; all it would take would be a communique with sufficiently foreboding wording.  Would Jinn have regretted traumatising an ex-Initiate with slavery for a week?  Probably.  Would Jinn regret that ex-Initiate going from slavery to torture and a slow death at the hands of some monstrous Zabraks?  Most definitely .

“So what do you say?” Xanatos went on, spreading a hand as if in offering, “Can you make it to Bandomeer in a day’s time, if I promise you a Jedi Padawan as a reward?”

Neither Maul nor his second, Savage, smiled.  But Xanatos didn’t think that Zabraks ever smiled, so he wasn’t discouraged.  He knew that this was barely a favor at all, in light of what the two Sith would get out of it.  

In the end, all Maul said was, “Send the exact time and coordinates,” and then ended the communication.  But despite the lack of praise for his devious, intricate planning, Xanatos felt supremely proud of himself as the comm system went silent and the holograms disappeared.  Xanatos immediately sent the necessary information, trusting that the Sith would arrive in time, and went back to the pilot’s seat himself.  Switching everything back to manual and increasing the speed, Xanatos murmured to himself in a light singsong, “I hope you enjoyed your time in the mines, Kenobi.  I gave them strict instructions not to kill you, but I don’t know if I’ll bother to give orders like that to your new keepers.”

~^~

There were a lot of side-effects of having been cut off from the Force.  The one Obi-Wan was least prepared for was his inexplicable inability to keep track of time.  It was like his internal clock was somehow hardwired to the Force and he’d not even known it until the collar cut off his abilities like frostbite numbing an entire limb.  

He was pretty sure he’d been on the offshore rig for a week.  He’d nearly died three times and had eaten seven times.  Food was more memorable than day or night cycles, with everything being a perpetual overcast grey, and he was pretty sure the overseers didn’t let them sleep in a regular pattern, so he couldn’t count on each period of rest marking off a day.  He’d also passed out from exhaustion often enough that there were gaps of time in which he simply was unconscious.  One moment he’d be straining alongside a dirty, hungry slave like himself, the next he’d get dizzy and then he’d be waking up in either the infirmary or just propped up against a nearby wall.  The guards weren’t shy about kicking slaves into action, so those times were probably the ones in which he was too far gone to be roused - usually he had new bruises when he hauled himself back to his feet.  

Or maybe he hadn’t been here a whole week, because wouldn’t his wounds from his fight with Xanatos have healed in that time?  Then again, the Force had a lot to do with healing, and it wasn’t like these were exactly sterile, healing conditions.  Twice he’d been called in to have the bandages on his ribs and shoulder replaced, but after that it seemed like everyone had ceased to care.  

Obi-Wan was pretty sure he should have felt feverish and hot, except the collar made him feel numb and cold.  

At least his nightmares appeared to have dried up after that last one on his first day here.  The fact that being cut off from the Force was the only way to stop his fucked-up dreams was just about enough to make Kenobi laugh and cry at the same time.

Gods, but he was hungry.  

But most of all he felt hollowed out and empty, because with each day his well of hope came closer and closer to running dry.  Every time he woke up, he reached for that knowledge that Qui-Gon would find him eventually - Jinn was a prodigy with the Force, after all, and Obi hadn’t even left the planet they were both on -  but it was getting harder and harder to keep that in mind.

“Fuck,” Obi-Wan muttered as he peeled his soaked shirt away from his side for the millionths time.  The Offworld guard had held the electro-jabber against his side so long that it had left blistered skin behind, and now it was all badly scabbed.  Still, he had to pull his weight if he wanted something to eat, so he gritted his teeth and reminded himself that pain was just signals being sent to his brain. The Jedi Temple had taught that they were useful signals, but right now they were just repetitive and pointless.  He couldn’t take heed of this pain in any way - and if he listened to it too hard then he remembered the pain of his scorched shoulder and the worrisomely persistent migraine from the blow to the head he’d taken.  

Not wanting to ponder the likelihood of his own slow demise from festering wounds, Kenobi took the lesser of two evils and focused on the numbness from the collar instead.  By this point he’d realised that the sensation of ‘cold’ was all in his head - yes, he was cold, but no more so than any other drenched worker on the offshore rig.  And the metal of the collar only felt cold because that was the best way his brain could translate ‘cut off from the Force.’  

“Remember Obi,” he muttered to himself as he leaned into another task, “You wanted the nightmares to stop.”  He grunted and accepted the jostling of another slave next to him, both of them dirty and fatigued and desperate to just survive.  “Be careful what you godsdamn wish for next time.”

The slave next to him might have chuffed a tired laugh, but the waves made it hard to discern noises, and Obi-Wan wasn’t even sure if he was next to a species that did laugh.  It was hard to tell beneath the grime that covered all of them.

After some eon of time, their shift ended.  Shifts always went twice as long as anyone could tolerate, and the only thing that kept any of them going to the end was the flimsy possibility of food and the realisation that they could be washed overboard (accidentally or intentionally) if they collapsed prematurely.  By the time the Imbats shouted that everyone could stop and return to the rooms that were generously termed ‘quarters,’ Obi was panting and felt like his limbs were barely connected to his body.  Water was dripping from his bangs all across his face.  

He mostly remembered walking inside, out of the waves and spray and rain.  

He mostly remembered being offered something resembling food.  The upside to everyone being worked to the bone was that no one fought over the scraps; that took too much energy.

It felt like the world drifted for a while, as Obi-Wan accepted the simple pleasure of not moving, collapsed against another moderately warm body while his body tried to leach every drop of energy from what he’d gulped down.  For a moment, he imagined that he was back in the Temple, the sounds of his fellows sleeping around him…

Then the sound of some poor soul shrieking in the distance (not an uncommon sound, as the Imbat guards loved to beat people) woke him up, and he grimaced as reality set in again.

Feeling suddenly out of sorts and like he might either cry or scream any second, Kenobi pushed himself to his feet and made up his mind to quit the room.  If he started yelling or sobbing, he knew he wouldn’t stop, and he was scared by how close his feelings were to tipping into anger.  He needed a moment to just… clear his head.  

Obi had learned two things about the anti-Force collar: firstly, that he could meditate even if he was wearing it (which perhaps should have been obvious, since meditation was not exclusive to Force-users anyway), and secondly, that if he tried very, very, very hard, he could still sense things through the Force in the most muted of ways.  On a few occasions now, he’d used that latter skill to wander about on his own without attracting attention, avoiding people by sensing their presence vaguely.  Usually, when he snuck away it was to try and find a way to get off this damn mining rig, or called Jinn - something! - but right now he just wanted a moment to himself to try and gather the angry clutter of his mind.  Maybe he could mould it into some semblance of calm and patience.

Like he’d done when he was a child, and he’d realised that his parents hated and feared him.

Like he’d done at the Temple, when he’d realised that his creche resented him for holding them back.

Like he’d done when Jinn had said he was too dangerous, and had been the last in a long line of people to deem him unworthy.

“ The fact that you’re here instead of with him means you must be a real fuck-up .”  Xanatos’ words echoed back to Kenobi, unbidden.  He gritted his teeth and forced his thoughts to the task at hand, instead of dwelling on the dark Jedi that had gotten him here.  

Trying to reach for the Force with the collar one was like bobbing for apples in a bucket of ice-water.  The longer Obi tried, the more numb and uncomfortable he got, and the less able to deduce what he was feeling.  However, if he was stubborn enough, he’d get what he wanted, albeit clumsily.  Jaw clenched and eyes closed for focus, he hovered just inside the door, reaching laboriously for something that used to come easily.  The collar felt like it was burning colder the harder he tried, but Obi was determined if nothing else.  The slaves behind him were too tired to care as Obi-Wan waited for about a minute and then slipped out the door.  No one ever tattled because it wasn’t like he could get anywhere.

Sensing other life-forces like dim candles, Obi made his way down the halls, having to remember that he wasn’t as light-footed as he usually would have been - after all, he didn’t have the Force to assist his motions either.  Even though he couldn’t help his newfound weakness, it still galled him, and it was with a sense of disappointment in himself that he turned away from a promising hallway (one he hadn’t had a chance to investigate yet because it always seemed to have people in it) and instead took the less occupied path and found himself outside.  The latest shift must have been down in one of the shafts, because the section of platform ahead of him was empty.  The waves washed over it, and as Obi, shoulders tiredly sagging, walked forward, the brisk, wet wind at least washed some of the dirt off him.  

He focused on that feeling as he went to stand in the open.  ‘ I’m not looking for trouble ,’ he told himself, just as he’d told himself that he wasn’t contemplating jumping yesterday when he’d gone to stand at the railing and looked out over the sea.  ‘ I’m just letting the weather clean me up a bit.  Good hygiene is a rare gift around here, after all, and goodness knows I need it .’  He turned his face to the sea-spray that he’d hated just an hour ago, willing his mind to pretend he was somewhere - anywhere - else.  Maybe a nice warm beach...

There was suddenly a shift in the Force so strong that he felt it like a shove between the shoulder-blades; Obi had been ‘listening’ so hard, and had grown used to hearing so little, that he literally staggered forward, eyes snapping wide open.  

For a split-second, his knee-jerk reaction was that one of the guards had noticed him - but that was just the sleep-deprivation talking.  Even as Obi-Wan spun around, he kicked himself for even considering that this Force-signature was an Imbat.  While physically very imposing, Obi would have noticed long ago if any of them were even vaguely Force-sensitive, much less powerful enough to create a ripple like this.  When Kenobi tried to stretch his senses out further, however, the collar pushed back. He ended up hissing against a wave of unreal cold, the effect enough to momentarily addle him his time.  Putting a hand to his head, he swayed and nearly lost his footing.  

When the dizziness cleared and he lifted his head again, he found himself staring at two figures, robed in black.  And it didn’t take any effort at all for him to know that this meant trouble.  

As Obi-Wan instinctively crouched, backing up a step, the shorter of the two figures stepped forward.  The wind was whipping at the figure’s hood, but with night closing in, all Obi could see past the material was the occasional glint of bright yellow eyes.  “You were not supposed to be this difficult to find,” the figure spoke, voice low and gravel-edged, like a predator’s growl.  A red-and-black hand stretched from beneath the cloak, gesturing to the side; in response, the second, bigger stranger circled off to the left.  Both newcomers were far bigger than Obi-Wan, and he knew the start of a flanking manoeuvre when he saw one.  He started edging in the other direction, on instinct.  Another buffet of wind; this time Obi caught a glimpse of more black-streaked-red skin as he was addressed again, “Do not further test my patience, boy.”

“Now that we have found you, do not make us catch you,” said the second, a few pitches deeper.  Obi’s eye snapped to the second speaker, and he circled further away, already reaching fruitlessly for the Force.  The collar gave a cold pulse around his neck, like an icy fist tightening.  

“I’m afraid I’m apt to wander,” he said in return, as brightly as he could.  It was a technique he’d perfected long before entering the Jedi temple, back when he’d needed to stay calm so that the neighbours wouldn’t suspect that Kenobi’s family wasn’t lovely and perfect.  Apparently the habit was ingrained enough that it persisted even after a week of slavery on a mining platform.

The first figure was glowering at him; he could see the patterned mouth twisted down in a frown.  The second one had briefly paused, likely caught off guard by Obi-Wan talking back.  “You speak quite boldly.”

“I can speak rudely, too, but people rarely appreciate it.”  It took monumental effort to keep the tremor out of his voice, but right now Obi-Wan needed just a few more moments… he could almost feel the Force.  He couldn’t get a firm grip on it, but he had a feeling that he’d need to do more than just sense life-forces around him.  Aware that he was babbling, he went on, “Speaking of rude, I don’t think we’ve been introduced.  Are you from around here?”

The bigger of the two newcomers made a sort of chuffing noise and stopped walking again; he was perhaps laughing.  The first figure transferred his glare from Obi-Wan to his companion.  “Savage,” came the warning growl.

Despite being the bigger of the two, the second immediately stiffened and replied, “Yes, of course, brother.”  Then… Savage? … turned to face Obi again, and prowled forward with more intent than before.  Both men moved like hunters, and Obi-Wan felt panic begin to constrict his chest.  

“Care to tell me what you’re here for?” he asked as lightly as he could, hoping that his smile didn’t look as fragile as it felt.  The Force kept slipping through his metaphorical fingers, but he kept trying, feeling desperation clawing at his gut with every second of failure.  

The first figure turned to look at Obi-Wan, the angle casting everything in shadow beneath the hood except for the embers of narrowed eyes.  “I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure that out, Jedi pup,” was the reply, like a blade scraping over a whetstone.

“Yes, I am,” Obi-Wan muttered, and then finally managed to push past the effects of the collar enough to get a grip on a pile of boxes nearby.  With a shriek of effort and pain as the collar reacted with a cold so fierce it felt like it burned, Kenobi dragged both hands through the air - and in response, the crates toppled.  

“Brother!” Savage shouted, and it was a bit rewarding to see those yellow eyes widen beneath their cowl.  Kenobi would have felt more triumphant if he didn’t feel as though someone had skewered an icicle right down his spine; it was like ice had crawled down between his shoulder-blades and up to the very base of his skull, and when he reached for the Force again, it was like yanking on a torn muscle.  He cried out and his knees buckled.  

Meanwhile, Savage’s brother had managed to leap back with a frankly alarming amount of dexterity for a man his size, avoiding the fall of crates.  The movement had torn his hood back, and Obi-Wan found himself panting and staring at a face the likes of which he’d never seen before, but which made his blood run cold - all patterned in black and red, it created a intense, fearsome appearance that only became more pronounced when the man bared his teeth in a snarl.  Belatedly, he recalled seeing stills of Dathomirians Zabraks, and hearing tales of their brutality and ferocity in battle that had seemed almost mythical in their scope.

With a sinking sensation that felt painfully familiar by now, Obi-Wan realised that he was outmatched.  

And that was before the red-and-black-marked figure drew a lightsaber, the hellishly red light of it snapping and sizzling like something angry in the rain.  It said a lot about Obi-Wan’s state of mind that he didn’t feel much shock at the sight of it.  Considering the fact that he was alone, injured, unarmed, tired, hungry - and just fucking barely thirteen years old - this just felt like one more nail in his coffin.  He stared, dull-eyed, when Savage drew a lightsaber as well, creating twin spikes of red that washed the whole platform with a bloody brightness.  

‘ You don’t have time to feel sorry for yourself, Obi ,’ he said to himself, even as another voice told him that he’d probably earned the right to a lot more self-pity than he ever allowed himself.  Before that second voice could gain a toe-hold, though, Obi-Wan was forcing his limbs to move, even though he didn’t see a single hope of him winning this.  Maybe he’d finally gotten so used to fighting losing battles that it was just habit by now - one way or another, he was making a break for it a moment later.  

His two pursuers were damn fast; Kenobi realised instantly that his only advantage was his smaller size.  He could turn more sharply and was a small target.  While his disconnect from the Force made him feel clumsy and sluggish, he was still able to duck under a piece of rigging, forcing his opponents to either go around or cut through it.  One of them cursed, and there was the angry sizzle of a lightsaber biting into something, although Obi-Wan didn’t turn back.  He didn’t have energy to waste on checking if his manoeuvres were doing any good, especially since he didn’t have any real gameplan here.

Surprisingly, the Force-users after him - Dark Force-users, he could sense with certainty now, despite the damned collar - weren’t wasting energy on superfluous actions either.  Obi had honestly expected some catcalling, some threats, or at the least a longer rendition of curses.  But no, they were almost eerily quiet, and that was scary in its own right.  It would have been easier to keep track of noisy opponents.  Instead, Obi-Wan hurriedly swiped wet bangs out of his face just in time to nearly run face-first into one of them.  “Shit!” he hissed, back-pedalling away and wishing so hard for his own sabre that his right hand spasmed.  

The Zabrak’s sabre didn’t come in for a swipe at him - but it did limit his exit options, and when he raced in the other direction, he soon found himself faced by his other pursuer, black-on-red-markings creating a near-perpetual snarl.  Too breathless to swear this time, Obi skidded to a halt so fast he almost lost his footing on the wet surface.  When he did his best to swerve to the right, the lightsaber in front of him suddenly doubled in length - having never seen a dual-bladed lightsaber before, Obi-Wan was honestly dumbfounded for a second.  Perhaps if he hadn’t been running on little sleep and less food, he would have overcome his shock faster.  As it was, he had barely a moment to stare - then to register that he hadn’t been cut in half - then another heartbeat to realise that the Dark Force-user was reaching for him with his empty hand.  The young ex-Initiate was grabbed in an eye-blink.

Obi-Wan didn’t waste time or effort yelling to be let go; he’d gone far past the point where he expected anyone or anything to listen to what he wanted.  Instead he made another mad grab with the Force, shoving at the dual sabre even as that black-and-red hand clenched more tightly around his collar.  Lightsabers were just tools, Obi had been taught; dangerous tools.  There was nothing mystical about them.  That meant they had no emotional attachments or loyalties, and therefore the lightsaber would cut its master just as easily as its foe, and Obi was sincerely hoping to cause the former instead of the latter as he gasped blindly with his crippled abilities.  The collar sent another spike of cold that hit him like a pickaxe to the back of the skull, but this time it was the nameless Zabrak who shouted a curse.  

Obi-Wan was dizzy from an unnatural mix of numbness and pain.  His head ached but at the same time all of him felt strangely disconnected, as if he’d not only lost his connection to the Force but had just managed to rip loose part of it from himself.  His knees shook so badly that it took him but a moment to realise that he was only upright because the hand around his collar was still there, holding him up on his toes now.  It made breathing hard, and he could hear the air whistling in and out of his throat when he inhaled and exhaled.  When he forced his eyes open a crack - gods, but he was so tired - he sagged a bit more, realising that he had most certainly not managed to do much damage: the red Zabrak was still as solid as a wall in front of him, just angrier than before.  Rain-water and sea-spray cut patterns down the lines on his skin, tracing around horns that Obi hadn’t noticed before, the glint of a stud in one black ear; now, it seemed trivial. Just one more unsettling characteristic on the face of an unsettling character who was likely going to kill Obi-Wan in an unsettling way any minute now.  

Further supporting that fact was the way the Dathomirian was holding his lightsaber to the side of Kenobi’s neck, the first truly warm thing that Obi had felt in days.  There was a similar hum behind him and a blush of heat against his spine that told Obi-Wan that the other Zabrak, Savage, had closed in to cut off any sort of retreat.  Not that Obi was going anywhere, with his feet barely on the ground and his legs barely holding him anyway.  

“Are you injured, brother?”  Savage sounded surprisingly worried, considering that his brother was easily three times the size of their prey.  Maybe Obi had gotten closer to hurting his bigger opponent than he’d thought; that gave him a bit of comfort, even as he was lifted further off the ground, and had to grab at his opponent’s wrist so as not to be left dangling by just his neck.  

“A scratch,” was the terse response.  Great, Obi-Wan had just managed to make him mad.  He was great at this.  “You are going to regret that, boy.”

“You vastly… underestimate,” Obi-Wan got out between catching his breath and trying not to be strangled by his own collar, “...how many regrets... I already have.  This one… might have to take a number.  I’ll get to it later.”

That earned him a snarl right in his face, and the lightsabers both moved in closer until Kenobi felt himself slide fully into panic.  Up until now, physical movement and stubborn humour had created a decent bulkwark between himself and his fears, but those two defences had always been flimsy.  Thankfully, Obi-Wan had long-since learned to have panic attacks quietly , so even as he started screaming internally, his jaw stayed tightly clenched against any outward sounds.  It was a reflex.  A sad and sorry reflex.  Probably the last one he’d ever have...

But then the lightsaber next to Obi’s throat shifted just slightly , a sluice of rain causing it to crackle and snap… and the beam of plasma just barely brushed against the collar.

The effect was instantaneous.  Whatever it was in the collar’s workings that kept its wearer sealed off from the Force, it was disrupted by the kiss of an active lightsaber blade, and the backlash hit Obi-Wan like a hammer to the skull .  Where before he’d had over a week of silence and numbness, now he had a rush of sensation and noise, a blast of psychedelic colour in a world that had been rendered monochrome - no, a blast of blinding light where his eyes had become accustomed to darkness.  It was so sudden that it hurt, and while Kenobi had clenched his teeth before now to stay silent, now he opened his mouth only to a silent scream.  His entire body spasmed, muscles locking.

And then the nightmares rushed back in.  

Golden eyes, looking down at a woman made of kindness and cruelty all in one.  “I shall do this thing, Mother Talzin.”  Body all patterned, black lines on red telling a story that no one could read - deaths, survivals, promises.  

“You shall have a Master, as all Sith do.  But you shall do my will,” the woman answered.

Horned head nodding, horns like a crown.  The crown held no power but that which it was given.  It was given a helper: Savage.  Yellow skin patterned in black; a family of stories.  Shared promises.  

“The Jedi and the Sith have equally wronged us.  Both shall atone.  Do you understand, Maul?”  The mother’s hand, a weapon, a caress down one cheek.  Her power crackled back through Kenobi’s head so sharply that he forgot how to breathe and suddenly the image was twisting, swirling, changing.  Everything was moving so fast, and Obi was seeing battles, triumphs, defeats, magic between the woman’s hands, a dead body.  Her dead body.  Palpatine, eyes aglow.  All of it compiled around so many mercurial emotions that it seemed to snap something further in Kenobi’s already fucked up brain.

Chapter Text

It was a blessing to come back to himself.  

Choking, he found himself on his knees, the floor beneath him… wet?  Yes, he was on Bandomeer.  The offshore mining platform.  For a second his brain rebelled, still feeling fine dirt beneath his palms, and musty, dry air scented with a magic he couldn’t describe.  

“Maul? Brother, what did he do to you?” Savage’s voice was the first to break through the ringing in Kenobi’s ears.  The collar still felt mostly intact, and after the initial rush, his head felt stuffed with cotton again; he’d just been overwhelmed, like a man dying of thirst but choking on his first meagre mouthful of water.  He wasn’t free from the collar’s effects entirely.  He reflexively reached up to paw at the collar and immediately felt a white-hot pain against his forearm - Savage was next to him, lightsaver a deft flash as it cut through Obi’s sleeve to singe his skin.  If Obi-Wan had thought his foes foreboding to look at before, it all paled in comparison to the look of fury being directed down at him now, as Savage readied his sabre for another, undoubtedly deadlier slash.  “Whatever you have done, welp, you shall tell me - or I shall cut you apart slowly,” was the heated threat levelled at him.  

“Stand down, Savage!”  

Both Obi and Savage twisted around to belatedly regard the red Zabrak, Maul.  Still just about swooning with the images that had rampaged through his head, Obi barely had the sense to curl his damaged arm in, swaying dangerously on his knees.  He didn’t even know what had just happened, only that he hadn’t liked it.  His skull felt like it had been scoured out with steel wool, and he wanted to vomit.  Of course his freakish nightmares had to be the one thing to slip through the crack in the collar’s defences.  Because fuck his life, right?  

Maul was looking at him strangely.  The facial markings still twined down his face like a snarl, but now he seemed startled, watchful… and Obi didn’t know if that was a good thing.  All he did know was that he’d just about run out of tricks to pull out of his sleeve, and certainly had run out of energy.  

While Obi-Wan cradled his newly-wounded right forearm, Savage lowered his lightsaber to his side, although he didn’t turn it off.  The bigger Dathomirian was standing so close to Obi already that the boy remained bathed in the sabre’s glow, like blood thrown all across him.  Savage addressed his brother again when the silence stretched, but when Maul belatedly stopped staring at Obi, it was only to say something to his brother in a language Obi-Wan didn’t know.  

Feeling wrung out and deeply unwell, Obi took the small reprieve at face value, hanging his head and trying to breathe through the nausea in his stomach and the fresh, throbbing pain where the lightsaber had kissed his skin.  Two men who were strong enough to probably literally tear him limb from limb kept talking over him, but the last fucks that Obi had to give had been pretty much knocked out of him.

But then he felt a startling pressure latching onto his sides, a beat before he felt himself dragged sharply and swiftly to the right.  Eyes snapping open in shock, Obi barely managed a yelp as an invisible grip sent him sliding a good six metres across the wet metal platform.  When he came to a stop, he was greeted by a laugh that sent chills of recognition down his spine.  “Xanatos,” he greeted, realising that he’d just been dragged by the Force - the Force that he was cut off from thanks to this bastard.  

Apparently Obi had a few more fucks to give, because he tried to lurch to his feet and lunge at the older Force-user, but Xantos was faster: the Force gripped Obi again and he was tossed down on his side.  A hard boot to his ribs followed right after, so hard and sharp that it not only knocked the wind out of him but sent him sliding a bit further.  He thought he felt something crack, and the pain of it took the breath out of him.  The realisation that Xanatos had just kicked him hard enough to possibly break a rib was somehow more sobering than all of the attacks thus far, a tactile reminder that Obi-Wan was terribly fragile in the grand scheme of things.  

Feeling too battered to move, Obi just lay on his side, trying to get his lungs to work properly again while the rain continued to soak him to the bone.

“You really are nothing but trouble, aren’t you, Obi-Wan Kenobi?” Xanatos said, stalking over to him, “You’re stuck on a rig in the middle of the ocean and still manage to not be where you’re supposed to be.”  Fuzzily, Obi-Wan got his eyes open, focusing first on the scene beyond Xanatos’ boots - the two Zabrak were standing where they'd been a moment ago, as if taken off-guard by Xanatos’ sudden arrival.  Clearly Xanatos hadn’t come to rescue Kenobi, though, as they didn’t look upset, or like they were in a rush to confront him.  With a groan, Obi closed his eyes again as Xanatos squatted down in front of him - clearly wanting to chat.  

There was honestly nothing that Obi wanted less.  Except maybe being kicked again… he didn’t think he could take being kicked like that again.

“So, are you disappointed that I’m not Qui-Gon, come to rescue you?” Xanatos said, far too brightly.  Obi wasn’t able to hold back the snarl of anger that curled his lip, anger flaring up involuntarily because he didn’t have the focus to stop it.  Negative emotions were harder to control when he was so tired and in pain that he was shaking.  The cold seeping into him from the metal platform beneath him wasn’t helping.  

Apparently no reply was necessary, because Xanatos went on, “I’m afraid that Qui-Gon was given an invitation to come… oh, a good week ago, I think it was… but declined.”  Those words hit Kenobi harder than the kick to his ribs had, and he flinched involuntarily.  Something inside of him crumbled.  There was no way for him to stop Xanatos from talking, however, so he just let his eyes fall closed and endured.  “I’m not surprised, really.  Jinn really has been almost psychopathically pragmatic all the time that I’ve known him, so I’m sure he saw no benefit in untangling you from this mess.”  There was a physical pain now in Obi-Wan’s chest, and he was ashamed to admit that it was not related to an injury in any way.  At least, not a physical injury.  “That means all you have is me and my friends now,” Xanatos went on with a faux long-suffering sigh.  “You’ve already met them, I see.”  Something touched Kenobi’s right wrist - near his new saber-burn - and he used up precious energy to drag his limb closer to his body, away from Xanatos’ prodding fingers.  Opening his eyes showed him a wicked grin being directed down at him, even as Xanatos stopped reaching a hand out for Obi-Wan’s wound and instead tangled his fist in Kenobi’s hair.  

Obi-Wan didn’t have any energy left in him.  Even the adrenaline wasn’t enough to keep him going now, so he felt like a wet rag-doll as Xanatos twisted his head back, leaning down so that his hot breath washed over the boy’s ear.  “They’re Sith, you know.”  A tremor of shock went through Obi-Wan’s body, and his eyes flew wide.  He couldn’t see anything past Xanatos’ cloaked shoulder right now - but he knew that the two Zabrak were still there.  And now he had the word ‘Sith’ ringing like a death-knoll in his ears, an ancient word that was spoken of amongst Jedi circles only as a distant, long-past nightmare.

Go figure Obi-Wan, with his endless nightmares, would be the one to find out that this bad dream was real .  

Xanatos was just getting warmed up, too, his voice sibilant and viciously pleased, “And guess what?  I’m going to give you to them .  You wanted Jinn’s attention so badly, but he didn’t have the time of day for you - but these two will give you all of their attention, I’m sure of it.  For as long as you last, at least.”  While Xanatos laughed, Obi-Wan gave one last valiant effort at struggling, but all of him was one big ache now, and what little energy he’d had burnt out completely in seconds.  As he sagged, Xanatos let him go.  “This is goodbye, Kenobi.  This game has been fun, but you’re just a minor player in it, and your usefulness has run out,” Xanatos said with a patronising pat to Obi’s head. “I’ll be sure to give your lightsaber to Master Jinn to remember you by, hm?”  As the Dark Jedi stood, Obi just pressed his face closer to the ground, until the coldness of the metal was leaching into his cheekbone and jaw and there was no way to tell what was rainwater, seawater, or tears.  

He barely had it in him anymore to notice the hum of a lightsaber coming to life as Xanatos stood up to loom over him.  “How about a little something to remember me by?”

Obi-Wan had drawn his right arm in, but he wasn’t exactly in a defensible position - and even if he’d had the energy to retreat, he’d never have had the speed to avoid Xanatos’ sabre as it snapped forward to give Kenobi a matching burn across the back of his other forearm.  The pain of it made him scream this time, the stench of burnt flesh suffusing his sense of smell even as pain overwhelmed all the rest.

He barely heard Xanatos finishing smugly, “One mark from your new masters, to remember who you belong to - and one from me, to remember who put you there.  For your sake, Kenobi, I hope you don’t live long enough to ponder either of those reminders… but knowing the Sith’s reputation for torture, you might actually linger for quite a while.”

If Xanatos said anything more, Obi-Wan didn’t hear it, as his body finally gave out and blackness swallowed him up.

~^~

When his Master, Darth Sidious, had tasked Maul with keeping tabs on the rogue Dark-Jedi Xanatos, it had felt serendipitous: being away from his Master meant that Maul could work with his brother more closely without the fear of Savage falling under Sidious’ paranoid eye, and Xanatos undoubtedly had knowledge of the Jedi that Maul could make use of.  When he’d found that Xanatos was almost rabidly interested in killing Jedi, Maul had been even more pleased, because that aligned with his personal goals quite nicely.  Mother Talzin would be pleased with her sons if they could kill a few Jedi.

Granted, she’d also be pleased if they could kill Darth Sidious, but that was a long-term goal that would take much more strategizing and patience to complete.  

But now it was clear that Xanatos only had a rabid interest in killing one particular Jedi , and was being so artistic and intricate about it that Maul was just about ready to claw his own eyes out in impatience and frustration.  Xanatos was too fanatical to be useful, Maul had decided (and Savage had agreed), but then he’d let the Dark Jedi tempt him into playing a part in this latest scheme - and while Maul and Savage had undoubtedly gained more of the madman’s trust, the promised prize of a Jedi Padawan… hadn’t gone as planned.  

As soon as Xanatos had left, they’d wrapped the unconscious Padawan up on Savage’s cloak to take him back to their ship.  The Padawan - Obi-Wan Kenobi?  Maul had honestly dismissed the name as unimportant when he’d first heard it - was currently stowed in the cargo hold while Maul and Savage retired to the cockpit to ponder what had just happened down on Bandomeer. Maul still wasn’t entirely sure if he’d been granted an enormous stroke of good luck or bad.  

Savage had offered to help Maul tend to the burn the Jedi pup had given him, but Maul had brushed him off - it had cauterised on contact, and he deserved some pain to remind himself of his idiocy.  This Padawan was a lot more than he appeared.  

For starters…  “He’s a Seer.”

Savage, who had been waiting silently for when his brother’s reminiscent silence would inevitably break, sat up sharply in the copilot’s seat.  “You speak of the boy?”

“I certainly do not speak of the maniacal fanatic Xanatos,” Maul snapped back, but without much bite.  He placed his hand over his right thigh, where his trousers sported a hole now and the skin beneath was red and angry.  Despite his intentions of letting the wound stay as a reminder of his carelessness, he directed some of his attention to the Force, and to healing.  He’d always had a bit of a knack for it; Mother Talzin had said that it was his grasp of healing and life that made him so adept with the opposite.  With killing and death.  Darth Sidious only cared to train him in the latter, but Maul was okay with that.  “When I was holding the boy, I sought to see into his mind-”  Something else that Maul was a prodigy at, even Sidious had to admit.  “-And what I saw was a font of images that were not of this time or place, things that the welp could not know.”  Went unsaid was that there was no way for the boy to have grabbed these images from Maul’s mind - there was no way the pup had the telepathic skill to try and the strength to succeed at such a feat.  Some of the images also hadn’t come to pass yet (Maul was still shaken by the split-second image of Mother Talzin dead), making it even more impossible that the boy was simply a telepathic prodigy.

Savage looked concerned but thoughtful, taking his brother’s words as truth.  They’d learned to trust each other a lot since Mother Talzin had sent them both to redeem the prestige of Dathomir, so long in the shadow of the Sith and foolishly rejected by the Jedi.  “The collar he wears… it cuts him off from the Force.  I could sense it,” Savage noted slowly.  While less powerful than Maul, with his abilities in the Force heavily augmented by the Nightsisters’ magic, Savage still had admirable skills and could be quite observant.  

Maul nodded.  The assessment was accurate.  “My lightsaber touched it inadvertently,” he said grudgingly, not wanting to admit that his lightsaber had actually been out of his control twice this day, “I may have damaged it in some small way, for in the moment that I read his mind, I could feel him reconnect with the Force in some small way.”

“I felt this as well,” Savage confirmed, dipping his horned head sagely.  He pointedly did not urge his brother to make the connection between the boy’s cut off use of the Force and Maul’s declaration that that same boy must be a Seer, knowing that Maul would speak in his own good time.  Savage could be patient like that.  

Since Maul was still pondering the situation himself, hardly able to believe any of it, he appreciated the moment to sit and stare out at the stars for a moment.  He ceased the Force-healing when he sensed that his injury would no longer impede his movements, but would still twinge and scar.  “Very rare indeed are those who can see the future through the Force,” he finally said thoughtfully, “Rare enough, I wonder, for Jedi like Xanatos to not even know when they had a Seer in their grasp.”

“You do not think that Xanatos collared the boy to blind his Sight?” Savage asked, cocking his head.

Curling his lip in displeasure, Maul immediately shook his head.  “Xanatos values the pup no more than he values a large rock - useful only insofar as he can beat someone with it.  The real question is whether or not the boy’s Jedi Master knows of his skills.”

Savage was frowning now, almost looking affronted by this entire situation as it was revealed to him.  “If he did, why would he abandon a protege of such value?”

“Why indeed?” Maul murmured.  “Regardless, he is in our possession now.  If I can just find a way to make use of his Sight, he will be more useful to us alive than-”

Maul was cut off as the ship suddenly shuddered, and both Zabraks felt an impact through the Force - like a shockwave rippling outwards.  They leapt immediately to their feet in alarm, reaching for their lightsabers and activating them fluidly and without a thought.  Savage looked immediately to the ship’s sensors, but saw nothing amiss.  It was Maul who instead stretched out his senses through the Force, pinpointing the source a heartbeat later.  Despite being a seasoned fighter who had both seen and committed many atrocities since accepting the path set before him by his mother, Maul’s eyes widened in shock and alarm.  

“The cargo hold,” he ground out, immediately flicking his sabre off and racing out of the cockpit.  

Savage followed hot on his heels, no doubt catching on quickly - after all, it was hard to miss the manic, blindly-bright Force signature in the cargo-hold, where previously their prisoner had registered as barely a flicker.

~^~

For the first time in what felt like forever, Obi-Wan woke up not feeling cold .  He wasn’t really warm, per se, but compared to his time on the offshore mining rig, the current temperature was enough to make an involuntary noise of relief escape his throat, even as the many pains in his body started to make themselves known.  He nose was also smelling something other than cold wet metal and diluted fishiness for once, as he woke up enough to notice a blanket wrapped all around him, smelling of spices that he neither had a name for nor would have probably noticed if his nose hadn’t been deprived of other scents for so long.  By default, it smelled amazing.

No.  Not a blanket.  

With a jolt, the rest of Obi-Wan’s memory came back, and his whimper of delight became a resigned groan as he opened his eyes to realise that he was wrapped haphazardly in a large cloak.  He had vague memories of being carried in it like a fresh catch in a fisherman’s net.  At least the cloak had some damn impressive waterproofing, as this was also the driest that Kenobi could remember being in over a week.  As he got his head free enough to look around him, he also felt the minute but familiar vibrations that came from a ship’s engines, and therefore wasn’t particularly surprised to look around and find himself in some sort of cargo hold.  

What little joy Obi had felt at not being on that damned mining platform evaporated as he remembered that he’d been handed off to two Dathomirian Sith.  Since he still had the hated Force-neutralising collar on, he couldn’t sense where they were, but Obi-Wan was more than smart enough to deduce that he was on their ship, being carted off to… who-knew-where.  Where they’d do who-knew-what to him.  

Thinking too hard on the future pushed him closer to the precipice of panic, so with a deep breath he closed his eyes and told himself, “Get a grip, Kenobi,” and tried to find something productive to do.

Why did he try?  He wasn’t sure.  His chances of escape or even survival were so nonexistent right now that a large part of him wanted to curl up, go to sleep, and pray that he’d never wake up.  Somehow, though, the minority vote of “Get up and try to get the collar off” still managed to win out, and Obi struggled the rest of the way loose from the cloak he’d been haphazardly bundled in.  His entire body immediately protested, and he had to stop for a moment, huddled on knees and elbows with his forearms - the newest and brightest of his pains - trembling so hard that his hands spasmed.  “Shit.  Shit shit shit,” he hissed a few times over, until he was able to breathe his way through the pain.  Blocking out pain was easier with the Force, but thankfully meditative, focused thinking worked without it… mostly.  It worked enough, and that was what mattered as Kenobi shakily forced himself to his feet.

“At least my legs work,” he muttered to himself, falling into the habit of talking to himself even as he tried not to think about just how much of him barely worked, “And at least you didn’t have any fucking nightmares while you slept.”  With those dubious silver linings firmly in mind, he began furiously casting about for something to help him get the collar off.  Already it was giving him that phantom sense of cold again, destroying any faint warmth that he’d taken comfort in.  It was enough to bring tears to his eyes, which he blinked back stubbornly even as he saw a bit of damaged bracing along one wall.  The ship was worn and used, and it looked like some of the panelling had been damaged in the past… leaving a piece of metal like a spike jutting upwards.  

It would be a bit of a stretch, but it was of the right shape and height for Kenobi to hook the end of it under his collar.  

Wincingly running a finger along the collar (hating how the chill immediately spread to his hand, although at least that made it easier to ignore the throbbing lightsaber burn near his wrist), Obi-Wan reassured himself that there really was quite a crack in the collar.  He just couldn’t easily pull at it without his hands going numb - and he didn’t have a lot of strength to work with.  Unlike Xanatos and unlike his captors, Kenobi didn’t have muscles on his side.  But he knew how to use gravity, so with renewed determination he strode up to the jutting piece of wall and braced himself to do something stupid.  

Considering his options… ‘stupid’ was better than doing nothing.  Because as bad as being enslaved in the middle of the ocean had been, Obi-Wan had no doubt that torture at the hands of two Dathomirian Sith would be so, so much worse.  The yellow one, Savage, had looked able to tear him in half with his bare hands, and the other one had seemed perfectly capable of worse.  

Telling himself that it was pain and not terror making his hands shake, Kenobi dragged over an empty cargo box as quietly as possible, enough so that he could be of a height with the jutting piece of metal.  “Here goes nothing,” he muttered to himself, amending, “Or… well… everything.”  And with that he awkwardly manoeuvred himself until he could hook his collar over the broken piece of metal, wincing as it scraped the side of his neck.  The collar felt uncomfortably tight, but the metal was strong and Kenobi could already feel that he had more leverage now.  

He did a slow count of ten in his head… then decided, ‘ Screw it ,’ at about four and started yanking as hard as he could, throwing his entire body-weight into it until he felt the metal start to protest.  He wasn’t sure if it was the metal of his collar or the broken piece on the wall giving way, but he didn’t pause to check - just thrashed harder. Just as he was starting to see spots in his vision from lack of air, his pulling forcing the collar too tight around his throat, there was a hard snap and suddenly there was nothing holding him in place any more.  Too startled to grab onto anything, Obi-Wan fell backwards, barely noticing the sharp sting as the broken, twisted edges of the collar were dragged against his skin as it came off.  

Hitting the floor left him momentarily dazed.

‘ Fuck, I actually did it, ’ he thought to himself… a split second before his entire connection with the Force returned with all the momentum of an ocean through a demolished dam.  If the previous shock of power had been overwhelming, it was nothing compared to this, and suddenly it was all Obi-Wan could do to keep his entire mind from being crushed under the onslaught.  He was a frostbitten limb being submerged in hot water, and his thirteen-year-old mind had never been trained to withstand a shock like this.  

~^~

Maul and Savage entered the cargo hold to find a place that looked like there was a storm living inside of it.  Even a Force-null individual would have been able to see what was wrong, as the Force was tearing around the place like a physical wind, hurling, shoving, and shattering anything it could reach.  The door had been straining against its lock and hinges by the time the two brothers had arrived, and Savage’s eyes had been wide at the chaos he’d been able to hear right through the steel door.  When they’d opened it, they’d had to keep quite a grip on the doorframe to prevent it from slamming into one or both of them, so great was the Force pressing outwards from within - like some sort of beast, eager to be freed after a long captivity.

And at the centre of that monster was a little human boy that normally either Zabrak could have snapped like a twig, so dirty that one couldn’t even tell what his original hair-color had been.  Being at the eye of this storm somehow only made him seem smaller, even as he stared sightlessly forward with eyes wide, terrified, and already bloodshot from the strain.  

Just moments ago, Maul had been contemplating the silver lining of his frankly annoying dealings with Xanatos: he’d tolerated the Dark Jedi’s needlessly complicated machinations, and had been tossed a relatively harmless but exceedingly exploitable Padawan Seer in return.  The boy was small enough to manage, and even if this were a fully-trained Jedi, Maul and Savage together could have likely overpowered him.  Since this Seer was just a pup, it was really more a matter of using his skills without breaking him too badly in the process.  Easily accomplished.  

Now, however, Maul was faced with the realisation that this wasn’t going to be anywhere near as simple as he’d hoped.  

Trained to take in entire war-strategies from one glance at a battlefield, it didn’t take Maul more than a few heartbeats to deduce what had happened here.  There was blood dripping down the side of the boy’s now-bare neck, and Maul had heard stories about just how unhealthy it was for a Force-user to be unwillingly cut off from the Force.  He himself knew how to close off his own connection, but he’d always been warned to do so slowly - and to undo it slowly as well, like a diver working to prevent depression sickness.  Obviously, the boy had done neither end of the process slowly, and Maul realised he’d have to act fast if he didn’t want his newly-found Seer to cripple himself.

Or die entirely, as seemed possible.  

The Padawan was just so small…

“Savage - hold back the storm he’s made!” Maul barked, not pausing to check if his brother understood.  Instead, he trusted in Savage to defend him, and put all of his focus into stalking directly forward, towards the little Jedi welp who knelt at the heart of all this chaos.  Since none of the flying debris hit him, he knew that Savage was doing his job, although Maul heard his brother snarl at least once with effort. Maul made a mental note to respect the boy’s powers - while clearly out of control, there was an honestly impressive amount of raw force at work here. 

Right now Maul was more worried about the more cerebral aspect of the boy’s Force use than the physical actions, so with Savage keeping away the storm of shrapnel being tossed around, Maul dropped smoothly to one knee right in front of Kenobi and immediately reached out and roughly gripped the boy’s face in both hands.  A pair of bright blue eyes didn’t even blink, but remained staring somewhere over Maul’s shoulder as if pinned in place by an unspeakable nightmare.  Red from a broken blood vessel had stained part of the sclera on the boy’s left eye, making the blue seem bluer.  

Frowning at the lack of response but not particularly surprised, Maul resigned himself to the fact that no boon ever came without effort, and used the Force to push his way into the boy’s mind.  He braced himself, but was still shocked by the absolute flood of images he saw.  This was why he’d needed Savage to watch his back - because this was going to take all of Maul’s concentration.  There was a storm in here, too.  “Listen to me, boy.  I am the eye of this storm, and you will come to me,” he growled, letting the words resonate through his hands, through the Force, exerting more power even as he worked to keep his own mind from getting caught up in the tumult in the Padawan’s brain.  It was tempting, too - every once and a while he caught a glimpse of something, an impression, and he knew without doubt that it was a snippet of the future.  Now was not the time to go fishing for prophecies, however, not when the prophet himself was drowning.  “The chaos around you does not belong here.  I bring calmness, and my will is absolute.  Obey it, or you will die.”  The last was less a Force-laden command and more of a simple truth, and he thought he felt a little tremor go through the boy - but that could have just been the Padawan sinking further into shock.  Maul pressed harder, grimly digging footholds into the boy’s mind with the Force, each new point of stability allowing him to reach in farther.  He’d taken over entire minds before, but not trained minds, and certainly not minds that were being defended by pure chaos.  Kenobi wasn’t even resisting him, yet the task was enough to take up all of Maul’s concentration.  

‘ Listen to me.  Harken, Kenobi .’  Now he was just talking mind to mind, willing his voice to echo above the cacophony of a million visions, all tumbled together into a slurry of incomprehensible madness.  ‘ You can sense the Force in me as I can sense the Force in you.  I am the beacon.  Find your way to me .’  

The head in his hands jerked; he didn’t know if it was an autonomic response or a sign that Kenobi was fighting back.  There was a new ripple through the Force that felt more purposeful - a push.  Ah, the boy had noticed he had a Sith in his head.  

‘ That’s it, boy,’ Maul pushed a bit deeper.  He was adept at this, and even as he had to use a certain amount of brute power, he also worked to keep his touch dexterous - after all, it would be counterintuitive if he cracked something in the young Jedi’s mind.  ‘ Focus on me.  An enemy can centre you; so can hatred.  Let your enemy become your entire world… ’

For a length of time that felt like an eternity but was in actuality only a few minutes, Maul kept pushing and digging deeper and deeper into the boy’s mind.  Kenobi pushed back more and more in response, definitely feeling the intrusion now, and this push and pull between them slowly imposed a roughshod sort of order - the natural law that existed between a planet’s destructive gravity and a moon’s desperate centripetal motion.  Maul smiled to himself, reflecting that the logic and order between predator and prey was perhaps more apt, one of the oldest patterns of the universe - and still just as usable in a pinch.  By the time he felt it safe to relax his efforts, the room around them was still and silent again, save for panting coming from directly in front of him.  At some point Maul had leaned his head in closer, and his foremost horn now brushed a dirt-smeared forehead.  Small, equally dirty hands had gripped his wrists at some point, fingernails digging little half-moons into his black and red skin, almost to the point of drawing blood.  

Kenobi’s eyes were closed again.  His Force-signature felt, if not normal, decidedly less like a rampaging, uncontrolled beast.

Proud of himself, Maul withdrew from the Padawan’s mind entirely and likewise released his head.  The boy immediately sagged, barely catching himself on his elbows, panting breath coming in warm, fast puffs against Maul’s bent knee.  Maul’s smug smile faltered a bit, as he was forced to admit that his feat had still only mended one problem of many - this close, and without rain and seaspray all around them, he could see that the boy was in worse shape than he’d realised.  

“I am not as keen with minds as you are, brother,” Savage’s voice came uncertainly.  He had come to stand over Maul, and was also looking at the pathetic shape that was all but collapsed against Maul’s right knee.  “But it would seem that you have calmed the Force in him?”

“For the moment,” Maul hedged, wary now of declaring victory when so much of this situation kept catching him off-guard.  He decided to act instead of being caught wrong-footed again, declaring, “We need to clean him up.  I fear more surprises if we leave him as he is, and unattended.”

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan felt numb.  He wasn’t sure if it was from exhaustion, from having a Sith taking up residence in his head, or because he’d finally been hit one too many times with the realization that his brain was fucked up enough to almost destroy him.  The deluge of waking nightmares had certainly taken a lot out of him, too.  Honestly, he just didn’t have the energy to function right now, even as he felt his connection with the Force settle into something roughly resembling normal.  

The two Zabrak’s were there.  When one slid a hand beneath his chin to tip his head up, he didn’t fight it; when the other gripped his arms below the shoulders, he let himself be lifted.  He’d royally fucked up his last attempt at escape, and officially didn’t have it in him to try anymore, so he just stood obediently when he was deposited on his feet.  It was no real surprise to find that his brain - which felt like an all-over bruise, just as his grasp of the Force felt like a torn muscle - wasn’t up to following conversations, as his ears and eyes informed him that the two Zebrak were talking to each other, but he didn’t register a word of it.  Maybe they were speaking another language; maybe he just didn’t have the energy to decipher even Galactic Basic.  All he knew was that Maul’s mouth was moving, Savage answering in a deep rumble of noise, and then hands were steering him.  So he walked.  His legs were honestly the least injured part of him, even if they felt leaden.  Savage walked steadily behind him, at least one massive, patterned hand on Kenobi’s shoulder at all times.  

He felt nauseous, and the world around him felt like it was starting and stopping in spurts - or else his mind was cutting in and out.  Either way, the next thing he was truly aware of was being in a new room.  It took him a slow blink to recognize the contraption dominating it to be a sonic shower.  “Clothes.”  Another slow blink and Obi-Wan realised that the yellow Zabrak was talking to him, but he just didn’t care.  With a sigh, he just closed his eyes and willfully stopped listening.  Likewise, he willfully didn’t react as, a minute later, he felt hands tugging his clothes off his body.  He already hurt everywhere, the pain of his wounds combining with tiredness and the deep, intangible pain of his disconnect-then-reconnect with the Force until he was an all-over ache.  He lacked the capacity to cope with anything worse being done to him, even if his swiftly increasing nudity gave him a few ideas of what might be coming next.  He hadn’t been molested on the mining station, but he’d been aware that some of the guards had a taste in younger boys like him.  He understood the concept of rape.

He didn’t expect to be gently nudged into the sonic shower without being hurt further.  

Naked now, he belatedly started shivering, then twitched in a half-hearted defensive reflex as he felt the sonic shower being turned on around him.  He’d been shut inside the cubicle, and could just make out the shape of the larger Dathomirian Zabrak through the frosted glass, presumably keeping watch.  Either the strangeness of that or the familiar feeling of the sonic vibrations perked Kenobi up a little bit, but only enough for him to manage a few more torpid blinks at the simple walls around him and lift a hand almost unconsciously to the back of his head.  He could still feel the knot of healing skin there from being hit the first time, when Xanatos had ambushed him and set all of this horror into motion.  

Then the pain in Obi-Wan’s shoulder throbbed, reminding him that he had a poorly healing wound there, too, and he dropped his arm back to his side.  Not having the heart to catalogue his other injuries, the ex-Initiate closed his eyes and let his chin sink to his chest.  He focused on just standing there, but as the shower went on - clearly having a lot of work to do in order to make sure that all of the dirt particles were done away with - he sank to sit on the metal floor.  The coolness of it immediately started sinking into his arse, but he didn’t care, because it was still not wet like the mining platform nor as cold as the seeping sensation of the collar.  

And no one was hurting him right now, so that made today… officially the best day Kenobi could remember right now.  

Wounded arms curled around his stomach and head pillowed on his knees, Kenobi let himself drift into a kind of thoughtless doze, revelling in the quiet on the inside of his head.  

Outside of the sonic shower, Savage watched with a heavy frown and increasing amounts of very un-Sith-like worry.  

When eventually the sonic shower turned off, Kenobi barely twitched, and likewise couldn’t find it in him to move when the door to his left opened.  He was barely awake, and his body reminded him of his injuries less if he didn’t move.  A hand landed on his back, large and surprising in its warmth.  “Get up now, boy.”  It was Maul’s voice, which probably meant that both Sith were in the room now, and that was finally enough of a threat to get Obi-Wan moving.  With a grunt of effort, he unfolded shaky legs and came unsteadily to his feet.  

He vaguely remembered someone telling him that it was always best to face trouble on one’s feet, but honestly, Kenobi would have been perfectly happy to take all of this lying down, because he couldn’t imagine how he was expected to have the energy for another fight after all of this.  Now that he was standing, he was aware of how nice it felt to be clean at least.  Even as he thought that, however, he felt the fresh scratch on the left side of his neck send a new drop of blood down towards his shoulder - the movement cracking whatever scab that had formed.  

With a dead-tired sigh, Obi-Wan just closed his eyes and padded out of the shower stall without having to be asked.  

Only in retrospect would he notice how oddly quiet both Sith were, their patterned faces registering shock and disquiet rather than smugness or triumph as they looked at him.

~^~

Since being given out as Darth Sidious’ apprentice, Maul’s interactions with the Nightsisters had been necessarily brief - there was no need for anyone to scrutinise the fact that Maul and his people were still so close.  Now, however, it seemed prudent to let Mother Talzin know that he’d collected a potentially powerful tool for their purposes.  Seers were rare, and to have one all but fall into their laps was nothing short of miraculous.  The fact that the Seer was of the Jedi Order was immaterial; the pup was small and manageable.  The Nightsisters would appreciate his powers regardless, and they’d worked with far more powerful, rebellious tools before - after all, the Nightsisters regularly commanded grown male Zabrak, so getting a human boy to do their bidding would be easy.  

The fact that Kenobi’s mind was fragile was a greater concern at the moment, so when Maul sent his coded message through carefully hidden channels, he made sure to note that this gift would have to be treated with care.  

Purposefully thinking no more about the fact that he’d just requested that a Jedi whelp be treated gently, Maul went about other business.  Mother Talzin would contact him if and when she wished.

Maul was in the process of triaging the disaster zone that their cargo hold had become when Savage commed him to request - surprisingly quietly - that Maul come to the ship’s refresher where he and the human boy were.  It had been reflex to tease his younger brother, asking if he was afraid to be alone with the baby Jedi.  Uncharacteristically, though, Savage had simply responded with silence and then repeated his request, a bit stiltedly, before closing the comm-link.  Baffled and a little bit unsettled now, Maul put down a piece of a splintered crate and did not run to find his brother… although he did perhaps walk very quickly.

When he stepped into the room, the sonic shower was still running, and Savage was awkwardly holding a bundle of soggy fabric - the Padawan’s clothes, it turned out.  “I was going to take these to run through the cleaning cycle a few times,” he explained, awkwardly domestic, “I do not think any amount of work will see them clean, and we have nothing else remotely of his size.”  Without further explanation, Savage padded out of the room, leaving Maul even more bewildered than before.  A glance to the right showed him a huddled silhouette in the sonic shower - nothing to be alarmed about.  The boy’s Force-signature was neither erratic nor dead, so Maul wasn’t sure why he’d been summoned here unless his brother was trying to get out of his task of watching the Padawan Seer. 

But Savage returned quickly, sans dirty clothes now.  His big, clawed hands flexed as if unsure what to do now that they were empty of either tasks or weaponry.  

“Savage, if you do not tell me why you called me here, I swear to-” Maul started to growl.

In another move very unlike Savage, the younger brother interrupted him, “The sonic shower should have done its task by now.  Go fetch the pup and you’ll understand.”

Generally speaking, Savage was the more straightforward of the two of them.  While perfectly capable of subterfuge when needed, it was usually Maul who instigated any type of double-dealings and led the way if any sort of lying was needed.  Simply put, Maul was the subtle, mysterious one.  Savage was usually blunt and upfront about things. Therefore, this new and unexpected secrecy had Maul more alarmed than he wanted to admit.  Working to keep his expression neutral, Maul merely nodded and strode confidently towards the sonic, even though he felt as if he were walking towards a bomb.  

The boy’s Force-signature continued to be neutral, though, quiet and still.  Maul was tempted to reach for the boy’s mind, but without eye-contact it was a difficult task even for his skill-level, so he let that fleeting impulse go and opened the glass panel instead. 

And immediately saw what Savage meant.

The boy was on the floor, his back and left side most visible as he sat with his knees huddled up and his head tucked against the back of them.  A bruise of a dozen shades bloomed all over the left side of his chest, so colourfully painful looking that Maul’s mouth twisted instantly in an unconscious wince.  He’d seen Xanatos give the boy a kick, but he hadn’t realised quite how brutally hard that kick had been. There were older wounds, too, injuries that Maul was not prepared to see: a badly healed burn across the curve of the boy’s left shoulder, the skin mottled with inconsistent scabbing; just barely visible at the back of the boy’s head, causing his newly-clean copper-blond hair to stand up in an unnatural cowlick, was another wound of unknown origin.  Given how much trouble the boy was having with his mind and the contents thereof, the head-wound in particular was deeply worrisome, especially as Maul recalled the psychological trauma that came with having one’s Force-connection turned off and then on like a lightswitch.  

Realising that he’d just been standing over and staring down at the naked boy, Maul forced himself to act, reaching down awkwardly to-  He would have usually grabbed the nearest shoulder, but that clearly wasn’t an option.  He ended up spreading his palm across the boy’s back where there weren’t injuries to disturb.  Trying to keep his voice to its usual level of intimidation but failing, Maul ordered, “Get up now, boy.”  He was surprised when the Padawan actually did so, and without any fight.  It wasn’t until Kenobi came fully upright, swayed rather alarmingly, and then walked past Maul like a sleepwalker that Maul recognized that he was dealing with pure exhaustion.  The boy was too tired to even be afraid.

Savage was glancing between Kenobi and Maul with vacillating looks of deep worry and uncertainty.  He was clearly looking to Maul for cues as to how to proceed… but also clearly resisting the urge to reach out to the Padawan in some way, although what exactly he was going to do was probably as unknown to Savage as it was to anyone else in the room.  

Taking a deep breath, Maul braced himself and took charge.  He stalked over to where Kenobi was just barely keeping his feet, circling around him and finally taking in the boy in his entirety with a clinical eye.  He made the analytical side of his brain engage, telling himself that he didn’t have time for the feelings that he could see turning up in his brother’s visage.  “Get the medkit,” he ordered shortly, even as he momentarily paused at the boy’s right side, taking in another set of half-healed blisters on that side of his ribcage.  “What did this?” he demanded to know, grasping one hand in the other behind his back, his posture militant.

Kenobi had had his eyes closed.  They opened now to bare slits, but Kenobi didn’t turn his head in the slightest even as he addressed the Sith next to him, “Electro-jabber.”  His words were breathy and dull, although he seemed to know what injury he was being asked about. His eyes closed again.  

Maul worked his jaw silently for a moment, unable to deduce exactly how he should react to all of this.  Finally he ended up reaching out, fingers boldly pushing aside strands of copper hair to more clearly reveal the knotted scabbing beneath.  “And this?”  

Kenobi’s eyes didn’t open this time, but he did take in a deeper breath, saying on the exhale, “No idea.  Just got hit on the head.”

How was it that everything he learned made the whole situation more alarming?  “When did these injuries occur?” Maul continued his interrogation, removing his hand from the boy’s person.  Zabrak, by and large, did not have hair, so the soft silky sensation lingered strangely on his fingertips.  

The answer was as lacklustre as those before, no resistance to be found.  “Not sure.  Haven’t had a calendar.  Before Xanatos stuck me on the mining platform.”  There was the faintest flicker of anger as the Dark Jedi’s name was said, but it faded quickly and left the boy seeming more drained than before, like a match flaring up for a few seconds but swiftly devouring its meagre fuel.  

“Xanatos did not mention that the boy was damaged beforehand,” Savage commented pointedly.  He was in the process of pawing through the medkit, but obviously was listening in and had paused in his work to look back at them.

“That’s because he did the damage,” Kenobi surprised them both by piping up.  He was perhaps trying to sound snarky or exasperated, but lacked the energy to put much identifiable emotion into the words.  His eyes had flickered open again, but once more drifted closed, this time with a pained look of resignation as he murmured, “Or his Offworld cronies did, anyway.”

Maul was starting to form a clearer picture of the situation, and as much as he told himself that he shouldn’t care about it (the only true issue here was that the damage threatened the usefulness of his newfound Seer), he didn’t like a single thing that he had heard.  

Apparently Savage didn’t either, because his expression had finally settled into a look of firm and heavy anger.  No longer uncertain or wary, the larger of the two brothers pulled what he wanted from the ample medkit and strode back to the little tableau in the centre of the room.  He immediately knelt down, his massive form folding in half.  A powerful, scarred hand reached out and gripped one of Kenobi’s elbows, and the boy’s eyes snapped open again to a tired half-mast.  There was a weak twitch of the Force and Maul was able to sense fear like a wave across the surface of the boy’s mind - easy for one Maul’s skill to pick up without even really trying - but it was a testament to how exhausted the boy was that his arm didn’t so much as twitch, even as Savage drew it towards him.  Hands that had broken bones before were careful, though, as they coaxed one lightsaber-burned forearm into reach; fingernails that had been lengthened into claws by Nightsister magic then opened a tin of bacta-cream to spread across said burn with equal delicacy.  Only then did the boy react, pain getting him to hiss and try to jerk his arm back. Savage’s right hand had moved to engulf the boy’s wrist just beyond the burn, however, so the only way the Padawan could have actually broken loose would have been if he’d chewed his own arm off.  

“Easy, small thing,” Savage murmured in what probably passed for gentle by his standards.  Maul watched silently as Kenobi breathed a bit faster, subtly but firmly leaning back, even though Savage barely seemed to notice the steady tugging with all of the boy’s weight behind it.  He finished smearing the bacta and looked up at Maul to ask calmly if his brother could get one of their native ointments - harder to source than bacta but admittedly much more effective. The Nightsisters specialised in death, yes, but their magics had other applications, including in the direction of healing.  Like Maul, their skills with life were balanced by their skills with death.  Looking marginally more alive now, the boy glanced rapidly between them, clearly not recognizing the word and even more clearly not sure what it meant for him.

Despite his best efforts, Maul felt a twinge of sympathy in his chest.  

He got the cream given to them by the Nightsisters.  Kenobi started looking at both of them - and the cream - like it was all some new wave of terrors about to be unleashed on him.  

Thankfully, Savage seemed blind and/or immune to the rising panic in the Jedi pup in front of him and continued to work one-handed while his other hand kept an unshakable grip on Kenobi.  He thanked Maul for his assistance, Maul further assisted by opening the jar, and soon the mixture of healing salves was being trapped against Kenobi’s skin by layers of gauze that Savage wound one-handed thanks to much practice.  It helped that Kenobi’s forearm was skinny enough for Savage’s entire hand to encircle with ease.  

Proving that he was not all brawn and no brains, Savage made sure to capture Kenobi’s other arm before releasing the first.  

“What are you doing?” Kenobi finally said in a breathless, confused little whisper.  Locks of copper-blond hair, no longer dirty but still rather matted, had fallen forward, not quite obscuring wide, terrified eyes - one still partially incarnadined from a broken blood vessel.  It was a fairly normal look for a Dathomirian eye, but looked very unnatural on a blue-eyed human.  With no clothing to hide behind, the fact that Kenobi was starting to shake was also obvious, lean muscles tensing up.  Maul caught himself pondering the desire to feed the boy because he was too skinny by half, and frowned at the sentimentality behind the thought.  

Before Maul could open his mouth to say something threatening to make up for his soft thoughts, Savage jumped in, suggesting, “That is a question best saved for later.”  

The boy blinked.  Then, proving that he wasn’t too exhausted to think, he replied, “That implies a later.”

Now Maul got a word in before his younger brother could, curling his lip a bit and snarking, “If you do not die of infection, then perhaps there will be.  Now hold still.”

The boy looked torn between shock, unease, and some latent urge to glare, as he just stared at Maul with his mouth opening and closing silently a few times.  He was preoccupied by Maul’s response enough that all he did was stare up at Maul for the next few minutes as Savage smeared healing creams on the second sabre-burn and then bandaged up the boy’s other forearm.  Now with matching bandages, Kenobi was released again.

Despite looking so stunned just a moment before, the boy immediately tried to bolt.  

Maul was impressed despite himself.  It took actual effort to react fast enough to catch him.  If Maul’s reflexes hadn’t been extensively trained on Dathomir and aided by the Force, he was pretty sure he would have missed, and even with all of this help, just barely managed to snake an arm out fast enough to grab the boy.  He ended up catching him by the neck, Kenobi letting out a squeak and then a swear as he was dragged back around in front of Savage again.  Savage then gave his brother a glare, which Maul was momentarily confused by until he felt wetness under his fingers: the deep scrape on the side of the Padawan’s neck was leaking blood.  He’d forgotten it was there because the boy was revealing no signs whatsoever that Maul was hurting him.  Unsettled despite himself, Maul loosened his grip quickly.  “Do not do that again,” he commanded warningly, even as he tried to fathom why such a young boy would be skilled at hiding pain.  

Kenobi’s eyes were halfway closed again; the surge of energy necessary to bolt, however futilely, had taken precious energy reserves that he didn’t have.  “ ’Kay,” the boy sighed without any particular inflection.  

Maul just continued to stare at the blood freshly smeared against the side of the boy’s neck.  He could decipher the imprint of his own palm in the redness, which oddly disturbed him despite the fact that he’d gutted opponents without flinching before. 

Brows lowered in concentration and perhaps a bit of unease himself, Savage reached out to grip the boy’s chin, although due to the size of his hand he ended up encapsulating most of the Padawan’s jaw.  Kenobi didn’t fight him as the younger Zabrak tilted his head back and to the side.  “This wound,” Savage said, sounding like he was stumbling through a foreign language as he asked carefully, “You received it recently.  How?”

Eyes barely open and staring numbly off over Savage’s massive shoulder, Kenobi shrugged and murmured, “Small price to pay for getting that damn collar off.”  A slow blink later (in which Kenobi seemed to contemplate just keeping his eyes closed) and the boy added with a ghost of morbid humour, “I guess I could have done it better, and not nearly cut my neck open, but hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

Maul made a mental note to check the cameras in the cargo hold.  When things had first gotten chaotic, it had slipped his mind - and then when he’d been inspecting the damage he’d noticed that the cameras were one of many casualties amidst Kenobi’s destruction.  He was pretty sure that the files were saved somewhere on the ship’s computer, though, and he could find out exactly how the whelp had broken out of a Force-nullifying collar and nearly slit his own throat in the process.  

Meanwhile, Savage was dabbing at the wound with an antiseptic wipe.  Despite how much it had to sting, the boy merely tensed and bared his blunt human teeth briefly.  His arms remained limp at his sides.  Maul watched as Kenobi’s breathing sped up a bit and his eyes scrunched completely shut when Savage began cleaning out the wound directly - all remarkably subtle signs of pain for something so young.  

Switching to his native tongue, Maul said briefly to his brother, “I’m going to fetch those painkillers we picked up on the last trade-planet - the ones that barely work.”  He circled around until he was standing at Savage’s shoulder so that he could then tap a finger on the middle of Kenobi’s forehead to get his attention.  The boy’s eyes immediately snapped open, fixing on him.  “Behave yourself, boy.  I want to keep you alive, but I have no particular reason to keep you conscious.”  In fact, he was pondering something else they’d picked up from that thrice-damned trader - a soporific that had been sold to them as a restorative drink.  Thankfully, Maul and Savage had mostly wanted information from the seller, which he’d given in return for them buying his overpriced shit.  

Eyes narrowing distrustfully, Kenobi reached up to grab at Savage’s wrist, although he was unable to loosen the Zabrak’s grip enough to pull his head free.  Teeth baring again - this time in annoyance - the boy managed to reply with a bit of fire despite the exhausted dark circles under his eyes, “You still haven’t explained why you’re bothering.”

“Do not question a gift, lest it be taken away,” Savage warned under his breath, and tired eyes slid to the other brother briefly before ultimately returning to Maul.  Good, the boy knew who the bigger threat was, despite Savage being physically larger.  

Maul was feeling generous, however, so he decided to lean in and respond.  As he watched every muscle in the Padawan’s skinny body tense up, Maul put on an almost-smile and admitted, “Because unlike your Jedi kith, I have found something of value in you - of great value, in fact.”  

It was gratifying how the boy’s eyes immediately widened in bewilderment and shock, and Maul felt marginally more in control of the situation as he straightened and then strode out of the room.

~^~

‘ Found something of value? ’  If Kenobi hadn’t lived so much of his life with people who found him quite the opposite of valuable, he might have been more disturbed by the statement than shocked - because being of value to a pair of Sith was probably a bad thing.  The sentence nonetheless hit Obi-Wan from an angle he wasn’t prepared for, and he was pretty sure he disassociated for a bit, just standing and staring at the place where the red-patterned Zabrak had been.  ‘Valued?’  He’d never been that, ever, it felt like.  He came back to himself either a minute or a year later when he realised that the other Sith, Savage, had let go of his face and that something had brushed his hip.  When Obi jolted in surprise and looked down, it was only to see that Savage was tying off a towel around his waist - probably just a hand-towel to the massive Dathomirians, the cloth nonetheless covered Kenobi comfortably from navel to knees.  

Honestly unsettled by the small kindness, Obi-Wan looked up to Savage’s face, almost desperately searching for some explanation there to make all of this make sense, but it was hard to divine any expression at all with the Dathomirian’s facial markings camouflaging the angles of his face.  

“Lift your chin,” was all the Zabrak ordered, and Obi obeyed without thinking, too off-balance to ponder rebellion.  He kept his arms at his sides and simply stood still as the wound on his neck was treated similar to his arms, gauze soon being wrapped around his throat by hands big enough to encircle his whole neck.  He kept waiting for one of Savage’s claws to score the soft skin of his throat.  So focused was Obi-Wan on that potential threat that he didn’t notice how tired he was getting of standing until his legs started to shake.  

Unsettlingly yellow eyes snapped down and then back up again; fearsomely marked brows lowered for a moment and then returned to their previous position.  “Sit,” was the next order, spoken as succinctly as before.  By this point, Kenobi wasn’t sure if the Sith was being purposefully gruff or if this was just what his voice always sounded like.  Either way, Obi-Wan obeyed, despite the fact that no one was restraining him right now and he had one less Sith watching him.  Sitting down felt obscenely good, though, and he made a little involuntary noise of relief when he did so.  

Savage made a chuffing noise that could have meant anything (but also could perhaps have been a small laugh) and then reached out to tap Obi’s right elbow, urging him to lift it out of the way.  He went to work on the half-healed electrical burns on the ex-Initiate’s ribcage next, and some part of Kenobi’s brain finally just sort of shut off.  He was undoubtedly still in terrific danger, but his threshold for danger had been so warped in the past week or so that even the tiniest cessation of threat (like Savage letting him sit, like Maul saying that he was valuable enough to keep alive) was perceived as safety.  His already beleaguered brain was willing to take what reprieve it could get, and his body followed, so that before long Kenobi was sitting with his eyes closed and nothing but peaceful white noise in his head.  He was aware in the most distant of fashions that the rest of his injuries were being seen to, but didn’t try anymore to understand why.  Keeping himself on the wakeful side of consciousness was officially all he had the energy reserves for.

“Open your mouth, Jedi.”  The command, in Maul’s harsh voice, jarred Kenobi enough that his eyes opened - although only to mere slits, because at some point all of the various pains in his body had settled enough to let a headache through.  The light of the room set his temples to throbbing, the back of his head doing the same as if he were being struck all over again.  Muddled by the growing migraine, Obi-Wan just barely opened his eyes enough to see Savage still sitting in front of him but the other Sith leaning over him - extending an uncapped bottle with an unknown liquid pooled inside.  Assured that he had Kenobi’s attention, flagging though it was, Maul went on sternly, “You will drink this.”

As Maul said this, Obi-Wan felt an accompanying nudge against his thoughts.  Before his training at the Jedi Temple, he wouldn’t have noticed, but while he’d ultimately been too poor a student to keep, he’d apparently learned well enough to feel a deft telepathic intrusion.

The problem was… he just didn’t care.  

Instead of trying to push back - to see if he could match this Sith mentally when he was so outclassed by his captors physically - Obi-Wan sighed tiredly, broke eye-contact, and just let it happen.  He’d been trying so hard and never winning, and for once he just didn’t want to waste any more pain and energy on a futile fight.  

The persistent, subtle nudging of ‘ You want to drink this, you need it, it’s good for you, and you’re craving it’ became an unhindered wave of Force when the expected resistance wasn’t found, and almost between one breath and the next, Obi was lunging for the container.  It was very much like something else was controlling his entire body, and if he’d had the fucks to spare, that might have terrified him - with his luck, he’d be horrified later when he looked back on it.  His mind had already felt bruised and fragile, and now it was pushed roughly aside as he let the Sith’s orders win out.  

The one silver lining was that the Zabraks looked royally startled.  Savage’s eyes widened and his muscles all tensed as the prisoner in front of him went from docile as a doll to frenetic and frightfully active.  Maul, for his part, barked out something that might have been a swear in another language as he found Kenobi’s hands grabbing and clawing at his wrist, all so that Kenobi could get at the bottle of liquid.  He nearly spilled it.  Obi felt a burst of pain in his mouth as his movements, so out of control, had him crushing his lower lip between the bottle and his teeth, although he didn’t care because a second later and he was guzzling whatever it was Maul had ordered him to drink.  The stuff was thicker than he’d expected, slightly chalky, a bit too sweet.  He still gulped it down so fast that he choked, and it took the work of both Zabraks to pull him back at that point.  

The Force-telepathy and the command disappeared from his head, leaving Kenobi’s migraine a thousand times worse and everything feeling like it had been pummelled.  Things felt loose in his head, shifting against each other like the two ends of a snapped bone.  He hung over Savage’s muscular forearms, which were now wrapped around his middle and making his damaged, scabbed ribs hurt.  The hugging grip had been necessary to pull him back, he realised.  Obi’s coughing turned to gagging for a moment, although at least it didn’t escalate to vomiting.  Distantly, he saw his own hands, and although the whole world was spinning, he was pretty sure he saw blood under his fingernails.  The noise he let out as he realised that he’d scratched up a Sith could have been generously categorised as a laugh - choked out, manic, and thankfully brief.  

The cloying taste of whatever he’d been commanded to drink was fading and he could taste iron from blood in his mouth.  His lip stung fiercely but couldn’t compete with everything else that hurt.  

And then everything started to get fuzzy and heavy.  

He thought he heard Savage say something accusatory to Maul, something about pushing too hard; Maul defending himself, saying that he’d barely used the Force at all, and how could he predict that response?  But everything was getting blurry and now his limbs and eyelids felt so leaden that even the presence of two Sith couldn’t keep him awake.  Suddenly Savage’s arms were the only thing keeping him up as he sagged against them.

This time when Obi closed his eyes, he didn’t drift into a fog of white noise.  It was impenetrable, silent blackness this time.

Chapter Text

Maul had returned to the cockpit.  He’d decided that they needed to change course to the nearest trade-planet, if only so they could get their new Seer more clothing than the dirty things he’d come in with (dirty things that were still in the process of being cleaned, although it was debatable if any structural integrity would be left after all the grime was finally removed).  Savage knew his brother well enough to know that Maul was also focusing on an achievable task because he was deeply unsettled, and needed something solid and controllable in his hands.

Because the boy was proving the opposite of solid and controllable.

Unconscious, at least, the Padawan was manageable - but to balance that out, he felt tenfold as fragile, just a little collection of skinny limbs like a pile of twigs.  Left with the task of watching him, Savage moved very carefully to lift the boy, ultimately cradling the human child in the curve of one arm.  Kenobi’s breath puffed quietly against his chest, lips slightly parted to reveal a bit of blood smeared across the lower one.  Savage reflexively reached out to tilt the boy’s head forward a bit more, so that if the mouth-wound kept bleeding, it would drip out instead of trickling into the boy’s lungs.  He frowned at the sensation of matted hair briefly beneath his palm - Savage’s experience with hair or fur was limited, although he’d slept with a human mercenary once who’d let him braid her hair.  The experience was enough for him to be sure that the current state of the boy’s hair was not ideal.

Nor was his temperature, Savage decided, watching as the little thing shivered.

Perhaps that was what had Savage walking to the cargo hold and hunting briefly amongst the wreckage there until he could find a mostly-intact crate.  It had no lid and was very small by Dathomirian standards, but he was able to grip it in his free hand to take it back to the shared sleeping quarters of the Scimitar without trouble, Kenobi sleeping limply in his other arm the whole time.  Savage was pretty sure that his brother would protest letting the human sleep in one of their beds like a comrade, so it made sense to then fill the crate with spare blankets - and besides, it was easier to position the crate in front of the room’s heating vent.  With the crate well-padded and positioned in a warm place that he could easily keep an eye on, Savage lowered the badly damaged human into the little nest, folding one of the blankets over him once he was settled.  Savage straightened and smiled, proud of his efforts.  The crate wasn’t big enough for the human to stretch out, but Kenobi seemed content to lie curled on his side, limbs tucked in like a chick within an egg.  From a practical point of view, Savage also knew that small, cosy spaces could be calming to scared, wild creatures, and on his side like this, Kenobi wouldn’t asphyxiate as easily if he vomited or bled more in his mouth (although the latter wound seemed to have stopped bleeding).  

At that point, Savage meant to stretch out on his own bed, where he could keep an eye on the boy and also relax… but instead he ended up sitting on the floor by the crate.  Maul would be busy for a while, if only to centre his thoughts - Savage knew his brother well, and that his mind was complicated, which often meant it was in need of extra tending to keep it in order.  That left Savage to unashamedly reach down into the crate and start the slow process of untangling some of the knots in the small human’s hair.  Thanks to the sonic shower, the hair itself was clean, and Savage had learned how to work through tangles without pulling - the mercenary woman had been a very educational bedmate in many ways.  Her hair had been long and black where the Padawan’s hair was coppery and much shorter, but Savage was able to fall back on old memories.  

While Maul focused on productivity to calm himself after the chaos of the day, Savage calmed himself with past memories and methodical, small motions.  The boy slept through it all, and Savage marvelled at how something so small could wreak so much havoc.

~^~

Darth Maul was at first not certain what he was looking at.  “You put him… in a box.  Like a pet.” 

His brother’s face went through multiple contortions before settling on a grimacing sort of frown, defending from where he sat upon his bunk, “It seemed wise to put him close to a heat source, as his body was sustaining its own temperature poorly.  The crate was conveniently sized and mobile.”

Folding his arms, Maul continued to stare down at the crate’s occupant - curled up and still asleep.  His Force signature was still worrisomely erratic, but at least he wasn’t dead… or awake and causing destruction.  “To my knowledge, humans do not adapt to extremes as well as you or I would,” he admitted grudgingly, “and considering the circumstances Xanatos put him through-” ‘ And how small he is ,’ his mind added with an unhelpful level of sympathy. “-I suppose I can see the wisdom in your decision.”

Relaxing a bit, Savage stood up and padded over until he was standing alongside his shorter brother, likewise looking down at their captured Seer.  “He was shivering heavily.  I cleaned his wounds well, but chances are high that he is going to be ill as his body fights off infection.  He is certainly malnourished.”

Nothing that Savage had said was untrue, so Maul nodded.  “We will have to watch his health, to ensure we have a live Seer to show the Nightsisters.”  He was attempting to remain objective, as he had just a few minutes ago when sending Mother Talzin an additional update - that the Seer he had discussed in his last report was… decidedly more damaged and erratic than previously thought, but still a valuable and workable asset.  Mother Talzin had already replied to his first message, albeit with nothing more than the expected orders to return immediately to Dathomir with their prize.  Maul had explained the necessity of a detour, although he’d said that it was to get medical supplies, not mentioning that he also needed to find clothes for the child.  The Nightsisters would not see why the Seer could not be handed over to them naked, and even Maul himself didn’t have a fully logical explanation.  If it ever came up, he could fall back on what Savage had said: the human was struggling with autoregulation.  Clothes would keep him warm, which in turn would help ensure he didn’t fall too gravely ill and perish before he could be useful.  “Did he wake at any point when you moved him?”

“He did not,” Savage shook his head.  His frown returned, looking troubled.  “The draught you gave him is working well, although I also suspect that he is exhausted.”

Maul knew that Savage was referring to the harsh conditions the boy had survived, but chose to instead focus on, “After his exertions with the Force today, I would imagine so.”  He went on briskly, hoping that would make it at least seem like this situation was under his control, “He is certainly a Seer, but at the same time his mind is undisciplined - doing tasks far outside its abilities. It’s a miracle he did not pass out on his own.”  It was also a miracle that his mind hadn’t cracked entirely, so far as they could tell.

Savage hummed and nodded in agreement.  His face had softened for some reason, as if the Padawan’s idiotic tenacity had somehow earned his fondness.  Maul rolled his eyes, reminding himself that Savage, for all of his bullish strength and size, really was the softer of the two of them.  “Go to the cockpit,” he ordered, deciding that Savage had spent enough time coddling their prisoner, “We are nearly to Regus IV, and you can handle landing and docking procedures.”  Narrowing his eyes when the Jedi twitched in his sleep, Maul went on, “I’ll watch the Jedi whelp while you disembark and procure suitable clothing and medicine for him.  You’ll have to be quick, though.  Mother Talzin has ordered us back to Dathomir with all haste.”

“I’m not surprised,” Savage replied, voice and expression growing more grave.  He, too, watched the Padawan, who was still unconscious, but now grimacing in his sleep.  “We bring her a rare gift indeed.”

Maul hoped so, but with everything he learned about Kenobi, he grew more and more worried about the strings attached to this gift - and its potential to self-destruct.  He and the boy had shared minds now twice, and both interactions had impressed Maul with the Padawan’s innate skills… and also worried him with how unstable that gift was.  He found his eyes wandering to the bandages on the boy’s neck, peeking out from beneath the blankets and hiding not only the nearly-cut throat but also the worrisome head-wound.  Being very mentally gifted himself, Maul knew that head-injuries and mental gifts did not mix.  And having one’s connection to the Force sealed off and then suddenly returned was not an easy thing for even a normal, stable mind to endure

~^~

 The last time Kenobi had woken up, he’d been… probably lukewarm.  Warm only in comparison to the wet cold of the mining rig.  This time when he woke up, he was warm- warm.  Actually warm, to the point where his mind merely drifted contentedly between wakefulness and sleep.  He was aware of his own breathing, of cloth all around him, but everything else was pleasantly muffled by warmth.  Pain was hazy; his hunger was an abstract concept; his recollection of the past twenty-hours… okay, that was slowly coming back.  But it felt disconnected, like he was watching someone else live through it.  Someone else nearly hanging themselves in an effort to break a collar off their neck - someone else standing by a sonic shower, being slowly stripped and wondering if this was how all rapes started - someone else desperately fighting off the presence of a Sith in their head, for the second time that day - someone else looking up at Mother Talzin’s white-and-black patterned face, one bony hand reaching closer-

What the fuck?   Who was Mother Talzin?

The realisation that he was recollecting dreams alongside real memories was like a cold dose of reality on Kenobi’s soft warm world.  He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to hold onto his blissful ignorance a little bit longer, not wanting to deal with his fucked up life or his fucked up head.  Then a familiar voice had his fight-or-flight instincts ramming into hyperdrive, saving him from further introspection entirely: “I can tell you’re awake, Padawan.  The Force gives you away like a fire in the night.”

In his defence, at that point Obi-Wan did his best to wake up and respond to Maul in some way - but then he found out that he was tangled up in blankets, and wherever he was, he didn’t have a lot of space to manoeuvre.  Muddled by sleep and also stiff as all hells, he apparently seemed like he wasn’t doing enough, because the next thing Obi-Wan knew he felt a Force-grip all the way around his neck.  He squeaked and swore as it dragged him unceremoniously upward, out of what turned out to be a lidless crate.  How he’d come to be there became immaterial as he struggled pointlessly against the Sith’s superior might, his only good fortune being that the Zabrak didn’t seem interested in throttling him to death - Kenobi was lifted neither very high nor for very long, soon being deposited on the floor in a naked heap.  He was getting really sick of not having any clothes, he decided, even as his skin pimpled in the cooler air.  He resisted the urge to look back forlornly at the crate he’d been in; at least it had been warm and he’d been covered up.  His wounded neck throbbed from the rough treatment.

Released from the Force-grip around his neck, Obi-Wan shakily collected himself, kneeling with his hands coming up to cover himself as (hopefully) subtly as possible.  His eyes quickly fixed on and didn’t leave the Sith across from him.

Darth Maul had been intimidating before, so he really hadn’t needed to make any further impression - and yet here he was, also kneeling, but his entire presence as foreboding as the slow implosion of a sun.  The comparison with the naked, bandaged boy huddled in front of him could only heighten the effect.  The room they were in now was well-lit, beds set into the walls in alcoves to either side, and nothing else to distract from the Dathomirian clothed all in black ahead of Obi-Wan.  Maul’s black-striped red face was a mask of all things threatening, the lines curling up around his mouth like a caricature of a snarl, emphasising his horns and further shadowing red-gold eyes.  Obi-Wan met those eyes in what was probably a stupid move, but it was the only kind of defiance he felt like he had the energy (and the guts) for right now.  Even as he made stubborn eye-contact, he couldn’t help but hunch down a bit, because his injuries were starting to ache again and he was starving and it was all he could do to not curl up in a ball and cry.  

“It is time we reached an understanding, Jedi welp.”

So of course Obi-Wan’s mouth just opened to let the words tumble out, “You know, it’s going to really disappoint you to know that not only am I not a Jedi, but I’m actually not a Padawan either.”

The marks on Maul’s face twitched as his brows twitched down into a frown.  Then his animal eyes narrowed with more intent, and he scoffed, “Do not lie to escape your fate, boy.  It changes nothing.”

“I’m not lying.”  Now that he’d started sassing, apparently he couldn’t stop, and maybe it was all a reaction to near-death experiences and still feeling supremely scared.  In fact, something like a hysterical laugh tried to crawl up his throat and it took effort to swallow it down even as he threw out, “If you’d gotten your hands on me a month ago I’d have been an Initiate at least, but I wasn’t even that after my thirteenth birthday.”  It hurt to admit, but he told himself it had to hurt the Dathomirian in front of him more: fishing for a Jedi only to catch a washed-out Temple student.   

Kenobi’s words were definitely having an impact as they sank in; Maul’s patterned face was twisting more and more with emotions as denial and temper and surprise warred in his expression.  Obi had just enough time to feel a fierce spark of triumph over that (because what else could he count as a victory in his current situation?) before the Sith’s left hand turned and closed in a fist and suddenly Obi-Wan was being lifted up onto his knees by an invisible grip around his throat again.

“Do not toy with me,” the Sith warned in a low growl like thunder, and Kenobi fancied he could feel the tremor of it right through the Force-grip tightening around his neck.

“I’m not…toying with you,” Kenobi choked out.  “You and I both know you can get inside my head - take a look!  I’m telling you the truth.”  Even as he said this, his insides twisted up into knots and his whole body quietly tensed, because he most emphatically did not want the Sith prying into his mind again.  His head already hurt and the helplessness from it happening before was still painfully fresh in his memory - added now to the helplessness of being held up on his knees, too low to get his feet under him and stand but too high to relieve the strain.  He felt his breathing start to pick up as his thoughts once more wandered involuntarily down a dark road, aware of how naked and undefended he was, and that he had no idea what a Sith would do to a boy that nobody cared for.  

Just as Kenobi’s mounting fear started to solidify into full panic, however, the grip released and he fell back down onto hands and knees again, coughing as the pressure disappeared.  Maul was still glowering at him, big hands flexing like a predator frustratedly flexing empty claws (although, notably, he lacked his brother’s physical claws).  

“It does not matter,” the Sith repeated, strangely.  When Kenobi looked up, massaging his throat and being a bit surprised not to feel new blood seeping through the bandages all around it, Maul looked to have tamped down on his temper so that it was a banked fire behind golden eyes.  “Your worth to me is unrelated to your status as a Jedi.”

There was that sentiment again… worth.  Value .  Obi-Wan felt something stilling in his chest again, that unhealthy little part of himself that liked hearing the word even as more logical parts of him screamed that it was not a good idea to want praise from a Sith.  “What are you talking about?” he asked warily.  

Whereas before Maul and his brother, Savage, had been cagy about giving out information, this time the Zabrak looked at Obi unblinkingly and stated, “You could be a Jedi, a chancellor, or a spice-trader and it would matter not.”  While Obi-Wan blinked in patent disbelief, the Sith warmed to his topic, clearly pleased with himself, “True, I was promised a Jedi Padawan, but I cannot truly be angry at Xanatos for his dishonest dealings when it led to a Seer being dropped into my lap.”

It seemed that perhaps Sith - or at least this one - had a slight flair for the dramatic, because Maul paused then, just watching for how Obi would react to this news.  For his part, Obi-Wan froze where he was for a second… and then burst out laughing.  “You can’t be serious.”  It was hard to get the words out between giggles, as the sounds refused to stop now that they’d started - like his body had needed an outlet for pent-up emotions and this was the first one it could find, however inappropriate.  His ribs flared with pain, forcing him to double-over and clutch at them, but he still couldn’t stop the bursts of uncomfortable laughter.  “There’s no way you believe what you’re saying.”

Having his dramatic reveal ruined had left the Sith looking disquieted, although maybe that was just a result of watching a failed Initiate dissolved into pained laughter.  Brows beetled and mouth turned down tightly in a frown, Maul blurted, “How hard did you hit your head?” like it was an involuntary question.

And Kenobi just wheezed, tears in his eyes but his mouth still twisting up at the edges because this was too unbelievable, “Really fucking hard.”  Getting the laughter under control at least a little bit as the pain outweighed the manic need to giggle, he sucked in a deeper breath… then winced because that wasn’t comfortable either.  He was beginning to suspect Xanatos really had cracked a rib.  “Not hard enough to have delusions of grandeur, though.  I’m not a Seer.”

Maul had collected himself a bit more, although he still looked rather ruffled.  That sucked for him, Kenobi figured - clearly he should have anticipated a little mania after all his audience had just survived.  “Clearly that is what everyone around you has believed - to their own loss.  But even if no one else has noticed, you are a Seer, boy, and I have plans for you.”

The reality of the situation could only be held at bay so long by hysterics, and as Kenobi caught his breath and swiped the dampness from his lashes, he tried to get a handle on the confusing knot of disbelief, lingering derisive humour, and fear in his gut.  “Yes, well, I don’t know how well that’s going to work out for you, seeing as I mostly just get random dreams that make no actual sense,” he said, trying to ignore how the last part of Maul’s sentence unsettled him.  He was sure that two Sith would have plans for him regardless of whether or not he truly was a Seer as they believed.  

Eyes narrowed to predatory, irked slits, the Dathomirian muttered, possibly just to himself, “You have an awful lot of cheek for one in your position.”

Obi-Wan felt a cheeky response immediately climbing up his throat but managed to choke it down this time.  The growled phrase did a lot to remind him that he was, indeed, in no position to be mouthing off.  She settled back on his knees and tried not to be too obvious about hunching defensively, the room feeling uncomfortably cold around him.  

The Sith’s expression shifted minutely into what might have been an expression of approval, chin dipping in the smallest of nods; Kenobi wasn’t sure what to make of it.  Tone back to being brisque, he went on as if Obi-Wan had never knocked him off-balance, “Savage has gone planetside to collect supplies.”  Obi sat up a bit in surprise, only belatedly looking around and realising that he wasn’t feeling or hearing the low vibration of the engine; they were docked somewhere, or at least had landed.  No doubt seeing the sudden alertness, Maul’s voice dropped to a more dangerous octave and he warned, “Do not think this an opportunity for escape.  We are far from any towns, and the terrain would be inhospitable even if you were not injured and unclothed.”

Seeing the Sith’s point, Kenobi settled back down again, trying to exude sullenness so as not to admit the little stab of defeat he felt.  He still cut another glance around the room, beneath the fall of his bangs, noting the door - it was behind him, and he was closer to it than Maul.  And as he’d determined previously, his legs were one part of his body that did work.

Obi shifted his focus back to Maul, who was still talking: “-Collect clothing for you.  This is not kindness - merely practicality.  Training you will already be tedious enough without you distracted by cold.”

Suddenly escape plans fell right out of Obi’s head as he snapped his head up and just stared at the Sith across from him.  “ Training ?” he couldn’t help but repeat, voice sharp and thin with bewilderment - and partly because his chest twinged again.  He curled an arm around it reflexively, trying not to let his breathing speed up again.  

This time Maul was not perturbed, and remained kneeling like a terrifying, black-clad statue with his implacable expression fixed on Obi-Wan.  “You’re hardly of any use to me as you are.”

Realisation began to sink in, tales of Sith turning Jedi to the Dark Side.  Kenobi swallowed thickly, but managed to grate out without his voice shaking, “I won’t be like you.”

That, surprisingly, had no particular effect on the Sith.  In fact, he dipped his head almost mildly as if in acceptance of that.  “Fortunate, then, that I do not need you to be.  I just need your mind to not shatter beneath the force of your gift - as it nearly did yesterday.”

Obi-Wan rocked back on his heels, Maul’s response hitting him like a splash of water to the face.  He could argue all day long that he wasn’t a… a Seer… but he had no defence against the assertion that his brain had just about imploded recently.  Multiple times, actually.  Even now, when he’d thought Maul would use the Force to burrow into his thoughts, he’d had the instinctive urge to defend his thoughts like a wild animal favouring a wounded limb.

All this while Maul was watching him keenly, and either the Sith was incredibly observant or else he perhaps was in Kenobi’s head a bit.  “You see the logic in my goals,” he stated with surety, “Your mind is fragile.  Without care, it will break further - perhaps irreparably this time - instead of healing.”

Obi didn’t know what to do with this.  On a surface level, this Sith was offering him help.  He still might not believe that he was some prophetic entity, but he’d known for a long time that his mind was fucked up, and recent events had made it viscerally apparent how dangerous that could be to him.  He physically could not think back to the moment when he’d broken the collar off because he could feel the frayed edges of himself there, and the worst part was, he barely had the words to describe the damage - much less the tools to repair it.

And now the universe was handing him a Sith highly skilled in mental Force skills, offering assistance at a price.  

Obi-Wan clenched his jaw and tried to decide if he wanted to ask what that price was exactly.  Because so far, it went unsaid that the Sith had plans for Kenobi’s gift .  “What if I say no?” he dared to say instead, voice low and careful.

The Sith didn’t even blink.  “Then you will discover that I am not asking.  And that I have no need to keep your body intact, only your mind,” he rumbled bluntly.

Well.  That answered that then.  

Obi reached out with the Force to grab the blanket off the nearest bed and yank it over the Sith’s head.  He’d been able to reach out in the Force enough to sense a settlement nearby - or at least living, sentient entities within range of his senses.  Whatever treacherous terrain lay outside the ship, it couldn’t be worse than the treacherous dangers that lay inside of it, and Obi-Wan preferred his chances running for help than sticking around to be bent to the whims of the Sith.  Adrenaline doing a lot of help him ignore his injuries, he bolted for the door, using all of the alacrity the Force could give him and that he’d missed so much on the mining rig.  Maul was still in the midst of his first roared swear behind him by the time Obi reached the door and forced it open.  

And physically collided with the second Sith. 

Chapter Text

Savage had just gotten back from his foray to buy supplies and had barely stepped up to the door to check on how their Padawan prisoner was doing when the boy in question came barrelling out of the door and right into him.  Startled but both trained and magically blessed with quick reflexes, Savage grabbed at the human even as the boy swore and tried to wriggle out of his grip.  “Brother?” he called.  Uncertain where to put his hands without grabbing injuries or digging in with his claws and further unsettled by the fact that his brother only answered in a series of Dathomirian curses, Savage was nearly bested by a child.  Luckily he managed to find a safe grip on the young Force-user’s upper arms - a relatively uninjured part of him - and while leaning over him, peered further into the room just in time to see his brother cast off a blanket from his head.  Thoroughly mystified, Savage just blinked, and then suddenly the boy made a furious noise and managed to swing around one of his forearms.  A wave of rather impressive Force energy swept through the room and the discarded blanket whipped up into Maul’s face again before he could get up from where he’d been sitting on the floor.  This time Maul roared in fury, and Savage found himself murmuring apologies even as he tried to get a better hold on the boy.  He ended up grabbing Kenobi’s wrist - then letting go with a start as the little boy let out a sharp yelp of pain.  Savage wasn’t sure if he’d pressed down on one of the bandaged wounds or just plain squeezed too hard, and both possibilities left him feeling more out of his element than he could ever remember being.

In the end he sort of squished the boy against his front, one hand still gripping Kenobi’s upper right arm and Savage’s other arm wrapped around his back.  This seemed to prevent further grabs for the Force, although perhaps he’d hurt the boy enough to dissuade him a second ago.  That thought made Savage feel more terrible than he’d anticipated.

“Brother, what happened?” he finally asked, bewildered. 

Maul had, once and for all, fought free of the blanket.  He threw it aside as he surged to his feet and then stomped angrily forward, face twisted with rage.  “This whelp-” he snarled, stepping up close enough to grab a fist-ful of Kenobi’s hair.  The boy’s head was pulled back and he bared his blunt little human teeth in a hiss of pain; a valiant attempt at a snarl for such a small thing.  Maul finished, growling down at the boy, “-Decided to test my patience with an escape attempt.  He no doubt had aspirations to run across the open terrain for help.”

Imagining that involuntarily, Savage looked down in alarm.  “Regus IV is treacherous.  You would not last an hour in the inhospitable climate.”  Savage himself had nearly been eaten just in his short journey for supplies.  He took in the boy’s small size, frowning down at the blue eyes now slanted grudgingly towards him despite Maul’s [equally inhospitable] grip.  “You are a very easily eaten size,” he felt the need to stress.  He even gave Kenobi a very small shake, because it felt important that this point sink in, before such a small thing made any further impulsive, dangerous decisions.

Maybe he was taking this a bit personally.

But they didn’t want the Seer to die on them, did they?  Surely it was natural to worry.

Either not believing Savage or simply deciding to focus on the greater threat, Maul, the boy grimaced and slid his eyes back to the red-skinned Zabrak, saying nothing.  He did flinch in Savage’s arms when Maul snarled more toothily at him, however, and Savage decided at that point that his brother perhaps needed to calm down.  

“I procured clothing of his size,” he changed the course of the conversation, and at first his brother appeared not to hear - he was busy glaring down at the Padawan he still had in his grip.  The boy was breathing shallow and quiet but fast in Savage’s hands.  “I can see to it that he’s presentable if you wish to handle the ship.”

Maul’s gaze narrowed and for a second Savage wondered if he’d stubbornly decide to choose the former task instead, if only to continue this staring match.  Savage was sad that there were no video feeds in the sleeping quarters, to see exactly what had transpired to infuriate his brother so… although Savage had a few ideas, having seen how Kenobi could wield the Force now that he was fully conscious.  Savage had never seen his brother bested by a weapon as harmless as a bedsheet.  Realising that Maul’s ego and temper might be on the verge of getting out of hand, Savage pressed carefully, “Mother Talzin will want another update, once we are underway.”

Mentions of Mother Talzin finally snapped Maul out of it.  He was always the one to message the Nightsisters, being better with words and diplomacy than Savage was.  He let out a smaller growl that was more of a gunt of recognition this time, and grudgingly let go of the boy’s copper hair.  Kenobi immediately dropped his head, closing his eyes and letting out a little noise that were probably both unconscious signs of relief.  Maul stepped back, voice less openly furious even though his body posture was still rigid with temper.  “Watch him.  I’ll get the ship underway,” was all he said before angling past Savage and storming towards the cockpilot of the Scimitar.

Savage watched him go.  Once there was at least one door closed between them, he looked back down at the Seer still in his grip, informing him, “It is not wise to rile my brother so.”

“Yes, well, what else was I supposed to do?” the boy surprised him by actually responding, head tucked down and away and words spoken quietly so Savage almost didn’t hear them.  

He did, though, so he responded even as he shepherded the boy back into the sleeping quarters so the door could close behind them, “Accept your circumstances.”  Only then did he risk letting go of the boy with one arm so he could reach back and lock the door - no more unexpected exits.  He added to his previous statement, “Or at the least do not attack my brother with a blanket.”

Leaning as far away as he could with Sevage still holding onto his right upper arm, head ducked and body-language speaking of a reasonable amount of defensiveness and fear, Kenobi surprised Savage by continuing the conversation.  His voice held an edge but was still quiet, like he was smart enough to be afraid but not smart enough to shut up entirely, “I wasn’t exactly spoiled for choice.  What would you have done?”

Deciding that the situation was under control as he could make it, Savage shrugged off the pack he’d been carrying, sitting down on the nearest bunk as he shrugged and decided to answer, “Waited until I had a more respectable weapon.”

Kenobi had been eyeing the door, but now snapped his head around to stare at Savage again with a look of consternation and disbelief.  Seeing no real harm in talking to their prisoner when he couldn’t really do much anyway, Savage elaborated, “Maul is a proud man.  He would prefer to be stabbed than…”  He sought out the word in Galactic Basic, and could only really come up with, “...Blanketed.”  

Perhaps it was the wrong word because the boy was staring at Maul like he’d grown a second head.  

Savage started pulling things out of his pack.  “Put these on.  You are small and skinny and your body heats itself poorly.”

As Savage stretched out a hand with the folded clothes, the boy shied away.  He covered himself a little, clearly knowing he was naked, but eyed the offering with distrustful eyes.  

Floundering for a moment, Savage just ended up doing what he’d done when he himself had been a child, and trying to lure in a Dathomirian sylreith with bits of bread: he tossed it on the floor between them.  Maybe the motion had been less intimidating when Savage himself had been less hulking in size, because Kenobi flinched back harder than the small native canine had.  Still, the boy eyed the clothes with a bit more interest now that they were not connected to Savage’s person, nor forcing him to come within arm’s reach.  “So… I put these on.  And then what?” Kenobi asked cagily.  He sounded defiant but he also sounded tired.  Savage eyed the crate and wondered if he could coax the boy back in there again, to sleep more.  

The ship gave a little quiver and a rumble, but the Scimitar was a well-kept ship, and therefore took off smoothly with no more fanfare than that.  Savage felt a little pang of sympathy as Kenobi tensed up and looked around him as if for another exit, no doubt recognizing that his already-slim escape chances dropped to nearly zero once they left the planet’s surface.  Maybe that was why Savage decided to distract him by answering candidly instead of being tightlipped as he’d usually be with a prisoner.  “After, we will leave this room and walk to the ship’s kitchen-” ‘ And very carefully not disturb my brother .’ “-And consider food and water.”  He also probably needed to get some medicine into the child, but considering how disastrously that had gone last time, he was uneasy about trying it again, especially without Maul present as back-up.  The boy didn’t look to be in pain, but with two lightsaber burns and multiple other abrasions and bruises, there was no way he was healthily pain-free.

Especially after Savage had struggled with him.  The larger Zabrak could still hear the boy’s pained cry in his ears, and it made him cringe internally.

Still eyeing Savage distrustfully, their new Seer nonetheless started sorting through the various clothes.  Hoping to be less threatening in some way, Savage made a show of stretching back on the bunk he’d decided to occupy - there wasn’t much the boy could do anyway with the door locked.  True, Kenobi could throw stuff at Savage or even have a go at the door’s control panel, but the younger Dathomirian was a bit more tolerant of that sort of thing than his brother.  He was determined to react with less outrage if a blanket was Force-thrown at his head.

When the sounds of clothing moving around stopped, Savage suspected that Kenobi was contemplating exactly that.  So, finding straightforward discussions more honourable, even with Jedi prisoners, Savage murmured even as he angled his head so that he was looking at the boy instead of the ceiling of the bed alcove, “If you are pondering attack, you will find it very hard to get my palm over to the door panel even if you do manage to incapacitate me.” It was a bluff; the door’s lock was nowhere near that sophisticated, but the boy didn’t know that.  Still looking very small and rough even now that he was dressed in tan tunic, trousers, and soft shoes, the boy jumped and stiffened a bit at Savage’s words.  Savage found himself fighting the urge to smile, internally gleeful that he’d guessed the Padawan’s intentions correctly.  “You will get food faster if you do not try,” he added.

Blue eyes narrowed, a wayward lock of reddish hair falling over them.  “What if I don’t care to eat anyway?  Maybe I’d rather starve than be useful to you,” he spoke with surprising fortitude for one so small and disadvantaged.  His little hands were clenched into fists, and Savage noticed that he was shaking.  

Savage was used to dealing with powerful enemies, big individuals who needed a lesson in how someone else could be bigger, threats that required someone of Savage’s strength and size.  A defiant child… he was less sure how to deal with.  Standing now, Savage came over to Kenobi to stand and frown down at him, arms folded in consternation.  He did feel an inexplicable little burst of amusement and pride, however, when the boy only gave way a half step, otherwise just clenching his fists tighter and tipping his head back to keep meeting Savage’s fierce countenance.  “Has my brother told you why you are here, Padawan?”

“I’m not a-” the boy started, then sighed gustily and flicked his eyes away, responding in a resigned tone, “Fine.  Yes.  He said that I’m a Seer, and you have plans for me.”  Still looking away, he replied in a voice that was probably supposed to be snarky but instead came out sounding unsettled and fragile, “If my mind doesn’t break first.”

How could the boy manage to look even tinier when he had his head turned away like that, expression obscured by that mop of hair?  Savage unfolded his arms but fought to keep up his imperious facade.  “Then you know that starving yourself changes nothing.”  Kenobi tilted his head enough to look up at Savage through his bangs, even if the rest of his body language remained closed-off and small.  “You will be on this ship regardless.  You will be under the watch of two Sith regardless.  It is merely your choice whether to do it while hungry or not.”

Apparently not entirely beaten yet, the boy retorted with surprisingly little hesitation, “True, but I imagine your brother will have a much harder time making use of me if I’m dead of starvation.”

“That is where you’re wrong.”  Savage folded his arms again and this time leaned down close.  He could see how the boy wound up to bolt, probably only holding his ground because he knew he didn’t have anywhere to go.  “Before death comes pain.  Before pain comes exhaustion.  Alongside all of those comes sleep.”  Savage unbent one arm to tap a forefinger against the boy’s forehead, maintaining eye contact even as the boy flinched back and glared and then widened his eyes as Savage finished, “And then you will dream, little Seer.  Only you’ll have a lot harder time waking up from the bad ones.”

Kenobi’s eyes were wide and bright with fear, the redness on one sclera from the broken blood vessel vibrantly visible.  Savage knew that he’d hit the nerve he needed to hit.  The boy would eat.  At least for now.

Even as he counted it as a win, however, he felt fucking terrible about it.  In fact, he felt less like a victor and more like a shameful cur as he led the now-quiet Jedi pup out of the room.  He kept one hand wrapped around one of the boy’s upper arms as a precaution, but every step of the way he found himself looking over worriedly and wishing for the boy to actually make an issue of it.  But no: their walk through the Scimitar was quiet.  Then again, the boy had to be very tired.  Perhaps later he would become trouble again - it would be a sign of good health if he fought back.  

Those tangled feelings suddenly faded into the background, however, as they reached the ship’s little galley and Savage realised he had no idea what young humans were supposed to eat.

~^~

In retrospect, Obi-Wan should have realised that his body wasn’t ready to handle that much food again.  But once the massive Dathomirian had started bringing out various edible things, Kenobi had just realised he was so hungry , and he doubted that any amount of Jedi training could have reminded him to moderate himself.  And in all fairness, for a certain amount of time, it had felt absolutely fantastic to finally eat and hydrate.

Then his stomach had cramped up and he’d ended up vomiting his guts out.  

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed but he was in the crate again.  He was shaky and exhausted enough from puking that he barely cared.  The yellow Zabrak, Savage, was somewhere nearby and, he was pretty sure, had not only kept him from falling into his own vomit but had carried him back to where he was resting now.  Savage was still terrifying but Obi-Wan was having a hard time focusing on that, what with how his limbs felt limp and watery and the blankets and walls of the crate around him created a sensation of inaccessibility and safety.  His hindbrain told him that he was warm and unreachable, and it was hard to fight back with logic that said he had a Sith in the room with him, capable of dragging him out of this flimsy box at any time.  ‘ Get up, Kenobi ,’ he kept telling himself, ‘ You’re supposed to face your enemy, not sleep when they’re around .’  No amount of self-chastisement could get him to move, however, and while he could have blamed it on how tired and worn out he was, that felt like an excuse.  Feeling ashamed, he burrowed his head deeper into the blankets and tried not to imagine what Qui-Gon would think of him now.  Or what anyone would think of him, really.  Even Savage had just watched his prisoner fail at the simple task of eating… although at least the Sith hadn’t had any reason to hold Kenobi at high esteem to begin with.

Furthering Obi’s embarrassment, he drifted off entirely, only realising that he’d fallen asleep when he was awoken by a nudge to his head.  When his dazed blinks became a gasp and jolt of fear, finding the yellow-skinned Zabrak leaning over the crate, the Sith made a noise somewhere between a hushing sound and clucking one’s tongue.  It was an incongruous enough noise that Obi-Wan just froze instead of trying to scramble away.  “Easy, little Jedi,” the massive Sith said while Kenobi sat, breathing fast and pressing back against one of the walls of the crate.  Obi-Wan hadn’t corrected the ‘Jedi’ title earlier, and now he felt even less equipped to, his muscles quivering while his heart raced.   

Still foggy from the doze he’d fallen into, it took Obi a moment to realise that the Sith was holding a spoonful of something up to his face.  Given that it was clearly a Dathomirian-sized spoon, it was like a small bowl to Kenobi, but what his brain really registered was that it smelled like soup.  He’d started to raise one hand and call on the Force to defend himself, but the enticing smell reminded him that he hadn’t managed to keep any food down.  

He should have pushed it away anyway.  He should have been defiant and stalwart and every inch a Jedi of the Light side, refusing an offering from a Sith.  

But then, he’d failed out of the Jedi Order, hadn’t he?

Feeling small and ashamed all over again, he gave into his body’s increasingly loud demands to eat, leaning forward and slurping down the broth more carefully than his earlier eating had been.  He shut out the responding noise of approval that Savage made, because the only thing worse than accepting a gift from a Sith was accepting praise from one, even if it felt nice to be doing something easy for once.  The soup was bland but filling, and if there was an aftertaste of sweetness on his tongue that reminded him of the stuff he’d wildly drank yesterday from Maul’s hands, well… It was too late to worry about that now.  

He hurt a bit less and his hunger was less, too, by the time he sank back down into the pile of blankets and started drifting off again.   No one tried to keep him awake, so as much as he knew he should be keeping his guard up, he was just too exhausted (and now full) to do it.  He felt Savage drop another blanket over him and then give his head the lightest of strokes, but Kenobi already had so many things to be ashamed of that he just thought resignedly ‘ What’s one more to the list? ’ instead of fighting the basic comfort of the touch.  

~^~

“He is not well,” Savage said gravely as he walked into the cockpit.  When his brother turned to him, Savage raised a mild belaying hand and anticipated the question, “He is asleep.  It gave him a small dose of the same drink you gave him yesterday, mixed with food.”  Maul relaxed moderately, turning back to the flight controls as if he hadn’t just tensed up at the thought of their little Seer unattended.  Savage sat down in the copilot’s seat… and then sagged heavily in it as he admitted, “But first he ate and then vomited all of it.”

For the second time, Maul turned from the controls, poorly hiding alarm.  “What did you feed him?” he growled.

Savage spread his arms helplessly.  “Very little!  And yet, his body could not handle it.”  He recalled the venture, where he’d been so worried about not having the right food for a human that he’d neglected to consider that any food at all might be too much. “He has been sorely starved.”

Maul glanced down, thoughtful, and Savage could see him chewing at the inside of his cheek even as his hands fisted on the controls.  Maul could be a man of explosive feeling and emotion, but he could also be very measured and - to some - unreadable and unpredictable.  Even when his brother was deep in his head as he was now, however, Savage knew his tells, and could see that the elder Dathomirian was troubled by this.  When he looked back up, his face was a picture of resolve, however.  “It changes nothing.  I will see to it that his mind is set to rights, so that he might be a useful gift to the Nightsisters.”  When Savage grunted and nodded, but otherwise just waited, Maul was soon adding in a less firm tone, “Did he manage to eat anything at all?”

“After I cleaned up his sick, I mixed the medicine into a broth.  I used father’s recipe.  It was a small portion, but it stayed down,” Savage relayed the last of the story with a shrug.  

At the mention of their father, long dead on Dathomir, Maul gave a blink and an accepting nod.  They both knew the recipe; before they’d become great warriors, they’d been children in the male colony, and they’d had their fair share of upset stomachs, too.  Savage was just happy that apparently Dathomirian home cooking agreed with young human constitutions.  “I’m surprised he did not throw it in your face,” Maul muttered darkly, ending the moment of shared reminiscence.  

“He’s really not that much trouble when he’s tired,” Savage protested weakly.  He pointedly did not mention how he’d felt the Force gather around the boy’s tensed hand, impressively strong for one so young and abused.  Savage had half hoped that he’d do it, if only so Savage could see just how much bite the little thing truly had when he wasn’t out of his mind destroying their cargo hold.  

Maul just growled and focused on the flight controls.  “You will say that until it is you that he decides to attack,” he grumbled, making no distinction between the lightsaber-wound and the shameful blanket defeat that he had suffered.

Savage found himself fighting back a smirk and got up to continue his Padawan-guarding duties before his mirth earned him his brother’s wrath.

~^~

Well, Obi could safely say that he wouldn’t be turning to drugs as a way to escape his dreams, because despite probably being drugged to sleep again, he had the most horrendous nightmares.  He didn’t wake up screaming, but it was a near thing, and honestly only the confined nature of his bed kept him from thrashing around.  If he’d been sleeping on a normal bed, he would have undoubtedly fallen out of it right onto his face.  Tangled images of Dathomirians and Pantorans both trying to chase and grab him (although he’d never met a Pantoran with red eyes before), ultimately culminating in horrendous, floating spectres surrounding him, the likes of which he’d never seen before.  He’d heard of Force ghosts, but these were skeletal and vicious, and honestly Obi-Wan woke up hoping that they were part of just some totally normal nightmares rather than part of his so-called gift at seeing the future.  

He ended up groggy and shaky upon waking, his ears ringing as if the spectres’ screams had been real instead of all in his head.  Maybe they were totally fictitious creations of his mind - he was feeling like he was failing to uphold so many of the principles that he’d been taught by the Jedi, so it made perfect sense that his mind would throw warped, angry Force ghosts at him.

All of that was weighing heavily on his mind as he sat for his first training session with Maul, yet another reminder of how far he’d come from the Jedi-hopeful he’d once been.  His chest ached, and he wasn’t sure if it was from his healing injuries or the deep sense that he was betraying people.

“Your mind is in shambles,” Maul informed him bluntly as they sat on a pair of meditation mats in the middle of the cargo hold where Kenobi had first woken up in.  Maul’s hands had briefly been on Obi-Wan’s head - long enough to come to this conclusion, before Obi had jerked back out of reach.  Savage was in the background, putting Obi-Wan further on edge because he was sure that the second Sith was there to help keep him in line even if Savage was ostensibly working on cleaning up the room while Maul and Obi worked on dual meditating.

“Yes, well, I wasn’t exactly expecting company in it, or else I’d have tidied up a bit,” Obi-Wan retorted before he could stop himself, anxiety making his mouth run.  Even with distance between them again, his heart was still pounding and he could feel how warm the Zabrak’s fingertips had been at his temples.  His wounds hurt and his chest felt tight and the food he’d had earlier didn’t feel like it was settling well - all of that was before taking into consideration the Sith peering into his mind.  As much as he wanted to get his mind back in one piece, he wasn’t sure he could handle the mental intrusions.

Maul did not look impressed by the sarcasm.  In fact, there seemed to be a twitch starting up beneath one right eye, a sign that Obi-Wan was perhaps pushing the limit with just how much of his mouthiness the Sith would tolerate from his Seer.  “I’m not in your mind, boy, I’m just assessing the damage.  If your mind is a library, I am merely assessing the structural integrity - not wasting time reading the books.”  The Zabrak’s golden eyes seemed to get a bit more red-tinged as he clenched his fists and added, “Except you keep slamming doors in my face.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose!”  Except perhaps he was, a little bit - insofar as his survival instincts were difficult to turn off, and every time he sensed the Sith’s presence against his thoughts it was like panic suffused his limbs.  It also hurt .  He still had sporadic headaches from the blow to the back of the head he’d taken, but this was different, and it was like his very thoughts were tender and limping.  So as much as he didn’t want to have a Sith in his head on principle, he also wasn’t keen on more pain - he just didn’t want to admit that, lest Maul exploit that.  Obi had heard enough stories and myths about Sith and their capacity for inflicting pain to get what they wanted.  

Maul made a frustrated noise, baring his teeth, but when Savage called out lowly, “Brother,” from across the room, the red-patterned Sith looked up sharply and smoothed out his expression a bit.  

One ivory canine still showing as a testament to just how annoying one failed Padawan could apparently be, Maul growled, “We shall try something else.  Turn around.”  When Obi-Wan obviously did not do that, since he already had enough trouble with Savage moving around beyond his range of vision without also having Maul at his back, Maul actually hissed in frustration.  He was quick to elaborate, however, “If you won’t have me in your head doing the fixing, then I must show you how to do the work yourself.”  He made a swirling gesture with one hand, clearly impatient for Obi-Wan to obey and turn around.  “I won’t even have to touch you, merely guide you.”

Still not trusting, Obi narrowed his eyes and queried, “What are you going to do then?”

“Sit behind you.  It’s called echo-meditation,” Maul bit the words out, then swiped a hand through the air and - despite not being close enough to touch - Obi-Wan felt something grip him.  He let out a cry of alarm and he felt himself spun around and dragged backwards.  “Will you stop being so difficult?” Maul complained even as his hold through the Force was replaced by his actual hands, catching Obi’s upper arms.  

“So all that about not touching me was a lie ?” Obi-Wan exclaimed, perhaps a bit hysterically.  He tried to sound tough and angry instead of startled and scared as he found himself sitting close enough to almost brush Maul’s shins.  

Surprisingly, the Sith immediately let go, red hands hovering like Obi-Wan had become radioactive.  When Obi-Wan twisted to look back over his shoulder at him, the Sith just gave him a pissy look.  “Maybe if you could follow instructions without physical encouragement, this would not be an issue,” he muttered.  

Rankled but relieved that his wish to be unhanded had actually been respected, Obi-Wan turned back forward again.  “Now do you believe that I was kicked out of the Jedi academy?” he griped under his breath.  He’d meant it to be a joke, but was unprepared for how it stung; maybe it was because his head was so out-of-sorts.  It felt like the simple retort sliced him on the way out.  And then unbidden he was thinking about ‘slicer darts,’ and about Nim Pianna, whom he’d known when he was nine and she was a Padawan and he and the others had been so happy for her and then she’d been dead-

Obi-Wan didn’t realise that his mind had been spiralling into a memory until he was jarred out of it, feeling the Force shift around him in reaction to Maul moving.  Confused and mortified at the example of how out of control his own mind was, Kenobi just sat utterly still, eyes wide and staring forward at nothing, as Maul leaned forward enough to put his chin almost above Obi-Wan’s head.  “Headbutt me and I’ll hang you from the ceiling by your ears.”

“Maul!” Savage’s shout rang from across the room in an accusatory tone.

This time Maul ignored it, instead resting his arms atop his knees so that his hands came into view on either side of Obi-Wan, ink-dark palms facing inwards.  Obi-Wan went from hyperfocusing on his own uncontrolled thoughts to focusing on the ripple in the Force all around him, magnified as if he were sitting cross-legged in front of a neutron star instead of another person.  It took effort not to quail, as he realised that this was Maul’s Force signature at its most blatant, radiant like heat from a forge.  “Think of it as resonance,” Maul said, as if that made perfect sense, and Obi belatedly realised that he had no clue how much time had passed while he’d been lost in an unbidden memory.  “If you will not have me in your mind, then you must echo the timbre of my thoughts with yours.”

Well, at least this proved that Maul really wasn’t in his head.  Because if he had been, he’d definitely have realised that Obi-Wan was having a miniature panic-attack instead of listening.

“Close your eyes and focus.  The mind of another being is part of their essence in the Force - so if the Jedi taught you to sense that, you can sense the pattern of a stable mind,” Maul continued, and while there was a bit of disdain in his voice as he mentioned the Jedi’s teachings, his tone was otherwise businesslike and unthreatening.  The problem was that now Kenobi was struggling to pull together any focus whatsoever: unbidden, thoughts of Nim came up again.  Her Master’s face swam before his eyes - roguish, amicable, and yet also the face of the man who had killed Nim.  Kenobi felt his thoughts fracture further.

“If you cannot learn by example - by sensing the pattern of my mind and reshaping yours to match - then we’ll have to go back to my other method, which I know you did not like,” Maul’s voice ground out, above and behind Kenobi’s head.

Nim had been friendly to him.  She’d been older than him, and so had treated him less like a friend and more as a younger sibling, and maybe that meant more to Obi-Wan because he’d never had siblings.  In fact, he’d never had family who looked at him with anything but fear and distaste, so maybe that was why he’d accepted her sisterly affection so quickly.  All of the other younglings had been found and brought to the Jedi Order as infants, so did they all crave family like Obi did, or did their early finding mean that they didn’t know what they were missing in terms of family?

All Obi-Wan knew for certain was that it had hit everyone like a bomb when the rumour-mill had caught wind of Nim’s ‘tragic accident.’  He found himself walking through the halls of the Jedi Temple all over again, where life was continuing as normal because their teachers didn’t realise that the Initiates had even heard what happened, and all the students were dealing with it in silence.

“Kenobi, are you even listening to me?”

With a gasp, Obi tore himself out of the memory, the recollected emotions like bile in the back of his throat and the sensations so real that he physically felt like he had to move to escape them.  He could even smell the incense he associated with the Jedi Temple.  “Back off!” he shouted even as he hurled himself awkwardly forward, unsure if he was talking to the actual Sith invading his personal space or his own uncontrollable memories.  Terrifying him further, he found his vision blurred, part of it maybe tears but part of it an overlay of the past - he was seeing busted crates and the walls of the ship but also the stone floor of the Temple and the sun beyond.  “Leave me the fuck alone!” he hollered even louder.  

Standing and stumbling, he was able to turn around, momentarily seeing a stunned Maul sitting in front of him - but then suddenly seeing Qui-Gon Jinn instead, hawk-like features bent in surprise.  

Struck dumb by the image, all of the emotions came welling up again: his failure as an Initiate, Qui-Gon’s worry that he was too volatile and dangerous after seeing him dual Bruck, the shame of knowing that he was docilely accepting the tender mercies of two Siths.  Obi-Wan’s shoulders sagged and suddenly everything hurt.  “I’m sorry, Qui-Gon,” he whimpered at the vision before him.

Then he felt a hand touch his back and he panicked, hands twisting and clawing at the Force and causing a pile of crates to collapse right next to him - and onto him.  Now he had more pain and embarrassment to consider, although at least dropping things onto his own head managed to snap him firmly and finally back into the current reality.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan shied back from the clawed hand reaching for his face, but held still again as Savage made that strange, rough, maybe-crooning noise and at least reached forward more slowly.  Obi’s last stunt with the Force had resulted in him dropping at least one crate more or less on his face, and now he grudgingly opened his mouth so the looming Sith could check if he’d lost any teeth.  He’d definitely spat out some blood already, and had new bruises.  

“That was not wise,” Savage informed him, his low voice sounding like stones grinding together.  It was the sound that came before an avalanche, but Obi-Wan was having another one of those moments where he didn’t have the emotional capacity to care.  He was sitting on the edge of one of the beds, legs kicking over the side, and he just sat there and sighed instead of responding.  The Sith gripped his chin, though, tipping Obi’s head back sharply to get eye-contact.  “Do you not recall what I told you?’

Flustered, Obi-Wan just frowned at the massive Force-user, feeling an ache along the left side of his ribs as his body tensed up.  Savage didn’t get threatening, however, when Obi didn’t immediately understand what he was getting at.  Instead, the Sith sighed, gave Obi-Wan’s head a little shake (a surprisingly gentle movement, given that he probably could have ripped Obi’s head clean off), and stressed in his thunder-low voice, “If you seek to attack my brother, you must do it well or not at all.”

Obi-Wan abruptly remembered the lecture about stabbing Maul instead of throwing a blanket at him, and wondered just what alternate reality he’d fallen into.  Maybe his brain finally had broken entirely.  “I wasn’t trying to attack him.”

Savage didn’t seem to believe him, which was fair.  Obi-Wan wasn’t honestly sure what his goals had been either, except to make everything around him just stop for a moment so he could regain himself.  Huffing and briefly closing his eyes as if for patience, Savage let go of the ex-Initiate’s face to instead straighten and put his hands on his hips.  “Whatever you were trying to do,” he said, just patronizingly enough that Obi-Wan had to bite back on the suicidal urge to get sassy, “you did it poorly.”

And of course then the sass slipped out.  “How do you know that I wasn’t trying to drop an entire mountain of crates on my head?  Maybe I just wanted to end it all instead of being a pawn for the Sith.”

What Obi did not expect was for the Sith to look troubled by that.  His horned head reared back a bit as if to avoid a slap, and the patterns on his face contorted as he frowned.  “Is this what the Jedi teach?” he eventually asked in clear bafflement.

Now Obi-Wan was confused, too.  “What?”

Frown heavy on his face and voice low with caution, Savage answered by observing, “You are very cavalier with your wellbeing.”  

Because he didn’t feel like taking the time or energy to explain that he really wasn’t, but that circumstances made being gentle with himself a luxury he’d not seen in a while and probably would never see again, Kenobi just sighed.  His breath caught as the right side of his ribcage twinged again, as if not wanting to let him fully breathe out.  

“Whatever they taught you,” Savage finally grumbled instead of awaiting an answer, “they clearly did not teach you to heal yourself.  Give me your arms.  Let me check them.”  He held out one big, patterned hand in a beckoning motion.

A wave of defensiveness had Obi-Wan hackling, although it wasn’t for himself.  Despite being rejected from the Jedi program, he’d been raised where their teachings were all he had, and to hear a Sith criticising them caused him to… well, perhaps show exactly some of that recklessness that Savage had been criticising him for.  “They did ,” he defended sharply even as he stubbornly tucked his arms in close.  The movement made multiple injuries twinge and he regretted it instantly, but he still didn’t relax, instead staying staunchly tense and defiant.  It was unbelievable to be lectured by a Sith on the topic of healing.  “I just haven’t been able to meditate enough to focus on healing.”  That last sentence was at least partly the truth - he definitely hadn’t been able to meditate.  Ignoring the fact that he was constantly in the company of at least one of his captors, his mind was also a verifiable mess, and he feared he wouldn’t be able to calm down and get it to focus even in ideal conditions.  Obi-Wan had also always been best at healing others rather than directing the Force inwards to do the work on himself.  No doubt this was yet another thing that had factored into his failing, but to him, healing others versus himself felt like the difference between writing on a sheet of paper and trying to write the same text across his own forehead.  

It was a bit hard to tell with all the markings on Savage’s face, but Kenobi was pretty sure the Zabrak was raising one unimpressed brow at him.  “My brother was attempting to assist you in meditation.”

“And I threw stuff around, yes, I recall,” Obi replied, probably more tetchily than was safe, but everything was aching again and it was hard to remember to choose his words.  He picked fretfully at the edges of the bandages on his left forearm, the burn Xanatos had given him, before realising that fretting at things wasn’t very Jedi of him so he stopped and just clasped his hands between his knees.  Feeling small and with precious few defences, he threw out more quietly, “Meditation that includes a Sith messing with my head isn’t exactly the kind of calm quiet that I need to practise Force healing.”

Obi-Wan fully expected the bigger Sith to just throw that back in his face, or at the best, laugh at his weakness.  Surprisingly, though, Savage merely cocked his head like a massive, horned bird of prey and seemed to consider what the human boy was saying. Despite his best intentions to stay defensive and wary, Obi found himself tentatively uncoiling as he felt a little spark of hopefulness that someone was listening to him and believing him.  He shut that feeling down quickly when Savage broke the quiet to command, “Stand up.”

Resigning himself to once again following orders or dying (something that had become pretty normal on the mining rig), Obi-Wan sighed defeatedly and slid off the bunk to come to his feet.  The Sith beckoned him forward and he came, fatalistically ready for his life, once again, to get worse.  

Therefore he was confused when Savage backed away from him.  A few moments later and the Dathomirian had them both standing side by side in the middle of the sleeping quarters, but not even within arms-reach.  Obi-Wan was officially too bemused for words.

Savage, on the other hand, seemed quite content with the whole situation.  While he wasn’t smiling (Obi-Wan had a hard time imagining either Dathomirian smiling), the Zabrak’s eyes were narrowed in a way that… didn’t look angry?  Either way, Obi was so out of his element and uncertain that when Savage stretched one arm forward and said, “Do as I do,” he just did it.  Fighting hadn’t gotten him anything but bruises, cuts, and lightsaber burns anyway.  “Like that, yes,” Savage went on, and more instructions followed, all mimed at the same time, “We will go slow, for you are injured.  And small.”  The last Savage said with a frown like he found this particular fault of Obi-Wan’s particularly unsolvable.

Nothing in what he’d heard about Siths had prepared Obi for this, so he just kept his jumbled thoughts to himself and continued to do as the massive Dathomirian said.  

And… it wasn’t bad.

The forms soon began to trigger an inkling of familiarity: some of the poses, some of the footwork and movement between stances, was not unlike some of the training he’d gone through for how to wield a lightsaber.  Obviously sans lightsaber now, Obi-Wan nonetheless found himself slipping into the familiar balancing act that came with any slow, controlled movement.  He definitely messed up a few times - some of the poses were novel, and even the familiar ones were hindered by his healing injuries.  Every time he did something wrong he couldn’t help the sharp glance he sent Savage’s way, or the heavy spike of trepidation that went right through him.  But Savage didn’t say anything.  Used to correction (back at the academy, on days when dreams had kept him up all night, Obi-Wan had fucked up even the simplest of tasks the next morning and earned liberal correction), Obi-Wan even ended up calling himself out after a time, muttering, “I know, I know, I need to put my balance on the front of my foot, not my heels.”  Then he’d look anxiously to Savage again, although he wasn’t sure why.  Was he hoping for the Sith to agree with him?  Or recognize that Obi-Wan did know what he was doing and did know how to do it right, even if he was messing up?

Sometimes Savage would make a low noise of acknowledgement in his throat, but more often than not he’d merely nod.  It took a long time after that for Obi-Wan to settle and realise that he wasn’t going to get a lecture for forms he didn’t execute perfectly.  It took even longer for Obi to realise that Savage did go back and repeat the incorrect forms more often, although it seemed that as soon as Obi showed a mastery of it (or that he truly couldn’t do it because of his injuries), the Sith would move on to other stances.  Kenobi had no honest idea what to make of this, except it was very quiet, and much more peaceful than what he expected from Sith.

So he finally dared to question, “What are we doing?”  He wanted to ask ‘why,’ but that felt like even more of a risk to ask.

Surprisingly, Savage answered, never even pausing in a steady switch between positions, “Meditating.  But without closing your eyes.  Or taking your mind from your enemy.”  Yellow eyes flicked over to Obi-Wan.  “It seemed fitting, for a Sith and a Jedi pup.”

Obi decided to not correct the ‘Jedi’ statement, because otherwise, Savage had a point.

Eventually there was nothing but the two of them moving, slowly and methodically, in the room, the only words being Savage periodically vocalising what stance he was moving into next so that Obi-Wan wasn’t caught wrong-footed.  It was like an unhurried dance to no music, and once Obi’s anxiety finally burned itself out, he was left with nothing to focus on but the not-unpleasant burn of his muscles working.  For the first time, Obi’s aches and pains felt like they anchored him to his body instead of pushing him out of it, and he remembered that there was a good kind of tiredness, too.

~^~

An hour later, Maul stood over what was usually his bunk.  “How did you get him to sleep?”  While ‘night’ and ‘day’ could be finicky concepts while on a ship, it was still quite early for the boy to be asleep - and yet here he was, passed out cold on the bed.  Even having two Sith standing over him, talking in low tones, didn’t rouse him.

Savage looked… honestly, rather disgustingly proud of himself.  Maul’s younger brother was positively grinning even as he reached over and pulled a blanket up over the small, copper-haired Seer.  Maul made an abrogated move to stop him, seeing the boy twitch, but apparently Savage knew better than Maul just how asleep the pup was, because by the time that blanket was drawn up to his chin, he settled again with a tight sigh.  A troubled line persisted between his brows, but so far as Maul knew, the boy kept that expression whether awake or asleep.  

“We meditated,” Savage answered the question, drawing Maul’s attention sharply back to him.  The elder of the two stared and blinked in disbelief.

“Meditated?” Maul finally echoed back in patent disbelief.

Savage’s eyes glinted smugly.  He nodded.  Then he explained exactly what they’d been doing, and Maul’s stare grew even more blank.

“You taught him Sith fighting forms?”

“Of course not, brother,” Savage snorted.  He folded his arms.  When Maul just kept glaring, he grew a bit more uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot as if he were a child rather than a man big enough to break most opponents in half.  “We obviously did not have lightsabers, so it was not proper training,” he tried to excuse himself, but then he glanced down at the still-sleeping Seer and his expression grew horribly fond, “He was actually very quick at it, wounded as he is.”

Maul sighed and dragged a hand down his face, accepting the fact that his brother was apparently proud of their prisoner for being a fast-learning of things he should not be learning.

“It was all for the best, brother!” Savage tried to salvage the situation one last time, and Maul gave in to his brother’s nudging, lowering his hand as Savage went on in hushed but encouraging tones, “He is calmer.  He rests now not only because I tired him, but because the stances were a meditation to him.  See for yourself.”

Feigning jaded disinterest even though he was curious now, Maul reached out a hand, stretching it close until it hovered just above Kenobi’s sleeping head.  Not touching, he let his hand skim the air above the boy from crown to heel, focusing on senses other than touch to get a feel for the Force all around him.  What he picked up made his brows beetle immediately.  

“You’re… correct,” he admitted grudgingly, although he returned his hand to hover over the Seer’s head, feeling how the Force crackled and prickled there against his palm.  “I can still feel the damage done, the cracks and fissures in his headspace, but… otherwise, his Force signature is calmer.”  

Savage nodded, looking regretful now.  “He is still quite damaged,” he said, voice very soft and sad for one who Maul knew for a fact to be merciless with enemies, “But he was, at least, much less ferocious when he eventually let me tend to his wounds.”

Deciding to ignore that his brother had called such a tiny thing ‘ferocious,’ Maul said only, “Now, I suppose, we shall see if he dreams.”

~^~

The next two days continued in much the same pattern.  Maul would attempt to meddle with the fuckery that was Obi-Wan’s head - they’d inevitably argue and Maul would leave before presumably murdering his mouthy (but largely useless) Seer - and then Obi would be left with Savage, who despite being physically more imposing, was starting to occupy a less threatening space in Obi-Wan’s mind.  He reminded himself that he couldn’t afford to cosy up to a Sith, and that he only breathed a sigh of relief when Maul left because the yellow-patterned Zabrak was slower to anger.  That didn’t make Savage a good thing for him; it just made him a lesser of two unavoidable evils.  Savage nonetheless was meticulously careful when doing his regular check of Obi-Wan’s injuries, and for his part, Obi decided to not squirm when bacta cream was spread on the healing injuries.  He didn’t want to seem too cooperative, though, so he refused any offers of further medication, even though he honestly felt like shit.  His chest still cramped when he breathed wrong, it felt like, and it was a constant struggle to hide how affected he was by the persistent pain he was usually in.  Bacta did a lot, though.  It kept things manageable.  And even though he’d failed out of the academy, Kenobi was still a Jedi at least in spirit, and he’d been trained for this.  

That’s what he kept telling himself, anyway.  It was hard to think of himself as a Jedi when he’d been found so late (despite knowing that there was a damn list for Force-sensitive children like him, he hadn’t been found for years), done so poorly (except that last duel with Bruck, in which he’d apparently done a bit too well), and then ultimately been let go.  And now he was just sitting around and doing what two Sith told him to do.

The dreams weren’t getting any better either.

A blue-skinned man with red eyes, reaching for him - a star system stretching out all around him but empty of stars, just a sucking blackness - no, no stars, but eyes, glowing eyes on gaunt faces that chased him - sometimes throughout the Sith’s ship, which he’d become familiar with, but sometimes through the corridors of a ship he’d never seen before.  He’d been told about Force Ghosts before, but if that’s what he was dreaming about, then the lingering souls of past Jedi must have hated Kenobi’s guts, because he awoke with such fear that he didn’t even scream.  In fact, the last time he awoke from one of those dreams, his chest was so tight that he just ended up coughing, fighting to get a proper breath into lungs that felt like they wouldn’t expand all the way.  

Kenobi hadn’t even known that Savage had been in the room for this until a large hand had been patting his back and he’d realised that he was wheezing “I’m fine.  I’m fine” to a Sith.  At least the Zabrak had been distracted by the physical malady too much to question if Kenobi was having nightmares.  It felt like living in the creche all over again, with Obi-Wan doing his best to make sure that he didn’t draw more attention to all of his problems than he already did.  He didn’t want to admit that it was already hard enough to sleep unless he could hear other people breathing near him, like he’d grown used to on Coruscant. 

Their journey was taking longer than planned.  Obi-Wan only knew this because he’d overheard Savage and Maul talking a time or two.  He hadn’t heard where they were headed yet, and the two did sometimes speak in what he figured was their native tongue, a language he couldn’t parse, but all that he gathered indicated that Maul was stalling and didn’t want to admit it.  “He’s still healing,” Maul had said at one point, and “I can’t deliver him as he is.”  Obi-Wan also knew ships enough to know when one was and wasn’t in hyperspace, and they rarely seemed to be - something that slowed their journey to… wherever they were doing.  No doubt it was meant to give Maul more time to mould his young prisoner into a more respectable Seer, so Obi-Wan did his best to make sure he stayed firm and that didn’t happen.  He didn’t expect to ever see Master Jinn again, but if the man ever heard of this, he wanted the man to be proud of him.

In reality, though, all the extended time meant was that Obi-Wan had more nights to dream instead of sleep, and more time for him to feel sicker instead of better.

His wounds were healing outwardly.  Sometimes Savage held him still long enough to use the not-bacta on him, which Obi-Wan remained heavily suspicious of to the point where Savage had finally given him a frustrated little shake (which was really quite a big shake considering their comparative asses) and told him that this was something Dathomirians used on family to heal great injuries.  After that, Obi sat still for that as same as for the bacta cream, inwardly a bit relieved, because it did a lot to relieve the pain of healing the burns and cuts - and the Dathomirian ointment itched less.  Already Obi-Wan had pretty much full range of motion back, although he suspected that nothing would keep the twin lightsaber burns on his arms from scarring.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought Savage looked a bit guilty whenever he tended to the one he himself had left.

Beneath the surface, though, Obi’s chest still hurt - but he couldn’t very well put bacta directly on his rib-bones, could he?  So he didn’t mention it, and when he quickly grew short of breath during his by-now-regular ‘meditations’ with Savage, the Dathomirian was better than some of Obi’s Jedi teachers in not pushing him.  “You came to us in poor health,” Savage said once, when he stopped their movements and Obi-Wan had looked at him with particular distrust, not believing that he’d be given a reprieve so easily, “Especially poor, given that you have little by way of fat reserves.”  He did poke Obi in the breastbone at that, which was rude.  “Young things crash quickly, for they are built with no margin for error.  So now you rest.”

Obi-Wan wanted to tell Savage that he was the strangest Sith he’d ever met, but then again… he’d only met two.  And more than that, he wanted to sleep, so it was all too easy to give in.  Even as he curled up on one of the bunks (he’d been regularly sleeping on whatever one was open, another allowance that felt too good), Obi wondered if this was what it was like to fall to the Dark Side.  The Light taught that the right way was often hard, and that giving in to what was easy could lead down a treacherous path.  

Was Obi-Wan giving in just because it was easier?

His chest ached and it felt like he needed to clear something out of his lungs and he fell asleep too fast to ponder that.

The dreams started taking a turn, and he wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or not.  He usually didn’t get the same one repeating so frequently, but then again, Maul was frequently telling him that his mind had nearly shattered entirely and was still heavily cracked - so maybe this was the new, terrible normal.  His mind certainly wasn’t healing.  So he kept dreaming of blue skin and red eyes, starless skies, and evil Force ghost-like entities that chased him.  Sometimes when he looked at them, their faces even morphed into reflections of his own, but desiccated and rotted away, the flesh peeling back from his teeth and empty eye-sockets.  But now he was also dreaming about a sword, and it was the only thing that seemed to cut back the terror of the ghosts.  Kenobi repeatedly dreamt that he was being attacked by the ghostly entities from the stars, their screaming feeling like it would make him deaf even in the waking world, but when the sword appeared everything would fall silent.  Nothing else stopped them.  

By now, Obi-Wan had gotten used to his dreams - nightmarish or otherwise - making precious little sense, and just fucking up his sleep.  What he wasn’t used to was being around people who actually noticed.

The other Initiates at the temple had all had the same goal Obi-Wan had: get some sleep so that they’d be ready for training the next day.  They’d all been there longer than Obi-Wan had, with no memories before this, so it was all routine, and that routine did not include staying awake to keep an eye on the one kid who sometimes whimpered in his sleep.  Life aboard the Scimitar with two Sith was different, however, especially since the last time they’d not kept an eye on their prisoner, he’d trashed their cargo hold.  Sith also apparently slept a whole lot lighter than Light-side trainees.  That meant that, for the first time since being taken away from his family, Obi-Wan was in a position where there was always someone awake and staring at him when he broke free of a dream.  

It was… unnerving.  

Obi-Wan had spent most of his training doing his best to keep people from noticing his nocturnal malady, but there was no hiding anything now.  He was already as vulnerable as he could get, and privacy was a rarity, and all of those stressors really just seemed to make the nightmares worse.  Or maybe the dreams got worse because, subconsciously, he knew that someone was listening to him now.  Either way, Obi-Wan started waking up more noisily, and it wasn’t long before he literally thrashed his way right off the bunk still gasping something about “need the sword!” before he landed with a thump.

Startled and embarrassed and his ears still ringing with the shrill, inhuman screams of the space-ghosts, Obi-Wan just panted on the floor for a moment before he even realised that it was Maul this time who’d been watching him, Savage piloting the ship.  By the looks of it, the smaller Zabrak had been awake for some time, reclined on his side but with one knee bent and his right arm draped across it, his other fist propping up his head as he watched the antics of their prisoner.  Kenobi refused to look at him, but doubted that even the dimmed lights were enough to hide that he was sticky with sweat and shaking with adrenaline.  He didn’t make a sound because he was viscerally afraid that the only word that would come out would be ‘sword.’  It was like a hot spark on his tongue, a bolt of lightning desperate to get out, and he really fucking hoped that the Sith were wrong and none of this was prophetic.

Instead of asking about the sword Kenobi kept sleep-talking about, however, the Sith just regarded him for a moment longer with red-gold eyes that glinted in the dark.  Then Maul said, “Are you ready to accept my help now?”

As much as Obi-Wan didn’t want to admit it, he was.  He closed his eyes in shame and pressed his face briefly to his clenched fists on the floor, but then nodded.  The Sith must have been able to see the tiny movement in the dark, because there was the sound of the Dathomirian moving and then strong hands were helping Obi to sit up.  The lights were turned on, a blessing because Obi really needed them to help banish the dream still flashing behind his eyelids at every blink, and this time they didn’t go to the cargo hold to meditate.  Maul just pulled one pillow off the bed and bade Obi-Wan to sit, and then sat behind him as he had before, apparently unbothered by having no cushion himself.  Backed into a corner in just about every sense of the phrase, Obi took in a deep breath and tried to let it out slowly, although the now-familiar twinge in his chest kept the action from being truly calming.  And then the also-now-familiar pressure of Maul’s Force signature surrounded him, intimidating in its strength and unsettling in its darkness.  

“Easy, Jedi,” Maul said, as if he could see Obi-Wan’s mounting anxiety right through the back of his head, “As I have said time and again, we do this because you’ve made clear that you do not wish me in your mind - so I am not.”

This was usually where Obi said something snotty and ill-advised, but ‘ We need the sword, the sword, the sword-! ’ was still clambering behind his teeth, so instead he just squeezed out a meagre, “Okay.”  He was exhausted, and he just didn’t want another dream like that.  

“Good.”  Maul’s hands flexed a little at either side of his peripheral vision, but despite that the Force signature all around him was as steady and calm as the waters at the bottom of a pool.  Then, perhaps, there was the slightest ripple, and Obi must have been sleep-deprived indeed because it felt a bit like concern.  Maul’s voice was quieter and his words careful as he went on, “We will… perhaps take this slower.”

And they did.  Which was good, because Obi was a wreck and he wanted to sleep and he wanted to find a sword he had only seen in dreams and Maul’s meditations were a lot harder than Savage’s.  For the first time, Obi and Maul didn’t end up bickering and Obi-Wan didn’t end up scrambling away, and by the time Savage returned to the room to take his turn at sleeping, Obi was drifting in a place that was neither wakefulness or sleep as Maul murmured quiet instructions about ‘mapping out the pattern of a stable mind.’  “We’ll worry about applying that pattern to your own mind later,” Maul said with more patience than he’d had up until now.

~^~

“He keeps mentioning a sword,” Maul said thoughtfully in one of the rare moments where neither he nor Savage were with the boy and were instead both in the cockpit quietly discussing things.  The Seer was sleeping - and, given his track-record, probably dreaming again.  Maul had made some headway with healing meditations with him only hours before, but leading up to that, the boy’s stretches of uninterrupted sleep had been sharply declining.  “I’ve seen it on the edges of his mind.”

Savage sat up a bit straighter, and his voice was mildly chastising as he reminded, “I thought you told him you were not reading his mind.”

Instead of pointing out how rich it was that his brother was lecturing him, a fellow Sith, on reading the mind of a Jedi-trained prisoner, Maul merely said soberly, “I was not.  But when he wakes, it’s so bright in his thoughts that I do not need to.”  It was also unsettlingly consistent: a long, two-handed sword, brutally jagged closer to the crossguard - meant for catching and breaking other blades.  Being used to fighting with a lightsaber, he should not have been impressed by it, but alongside the image in Kenobi’s head was the burning awareness of this sword’s power, so that was imprinted on Maul’s thoughts, too.

Savage had also been around the boy during some of his nightmares, but was less adept at the mental arts, so he merely sat with widened eyes and then accepted that with a nod.  His brother would not joke about this.  “Is this why you delay our return to Dathomir?” he posed the question he’d been politely not asking for days now.

For his part, Maul did not deny it.  Instead he thoughtfully palmed his chin for a moment before nodding and admitting obliquely, “In part.  I do not wish to waste the Nightsisters' time with a poor gift.”

The last bit sounded like a half-truth, but Savage did not pursue it.  His brother always had five reasons for doing any one thing, and he only ever shared one or two of those reasons at a time.  He also, often enough, lied as much to himself as to Savage… particularly when this Jedi pup was involved.  For his part, Savage was quite truthful (with himself and with Maul) that he thought this delay was a good thing, as the human boy was still far too fragile - and Savage of all people knew how ungentle the Nightsisters could be even with their own kith and kin.  He hoped that they’d treat a valuable Seer more carefully, but he could not be certain.  “So you have told the Nightsisters of the sword dreams?”

“Not yet.  But I think that now I shall,” Maul seemed to come to a decision.  His body language changed and became more decisive; he leaned towards the comms and began pushing buttons.  He was still dressed for sleep, but looked competent and awake, as he had since Savage had walked in on his brother and the small Padawan meditating.  Maul had been like an umbral aura behind the boy, eyes opening above the boy’s head like sharp pricks of light while the boy himself had remained quiet, eyes closed.  Without thinking, Savage had smiled at the sight, something in him relaxing now that Maul and the Seer had learned to get along.

When Maul had seen the smile, he’d glared at his brother over Kenobi’s head.

“Watch the boy,” Maul ordered, sure of what he wanted now that he’d set his mind on a path forward, “I shall see if the Nightsisters have heard of this sword the boy dreams of so much.”  Then, in a less staunch tone, Maul added, “And… let me know if he sleeps.  His mind is far from healed, and as much as we value his dreams, what he needs is rest.”

“Of course, brother,” Savage nodded and departed the cockpit - this time before his brother could get after him for smiling. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Maul knew that the boy was a Seer.  Despite anything else that Kenobi said or that the Jedi all around him had believed, the boy was not just some mediocre Force-user - if anything, he was actually rather strong in the Force, even before one took into account his dreams.  Of all that, Maul was very certain.

He was still unprepared to learn that the sword was very much a real thing.

“A Sith sword?” Savage asked, the two of them back in the cockpit again.  It was now the most private part of the ship, since the other rooms were ones they regularly accompanied the boy through - be it for meditation or just making sure he ate and slept.  The only place the boy did not go with them was to the cockpit.  Maul doubted the boy could commandeer or even fly the Scimitar , but a place to talk away from his ears was needed.  

Maul nodded, leaning back in his seat and still a bit overwhelmed himself.  “I was able to describe it, and the Nightsisters knew it instantly.”  That had been an incredible shock.  The Nightsisters of Dathomir were not part of the Sith order, and in fact their involvement in it had only really started when Darth Sidious had come to the planet seeking an apprentice - and leaving with a then-child Maul.  Apparently Mother Talzen’s contempt for the Sith had led to a lot of research since then.  She took ‘know thy enemy’ quite seriously, Maul knew.  There was a reason she had never tried to steal her son back from Sidious, and had instead sent another son of Dathomir out to join him.  “Sith swords are ancient relics, not used anymore, but according to the histories, they were once a favoured weapon of the Sith empire.”

“And this boy dreams of one,” Savage finished, no small amount of wonder in his voice.

Generally speaking, Savage was more easily awed than his older brother, but in this case, even Maul was quite stunned.  He was glad that he’d been close enough to the boy to catch images of it, flashing like frantic fish at the surface of a disturbed pond.  Usually the pup used his Jedi training well to keep his thoughts guarded, but not when he was fresh from a dream.  “This longsword was wielded by a little-known Darth Miserik.  Mother Talzen was able to find nothing but his name and a description of his sword,” Maul added with a shrug.  Ancient history was rarely complete, especially when it was the history of the defeated.  

“But despite that… Mother Talzen wishes for us to seek out this sword?” Savage asked a bit more dubiously now.

That had Maul puzzled as well, and suspecting that Mother Talzen had not told him everything.  This was not uncommon, and therefore should not have surprised him; Dathomirian men were useful in the way that knives were useful, and one rarely explained everything (or even anything) to a knife.  It did not need much knowledge in order to cut.  “She said it would be a test of our Seer.  If he is truly seeing this weapon, perhaps that means it is time for it to be found again - brought forth from the pages of history.”  Mother Talzen had seemed equally keen on testing the Seer as she had been on finding the sword in general.  Maul considered sending a message to his master, Sidious, to see if perhaps the old Sith might shed more light on the matter of Sith swords.  He’d have to be careful how he asked, however, as it was just as dangerous to play Mother Talzen - and seek things behind her back - as it was to give too much information to Darth Sidious.  Sidious let Maul do as he wished only when he was behaved, and Maul suspected that Sidious already knew about Savage’s existence and was humouring it.  How would he react if he thought Maul and Savage were seeking out an old Sith relic?  

“I cannot see what the Nightsisters would want with an old sword,” Savage said, frowning.  His words reflected what Maul had been puzzling over - why indeed?  “But if that is what Mother Talzen wishes, then that is our path,” he finished with a shrug.  Both brothers, despite their differing upbringings, had been raised with one certainty: you did not deny a Nightsister.  “How shall we proceed?”

“I suppose that that shall depend upon our little Seer,” Maul said contemplatively even as he pushed himself to his feet and headed to the door.

~^~

It felt like all Obi-Wan did was eat and sleep, just trying to get back to what he once was.  But no matter how often he ate it seemed like he was still starving from his time on the mining rig, and obviously sleep just wasn’t working.  The only small mercy was that at least his external injuries were mending at what felt like a normal pace - otherwise Obi would have really panicked, assuming he’d just been fundamentally broken in some way from his time enslaved. Even on the occasions when he was left alone, he couldn’t seem to fall into a proper healing trance, the omnipresent sense of danger too much to let his mind relax.  As galling as it was, his mind was at its quietest and his body at its best when he was going through stances with the bigger Zabrak.  Lying on one of the cots now, eyes closed in an attempt at rest, he tried not to think about the latest successful meditation with the other Sith, Maul… because if he thought on it too hard, Obi knew that he’d start yearning for the glimmer of peace he’d found there, too.  

Good Jedi were not supposed to find peace from Sith.  

That storm of guilt and inadequacy followed Obi down into sleep, and he didn’t even realise when he’d gone from fretting to dreaming until he was in the throws of the same damn dream again - chased by ghostly demons with his own rotting face, saved by an old metal sword that he couldn’t touch.  He actually woke up when he tried to grab it this time, and felt a jolt of Dark energy so strong that it felt like it scalded him up to his shoulder.

He was still staring at the weapon when he hit the floor, tangled in blankets and blinking dazedly at what he knew to be just a blank spot on the wall - he’d stared at it before.  No matter how hard or furiously he blinked, though, the vision of the Dark sword lingered like an afterimage of staring at a sun.  His inability to rid himself of the dream was panic-inducing, and it was almost a mercy that the left side of his chest cramped up and before he knew it he was doubled over on the floor coughing.  It still felt like he had something in his lung when he lifted his head, finding that no more false images danced before his eyes.

He had two Sith staring down at him instead.

“Your dream of the sword is persistent,” Maul said, letting Obi know that he’d probably been talking in his sleep again as well as thrashing his way out of bed.  Cocking his head slightly to one side, the stud a quick flash of grey against his ear, the Sith went on, “Do you still believe that you are not a Seer?”

Obi-Wan disliked the calculating look in Maul’s yellow eyes even more than the told-you-so tone, so he fought to push back the clinging webs of sleep as fast as possible from his thoughts.  In reality, he knew that he didn’t stand a chance against two Sith even if he were fully alert, but what choice did he have?  Tensing up and trying to slide the blankets off himself as subtly as he could, he replied cagily, “Having the same dream over and over again wouldn’t get you so excited if you knew how nonsensical it all was.  If I’m seeing futures, then the galaxy is headed in a terrible direction.”

Savage was standing like a bulky sentinel, but Maul had an increasingly intent look on his face that was in turn making Obi increasingly nervous.  To make matters worse, he still hadn’t gotten his legs untangled by the time the red-patterned Sith abruptly sat down in front of him.  Obi-Wan would have been jealous of how smooth and easy the Sith’s every movement was if he weren’t presently wishing he could put more distance between them.  “Perhaps it's time you finally tell me about those dreams then, boy,” Maul said almost pleasantly, when he was sitting close enough to reach out and grab the ex-Initiate in front of him if he wanted.

Obi was trying not to let his breathing pick up, because he knew it would just send him into another coughing fit.  “There’s not much to tell,” he bluffed, “I don’t remember much beyond colours and flashes.”

Maul’s hand moved so fast that one second the Sith was sitting complacently and the next he had Obi’s jaw in an iron grip.  Even as he pulled Obi-Wan forward, the boy almost overbalancing right into the Sith’s lap, Maul’s expression remained serene.  As did his voice as he said, “That’s one lie.  Don’t insult me with another.”  He let go and Obi-Wan fell back, leaning away until his shoulder-blades were pushed against the bed.  All the while Savage watched with an inscrutable frown, a looming shadow.  “You wake up calling out for a sword and with your eyes always turned there-”  As he said the last word, Maul twisted a little and pointed up over his shoulder, and Obi realised that the Zabrak was indicating the spot that Obi had been staring at, envisioning the sword.  He hadn’t known that he’d done it more than once.

Maul grew more thoughtful as he turned back to Obi-Wan again.  “Considering that our course has been quite steady, I wonder if that perhaps means you know something of this weapon you seek.  Of its location.”

Not liking where any of this was going, Kenobi bristled, denying, “I’m not seeking anything.”

“Oh, but your mind is,” Maul persisted, “It would seem that, trained or not, your subconscious is trying to tell you something important.”

“This is absurd,” Obi scoffed and shook his head.  All the while, he was trying to hide how scared he was, coming right out of sleep to be confronted by his captors without warning.  

“So you say,” Maul allowed, albeit with a dismissive shrug of one powerful, black-clad shoulder, “But you were raised by Jedi, and what they consider sensible is already absurd to me.  So tell me your dream, Kenobi.  I shall be the judge.”

“Fine!”  Obi-Wan didn’t know if he gave in to avoid things turning violent or because the dreams were starting to pile up behind his teeth like floodwaters behind a weakened dam.  The mere thought of finding the sword, Dark though it might turn out to be, had relief prickling through his every nerve like a cold sweat.  “You want to know?”  He finally managed to get loose of the damned blankets and stood, because at least then he was taller than one of his captors, able to glare down at Maul’s frustratingly unbothered expression.  “I keep dreaming about a Pantoran with red eyes, ships I’ve never been on before, flying through skies with no stars, and evil Force-ghosts that come out of it wearing my rotted face!” he ranted all in one go, and at least Savage looked suitably startled.  Maul was more unflappable, although he wisely remained very still as Kenobi’s voice rose in volume and he started gesturing frustratedly by the end.  “And the only thing that can touch the ghosts is this old sword, but I’m never holding it.  Because it’s a fucking dream and dreams don’t make sense.” 

“Evil Force ghosts?” Savage murmured, that part clearly sticking with him the most.

Maul merely placed one elbow on his knee, propping his chin on one fist thoughtfully.  “And what does this sword look like?” he asked calmly.

Obi was fighting with his breathing again.  At the Temple, breathing exercises were one of the first things they were taught as a way to centre themselves, but Obi-Wan just didn’t want to go into a painful coughing fit.  “I…  It looks-  It’s big,” he finally started to say falteringly, because now that he’d started giving out information it felt like a bit of a relief.  He’d never talked about his dreams to anyone before, not since his parents had started looking at him like he was a monster and calling him a ‘sorcerer.’  “It’s… longer than I am tall, maybe.  With jagged edges, at least at the start of the blade…”  He went on to describe the rest, a bit surprised at his own recall  - and how certain of it he was when Maul pressed for details.  Not once did the Sith look surprised.  

“And where is it?” Maul asked next, as if that were the only logical question after the whole weapon had been described in finite detail.

Kenobi sighed and leaned back against the edge of the bed, suddenly tired again.  “I already told you, I don’t know.  It’s a dream.  I’m not a Seer and my dreams aren’t labelled treasure maps.”

“Yet you keep staring unerringly at the same spot right after calling out about the sword.”

“I’m stuck in this room an awful lot.  Maybe that’s just the only part of the wall my subconscious isn’t sick of yet.”

That finally got through Maul’s impenetrable calm, as he glowered a bit at his snarky prisoner.  Obi just met his gaze evenly, because Maul couldn’t get mad at him for lying this time - because he wasn’t.

It was Savage who broke the stare-down, bluntly saying to Obi in a censoring tone, “You are being difficult.”

“I’m being sensible ,” Obi snapped back, feeling cornered.  Not only was he physically hemmed in by two Dark Force users who were a lot stronger than him in just about every possible way, but he was feeling overwhelmed by their insane ideas about him.  He wasn’t even sure if he found the ideas insane because he thought they were false, or because the hints that they were true led him back to memories of his childhood - where everything bad in his life had started with this idea that he was seeing the future and that was a very, very bad thing.

Obi started feeling the waters of the river again, closing around his face while his mother’s hands closed around his throat to make sure she got him down deep enough.

“It is not sensible to deny reality,” Maul pushed, standing.  Obi made to back up only to realise that he was already up against the sleeping nook; the only way to get physically further way would be to climb right onto the bed.  “When you broke free of the collar blocking you from the Force, I saw some of your visions - and in them, faces that you could not know, events that have not yet come to pass,” the Dathomirian went on, more impassioned now even as Obi started to breathe shallowly, his nose filled with the mucky scent of river water.  The planet Stewjon was very refined, but Obi couldn’t say he liked the taste of its waters.  At least not at the edge of his town where his mother had taken him.  Maul continued, “The sword you dream of is real, boy.  You describe an ancient relic that has not been seen in aeons.”  

‘ You’re actually dreaming of real things ,’ Obi thought to himself as the waters rose higher, soaking his hair and filling up his ears, ‘ Real things that you shouldn’t .’  It was easier to deal with just being the poor sod who had too many nightmares and kept holding back his creche because he couldn’t sleep.

~^~

Maul could see it the moment that Kenobi accepted reality - could feel it in the Force like ripples from a dropped stone, even as the boy’s expression when slack with shock.  Maul had been careful not to show his hand too early, not to start up a fight by admitting that he’d already seen the sword on the edge of the boy’s thoughts when his mind was bright and unguarded after a dream.  Now he could see that he’d manoeuvred it perfectly, with the boy’s resistance finally unable to stand up to the facts weighed against it.

“You are dreaming up the future, Kenobi, albeit without skill.”  Hopefully they could change that, after they mended the boy’s mind a bit.  “But your mind knows that the Sith sword must be found.”

And that was when he fucked up.

Kenobi’s eyes, which had been glassy and distant with realisation, suddenly snapped into focus, and it was honestly shocking to see the child grow defiant so fast.  He was still wrapped in bandages and too skinny by half, but his blue eyes crackled like lightsaber blades and suddenly he was curling small hands into white-knuckled fists.  “No.  I’m not leading you to it.”

Maul could practically feel his brother looking at him with a pitying ‘ You really stepped in it now ’ expression and refused to look over and meet his eye, instead glaring at the Padawan (not-quite-Padawan) before him.  But no matter the temper that Maul infused into his expression, the boy didn’t back down.  

“Jedi welp, you are too stubborn by half,” Maul snarled, reaching forward on reflex to grab the boy by his scrawny neck.  At the last second he remembered that the young Seer was injured, something that he’d forgotten once already and was going to get lectured by Savage over.  When Maul halted his movement at the last second, however, he found himself quietly floored by the fact that Kenobi did not back down .  Even though Maul had frozen with his hand a mere hair’s-breadth from the boy’s throat, close enough to nearly brush the bandages, the boy hadn’t flinched away.  He’d tensed visibly, but his eyes were still fixed on Maul’s face and veritably spitting sparks, and he didn’t try to evade the threatening hand so near him.  

Maul wasn’t sure if he was disturbed or impressed.

This was a Force-sensitive that the Jedi Order had thrown away?

As he closed his hand carefully enough to just feel the racing of Kenobi’s pulse beneath his thumb, the obvious fear only making the bravery more shocking, Maul realised that he’d have to change tactics.  While Darth Sidious had trained him in the Sith ways of using fear against opponents, and had valued Maul’s physical might from the moment he’d started growing from a boy into the man he was, Maul was more than just an angry Sith.  Life had taught him that different problems required different solutions.  Mother Talzin had taught him that when she’d decided that both the Sith and the Jedi problem could perhaps be fixed by one sacrificed Dathomirian son (eventually followed by a second).

Maul shifted a bit closer until he was standing in Kenobi’s space, looking almost straight down at him, watching as the boy’s shoulders grew tenser but he otherwise did not yield.  The Sith kept his hand where it was, although instead of squeezing threateningly he just moved his thumb up to the vulnerable underside of Kenobi’s jaw so that he could tip his head back, forcing eye-contact.  To the brat’s credit, he didn’t look away.  

“Heed me well, Kenobi,” Maul said, balancing his voice between threat and seriousness, “It’s time you earned your keep.  You may be a novice still in your powers, but you will cooperate in any way you can, if you are wise.”

And of course that damn child had the nerve to bite back.  Maul felt the response building beneath his hand, and at first thought Kenobi was backing down, because of the tremor that went through him.  But then he firmed up again, jaw tensing and brows lowering further into a glower.  “I won’t help a Sith,” he told Maul to his face.

By Savage’s carefully growled, “Brother…” it was clear that Savage expected Maul to rip Kenobi’s head clean off, and to be fair, Maul did have to take a second to push down a wave of rage.  The boy must have been reaching out in the Force to get a feel for it, because his eyes widened just a fraction, fear sparking beneath the facade of courage.  Maul had expected resistance, however, and reminded himself that a patient hunter was often more successful than a ferocious one.

Instead of trying to beat sense into their Seer (something that looked unlikely to work anyway, as Maul suspected that the boy’s body would give out before his resolve would), Maul leaned down closer and spoke in a voice lower and calmer than before, “Let me make something clear to you.  At this moment, you think you are doing something noble.”  Only now did Kenobi try to pull away, lip curling in denial, but Maul shifted his grip so that he had the Seer’s chin firmly grasped.  Apparently talking to Kenobi nose-to-nose was the only way to get sense into him.  “You think you are upholding Jedi ideals and serving a greater good.  And perhaps this is true.”  The boy stopped subtly trying to work his head free to look back up at Maul in brief bewilderment.  Waiting for that eye-contact, Maul went on to strike the final metaphorical blow, “I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter.  Because do you know what task my master has set before me?  Yes, I have a master.  And he has decreed that I hunt Jedi.”  Watching as Kenobi’s eyes widened with horrified realisation, Maul finished, “A task that is sidelined so long as I am working with you, and following where your dreams may lead.”

Now the boy was shaking in earnest beneath his hand, so Maul let him go and straightened, waiting patiently for his words to do their work.  They were not lies, either - he’d demanded the truth from Kenobi and the boy had given it to him in the most annoying way, and two could play that game.  If anything, Maul considered the truth to be the most fitting of weapons against one of the Jedi Order.  “So what will it be, Kenobi?” he finally pressed, “Do you assist us in hunting down an old sword - or do my brother and I find other pastimes with your kind?”

The boy was staring off into the middle distance, perhaps in shock - perhaps a bit in the edge of a dream, as his eyes had drifted off in the same direction as when he’d awoken.  His breathing was very quiet, but the tension seemed to have leached out of him, so that his narrow shoulders sagged.  

But apparently he was not done.

“If I help you, you don’t hunt Jedi,” he said.  His voice was very soft now, but as firm and pointed as a small knife.  Maul frowned as he saw Kenobi’s fists tighten again in persistent stubbornness.  “Give me your word.”

Savage stepped up at this point.  He seemed to be developing a troublesome soft spot for the Seer that Maul would perhaps have to talk to him about, but right now he merely looked curious.  “You would trust a Sith at their word?” he asked.  It was a pertinent question, so Maul waited, interested in the answer himself.  

Bitter blue eyes flicked up to them, a gimlet look beneath lowered brows.  “I don’t have a lot of choice, now do I?” the boy had the impertinence to murmur, but he didn’t retract his earlier demand.  In fact, he squared his stance a bit - once of the stances Savage had taught him, Maul recognized idly, one designed for wielding a lightsaber with balance and strength, a stance that did not allow for retreat - and then repeated more loudly than before, “While we’re hunting for this sword, that’s all you hunt for!”

Making deals with a Jedi was probably not what Darth Sidious wanted his apprentice doing… but then again, Maul was not entirely the apprentice Sidious thought he was.  So Maul nodded.  “I swear it upon my lightsaber.” He touched a hand to the hilt firmly secured at his belt, politely ignoring how Kenobi finally did flinch a bit at that, body swaying away for a second.  “So long as you do not waste time and purposefully prolong this search, I will not hunt Jedi at least until it is found.”  

Obi-Wan’s eyes shifted to Savage without another word, body language speaking of unease over how the second Sith would respond, as if he didn’t know that Savage was the more easily swayed of the two.  Even Maul was surprised when Savage put a hand on Maul’s shoulder, though, and said solemnly, “And I swear upon my loyalty to my brother, I shall do the same, Padawan.”

For a moment Kenobi opened his mouth, and Maul could practically see him taking in a breath to correct the ‘Padawan’ title.  But then he closed his eyes and his mouth, apparently giving up on the discussion.  “Fine.  I don’t have a single solitary clue what I’m doing,” he boy finally gave in, looking tired and harried, “but I’ll do my best to try and find where this sword is that I’ve been dreaming about.”

~^~

The moment Obi agreed to hunt for the sword, it was like something behind his breastbone un-knotted.  The relief that went through him was unsettling, as palpable as a taste on the roof of his mouth.  It was enough to nearly stagger him.  At the same time, though, it was an incontrovertible reminder that all of this was real, and he was just as unnatural and strange as his parents had feared.  All of the time at the Jedi Temple trying to hide it felt like a farce now.  

Considering that he’d just agreed to help two Sith find a Sith sword, his Jedi training in general felt like a farce.  Obi-Wan felt sick in the wake of his agreement, feeling like such a traitor to all of his teachers.  He’d had aspirations to be a Jedi Knight from the first moment he’d been removed from his infanticidal mother’s care and learned that someone from the Jedi order had saved him, but now he wanted to kick his old self and scream at him that this was what he’d amount to instead.  Feeling small and disgusting for giving in, for not finding a better way to deny these Sith anything , Obi just stood for a moment while the Zabrak’s spoke over his head.  He wanted to vomit, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was still tasting river-water in his mouth or because he felt like a traitor.  

Unbidden, another memory washed over him - another wave of river-water - Qui-Gon Jinn saying, “He’s too dangerous.”  

Obi-Wan physically flinched back from the memory, squeezing his eyes shut until he just saw stars on the inside of his eyelids instead of Jinn’s wary, ominous expression.  Maybe that had been an omen, too, escaping from Kenobi’s damned dreams and into reality, forecasting a certain failed Initiate giving in to two Sith.

The fact remained, however, that no matter how Kenobi wracked his brain, he couldn’t find another way out of this that didn’t put people in danger.  He fully believed that Maul and Savage were out to hunt Jedi, and he had to do anything in his power to stop that.  

Obi tiredly opened his eyes again, his lungs still feeling full of river-water, and accepted the fact that he now had to rely on the word of two Dark Force users and his own fickle ‘gift’ until he found a better solution.

Chapter Text

“Just shut up!  I’m already not good at this,” Kenobi raised his voice, exasperated and on the verge of just screaming - or seeing if he could repeat the storm he’d created in the cargo hold.  A Force-tantrum felt dangerously tempting right now.  Luckily his two Dathomirian companions complied and fell silent, allowing Obi-Wan to go back to what felt like pure nonsense.  

He was currently standing in the middle of the cockpit with his eyes closed, trying to point in the direction of their quarry.  While he’d apparently been doing this repeatedly already, he had no idea how, and apparently being a dowsing rod for Sith swords was easier when one was barely awake.  

So after a few moments of turning aimlessly and feeling like an idiot, Obi blew out a breath and opened his eyes to admit defeat.  “This isn’t working,” he said, stress over the situation making his tone sharpen, “I told you this wouldn’t work!”  

Maybe Obi’s anxiety was palpable, although he doubted that his captors understood exactly how panic-inducing it was to have his success tied to the continued safety of other Jedi.  Regardless of whether or not they could sympathise, Savage stepped in closer from where he’d been leaning against the door.  It really wasn’t that comforting when two heavy hands landed on his shoulders, and Obi involuntarily held his breath, suddenly feeling precariously and shamefully close to crying.  He waited for the clawed hands to tighten, to squeeze down on his collarbones until the pain somehow made him a better Seer.  

Instead, even as he felt the Zabrak’s body heat radiating against his back from the intimidating nearness, Savage merely rumbled lowly, “Breathe, little thing.  This is just meditation.  Think of it as a new stance.”

“It’s not that easy,” Obi whined, hating the pleading note in his voice but unable to keep it out.  It was more than wanting to do well - he needed to do well at this.  He glanced over at Maul involuntarily, the potential-Jedi-Hunter sitting like a barely sated predator in the pilot’s seat, turned to face them.  

“Do as my brother says,” Maul merely coaxed, tipping his horned head towards Savage, “As with all new things, you must try it.  Even then, you may do it poorly for a time before you can say whether or not it is possible to do it well.”

Blinking and trying to swallow that unexpectedly sage advice - something that Obi expected from the Academy but not from a Sith - Obi didn’t twitch when Savage’s hands did flex against him, but not enough to hurt him.  They just kneaded briefly at the slope of muscle between neck and shoulder for a moment.  “Repeat form 1 and 2,” Savage commanded, “until your mind is quiet.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Obi-Wan sighed.  He already expected it wouldn’t.  He still had a hard time accepting that Seers were real, and that he was one, and already he was being expected to play the part!

Maul rolled a hand palm-up in a surprisingly accepting gesture.  “Then we try something else.”  When Obi just stared at him like he’d grown a second head, Maul added as if Kenobi were dense, “That’s how learning works.”

Unable to believe that this was his life right now (and also unable to believe that these were two dangerous Sith, currently giving him thoughtful advice on dream-hunting), Obi lifted his hands to scrub at his face for a moment.  He muttered resignedly though his palms even as Savage’s hands fell away from him, “Fine.  Fine, I’ll try it.”  He dropped his hands, feeling frazzled.  Not too frazzled for a bit of snark, though.  “It’s not like I have anything else pressing on my schedule.”  He thought he heard Savage make a little choking noise behind him, and Maul merely rolled his eyes and let out a breath in an aggrieved way.

When Savage backed off, that still didn’t leave Obi with a ton of room.  The cockpit was not large, especially since Obi knew already that the closer he got to the flight controls, the might uptight Maul got.  However, the two forms Savage had chosen were ones that required very little movement; they’d been Obi-Wan’s favourites, as they mostly relied on just footwork and very little additional movement that would wear on his injuries.  So after taking in a little breath (shallow, lest his lungs catch and a cough start), Obi shifted his feet, focused on where he was balanced, and started shifting between what he knew only as Form 1 and Form 2.  And for the first time, he closed his eyes while doing it.  

At first it was difficult to ignore the two Sith in the room, but since he’d already been doing this with Savage, eventually the unease about Maul flickered and went out.  When they’d first brought him into the cockpit because of its view of the stars, he’d been hyper-focused on being in the Scimitar’s control-centre for the first time - but the novelty of that had worn off a good half hour ago anyway.   What was he going to do?  Try to sabotage the ship with two massive lightsaber adepts watching him?  Pretty soon all he was thinking about was getting his footing right, and making sure the minimal arm movements didn’t make his blaster-burned shoulder ache.  All of that was something he’d done multiple times before, so surprisingly soon he wasn’t even thinking of that.

He wasn’t thinking about anything at all until he started to feel ridiculous, especially since he wasn’t sure if he should be trying to recall the dream-sword or not - and when he tried, nothing really felt any different than before.  Eventually he huffed out a strained sigh into the silence of the cockpit, starting to say, “Look, I don’t think-”

“You can stop now, Kenobi,” Maul’s voice interrupted him, lower and more gentle than expected.

It was probably the tone more than the words that had Obi’s eyes blinking open in surprise, frozen mid-form with one arm still stretched slightly away from his body and weight shifted to the pad of his left foot.  He was startled to realise that there were lights around him, a glance informing him that one of the Zabraks had activated the holographic star-chart while he’d been moving, and that apparently he’d stepped right into it.  

Maul reached towards him, and when Obi reflexively pulled away, he bumped into Savage right before him.  In the second it took for Obi to look up and take note of the larger brother’s presence, the red Zabrak had very carefully caught hold of Obi’s still extended wrist.  The ex-Initiate sucked in a breath as he felt the Sith’s powerful grip so close to one of the bandaged lightsaber burns, but all Maul did was shift Obi’s hand back to where it had presumably been a few seconds ago.  The projected stars and hyperlanes cast new patterns on both of their skins, and Maul said simply, “You keep pointing to the same place, and when I activated the ship-star chart, you ended up here.”

At that moment Obi-Wan realised that his fingertips were dipping into the holographic image of a planet.

~^~

Obi… wasn’t sure how he felt about being a magic planet-finder.  Ignoring how he remembered drowning every time he was forced to confront the fact that he was indeed a Seer, there was the fact that he didn’t even know how he did anything that he did, and it was driving him mad.  As a Jedi-in-training, everything had boiled down to hard work and conscious application of skills; he knew what he was good at, what he wasn’t, and how he moved between those two points.  Even a lightsaber, so mystical to most of the known galaxy, held no secrets to him since he’d built his own.  

This, though?

It was like his mind and now also his body were constantly doing things out of his control.

Multiple Jedi masters had liked to say that the Force worked in mysterious ways, but now it felt like the Force had been leery of Obi all along, and had done its best to ensure he’d never become a Jedi because this was what he was capable of.  Why was he dreaming of a Sith sword, for crying out loud?!  And not only dreaming of it, but inexplicably driven to find it right when he fell into the hands of two Siths.  

Desperately needing something else to focus on and something productive to do if only as a distraction from his increasingly dark thoughts, Obi-Wan turned his mind to escaping.  

Obi-Wan had heard stories of Padawans reaching out to their masters through the Force, essentially meditating deeply enough and using their will skillfully enough to send out a distress beacon when in dire need.  Obi wasn’t a Padawan, though, and even if Jinn had become his master, Obi-Wan’s recent doubts about his own status as a good person crippled him with reluctance.  Even if he were able to reach out to Qui-Gon, wherever across the whole wide galaxy he was, would it be worthwhile for Jinn to follow Kenobi’s call and get him out of this mess?  When Obi scrapped that plan, he told himself it was because he probably wasn’t skilled or powerful enough to do it anyway.

None of the plans he came up with were good really, merely more or less bad.  Therefore he was fully aware that getting into the cockpit to either sabotage or take over the ship was a grand order of stupid, but was still better than anything else he could come up with.  And it played to his strengths, such as they were.

Obi-Wan liked spaceships.  Besides space travel being part of an Initiate’s training, since Jedi were meant to travel as diplomats and peacekeepers all across the galaxy, Obi had held a fascination for ships ever since one had taken him from his homeworld so he could start a new life as a potential Padawan.  In fact, the classes on flying ships were some of the few that Obi-Wan had managed to do quite well in, despite being chronically sleep-deprived.  Therefore he was pretty sure that the Scimitar probably did not actually have biometric locks on all of its doors. 

He’d started to suspect this a while ago, but he’d been either asleep or very well watched since Savage’s first comment about the door-lock, so it wasn’t like he could test it out.  However, the Scimitar was not a large ship, and while Obi had never been on exactly this type of ship before, he’d learned about models that held similarities.  She wasn’t a prison ship, nor was she a massive cruiser with a diverse crew.  Usually smaller ships like this, ones made to be flown with just one or two people, didn’t really have measures for internal isolation outside of pressurisation.  After all, if you had a ship built for just two people, it stood to reason that those two people had to trust each other quite a lot, yes?  Therefore, building a ship with sophisticated locking systems on all internal doors wasn’t necessary.  At most, the Scimitar was built to keep outsiders from boarding the ship; no one would have planned for her carrying a prisoner.    

The door did have a panel next to it, and Obi was just as unfamiliar with it as he was with the ship in general.  So the next time that he and Savage went through stances, in the ‘moving meditation’ that Kenobi didn’t like admitting he rather enjoyed, he ended it by claiming he was exhausted.  Savage’s mouth had turned down at the edges, making his expression look thunderously foreboding but which Obi was starting to recognize as nothing more than mild, questioning worry.  Savage had been in the process of leading Obi-Wan out of the room to eat, but instead believed the boy’s assertion of being too tired to be hungry.  As usual, the huge Sith blocked the view of the door when he opened it, and Obi-Wan feigned sleep until he was sure that Savage was gone.  In truth, lying there just reminded him that he was definitely hungry, and also that he wanted nothing more than exactly the nap that he’d asked for.  Instead, Kenobi forced himself up and tossed back the blanket, making a beeline for the closed door.

It didn’t open automatically to his presence, which for a moment caused his heart to plummet down through his shoes, but Obi pushed aside the depressed feelings and reached for the panel.  He’d expected resistance, he reminded himself; if the door had just opened, that would have been shocking (and embarrassing, since it would have meant he could have just left any time he wanted).  The room was darkened except for the red nocturnal running lights along the edges of the floor, but the touch-pad lit up easily enough when he reached for it.  

The results were mixed: on the up-side, he didn’t see a palm-scanner, meaning Savage had definitely lied to him about there being a biometric component to the lock.  The downside, though, was that the whole thing was configured with a language that Obi-Wan had never seen before, and he nearly buckled and cried right then.

“Get it together, Kenobi,” he muttered into the dark room, only allowing himself a moment to be overwhelmed.  He sank down into a crouch, head down and shaking fingers buried in his hair.  Folded in half like this, it was easier to ignore how heavy his lungs felt these days, and it helped him focus on his breathing.  A careful count of ten later, and he stood up again without hyperventilating.  “Think, Kenobi, think,” he muttered to himself next.  The habit of talking to himself cropped up, perhaps saying something about how he dealt with anxiety when alone with no one else to talk to.  “Different language doesn’t mean different function.  It’s still just a door control panel.”  He hoped.  He didn’t have a lot else to work with, though, short of trying to make a run for it the next time Savage opened the door.  Obi had been grabbed more than enough in the past weeks, thanks ever-so-much.  

Nerves fading into the background as he engaged the more analytical side of his brain, Obi looked at the screen more critically.  The arrangement of buttons, regardless of the text… did not look familiar.  He also didn’t know if anyone would be alerted if he started pushing buttons, although it had lit up and activated without any noticeable trouble.  So he hesitantly reached out and touched a finger to the pad, relieved that it responded even though he clearly wasn’t Dathomirian.  The screen immediately changed to an arrangement of buttons that looked a bit more like a code-entry panel, which made him swear softly even as he had to admit it was at least familiar.  He just didn’t know the code, or how quick it would be to log his failed attempts.  

Feeling frustrated and trapped again, Obi focused on the edges of the panel instead, closing his eyes and feeling about with the Force.  Obi-Wan had heard of some Force-users who could manipulate technology, and he certainly had never shown any aptitude for that, but he knew that a control-panel looked like and how they were generally affixed to walls - so now he just hoped that when their wires were all exposed, there would be no ‘language’ barriers.  He would have also spared a moment to check the Force-signatures of his two ‘shipmates,’ but didn’t have the focus to spare.

Which meant things got hectic very quickly when he eventually succeeded in hotwiring the panel.

Not being a mechanic and not being in the best headspace, Obi nearly electrocuted himself in the effort, the nerve endings on both hands right up to his shoulder-blades tingling even as the door suddenly slid open.  Deliriously elated at finally succeeding at something, Obi darted out, still a bit dazed from the shock.  He didn’t notice that the fingers of one hand were actually bleeding, falling victim to the metal edge of the panel that he’d finally just muscled open with a combination of the Force and all of his still-recovering strength.  His ribs didn’t hurt, surprisingly, but he could still feel his lung catching on the left side as adrenaline started amping up.  For a moment he just skidded to a halt in the central corridor of the Scimitar, coming to grips with the fact that he was out on his own for the first time in days.  

It was so freeing that he had to swallow down the urge to manic-giggle, which turned into a rough cough instead.  

Before he could gather himself, however, he heard the hiss of the galley door disengaging and panic flooded through him.  Even as the door was opening, Kenobi was spinning to face the other direction - the cockpit door - and stretching out his bloodied hand and reaching out with the Force.  He might have fried a few nerve endings and probably brain cells fighting with the last one, but that just meant he knew what to do with this one, and the panel was ripping away even as he started running towards it.  If he’d done it wrong, he’d slam head-first into the door, but that seemed a better option than not trying at all.  

He didn’t slow down a single iota as he neared it, heart hammering heard in his chest and then doing a delicious, almost painful flip as the door gave way just like the one to the sleeping quarters had.  “Jedi!” he heard barked from behind him, and he wasn’t even sure which Sith was on his heels.  Obi-Wan hadn’t thought this far ahead because frankly, he hadn’t thought he’d get this far, but he was more than ready to improvise.

Improvisation flew out the window as he skidded into the cockpit, and at the same time he found out who had been shouting at him: definitely Savage, because Maul was right here.  Talking to a robed, hooded hologram of someone with the lights of hyperspace flashing past on the viewscreen beyond.

Feeling stupid and doomed in every molecule of his being, Obi-Wan froze even as Maul’s golden eyes turned to him in surprise.

Before the hologram could turn, too (Obi-Wan was out of range of its sensors, but it was hard to miss how Maul had twisted, startled), Savage caught up like an avalanche crashing in behind Obi.  Without a word, one of his massive hands locked around the front of Kenobi’s face, effectively silencing him before he could even consider making a noise.  The Zabrak’s other arm encircled his chest, everyone still eerily silent, except for the holographic image of Maul’s compatriot, who demanded in a male, raspy voice, “What is it?  What was that?”

Obi-Wan was getting the distinct sense that something was wrong, and he didn’t think it was entirely to do with his daring breaking and entering.  While Maul turned back to the communications display, Obi could see how the Sith was purposefully composing himself again, shoulders easing and attention purposefully leaving Savage and Obi.  Meanwhile, Savage hauled Obi backwards - although at that moment, the door decided to close again.  And not open.  Savage hissed a very quiet word that Obi was starting to become familiar with and identify as a curse.  He’d definitely done a number on that door.  

“What was that?” the holographic newcomer demanded again, and something about his voice made Kenobi flinch.  It wasn’t just the gravel-rasp of the voice; it felt like the tip of a needle scratching at his ear-drum, a physical wound.  His head jerked and Savage’s grip tightened in response, enough so that Obi-Wan realised he was in very real danger of being suffocated, or Savage’s lengthened claws digging into his face.  

But for some reason he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the hooded figure, and he couldn’t bring himself to focus his fear on Savage or Maul.

“Nothing, Master,” Maul said, “Merely one of the sensors picking up an anomalous reading.  I will check it after our conversation is complete.”

Obi-Wan’s sense of danger was rising, even as it remained utterly disconnected from the two very real Zabrak in the room who were undoubtedly going to delimb him later for this.  He could still breathe past Savage’s hand clamped over most of his face, but there was a sense that the cabin was filled with rarified air - or the crackling crispness of ozone before lightning struck.  He felt himself start shaking before he even knew why.  

“Do not lie to me, Apprentice,” the figure croaked back, while Obi-Wan had fear crawling up his spine and suffusing his veins like some new substance replacing his blood millimetre by millimetre.  There was something very, very wrong going on here, and it had nothing to do with one ex-Initiate on the loose.  Kenobi felt a headache coming on, hot and oppressive behind his eyes.  “You might be a keen student, but you would be a foolish one to think you could get falsehoods past one such as me.”

“Master?” Maul feigned ignorance with far more stubbornness than Obi would have managed.  The heaviness in the room grew, fear becoming a copper tang in Obi-Wan’s mouth until suddenly - suddenly he was tasting ash .

Between one glance and the next, eyes moving from Maul’s shadowy Sith Master to Maul himself, Obi-Wan found himself gazing upon a far younger Maul - leaner than he was now, face strange with fewer tattoos upon his red skin.  The walls of the ship were replaced by lifeless earth and the remnants of buildings, colour leached from everything but the red of Maul’s skin and the two glowing yellow pinpoints beneath the hood of his Sith Master.  

Some part of Obi-Wan was aware of the conversation continuing in the ship around him, of Savage still muffling him and restraining him tightly, but even when he blinked he couldn’t stop seeing young Maul before his master, a dead world around him.  His mind registered a lecture long past, the air crackling with Dark Force energy so oppressive that it stank, and then the Sith Lord was whipping up the strange grey earth into a whirlwind around his apprentice.  Obi-Wan stared at the ancient bones revealed beneath, and tasted ash on his tongue even as he watched Maul from long ago gasp and cough with no choice but to inhale.

Obi came back to himself as suddenly as he’d left, a raging headache boiling from the backs of his eyes to the base of his skull and the whole sense of darkness fully and unflinchingly focused on the holographic image still speaking to Maul.  “I know your brother is there, Maul,” Darth Sidious said, and Obi-Wan whimpered silently because he couldn’t remember if he’d heard Maul call him that or if the vision had told him the name.  “No need to call him forth - I do not need my suspicions proven, for I know of your doings.  Just remember this, my apprentice: you do nothing without my knowing.”  The hood’s shadow was not so deep as to hide a wrinkled mouth stretching into a sickly, triumphant smile.  “In fact, you do nothing that is not my will.”

And with that, the Sith Lord ended the communication and his holographic image blinked off before Maul could respond.  The room fell silent and still, darker now without the hologram casting its blue light.  

Savage was the first to speak, a hurried, “I’m sorry, brother, I do not know how he-”  Savage paused, and the hand he’d wrapped around Kenobi’s shoulders let go, presumably to gesture back at the stubbornly closed door, hopefully not a permanent problem.  “In getting in here, he damaged the door, and I did not know-”

This time Maul cut his brother off, swivelling around in his seat to face them and silently raising a hand.  His expression was grim and stern, and Obi wasn’t sure if he looked furious or if that was just the tattoos.  Kenobi tried belatedly to reach up and tug Savage’s hand off his face, but that just encouraged the younger Zabrak to grab him with both hands again.  Obi felt the fingers of his right hand slip on Savage’s knuckles.  He’d forgotten he was bleeding, and even now could barely feel it over the throbbing migraine.  It felt like he was equally scrambling for purchase inside of his own head, but he tried to stay in the here-and-now and ignore the flickering after-images of crumbled stone and ancient warriors turned to ash.

Savage spoke again, more solemnly this time, “So do you think Lord Sidious knows about the boy?”  Obi-Wan sighed out of his nose in relief, because at least now he could say for certain that he knew the name from being told, not from a hallucination.  

Maul had steepled his fingers, tapping the tips of them against his chin thoughtfully as he stared either right at Kenobi or into the middle distance disconcertingly near him.  “No,” he said, and although the answer came after a pause, it sounded certain, “He knows about you, certainly.”  Against all reason, Obi felt a little flutter of regret at that; it sounded like Savage’s presence had been meant to stay a secret, and Obi-Wan had effectively ruined that.  But then Maul went on, “But I had suspected he might for some time now.  The boy though-”  He moved his hands apart to wave one Kenobi’s way.  “-He knows nothing of.  If my master has a weakness, it is his desire to gloat, and he would have made his comments much more pointed had he known I possessed a Jedi Seer.”  Now Maul’s eyes were most definitely focused on Obi, and he went on in a lower register, “Which means you and I need to have a talk, boy.”

Even as Maul reached out a hand in a (by now unfortunately familiar) gesture to catch hold of Obi-Wan with the Force, Kenobi was still trying and failing to shake the hallucinations.  Therefore when he was pulled out of Savage’s grip, he just stumbled forward without protest, even as he heard Savage make an aborted sort of noise behind him.  There was no way to tell if the younger Zabrak was uneasy about his brother’s actions or if he’d finally noticed the blood smeared across the back of one hand.

His mind a frazzled tangle of anxiety and memories that were not his, Obi was fully expecting a violent lecture at best .  Therefore, he was prepared for Maul’s hands catching his upper arms almost bruisingly tight - what he was not prepared for was how the fervour in Maul’s voice and eyes did not contain any anger.  “Listen to me, Kenobi.  If you ever see my master ever again, you run in the opposite direction.  You do not hesitate, you do not ponder this, you run .”  He gave Obi-Wan a shake, then continued to hold them barely two hands’-breadths apart, making it impossible to escape the unblinking intensity of red-gold eyes - unfortunately, all that seemed to do was trigger the earlier memory, and Obi was tasting ash on his tongue again and getting swamped in the same ancient memories that younger-Maul had.  It was lucky that Maul was holding him so firmly, because Obi-Wan was beginning to feel unsteady even as Maul went on sternly, “And if ever you are around him and you cannot escape, hide your Force signature however you can.  You may dislike being my Seer, but you will dislike it far more should you fall into his hands.  Do you understand?”

Obi-Wan didn’t answer.  Not because he was being a stubborn little shit for once, but because his throat was dry and his whole mind felt clogged with memories, the headache of it all almost unbearable.  

Belatedly noticing something was amiss, Maul’s expression faltered, brows lowering.  “Kenobi?”

“Malachor.”  A planet-name Obi-Wan had never heard before fell out of his mouth like the blood bubbling out past his clenched fingers.  He coughed because it felt like more words were filling up his lungs, leaving no room for him to get his own breath in.  So he just kept speaking words beyond his control, tears of panic pricking at the corners of his eyes, blurting in a rush, “I know why you hate Jedi so much.”  

Maybe it was because Obi-Wan’s Force-senses were so raw right now - his mind partway to broken, as Maul had been warning him since they’d first met - or maybe it was because he’d been meditating with Maul so often, but he thought he felt the Sith’s shock through the Force.  Outwardly, Maul’s brows merely jumped upwards for a second before he smoothed his features out again.  Narrowing his eyes and searching Kenobi’s face for answers that Obi-Wan knew for a fact weren’t there (because he certainly didn’t have any, as much as he wished he did), Maul murmured very quietly, “You mind wanders at the most inconvenient of times, little Seer.” 

At that point the mix of panic, lingering fear, and his skull-splitting headache got the best of him, and Obi-Wan gasped out an agonized, heart-felt “ Fuck ,” and dropped his head.  Tears leaked down his nose and cheeks and chin, and the conversation went no further.  Maul never lectured him on breaking into the cockpit.  Maul asked no further questions about Obi-Wan’s new knowledge of Malachor.  Instead, the elder Sith just turned to Savage and they talked quietly about how to get the door to open up again, Savage filling in a bit more about what he knew of Obi’s recent mischief.  Maul's hands remained on his arms, perhaps more supportive now than restraining.

Chapter Text

It had been a long time since Maul had thought about his first trip to Malachor.  Consciously, at least.  Subconsciously it coloured everything he did in a way that was inescapable, just as his master had intended.  When Darth Sidious had taken Maul from Dathomir (under less than diplomatic circumstances), he’d been looking for a political pawn as much as an apprentice.  Therefore, it made sense that once Maul was old enough to start showing potential as a Sith but also as a political liability (as he got to an age where he could think for himself), Sidious would take Maul to Malachor, where Jedi had slaughtered nearly every Sith in existence.  

Even at the memory, Maul felt the familiar bubbling of acidic anger crawling up his throat; it took conscious effort to push down the animal growl that formed.  He dragged a hand down his face, holding it over his eyes for a moment as he let the anger sink in and settle, having long-since accepted it as part of his new normal.  As his master had anticipated, breathing in the ashes of the lost Sith had given Maul memories that he’d never be able to get rid of, and with them an ancient anger towards Jedi that was also always with him.

Therefore, he wasn’t sure how to feel about Kenobi, the young almost-Jedi, who now bore this burden, too.  All because the kid managed to be a Seer at the most inopportune moments.  The angry part of Maul, the part of him that had been irrevocably changed on Malachor when the loss and pain of a generation of lost Sith had been imprinted on his psyche, was viciously pleased that a Jedi (or at least an almost-Jedi) was finally sharing in the pain that they’d caused so long ago.  Maul had had over a decade to come to terms with this wrathful new side of himself, however, and he knew that his anger had a place - and it wasn’t in Kenobi’s mind.  

The doors were both busted.  The best solution right now was to have them stay open, at least while Savage fixed them.  Maul was also trying to figure out the correct timing and wording to let Mother Talzen know that Sidious had found out (or presumably had long-since known) that Maul was travelling with his brother.  Right now, though, the elder brother stepped into the sleeping quarters, where the only light was coming from the corridor and nocturnal running lights, casting the little boy on the far bed in shadow.  Kenobi didn’t react to Maul’s shadow being cast through the open doorway, but considering how he was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head between his hands, it was possible he was in pain - Maul would have been more sure of that if the Jedi whelp didn’t have such a running habit of hiding pain, so Maul had no previous glimpses to compare this to.  Kenobi’s hands were white-knuckled in his copper hair, however, his whole body harshly tense, and Maul’s keen eyes could see in the dark well enough to note the shallow hitching of his breaths.  As Maul shifted and his own shadow moved, he also caught a glimpse of blood staining the edge of the boy’s right hand and now his hair, so with briefly widening eyes, Maul decided that the boy had to have some secondary pain to be ignoring the first one.  “Let me see your hand,” he said by way of announcing his presence. 

By the way Kenobi tiredly lifted his head, eyes bloodshot and dull, he’d known the Sith was there all along.

Savage had warned Maul about the boy’s cut hand.  He hadn’t had to say anything - he’d just looked over Kenobi’s head, wide-eyed, as he’d finally ushered Kenobi out of the cockpit, and lifted a hand to show Maul blood-stained knuckles.  Another quick point and Maul saw drops of red on the floor, finally following his brother’s eyes to the Seer’s left palm.  Now as Maul stepped into the room fully, a glance to one side showed him the stubbornly demolished entry-pad with blood on a few metal edges.  Maul was a keen enough tactician to put the pieces together, and was thankful that he had already detoured to get the medkit before heading this way.

The closer Maul got and the more his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, the more sure he was that Kenobi had a migraine - not surprising, given the pressure visions had to be putting on his already fragile psyche.  However, at Maul’s request, Kenobi lowered his hands from his probably-aching head and tucked them distrustfully against his body.  He didn’t say anything, though, even as he watched Maul with all the wariness of a small animal - one that had already proven entirely too often just how far it’d go when cornered. 

‘ Why don’t you ever beg? ’ Maul found himself asking silently, the full strangeness of the situation finally hitting him.

In all the time he and Savage had had Kenobi, right back to when they’d first collected him on Bandomeer and watched the Dark Jedi Xanatos taunt and tease and injure him, Maul realised that Kenobi had never once pleaded for mercy.  Not a single, “No, don’t!” or “Please, I’ll do anything!” even when it had been a totally reasonable response.  He’d been mouthy from the start, and did cry out involuntarily in surprise or pain, but otherwise he was a remarkably unresponsive prisoner, now that Maul thought about it.  Only once had he even demanded that Maul back off, but that hadn’t been begging - that had been a trapped animal snarling.  Also reflecting back on their interactions up until now, Maul grimly realised that the snarkiness had been tapering off, replaced by nothing at all.  Kenobi did not try to barter for leniency or ask for mercy, or even try to wheedle his way into his captor’s good graces for safety.

And as much as some might have described that as a sign of pride and courage, Maul did not think it was that.  No, in fact, after another heartbeat he realised that he’d seen this before - but only in soldiers too long on the front lines, reserves already bled dry but knowing another wave of attacks was coming.  He could see it in how Kenobi had straightened a little just now, tiredness replaced by steeliness in his eyes, all without words of complaint.  Complaining wasted energy.  And begging didn’t stop the enemies from coming.

Suddenly Maul felt tiredness deep in his core, because all he could think was that he was not looking at a soldier.  He was looking at a little boy who, as Savage liked to point out, just dearly needed food and rest.  

Maul changed tactics, and instead of forcing a fight over Kenobi’s injured hand, the Sith sat down on the opposite bunk.  The Seer’s eyebrows twitched in badly hidden surprise.

“I will not call your skill a gift,” Maul said after a moment, slowly, choosing his words carefully, “Not again.  Not even once you learn to use it.”  He did not know what the human’s eyes would see in the room’s poor lighting, but Maul himself could see how Kenobi’s expression slackened further in bewilderment over how this interaction was transpiring.  “You have seen my past in Malachor.”  It was a statement, not a question; he could tell by how Kenobi flinched and looked away that the boy had seen quite a lot, and even the indelibly vicious part of Maul couldn’t find joy in that.  “You know now that I am not entirely inexperienced with visions.  I cannot see the future as you do, but I relived enough pain in the past to know that seeing beyond one’s own reality is not a gift.”  

Now the boy was watching Maul with narrow-eyed suspicion, but the look was still less guarded than before - grudging curiosity burning through it all.  “And yet you want me to use it,” he finally accused softly.

Maul found himself more heartened than he should have been by the bit of snark being thrown his way.  He fought back an involuntary smile only because this was a serious conversation.  Voice low and grave, he shrugged and slowly - broadcasting his movements - just touched his fingertips to the lightsaber hilt at his side.  Kenobi watched warily but didn’t cower back.  “We are all asked to use skills that are not gifts,” he demurred.  He knew well the Jedi view on everything a Sith might be gifted in.  He watched the flicker of surprise and understanding colour the boy’s gaze as those words sank in.  “If we only used our most benevolent skills, we would not make it far in life.”

“That’s a Sith’s viewpoint.”  There was a bit more of a scoff in the boy’s tone - a bit more life.  

Maul shrugged again.  “You are talking to a Sith,” he said simply

Kenobi glared, but then he rolled his eyes.  Then he gave his left hand an uneasy flex, glancing down at it as if the pain was only now finding its way to the forefront of his awareness.  A good warrior read the body language of any opponent, and now Maul took careful note of how the boy, if only for a second, was willing to put his own pains above the threat of the Sith in the room.  It felt like progress - although towards what, Maul was not sure.  He decided it was a good time to press again, “Now may I see your hand?”  He lifted the medkit pointedly.

This time when the boy glanced up it was with less stony, exhausted defiance than before, although he still subtly huddled his body away.  “I thought you said the condition of my body didn’t matter - just my mind.”

‘ The boy has the verbal accuracy of a sniper ,’ Maul noted a bit sourly, but he had to admit that boy was correct: Maul had said basically that.  Nonetheless, the Zabrak stood up and stepped forward, rebutting gruffly, “I will be embarrassed to return home with a one-handed Seer, especially when I have to explain how you lost it.  Just be glad that I am willing to treat your injuries before you get gangrene in half your limbs.”  

For some reason that worked, or else Maul had finally worn the boy down.  Considering how small and beleaguered the welp had been from the moment they’d collected him, and all he’d been through in the last hour alone, Maul wouldn’t have been surprised if the latter was the case.  Either way, Kenobi leaned away a bit but otherwise did unbend his arm enough that Maul was able to grasp it.  The Sith ended up crouching down in front of the boy, pulling the limb closer and watching as, after a moment of obvious hesitation, Kenobi unfolded his fingers.  The inside of his hand was sticky with blood, some fresh redness weeping into the creases of his palm.  They hadn’t even healed the lightsaber wounds on his forearms yet and the boy was already further damaged.  Maul felt a flash of guilt and told himself the feeling came to him because Kenobi was a powerful tool that he and Savage were clearly taking poor care of.  

Maybe that was why Maul tried to slow down and be more gentle as he cleaned and dressed the wound.  

Through it all, the boy just watched, and silence reigned.  Although at one point Kenobi spoke up, noting out of nowhere, “That’s the cream from your home-world.”

Maul was beyond asking himself if this was something either he or Savage had told Kenobi or if the Seer had plucked that information out of a vision.  “It is.  And if you can resist the urge to get into further trouble, there might be enough of it to last the trip,” he warned, pitching his tone in a threatening growl for emphasis.  When Kenobi responded with his mouth twisting down mulishly, Maul looked up to meet his eyes and continued, “And if you agree to never tell anyone that you broke into the cockpit of my ship, I’ll agree to not roast you slowly over an open fire for it.  Are we in agreement?”

Although both of his eyebrows jumped upwards rather alarmingly, all the boy did was give a nod and respond in a brief, “Fine.”  

At that point Maul noticed his brother at the broken doorway, no doubt standing and watching. Not wanting to give any appearance of softness, Maul finished up bandaging the boy’s hand quickly and then stood, looking down his nose to say, “Don’t do it again.”

“I’m not sure that he can,” Savage surprised both of them by speaking up; Maul and Kenobi’s heads both snapped in his direction.  The larger Zabrak was leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded and face quite serene despite what he said next, “The damage to the door’s locking mechanisms was significant.  I believe we will have no choice but to leave the doors open until we can dock for repairs - or risk being unable to open them again.”

For a moment Maul just stood with his mouth hanging open slightly, no words forthcoming that could sum up his reaction to this.  When he thought he heard a startled laugh behind him, Maul immediately spun with a growl.  Savage was immediately saying something in a mollifying tone, so Maul snarled, “I know, I know, I’m not going to throttle him!” even though part of him was very, very tempted.  He still grabbed the boy by his collar before Kenobi could wriggle away, bringing them nose-to-nose so that he could at least let out some of his exasperation in a seething hiss, “You are very lucky that you’re so valuable, because you’re the most maddening child I’ve ever met.”

And apparently Kenobi wasn’t out of snark entirely, because he squeaked out, “I’ve actually heard that last part before.”

Letting out a wordless noise of pure frustration, Maul let the boy go to more or less throw him back onto the bed.  It was a harmless landing, softened by blankets, so he stormed out as theatrically as possible to make up for how impotent his temper was.  “Watch him,” he shouted over his shoulder to his brother while he stormed through all the broken doors on his ship, “I’ve got to think of what to say to Mother Talzen.”  Because he’d prefer death to admitting that a child had wreaked so much havoc under his watch, but the Nightsisters needed to know about the development with Lord Sidious knowing about Savage.  

~^~

They were only three days away from their destination, the planet Alvo-4, and it was perhaps a blessing that the only additional stress during that time came from Maul’s communique to Dathomir.  For once, he was glad that the Nightsisters preferred sending messages rather than having a face-to-hologram talk - messages gave him more time to ponder and pick his words very, very carefully.  In the end, he’d kept it brief, saying that Sidious had decided to reveal that he knew Maul was travelling with his brother, while stressing that this had been inevitable.  Savage was not a subtle being to begin with, and considering how long he’d been by Maul’s side, it had only been a matter of time before the topic came up.  If anything, Darth Sidious’ response had been fairly benign, although Maul would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t worried about what came next.  Sidious did not like being lied to, and he also did not like things that were outside of his control, as he’d said - and Maul joining up with a family member would definitely trigger the old Sith Lord’s paranoiac side, too.  Maul decided to leave that to the Nightsisters to think on, sending off his message and waiting to see what Mother Talzin and her coven would suggest moving forward.  Alvo-4 was on the far Outer Rim, so it would take time to get back to Dathomir even through hyperspace lanes - more time to prepare himself for inevitable questioning.

Despite now having two permanently open doors, Kenobi caused no more trouble.  This was partly because Savage and Maul were now watching him a lot more strictly now (no more private brotherly meetings while they blissfully assumed the boy was behaving out of their line of sight), but it seemed that that last stunt had also taken a lot out of the little Seer.  Sometimes Maul forgot, when he was faced by stubborn blue eyes and that refusal to back down, that Kenobi had come to them not only injured but starved.  Savage had guiltily admitted that the boy had undergone his last escapade instead of eating, and those choices led to them having a very overextended Jedi on their hands.  So instead of more trouble, the boy went back to a pattern of eating and sleeping.  

And coughing.  Maul told himself (and his brother) that they’d expected the boy to get a bit sick eventually; it would have been more shocking if his immune system had remained iron-clad, given the conditions he’d survived on the mining rig.  It was a big embarrassing that Maul had to convince his brother (in hushed whispers while Kenobi was sleeping) to not put the boy back in the box by the heating vent again, but ultimately they just pulled more blankets out of storage and Savage ended up cooking more of their father’s soup.  Maul forbade him from telling Kenobi that these things were being done specifically for the boy’s comfort.  

Considering how lethargic their captive was by the time they reached Alvo-4, it was debatable whether or not he’d have reacted if he’d learned about those kind gestures anyway.

“He’s not well, brother,” Savage said, for at least the dozenth time.  Maul didn’t snap at him to shut up because it was true, and because that same sentence kept echoing in his head; Savage was just the only one of them willing to say it out loud.  Even as they said this, the boy was in bed - maybe sleeping, but probably not much, since they could hear coughs periodically and watch as his body jerked beneath the blankets every time.  They had medicine on the Scimitar , of course, which they had been measuring out carefully for the ship’s smallest occupant, and the medicines seemed to be helping with everything except that damn cough.  The boy wasn’t even hacking anything up, and when asked (by Savage, of course, who was by now an irredeemable softy in Maul’s eyes) had said he just felt like he had something in his lungs he needed to get out.  The boy’s sleep had been so restless that he’d barely been dreaming, which felt like a bit of a reprieve.

There wasn’t anything they could do that they were not already doing, however, so Maul kept his worries behind his teeth and assured instead, “Once we have found the sword, then we will find a proper healer to see to him before we continue on to Dathomir.”  The mission needed to come first - but it would also be sensible, once planetside, to make use of the more extensive medical facilities that most colonies had.  Maul had never even heard of Alvo-4, but a bit of research through the ship’s computer had at least confirmed that it wasn’t… too much… of a backwater planet.  Hopefully Kenobi’s visions wouldn’t lead them too far away from the planet’s main colony, Alvidera.  

Not wanting to meet the worried gaze that he knew his brother was directing his way, Maul stepped forward to be the one to get Kenobi out of bed.  The boy was all buried in blankets, so when Maul reached down to shake him, he didn’t realise that he’d grabbed the boy’s healing shoulder until a hiss was emitted from beneath the pile.  It for a moment threw Maul off-balance, even as he retracted his hand quickly.  He was used to inflicting pain mercilessly but also on purpose, and this situation fit neither of those criteria, leaving him at odds with himself.  “We have landed, Kenobi.  It’s time to follow your vision to its end.”

It wasn’t until Kenobi twitched and curled in on himself tighter that Maul realised the boy was actually still sleeping - and despite his nagging cough, dreaming.

~^~

Obi-Wan’s dreams had been changing ever since the Scimitar had started heading towards Alvo-4 (where Obi still wasn’t convinced that they’d find anything).  He wasn’t sure whether or not these different dreams were an improvement, though.  They were still such a cluttered mess, and bogged down in so much visceral fear and darkness.  

If he dreamt of the sword, it was lying upon a sea of red sand, pointing Obi-Wan onwards.  The ground shifted like water, everything - everything - red.  It was hard to keep his feet even as the dream always dragged him forwards.  Equally ruby-toned rocks and stone walls of dark rust blocked his way and hindered his path, but in the dreams he knew which way to weave around them.  The problem was that all he found, the deeper he went, were more nightmares.  He saw droids with living, human skins pulled tight over them, talking in languages he couldn’t understand before sinking into the bloodred sand.  Most of the dreams (nightmares by now) ended with a shadowy figure rising over the whole scene, faceless and cloaked in a darkness palpable enough that Kenobi fought to breathe.  As he choked and ran, sometimes the spreading shadows consumed him, and he’d wake up fighting for air.  

Other dreams ended with him escaping the shadows, stumbling out onto a dune of normal-coloured sand and finding Maul standing before him.  Suddenly rooted to the spot, Obi-Wan would be able to do nothing but stare as the Dathomirian met his gaze expressionlessly and then reached down to press his fingertips against the lower edges of Kenobi’s left ribs - where the bruises were fading, but where the tightness lingered in his lungs when he was awake.  But then nightmare-Maul would push harder, harder, until he was digging his fingers through Kenobi’s flesh and burying his hand underneath Kenobi’s ribcage in a mess of blood and ripping skin.  Obi-Wan had always dreamed in all of his senses - sound, sight, hearing, even taste and smell sometimes - but in these new dreams, he also had the ability to feel pain.

Those nightmares he woke from silently, only because the pain had locked up his lungs so badly that he couldn’t get a sound out.  That would eventually devolve into coughing, too, but harsher, as his bewildered brain told him to try and expel Maul’s fist from inside of his chest cavity.  The heaviness in Obi’s chest never seemed to leave after those dreams started, but he was so exhausted that he just kept going back to sleep again, starting the cycle all over until his chest and diaphragm were a constant ache.

It was one of those dreams that Maul shook him out of, and it was all Obi could do not to shriek and scramble all the way into the corner, his mind still tangled in make-believe images of Maul gouging his way through Obi-Wan’s floating ribs like he was digging for his heart.  As Maul said his name, “Kenobi?” it sounded as if from far away still, and Obi fought to drag his beleaguered mind fully into wakefulness before he did something embarrassing like cry.  As it was, he couldn’t help but twist away as he sat up, the phantom pain on the left side of his chest still too fresh to allow the Dathomirian near it.  Maul clearly noticed, fearsome face twisting into a frown even as he obligingly pulled back.  

“I’m up.  I’m up!” Obi insisted, before anyone could ask questions.  He sat with the blankets still tangled around his waist, rubbing his hands furiously over his face to try and wake himself up faster.  He swallowed down yet another damn cough with effort.  He never coughed anything up, but his lungs felt heavy, like the one time he’d cough Vilgarin pneumonia when he was ten.  At least that illness had come with a telltale sore throat, too - right now he was pretty sure his throat was only sore because he kept coughing.  

“Good.”  Maul folded his arms into his dark sleeves, a familiar foreboding pose that Obi was way too tired to be all that affected by.  “Because we have landed upon Alvo-4, the planet your visions indicated.”

Rubbing his hands down his face one last time before dropping them to his lap to look up at Maul with probably rather bloodshot eyes, Kenobi deadpanned, “So we’re back to following my dreams again?”

Maul’s eyes narrowed and his mouth twitched like he was on the verge of growling, but Obi had kept the sarcasm in his tone subtle this time, so apparently the Sith decided he ultimately couldn’t justify reacting to it without seeming childish.  It was a small win to watch how much Maul wanted to shout at him anyway.  “Yes.”

“Fantastic.”  Okay, now the sarcasm was slipping out more transparently, but Obi was too tired to care.  He got himself disentangled from the bedsheets as he finished with a bit more dark humour, “Because I’ve been dreaming up some truly stellar madness.  Maybe if I’m lucky, they’ll come true so you can share the insanity with me.”

He ignored the concerned looks that the two Siths shared, instead focusing on finding his shoes.

~^~  

Predictably, the Siths had given Obi-Wan a threatening talk about not running away or otherwise trying to escape.  As shameful as it was, Obi figured he’d obey.  As much as he told himself that he needed to use every opportunity at his disposal to escape, he was just too tired to, even forgetting his deal with Maul: so long as Obi was helping them look for Sith swords, there would be no hunting of Jedi.  That more than anything kept Kenobi in line, a heavy weight on his shoulders.  So he swallowed down his pride for what felt like the thousandth time in his life and walked between Maul and Savage, for all the world acting as their adopted child or maybe their unusual pet.  

The clothing Savage had gotten for Obi-Wan had included a few different articles of trousers and shirts and even a cloak, and he was wearing long sleeves now to hide the bandages remaining on his forearms.  The cut on his neck was sufficiently healed to warrant that bandages’ removal, but Savage had pulled the hood up over Kenobi’s head anyway, probably to avoid anyone seeing the remaining mark - Obi hadn’t been around a mirror lately to tell if he’d given himself an ugly scar or anything.  

It should have been exhilarating, maybe even relieving, to be back amongst other people again.  They’d apparently landed near a city called Alvidera, the central hub of the planet’s one small continent, and for the first time in over a week, Obi-Wan was surrounded by people who weren’t Sith.  It was a mostly human planet, with a smattering of other species that he mostly recognized, and those around him were even speaking Galactic Basic for the most part, whenever he overheard any chatter.  Yet instead of cheering Obi-Wan up, it just made his anxiety burrow deeper into his heart, reminding him that the good behaviour of the two Siths at his side depended upon him.  After all, they’d promised to stay focused on this current dream-chasing endeavour, but what if Obi messed that up?  Even accidentally, what if he sabotaged this?  He knew that they’d find other things to occupy themselves with, and that thought alone had the small breakfast he’d managed to eat turning sour in Obi-Wan’s stomach.

Maul’s right hand shifted; Obi-Wan had ended up on the Zabrak’s right side, which was clearly going to be a problem, because now Obi instinctively flinched away.  He silently berated himself for the involuntary reaction, flashes of the dream coming to his mind again - Maul’s hand clawing into his left side.  Maul obviously noticed the movement but merely dropped his hand to his side again, frowning from within the shadows of his hood.  Savage’s heavy paw landed on Kenobi’s back as if to stabilise him (probably suspecting that he was thinking about bolting).  At least the elder Zabrak didn’t comment, instead asking, “What do your senses tell you?  Now that we are here, have your visions told you further where to go.”

Feeling out of sorts and anxious, Obi-Wan looked around him.  He wanted to do well at this, to keep people safe, but right now all he sensed was his own buzzing nerves.  “I’m…” he floundered, suddenly flashing back to his last duel at the Academy, with Jinn watching and passing judgement.  Back then, he’d said Kenobi was too dangerous, but now Obi had to wonder if Jinn would have been equally disappointed if he’d given Obi-Wan a chance and had seen how quickly he froze up under pressure.  “That way?” he indicated with a turn of his head, then groaned internally at how the question mark had slipped into the end of his sentence.  ‘Way to go, Kenobi.  About as decisive as a baby wormhole. ’  

Unsurprisingly, the Sith picked up on the uncertainty, too.  So instead of moving in that direction they continued to stand amidst the moving crowds on the loading docks, and Savage’s hand moved to give a squeeze between Obi’s neck and left shoulder.  “Do not respond if you are not certain,” he commanded lowly.

Anxiety rising, Obi immediately bit back, “I am certain!  I-”

Another belaying application of pressure; not painful, though, just firm.  Unexpectedly, Savage’s voice was likewise as he interrupted, “You are not.  And we need to know when you are not.”

“Incorrect information is more dangerous than no information,” Maul added in, even as Obi-Wan struggled with the acidic bite of panic bubbling at the back of his throat.  He was thinking of Nim Panna again - no, more than thinking of her.  He flinched and jittered sideways violently as he realised he was seeing a figment of her right in front of him, smiling and friendly just like when he’d last seen her - save for the gaping lightsaber wound through her chest.  Obi would have fallen if he hadn’t jumped back right into Maul, the Sith reacting fast to clutch at him.  

That was when Obi-Wan realised that Nim was stretching her arm off towards the west, pointing with the very slider dart that had led to her master killing her.

It was impossible to hold back the whimper that crawled up his throat, horror and panic a tide he couldn’t keep his head above.  

“Something about this place is making him worse,” Kenobi just heard Maul’s voice above his head, even as the Sith’s arms and hands tightened around his chest and shoulders.  It was an almost painfully tight grip, unlike Savage’s, but right now Obi-Wan wanted anything that grounded him in reality.  For a second he even told himself that he was staring at a Force-ghost, maybe (could Padawans become Force ghosts?), but then the hallucination grinned, and her human teeth had been replaced by wires and crackling sparks, her eyes taking on a demonic, robotic glow.  Obi-Wan tried to back away again, ignoring the fact that it was physically impossible for him to push himself backwards through a Dathomirian.  “Kenobi-” Maul started to say, and Obi-Wan, already seeing where this was going (the Sith realising he was useless, realising this really had been a fool’s errand, and then shifting their focus to seeking out Jedi to kill) felt his lungs constricting with panic.  

“I know where we’re going!” he tried, and now his voice sounded sure.  It had to be.  He had to be.

But Savage still squatted down next to him, putting a mollifying hand on his shoulder.  “Do not-” he started to say, probably to tell Obi once again that he shouldn’t speak if he wasn’t sure.

Terrified that he was about to fail and people would die, Obi-Wan just hollered over the massive Zabrak, pointing sharply as he did so, “I know where we’re going because that’s where she’s pointing me, all right?!”

The people all around them stopped and stared, the few that kept walking giving the trio a wider berth and uneasy stares.  Obi-Wan didn’t care.  He kept his arm pointed rigidly in the direction where the nightmarish vision of Nim had stood, and choked down the urge to cough.  It was only at that point that he realised he was directing them in the only direction where there was nothing but rolling hills and grey sky stretching into the distance.  He dropped his arm, suddenly unsure what else to do.

Maul’s hand splayed over his chest - where it no doubt felt his wildly thumping heart.  He spoke to Savage, though (who was just staring at Kenobi with wide eyes, making Obi-Wan feel embarrassed now as well as anxious), “Take the boy back to the ship-”

Pure horror suffused Obi-Wan like ice.  He spun around, ignoring how much bigger Maul was and just staring up at him, beseechingly, “No, please -”

Maul glanced down at him sharply, and for some reason he looked for a second more startled than the expected angry.  He still cut Obi-Wan off, though, albeit with words that put a halt to some of Obi’s fears, “-While I ask around for what lies in that direction.  Once we are more aware, we will set out.”

Chapter Text

The fact that Kenobi was honestly eager to get back to the ship - where he’d been held captive all this time - was deeply worrisome, to the point where Savage couldn’t help but ask why that was.  Kenobi’s terse answer of “Well, at least most of my visions on the Scimitar are limited to when I’m sleeping,” really wasn’t any more reassuring, especially since he said ‘most’ rather than ‘all.’  Then again, the boy’s reliving of Maul’s Malachor visions had been pretty obvious.  Either way, Savage felt unaccountably awful watching Kenobi slink back onto the ship like a beaten cur back into its own cage.  

Recalling how little Kenobi had eaten before they’d left, Savage hustled the small human towards the galley, asking along the way who ‘she’ was.  Kenobi’s minor breakdown on the planet’s surface had been sudden and startling, and honestly the only thing that Savage felt qualified to ask about was the lone statement about some female entity pointing.  Unfortunately, Kenobi wasn’t eager to explain.  “It doesn’t matter who she was,” he muttered, pacing the small room while Savage reheated food.  Kenobi hadn’t vomited since that first time, and seemed to have recovered from starvation enough that he could eat anything in reasonable portions, but right now Savage went for just some bread and water.  Worked up as he was, it was possible the boy wouldn’t even keep food down.  

Without saying anything else, Savage put the food down on the room’s retractable table.  Kenobi eyed it almost hatefully, although perhaps his frustration wasn’t really directed at the food, as he then looked up at Savage and said defensively, “I don’t want to talk about her.”

Savage raised one brow.  He was used to having conversations where the other person did half of the talking in their head - it was something Kenobi shared with Maul.  Complex people, in Savage’s experience, had an awful lot of thoughts that never made it out of their mouths, and life was too short for Savage to get bogged down in figuring it out.  “That is fine,” he said with a shrug, sitting as well.  He’d brought enough bread for himself, since he’d found early on that the boy ate more readily if he wasn’t doing it alone.  It was a wise move; animals learned what was safe by watching what others ingested.  

“It… is?” the small human echoed in obvious surprise.  He at least stopped fidgeting about, sitting still in his chair and casting his eyes searchingly across Savage’s face.  Savage was quite good at keeping a patient, calm countenance, and did so now, taking a bite of bread as he waited to see what the boy would do next.  Maul seemed to always be the one blessed by the little Jedi’s more violent tantrums, so Savage was more worried that Kenobi would work himself into a coughing fit again - which were always stressful because, unlike a fit of violence, Savage couldn’t do much about that.  

Eventually taking Savage’s silence for the approval it was, Kenobi looked down, uncertain.  He eyed the bread, eventually taking some, albeit mostly to tear apart with his fingers.  They’d only taken the bandages of his left hand yesterday, but thanks to the bacta cream, Savage was glad to see that the boy’s dexterity seemed to have suffered no losses.  “I didn’t even really know her.  She was at least a few years older than me, and already a Padawan when she was killed.”

By the end of the sentence, the boy’s voice had fallen very quiet.  The pain in it was clear, and for once Savage wished he had the mental abilities with the Force that his brother had - if only so he could understand just what the boy had seen in his recent vision.  He felt he had to say something, and even though he could veritably hear his brother in his ear telling him not to give out information, Savage was about to tell Kenobi about how Dathomir was a place of necromancers, so seeing the dead was not always a bad thing, but then the boy surprised him by speaking without warning, “How come you never force me to say anything?”

Kenobi was still looking down at the bread he was slowly murdering between his slender hands.  Savage blinked and tried to cobble together something entirely different from what he’d been trying to say, “My brother frequently forces responses from you.”

But the human shook his copper-haired head, the bang brushing back and forth where they fell across his brow.  “Not really.  And you less so.”  Then he sighed and seemed suddenly more tired, shoulders sagging.  “Although I suppose with mindreading, you hardly have to.”

The boy looked so defeated in that moment that Savage felt his heart twisting in his chest, and somehow that forced soft words out of his mouth, “I have never been able to read your mind.”  Wary blue eyes lifted, watching Savage from under slightly beetled brows.  Savage continued, lifting and dropping one massive shoulder in a shrug.  “We all have our skills.  Mine have never been with mind-magics.  And even my brother has told you that your mind is not an open book to him.”  Although clearly the boy didn’t believe him.  

Quick eyes were still watching him, seeking more and more furtively across Savage’s face; for what, he did not know.  “So… then why don’t you demand answers?  Do you just not care?”

There was something in the end of that last sentence, so faint and subtle that many would have expected Savage - the powerful one, the brawn to his brother’s brains - to miss it entirely.  But many would forget that Savage had spent quite a lot of time around his brother, enough to appreciate that a lot could be learned from even the subtlest signs.  

And right now, he caught the fragility in that last sentence like a fissure in a sheet of ice.  It was so faint that he wasn’t even sure the boy was aware of it himself.  Kenobi needed someone to care about what he knew and said.

The words came a bit more easily this time, as Savage said lowly and slowly but as clearly as he could, “I care a great deal.  But I have learned-”  As he spoke, he extended his hand; Kenobi tensed up expectedly, but all Savage did was relinquish his piece of bread onto the boy’s plate, since Kenobi had fully massacred his own half of the meal.  “-That trying to take something apart will often not get me what I truly want.”

For a long moment Kenobi sat frozen, like a wild creature at the edge of a campfire’s light, looking between Savage’s face and the offering of bread and occasionally down at the pile of crumbs that had become of his own.  Then for a moment his lower lip trembled like he might cry before he rubbed a hand over his eyes and then brushed his hands off on his trouser-leg, busying himself and looking away.  He didn’t say anything more but he did take the bread, this time digging into it with a greediness appropriate for such a scrawny creature.  Savage merely smiled and nodded, humming his approval.  He felt that he had won a small victory, even though, lacking his brother’s mental acuity, he could not define just what it was.

~^~

“The only destination of note in that direction,” Maul said when he returned an hour later, “is an abandoned droid factory.”  He was frowning, clearly a bit displeased with what he’d learned, especially the next bit that he said with a hint of disdain, “The locals claim that the place is cursed, and that is why it was shut down shortly after it began running.”

“Do you think that this is the place we need to go?” Savage went ahead and asked the sensible question.  

Despite the fact that Kenobi was still in the galley with them, the two brothers just kept talking to each other, Maul shrugging, “Much of the planet has been developed at some time or another, but that stretch of land has apparently always been seen as cursed or haunted - so up until this industrial endeavour with the factory, it has been untouched for as long as people seem to recall.  If there is anywhere that might be hiding an ancient Sith relic, it would be at least in that area.”

The whole while, Kenobi (who seemed a bit more put-together now that he’d eaten) was looking back and forth between them cautiously.  He wasn’t surprised when Maul at long last turned to him, saying, “It seems your visions might yet yield fruit.”

Further proof that the boy had found his equilibrium a bit was the fact that he retorted, “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”  Savage winced at the rudeness, but at least Maul seemed to either be in a good enough mood to ignore it, or he was growing immune.  

Either way, soon the three of them were once again leaving the ship, this time trekking out away from the city and into the rolling stretch of grassland.  The sky remained dark and dour, a fog obscuring the distance, so all the three of them could see was a seemingly unending stretch of compact earth and increasingly stunted grass - and a silhouette of something larger in the distance that Maul claimed to be the abandoned factory.  “Are you good to walk that far, boy?” Maul asked bluntly.

Kenobi, who had just now been hiding a cough into his sleeve, gave Maul a challenging look that was really rather impressive given that he was a fraction of Savage’s brother’s size.  “No one’s broken my legs yet,” he said gamely.  Savage took in and let out another deep breath, reminding himself that the snark was a good sign - if the Padawan were not mouthy, it would be cause for worry.  Granted, anyone being catty to Darth Maul was also a sign for worry, so Savage carefully put himself between the two and shot Kenobi a censoring look (which the boy ignored by way of avoiding eye-contact).

As they walked, Kenobi kept up remarkably well.  He seemed used to keeping up with longer strides, and was impressively light on his feet - Savage was pretty sure that the boy was reflexively using the Force just to move, and perhaps the Jedi did teach their trainees some useful things.  The coughing did slow them all down, though, as Kenobi was neither nimble nor swift when a fit took him.  Maul didn’t seem impatient, though, instead just pausing and taking in the world around him with keen interest whenever they stopped.  “What have you dreamed lately, Kenobi?” Maul asked at one point.  

Savage guiltily expected the boy to look over at him accusingly, after their last talk about the Sith not demanding answers from their small charge, but apparently Kenobi’s latest fit had him frazzled, or perhaps Maul’s off-hand tone wasn’t really all that pushy.  Kenobi let out another wheezing cough in which nothing came out but air (he never coughed anything up), then said while still bent double over his knees, “Since I hallucinated on the loading dock?  Blessedly nothing.”  Just as Savage opened his mouth to hiss a warning at the boy for his sarcasm, Kenobi hung his head again for another cough, then straightened to likewise give a straighter answer, “Before then, I’ve been dreaming of nothing but red sand and droids with human skin stretched over them.  Are you sure you still want me as a Seer?”  

The two brothers exchanged looks, expressions showing equal alarm before they managed to quash the reaction.  Maul grumbled something about how Kenobi’s visions would make more sense in time, but he sounded more hopeful than certain, and then he got them moving again.

The boy got worse as they went along.  If he was having more waking visions, he was hiding it, but what he couldn’t hide was how the coughing got worse - and then progressed to shivering and lethargy.  “I’m fine.  I’m okay!” he always maintained when asked, despite how he began to develop a dazed look in his eyes.  When Savage finally couldn’t take it and stepped over to put a hand on the boy’s forehead, testing for a fever, he didn’t find one.  But despite how Kenobi again protested that he was fine, there remained the fact that he hadn’t flinched or tried to wriggle away like he usually would have.  Even Maul looked guardedly worried, but then the boy just trudged past them, declaring, “I’m not dying, okay?  I can do this.”  His tone was stubborn even if he looked shaky, and then he gestured ahead of them, saying, “We’ve found the red sand, haven’t we?”

Savage and Maul both looked ahead, perplexed.  

“The ground is not red,” Savage finally had to say.  His own eyes only picked out more of the same semi-barren earth, all in shades of brown and tan and green.  

It was painful to see how the boy’s face fell, realisation stupefying him for a moment.  He held still even as Maul walked up and put a hand on one shoulder.  

Savage walked up behind the two just in time to hear Kenobi say, so quietly that he would have missed it from further away, “Why am I having so many more visions while awake?”

“I do not know,” Maul admitted.  Savage glanced at his brother in shock, for the elder Zabrak was not known for admitting things like that to anyone.  “Does the red sand indicate that we are close to the sword?”

“Maybe,” Kenobi shrugged, then swayed a bit before steadying himself.  He had dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there an hour ago.  “I dreamt that the sword was in a whole world of red sand and rock.”

“And the… pointing woman from earlier?” Maul pressed carefully.  Savage winced; he hadn’t had time to warn his brother that the unknown female entity seemed to be a sore spot for the boy, someone real from his past.

Kenobi went still and quiet, and then shivered hard enough that even Savage could see it.  The boy ducked his head and seemed to not have the energy to get snappy, instead replying in an obedient murmur, “All I know is she was pointing this way.”

His voice was so subdued that Savage felt that tugging in his chest again, and for once he didn’t care what his brother thought as he said, “We should turn back.  This endeavour-”  Maul turned to him, and Savage met his eyes squarely, shaking his head.  “-It is not worth it.”

Which was apparently the wrong thing to say.

But not to Maul.

“ NO !”

Where he’d been soft before, the boy was yelling now.  The sky on Alvo-4 was stuffed with low-hanging clouds, and the distant fog seemed to muffle things, but still Kenobi’s shout was sharp and loud even as he tore himself out from under Maul’s hand.  He spun on both of them, suddenly looking about as fierce as an injured human child could look.  “I said that I could get you to the sword, and I will,” he insisted, blue eyes sparking with temper now through the exhaustion.  Now it was the Siths’ turn to be struck dumb by surprise, which Kenobi took as reason to continue, “I can find it and I will not be the reason that we have to stop.”

“Kenobi…” Maul had recovered himself enough to growl, a low warning.

The boy didn’t listen to it; if he registered the threat, he was too wound up to care, and pushed fear aside.  In fact, his gaze swung over to fix on Maul with a furious glare, and then he was shouting just at him, “No!  You said you wanted a Seer?  You have one, and this is what we’re doing.  That was the deal.”

Now Maul was looking uneasy, which was good - because Savage sure as all hells felt uneasy.  There was something wrong here.  Something more wrong than Kenobi’s rapidly degrading health.  Maul tried again, in a voice that was less of a commanding threat and more of a bid to calm things down, “Kenobi-”

The boy talked right over him, something very few people did to Maul and lived.  “I’m not going to give you any excuse to go back on your word.”  This time when Savage reached for the boy, he felt his whole arm batted away by a hard swipe of the Force, and then Kenobi was spinning away from them and running .

It said something about how shocking this all was that it took a full three seconds for the brothers to react, and then they were chasing after him.  Despite the fact that Kenobi was obviously stumbling and not himself, he was still shockingly fast - solidifying Savage’s suspicions that the Padawan was very skilled at imbuing his every movement with the Force.  Savage and Maul had longer legs at the very least, and yet it was like chasing a bird, light and flitting ahead of them.  Savage was entirely sure that the only reason they’d outmanoeuvred Kenobi on Bandomeer was because the boy had been collared, his connection with the Force cut off.  The factory ahead of them loomed closer, until they were able to see more of its shape beyond a silhouette, and then Kenobi began to dart around pieces of abandoned out-buildings and machinery with such surety that it was as if he’d been there before.  Savage spared a look with his brother; neither said anything, saving their breath for closing the distance with their prize, but understanding passed between them.  Either the Force was doing an awful lot to help Kenobi navigate, or his visions had told him something of this place.

But then Savage started noticing something: a dampness to the ground, the plant life dead.  There was a wet gleam to some things but no puddles to indicate a recent rain or nearby spring.  Some of the decrepit walls they passed had what looked like some slick, gelatinous substance on them - and while they didn’t have time to stop and look closer, even while running Savage could define that the substance was red.

Then Kenobi suddenly stumbled and fell entirely to his knees in front of them, no discernable obstacle responsible, and it was seconds later that Maul and Savage caught up and nearly stumbled themselves as a wall of Dark Force energy slammed into them.

It was like being in the heart of the Nightsisters’ coven when they’d fed their magic into him, turning Savage from the weak young man he had been into the massive warrior he was now.  Both Maul and Savage used the Dark side of the Force, but this was shocking purely by its magnitude - as if the air and the earth were soaked in it.  Kenobi was gasping as if it were water he was trying fruitlessly to breathe.  For a moment all three of them were stopped in their tracks, simply recovering from the shock.  

Somehow the boy had been sensing it earlier; of that Savage was certain.  Dark Force energy was something that took some getting used to, and watching the boy flounder now, Savage could well believe that his deteriorating condition correlated with their increasing closeness to this place.  “Fuck,” the boy finally wheezed, and voiced no protest when Savage belatedly reached his side and pulled him to his feet.  Kenobi stood there, not fighting the firm hand on his upper arm, and just grimaced with eyes closed while Maul and Savage got over their shock and adjusted to the oppressive feeling in the air.  

Maul was looking around them, and Savage noticed his wide eyes before he, too, took in their surroundings and realised what he was seeing.  

Kenobi had mentioned droids with human skin stretched over them.  Well… all around them were the remnants of the droid factory, and out of the walls and earth there seemed to be growing pustules and globs of flesh, slick and red and forming over things like an utterly illogical, gruesome skin.  

Maul shifted closer, until Kenobi was hemmed in between them - less like he was a flight-risk and more like Maul was defending something fragile against attack.  “The Dark side of the Force has warped this place,” Maul declared, horror and wonder in equal parts in his voice.  “It’s no wonder the locals call it cursed.”

“Yes, but what if that is why the boy is worsening?” Savage stressed, deeply concerned now.  He dipped his horned head down towards where Kenobi was… upright.  Very little more could be said of him, even as he livened up a bit upon looking past his Sith companions - and also seeing the horrors of flesh growing on the inanimate objects around them.  

Maul seemed to realise the situation then, too, turning around and truly looking at their beleaguered Jedi pup.  Just as Maul opened his mouth to say something, though, Kenobi swung his head to the right - towards the shadowy building that had no doubt once been the factory itself - and said as if in a trance, “There.  It’s in there.  Under it.”  He lifted a hand to the side of his head, wincing and covering one ear even as he kept talking, “They weren’t Force-sensitive, so they didn’t know what they were digging into when they broke ground.  But the more they expanded and the longer they stayed-”

As Kenobi spoke, voice distant and wobbly, like words pulled up out of a dream, there were noises around them.  Maul returned to his defensive posture and now Savage followed, just keeping one hand on the boy’s shoulder to steady him as the Zabraks otherwise turned their backs to each other with Kenobi in the middle.  

“-The more the darkness grew,” Kenobi finished in a strained voice, and then lifted his other hand to the other side of his head with a thin, pained cry.  The Dark Force in the air grew more oppressive, and the distant foggy silhouettes moved.  Any doubt that Savage might have had that there was flesh and not some weird mushroom on everything vanished as something vaguely humanoid shuffled into view, the same viscous, formless flesh wrapped around it.

The ‘droids with human skin stretched over them’ suddenly made sense now.

~^~

Obi-Wan had been feeling generally awful for a while, but it had gotten worse once they’d left the ship on Alvo-4 - and then exponentially worse in all new ways once they’d taken off across the open grasslands.  It had swiftly made him feel so terrible that he didn’t have words for it, like a headache stubbornly ignored until it was a migraine too crippling to breathe through much less speak about.  Maybe later he’d look back on this, analyse it, and realise that this felt like no sickness he’d ever felt before.

If he survived it.

It felt like darkness sinking into his skin, a slime reaching coldly for his bones, but somehow so sentient that he could feel hot breath against his ears.  He’d felt the Dark side of the Force around Savage and especially around Maul, but it had been nothing like this.  He hadn’t known that it could be physically painful to be around so much of it.  Maul and Savage’s Dark Force-signatures had been an ambient heat he could adjust to; this was standing in the middle of the fire.  He didn’t know how anyone got used to this.  It also felt like his emotions were all over the place - but only the negative ones, the ones he’d been trained so hard to keep under control, like rage and petty jealousy.  It was strangely like he was standing outside of himself, watching from a distance and unable to prevent the meltdown he could see happening in his own mind.

The upside was that, on top of all he was dealing with, seeing his biomechanical nightmares in the flesh (literally) somehow didn’t have as much impact.  His capacity for trauma was at its limit already.  

Maul and Savage had already activated their lightsabers, and semi-organic monstrosities were pouring in as if they’d just been waiting for their prey to get within reach.  It was horrifying.  The only way to describe it was to imagine that flesh had grown haphazardly around anything it could reach, devoid of anything but the most basic instructions.  The fact that this had been a droid factory, meaning there were various humanoid frameworks to start with, but flesh and grown over those droid bodies with no respect for biology and only the vaguest nod to logic.  Sometimes a droid’s arm would be covered in twisted, slick muscle only to the elbow, at which point the fleshy components had apparently decided to take a detour, stretching out and presumably growing its own bone to create a parody of a forearm sticking out of the droid’s elbow, naked metal extending the rest of the way where the original mechanical body had been abandoned.  Humanoid features like eyes or ears were occasionally where they were meant to be on the head, but as often as not could be buried in wrinkles of disorganised flesh in the middle of a torso or leg.  Kenobi watched a glazed eye blink torpidly amidst its parody of a socket, halfway down an arm.  It got worse when other amalgamations dragged themselves closer - probably R-2 units, but now so covered in skin and organs and muscles that they looked like fat children grown inside tight vessels.  The result was an egg-shaped blob of flesh with teeth and eyes and stunted almost-limbs waving at random.  Many of the twisted nightmares had no mouths at all, and the ones that did made no sounds.  The few droids where their metal parts were visible all looked dead, and sometimes incomplete, and Obi-Wan realised that it was the organic parts that were moving the mechanical components, and not the other way around.

The biggest problem was that they were all coming closer, and some of them moved at an unsettling speed.

“Back!” Maul ordered, even as Obi-Wan heard a voice whispering in his mind that sounded mostly like himself urging him to run .  Now was his chance, while his two captors were overwhelmed by a barrage of flesh-covered droids.  Before he could give in to that increasingly loud impulse, however, Maul spared a hand to reach back and push him, and Obi found himself shuffling backwards between the two Sith.  Backwards towards the old factory, which now revealed itself to be even more hellish than its denizens.

The walls were no longer metal or stone - or if they were, you couldn't see it anymore.  Flesh had grown over all of it, calloused skin that occasionally swelled with bulbous pustules, blood dripping from some that looked to have busted open.  The air smelled metallic, and for once Obi-Wan’s worsening inability to breathe properly seemed more like a boon, because he didn’t want a deep inhale of this.  ‘ I wouldn’t even be in this mess if it weren’t for these damned Sith ,’ he found himself thinking with a sudden burst of viciousness like fire under his skin.  Obi-Wan hadn’t wanted any of this.  But he’d been threatened, traded off like cheap goods, and now the nightmares that he’d just wanted forgotten were growing worse - and coming true .

Obi was just about ready to scream with rage by the time the wave of monstrosities broke upon them like a wave upon a shore.  

Maul and Savage were clearly devastating in a fight.  While Obi-Wan’s trained eye could see that Savage didn’t have as much formal training (or at least as much interest in form), the larger Zabrak more than made up for it in pure savagery as he dragged his double-bladed lightsaber right through the middle of multiple foes.  Blood boiled and flesh and metal combined into a sludge, melted in the plasma’s wake.  Maul was likewise making good account of himself, his blade a flurry of red light.  His form combined power and control, intermixed with bursts of unpredictable motion that would suddenly see multiple opponents falling back, flesh and metal sizzling and smoking from deep gouges.

And all the while, Obi-Wan couldn’t stop thinking about how he wanted to see them both torn apart by these twisted entities.

What was wrong with him?

The awareness of his own thoughts came like an out-of-body experience.  It was like stepping away from himself and realising that he was looking at a monster, almost unable to recognize the wrath in his own thoughts.  

It was so easy to tumble back into them, though - to see that these Sith deserved a messy death like this, for all they’d put him through and threatened.  And so did Xanatos, for playing games with Obi-Wan just as a way to get at Qui-Gon.  But then Obi’s rage just kept boiling over, and he wanted to scream at Qui-Gon, too, for not saving him, for just not caring that Obi was taken away just like Obi-Wan’s parents hadn’t cared when he was whisked away by utter strangers to a stranger school who couldn’t even teach him to be happy.  

Obi-Wan avoided getting grabbed by a flesh-riddled automaton because when he screamed in fury, the Force lashed out around him, physically pushing the world away from him.  The scream felt like it tore loose some of the heaviness in his chest, although instead of relieving the discomfort, it worsened it - which had the benefit of momentarily shaking him out of his rage again.  The second time around was even more jarring, as he physically stumbled back this time and was faced with the thought of, ‘ Is this what it feels like to fall to the Dark side of the Force? ’

Perhaps Obi would have pondered this horrifying thought longer, except in that moment Savage was overwhelmed.  Obi-Wan jerked his head over to see it as the younger Zabrak let loose a roar of frustration and the light from his lightsaber went out as it was knocked from his hand.  Startled, also hearing Maul call out to his brother, Obi-Wan realised that up until now the two Sith had been working valiantly to keep the worst of the swarm at bay - keeping Obi save from all but that one that he’d just now beaten back himself.  They’d been protecting him.  Now Maul couldn’t even go save his brother as it was clearly taking all of his skill to hold back the wave of monstrosities before him.

Obi-Wan felt the Dark energies clawing at the back of his mind again, and in a desperate bid to push them away, he turned on his heel and dashed to the right without thinking.  In seconds, he had Savage’s dropped lightsaber in his hands, and he was activating it even as he ran towards the saber’s owner.  

He almost didn’t make it - not because of the nightmarish droids but because Savage was a Sith, and his essence was deeply imbued within his weapon.  Obi-Wan had never thought of himself as especially sensitive to the Force-signature of others, especially through their belongings, but all of him was just so raw right now that it was like salt in a wound.  He cried out and stumbled even as the lightsaber’s activation bathed him in red light.  The Force that Kenobi felt through Savage’s lightsaber wasn’t actually as Dark as he’d expected, but with such a miasma of the stuff all around him, it was one more wave on a drowning man.  But Savage was almost invisible now beneath a clawing, oozing, pulsing mass of metal and flesh now, and as much as the voice in Obi's head kept saying that was a good thing, Obi-Wan didn’t want to fall to the Dark side.

So he got his feet back under him again, focused enough so that he didn’t take one of his own limbs off with a lightsaber that was built for a body far bigger than his, and charged right at the pack of them.

Chapter Text

He thought he heard Maul shout his name but wasn’t sure.  Obi-Wan had figured out how to ignite just one side of Savage’s saber and now he was using his much lesser strength to try and cut the Sith free of his attackers.  More screams tore up his throat and it was like he couldn’t stop them, not even when it became impossible to tell if the noises were ones of rage or utter terror.  Only when his damned bad lungs seized up in coughing did he stop making noise and stagger back, but he didn’t let himself stop.  He was afraid that if he stopped, he’d no longer be doing something good , and then all the evil would rise up in his head again.  Staggering and coughing, struggling to remember all that he’d been taught in lightsaber combat, Kenobi dove back in, reminding himself, ‘ Don’t hurt Savage; only cut your enemies ,’ while another voice in his head was screaming ‘ HE’S YOUR ENEMY CUT HIM APART TOO .’

It felt almost like a mercy when one of the flesh-covered droids managed to dodge the lightsaber long enough to swipe out a heavy, globulous arm and take a swipe at him.  Apparently beneath the mass of muscle and skin and misplaced organs there was a metal structure, because the swat hit Obi-Wan hard enough to slam him clean off his feet.  Savage’s lightsaber went out for the second time during the fight, while Kenobi rolled across the bleeding ground.  For a moment he was flashing back to the mining platform, when Xanatos had kicked him in the ribs - but somehow this was worse.  This time it felt like part of his lung had torn loose and now he couldn’t drag in a single full breath, when before he’d managed to get a good inhale from time to time.  It felt exactly like his dream, with Maul’s fist reaching up under his ribs to tear into his chest cavity.  

Terrified at his own inability to breathe properly and having no idea where he’d dropped Savage’s lightsaber, Obi-Wan waited to be the next one engulfed in enemies.  Instead there was another wave of red light meeting his eyes, and suddenly Maul was standing right over him.  

~^~

“Savage!” the red-patterned Sith yelled, raising his voice to a parade-ground holler so that it thundered through the air.  

Maybe the boy’s wild attack had done some good, because soon the Dark-tainted droid’s were scattering - physically thrown in all directions as Savage finally broke free.  Without a lightsaber, Savage fought with horns and claws, his roar titanic.  Maul spared only a nod of approval, noting the fading bog-light-green glow that had taken over Savage’s eyes - the Nighsister’s magic still flowed strong in Savage then.  Always good to be reminded.

Maul switched his own lightsaber to a one-handed grip just long enough to stretch out his free hand, a flick of his wrist sending Savage’s lightsaber flying back to him.  His brother caught it and ignited it in time to keep the nightmarish entities from overwhelming him again, the momentum of battle regained.  Maul was still torn, however - because a large part of him wanted to grab Kenobi and shake him while shouting in his face, “ What in the name of the Fanged God did you think you were doing?! ”  Even now it took effort not to constantly look down and check that the boy was still there, and not at the bottom of a pile of droid abominations himself.  The boy was as hard to protect as he was to keep alive in general, it seemed, and now Kenobi was coughing and wheezing weekly.  

Maul had seen the boy get batted aside, and while there was no way for Savage to have witnessed it, Maul’s brother was calling out almost as soon as he was on his feet again, “What of the boy?”

“Too courageous for his own good,” Maul snarled back, “He charged in and beat back your attackers, at his own risk.”

Without looking over, Maul knew that Savage was shocked; he could hear it in the hum of his lightsaber’s swings, the rhythm of it faltering.  “I thought that was you,” he said only.

More monstrosities pressed in on Maul, but he refused to give ground because he couldn’t abandon Kenobi.  Gritting his teeth and splitting his attention between wielding his lightsaber and pushing back some opponents with a hard shove of the Force, Maul snarled, “I have been rather busy.”

At that point Kenobi tried to get up, and it was worrisome how he almost immediately crumpled again.  At this point Maul wasn’t even sure if the boy was down due to new injuries or if the oppressiveness of Dark Force energy was crippling him - it was strong enough that even Maul was having to steel himself against the pressure of it.  They’d managed to cut down an insane number of these twisted monstrosities, to the point where the ground was becoming a morass of flesh and organs and random protrusions of droid parts.  While Maul was fairly certain that he and his brother could triumph at this point, he knew that Kenobi was a liability.  

Despite thinking that, the moment a biomechanical monster dove low under Maul’s guard, the Zabrak chose to put his leg in the way (feeling pain rip upwards towards his knee as android claws ripped through his trouser-leg) rather than letting the beast get to the boy.  A heartbeat later and he’d removed the attacker’s arms and Force-thrown the pieces back into its grotesque fellows.  Then, with a clenching of one hand, he crushed it like a pulpy fruit.  

The ensuing mush of flesh and twisted metal was disturbing, but nothing that a veteran killer like Maul couldn’t handle.  What disturbed him was hearing Kenobi use what little air he had to hiss out, “Yes!  Rip them all apart!”

Savage must have heard, too, somehow because before Maul could find any way to react besides fighting harder, his younger brother was calling over, “Take him away from this place, brother!  The Dark side of the Force is too much for him here.  He’s too young.”

Kenobi pushed himself up on hands and knees, dragging in a strangled sort of breath only to wheeze furiously, “I’m not weak!”

Maul did not have the time to explain to Kenobi that weakness was not the issue; the first time Maul had experienced Dark energy this powerful had been on Malachor, he’d already had multiple years of training under his belt to brace him for it.  It had still nearly cost him his sanity.  “So what are we to do?” he snarled down at his charge, sweeping his lightsaber in a broad arc.  There were fewer foes pressing in now, but they were all still stupid, so two fell to the ground writhing as they were scythed in half.  “Leave you here?”

“Why not?  Everyone else has,” the boy spat back with enough venom to make Maul and Savage both twist to stare at him, even if the fighting immediately drew their attention back to deadlier matters.  None of the droids were armed, but some of them had teeth and claws, and they were still intent on smothering the three intruders with pure numbers.  

“Go,” Savage repeated, more firmly. It was rare that Savage took it upon himself to be the one giving orders, so Maul paid attention, especially as Savage added seriously, “I will finish our search.”

“Savage-” Maul started to caution.  

Savage ignited both ends of his lightsaber and swung it around himself, carving out a massive space where there was nothing but twitching bodies.  It gave him a moment to simply stare at his embattled brother, saying levelly, “It does not take a genius to think that our prize is at the heart of this Darkness.  I can cut through the remaining abominations in my path.”

Fear for his brother pickled unbidden up Maul’s spine.  He tried to crush it, but it made his voice sharp, “And if you cannot?” 

“Then you will still have kept our Seer alive,” was all Savage said, then turned and waded into the building itself.  The majority of their foes immediately started to shamble after him, still eerily voiceless and some dragging half-severed limbs.  

“Good luck, brother,” Maul said to himself.  He had never followed the Dathomirian gods with much interest, but he sent out a call to the same Fanged God he’d cursed with earlier that the building would have more defensible locations than they’d found out here.  

Which left Maul with an increasingly unreasonable Seer on his hands, although thankfully also a much reduced stream of enemies as Savage (purposefully or not) led them away.  Lightsaber in one hand, he took a handful of the boy’s clothing in the other.  “It’s time to escape your red sands,” he said, and Kenobi didn’t reply except to stumble along as best he could.  

~^~

The further they moved away from the now-living factory, the fewer denizens focused on them, as if the life in them drained away the further they ventured from the Dark Force energy that had created them.  Unfortunately, Kenobi’s condition was worsening more rapidly than they could put distance between themselves and the cause.

The boy was shouting and screaming now, agony and rage making his voice raw even though he seemed to be having a terrifyingly hard time catching his breath.  He tossed the earth around them with the Force like a troubled whirlwind, worsening the matter, until finally Maul - glad at least that they’d out-paced the last of their enemies and were alone now - stopped and turned on the boy.  Instead of reacting in fear, the boy’s stance firmed up and he bared his teeth in a snarling grimace, eyes as furious as a Rancor’s.  “What?  Offended that I want you dead?” the boy spat, then had to pant for breath a bit.  Something was very wrong with his breathing, but he seemed to have lost the ability to care.  He’d also been constantly informing Maul that he wanted him dead (and Savage with him) for the past five minutes now, although Maul had been ignoring him.  “That’s what I’m supposed to want, isn’t it?  Just like you want my kind dead, I’m supposed to do whatever I can to kill you,” Kenobi seethed.  It was so unlike him that Maul for a moment just stared.  Kenobi’s chest heaved.  Despite the wrath like poison in his tone, the little Seer barely maintained his balance when Maul let go of him, and his blue eyes were wet.  

When Maul turned off his lightsaber and holstered it, Kenobi let out a furious little noise that was most definitely a sob.  His Force signature crackled alarmingly, and the earth near them whipped up once more, but Maul just stepped closer and then dropped swiftly to one knee.  Before Kenobi could back away he had a hand on either side of the young human’s face, fingers curled behind each ear to hold him in place even as his thumbs pressed against either cheekbone.  “Look at me, Kenobi,” he commanded, trying to return some sense of order even as his senses told him more and more that Kenobi’s mind was once again being dangerously pressured, “You are feeling as you do because we followed your dreams to a very Dark place.”

The boy gripped Maul’s wrists with his fingernails digging for blood.  When he found that he couldn’t squirm away, though, he gave up and just screamed in Maul’s face, “But I’m just so angry! ”

“Yes.  I know you are,” Maul acknowledged in a perfectly sober voice.  

The boy struggled a bit more, fighting against Maul’s hold on his head, but only words could escape so they did: “I’m so mad at all of them!  Qui-Gon didn’t even come and look for me!”   Blue eyes squeezed shut until tears finally leaked out.  His pitch rose.  “Even after fucking Xanatos told him where I was - he didn’t come get me!  I hate him! ”  He thrashed, feet kicking against the barren earth for purchase, and when his boots merely slid Maul pulled him a bit closer so he didn’t fall.  “ I hate all of them! ” the boy seethed, “Why am I always left behind?  Am I not worth anything to them ?  I want them to feel the pain that I’ve felt!”  Maul could feel the remnants of Dark Force energy bleeding off the boy now, and merely sighed, letting it happen.  Afraid of neither Darkness or rage, Maul pulled Kenobi in until their foreheads touched, Maul’s foremost horn brushing sweat-dampened copper hair, and for a moment that seemed to get through to Kenobi - enough to make him still.  Then the boy growled, low and hateful, into the shadows between them, “Jinn deserves to fucking face his mistakes.  Just because he didn’t want me as his Padawan doesn’t mean he just gets forgiven for leaving me on a mining platform as a slave!”

Instead of arguing, Maul let out an almost subvocal growl; by the way Kenobi twitched, he either heard or felt it.  “He does deserve that,” he said calmly, letting himself settle into Kenobi’s storm.  He didn’t know the details, but all that he did know pointed to this being a reasonable conclusion - and even if it didn’t, it was ingrained in Maul to hate Jedi.  And right now he rather hated this Jedi Master in particular, based on what Kenobi was revealing.

Small hands flexed on his wrists before the boy’s fingertips dug in again.  He wheezed a moment but at least didn’t cough in Maul’s face before he regained the breath to exorcise more of the rage burning him from the inside out, “But I want them all to die!”  He kept shrieking now as if he wanted Maul to push back, to stand up to him - to stop him.  “Xanatos, Master Jinn - fuck, the whole Jedi Order!”  Maul refused to be rattled, even as Kenobi went on with his blistering rage, “They didn’t even fucking find me as a child when they were supposed to!  They didn’t find me until my mother tried to drown me in a river because I was a freak -!”  Now Maul twitched, his eyes being opened to things he wasn’t prepared to hear.  Oblivious, Kenobi kept going, “-And then when they took me in, I still turned out to be nothing!  How dare I get so much pain and they just get …!”  Finally Kenobi floundered, tears streaming down his cheeks and mouth moving without words - also struggling for air again.  At long last he collapsed to his knees, and Maul just stayed with him, keeping their heads pressed together even as he felt Kenobi’s Force signature beneath all of the Dark side, all the rage.  The boy beneath was riddled with pain, only a small part of it physical.  “-And they just get to go on about their lives like nothing wrong has happened?” he finally finished in helpless anger, “I want to hurt them all so badly.  For everything!”

Now Kenobi was truly running out of breath, starting to wheeze and gasp, so Maul was able to slip his own words in now.  “Easy, Kenobi.”

“ NO !” the boy rallied, then started coughing, head tucking down in his body’s instinctive attempt to catch more air, his previous posture not working (this new one wasn’t helping either).  

Maul just hushed him softly, “Shhh.  I’m not arguing with you, boy.”

“Yes, you are!”

“I’m not!” Maul raised his voice just enough to be the louder of the two, but perhaps only won out because Kenobi started in on another round of useless hacking.  His whole body was shaking enough that Maul could feel it through his hands.  “Obi-Wan-”  Maul didn’t quite realise that he’d used the boy’s first name until finally, finally the boy shifted to look at him with something other than blind rage.  Considering the fact that Maul wasn’t sure he’d ever used anything but the boy’s last name, perhaps the surprise in those tear-damp eyes was warranted.  He went on quickly rather than pondering that, “-Your anger is valid.  I do not intend to rip it from you.”

Maul could feel it - how Kenobi was torn now between bewilderment and the rage that the Dark side of the Force had fed like a bonfire in him.  “Then what do you… intend to do?” he choked out.

‘Progress ,’ Maul noted with some relief.  He stroked his thumbs against the skin in front of Kenobi’s ears, feeling warmth and silky-soft hair.  “What I have always done with you,” he said as reasonably as possible, “I intend to make sure you do not break apart.”

Kenobi let out a pained noise, closed his eyes, and tried again to wriggle his head free, but short of popping his own ears off, he wasn’t getting loose from Maul’s grip.  The Sith pressed their foreheads closer together, careful of his horns but gaining the eye-contact that he sought again.  “Your anger is valid because it is yours.  I cannot judge any anger but my own,” he said something that he’d learned long ago, “But anger is a fire, and I am here to tell you that you must master it so that it warms you rather than burns you.  Anger is a tool.”

“No, it’s not,” the boy shook his head feebly against Maul’s hands, and that was actually the first sign that he was coming back to himself.  He sounded miserable, and the words he said next sounded less like a Dark Jedi and more like a student of the Temple, “That’s what a Sith would say.”

“Fitting, then, that I am a Sith,” Maul shrugged.  He noticed that their nearness was working: troubled as his breathing was, Kenobi was subconsciously matching the pattern of Maul’s breaths, which the Zabrak was keeping deliberately shallow and slow.  “But I am not wrong.”  When Kenobi tried to talk over him and argue, Maul used his first name again like a magic word, “Obi-Wan!  Your anger exists, and that matters.  And I share it.”  Based on what he’d just heard, Maul was actually struggling to keep his own anger in its proper place.  He’d heard from Xanatos how Jinn had failed the boy, but what was all of this about Kenobi’s mother?  “You cannot wish it away any more than I can.”

Kenobi’s usual self was definitely reasserting itself, as he sucked in a breath and exhaled stubbornly, “I can try.”

“But you should not.  Don’t swallow fire, boy,” Maul said sternly, tilting his head just enough that the boy would feel the press of one Dathomirian horn against the centre of his brow - there and gone again, a harmless bit of physical emphasis.  “Much better that you make a hearth for it.  Give it a safe place to live.”

“No.”  Now Maul was definitely arguing with a Jedi, which made him sigh tiredly.  It was better than the boy going mad, he reminded himself.  He could tolerate philosophical arguments with a follower of the Light side.

“A lantern then,” he tried.  Both of them were just kneeling now with their eyes closed, and Kenobi had ceased to create chaos around them with the Force.  His mind was also growing quiet enough that Maul could sense his puzzlement, and so he elaborated, “Fire can be used for more than burning things.  It can also light one's way.”

The befuddlement only grew, and Maul could now sense the emptiness Kenobi - Obi-Wan - was feeling in the absence of his rage.  After a long moment of just trying (and sadly failing) to get his breathing back to normal, Kenobi said in a very small but admirably stubborn voice, “I don’t want to become a Sith.”

“I don’t think you ever will,” Maul simply sighed.  He did not know what to do with this boy, but of that statement he was strangely certain.  

~^~

The effects of the Dark side of the Force had left Kenobi without shattering him, but it had also left him exhausted - enough so that Maul was eventually able to let him go.  Kenobi just sagged when he did, barely moving from kneeling to sitting, clutching at his side.  “Let me see,” Maul demanded quietly, and was surprised when the boy let him.  It was like their first day together all over again, Kenobi exhausted beyond the ability to comment on anything, although hopefully this wouldn’t end with the boy destroying the cargo hold again.  

Despite keeping the boy’s fatigue firmly in mind, Maul still felt strangely humbled as he was allowed to check Kenobi over.  Maybe that was why, after one more check around them to be sure that they were still safe, he sat down, too, and said, “I’m going to see what I can heal of this wound.”  Because while he hadn’t felt any broken bones, Kenobi was very much favouring his side and something was quite obviously wrong with the left side of his chest.  

That got blue eyes to flutter open.  “You’re going to what?”

For whatever reason, Maul got a bit defensive about that, and he glowered and straightened his shoulders as he said, “Healing is a useful skill in the Force for Jedi and for Sith.  Did you think only users of the Light side of the Force capable of coaxing skin and bone back into order?”

Kenobi gave him two slow blinks.  “In all honesty, yes.”

Maul made a scoffing noise (mostly for show) and rebuked mildly, “If your returning sarcasm were not a sign of improved health, I would warn you about back-talking a Sith larger than you.”

“So I can only sass ones smaller than me?”

“Shut up, Konobi.  Let me concentrate,” Maul sighed a bit dramatically.  Deep down he felt relief uncoiling some of the knot in his stomach, because even while Kenobi’s breathing continued to be immensely strained, his mouthiness seemed to indicate that his mind had suffered no permanent ill-effects.  Maul reached out and held the edge of Kenobi’s shirt up while splaying his other hand just over the bruised skin.  “Keep an eye out for anything approaching,” he said, begrudgingly closing his eyes, because he did indeed need to concentrate.  This injury was far more serious than the little lightsaber graze he’d last healed on his own leg - and the only people Maul had ever needed to heal were himself and Savage until now.  While it was true that Sith could use the healing arts, they generally specialised only in healing themselves.  Without waiting for an answer, he settled into the light meditation needed to focus on the task of mending whatever was broken.

For all that Maul was capable of healing through the Force, he knew he was no adept at it.  Therefore he was unable to truly analyse what was wrong, and in the end, got the sense that he didn’t fix much.  There was enough light left in the sky for both of them to see that the new bruising and redness was gone by the time Maul had to stop (the venture more tiring than he wanted to admit, and thus dangerous with potential enemies around and his brother still absent).  Despite that, Kenobi continued to inhale shallowly, expression twisting with frustration.  “Your breathing is still troubled?” Maul asked, hating himself for asking such a useless question because he could easily see the answer.  But he could think of nothing else to say.

The tremor in the boy’s voice sounded like frustration on the surface, but Maul had gotten good enough to read the boy that he knew it to be fear underneath.  Kenobi grimaced.  “It’s like… It’s like I’ve got a rock in my chest.  I can’t breathe around it,” he eventually confessed.

“If my skills cannot touch it,” Maul admitted, his own frustration very real… and perhaps also covering up fear, “then we will have to find you a healer.”

For some reason that started Kenobi to laughing - just small, breathy chuckles.  Maul was beginning to realise that any time the boy laughed, it was always going to be disturbing to him.  “What?”

“I just…”  Kenobi paused to cough just once, but his body and mind seemed to finally be agreeing that coughing did no good.  “I also dreamt… that you tore into my side - right there-”  He indicated the spot Maul had just been healing, where his shirt was still mussed.  “-And started tearing out my lung with your bare hands.”

Now Maul was growing alert again, glowering and looking over the boy keenly as if more answers were written on him somewhere.  “When did you dream of this?”

“Just about every night for the past three days,” Kenobi said tiredly.  He shrugged.  His eyes had fallen closed in that parody of trustfulness that Maul by now recognized simply as ‘can’t spare the energy to give a fuck’ exhaustion.  “Honestly, just now I thought it was about to come true,” he wheezed more softly.

Maul was quietly stunned.  “And yet you let me…?”  He stumbled and found he couldn’t even finish the sentence.

Kenobi didn’t even open his eyes.  He swayed a little where he sat, clearly on his last ergs of strength.  “I just didn’t have the energy to fight,” he said utterly without malice, as if he were simply stating a fact about some inclement weather.  

And Maul had no idea whatsoever what to do with that.  

They spoke no more of that.  Kenobi was clearly drained and Maul was still trying to sort out his thoughts after all the boy had said - it felt like every time he finally got the little Seer to talk freely, everything that came out of his mouth was troubling in a way Maul could never predict.  So he just focused his attention on coaxing the boy climb up onto his back.  It was clear to both of them that Kenobi was too shaky to stand, and if he did make it to his feet, he couldn't catch his breath to walk any further.  There was no argument over that even as Maul stood up, the Jedi pup now riding piggyback, although the boy asked, “What about Savage?”

Maul made a note that it was questions like this, asking after his enemy, that assured him Kenobi would never become a Sith.  And at least this conversation was a bit more normal , so far as their conversations ever went.  “I can still sense him.”  He turned his head in the direction they’d come, where the droid factory stood as just a silhouette against the foggy distance.  It was growing darker, the day ending, but Maul also imagined he could still see flashes of red.  “If he were dead, I would know.”

“Will he…?  I mean, do you think he’ll succeed?”

Not knowing where the desire to explain came from when he usually shared information only sparingly and strategically, Maul found himself replying, “The Nightsisters made him strong.  Stronger than any of my kind can be on their own.  He will succeed.”  What he did not say was that he did not know, but that he had to believe his own words.  Maul refused to imagine his brother dead.  

Despite what he’d said and what he believed, Maul still felt himself being tugged back, yearning to stand beside Savage.  

But the increasingly troubled pattern of Kenobi’s breath against the back of his neck encouraged him to turn around.  He’d head towards the ship, to leave his brother a note for when he returned himself, and then he’d go into Alvidera and knock on every door within reach until he found a doctor.  He didn’t care how late it was or who might be sleeping.

~^~

Savage left everything in ruins behind him, and he felt quite good about that.  

He knew that Maul would have preferred to have this task, but while Savage was quite capable of great feats of destruction, he knew next to nothing about magics of the mind - and their little Seer’s mind was the thing most in danger now.  So Savage had been determined to do the best job possible so that his brother would not regret leaving this task to him.  Although covered in scrapes and scratches and bruises and his lightsaber heavily damaged by the end, Savage had not allowed himself to be overwhelmed again (shameful enough for it to have happened once, and to be saved by the child, no less), and ultimately, his instincts were correct: the item they sought was at the centre of all of this, where the Dark Force was strongest.  

Granted, it had been like finding the heart of a bonfire, but years training under Maul and, before that, being imbued with power by the Nightsisters, had left Savage more than equipped to deal with that.  

He still felt sickened by the time he left.  Like Maul, Savage had great respect for the Dark side of the Force that they wielded - but that did not mean he venerated it without question.  As he lit the whole place on fire, old containers of fuel ensuring that even the fleshiest bits would burn, he sincerely hoped that the stain on this place would be at least a little bit cleansed by the fire.  Too much of the Dark Side had festered here unchecked.  

The two items he walked away with were also steeped in Dark energy, but even as he walked away, marvelling at them quietly, he could feel that the worst of the oppressive energy was being left behind.  The crackling - and then roaring - of the growing flames sounded a lot like screaming at times, and the air was filled with the smell of decay and cooked meat.  

He didn’t find Maul or Kenobi but he found their tracks. Since Maul was a masterful hunter and therefore quite skilled at hiding any signs of his passing, it was a sign to follow, and so Savage did - all the way back to the ship.  The Scimitar was empty, but the moment he entered he almost stepped on one of their communicators, purposefully placed right in the middle of the floor.  Savage and Maul hadn’t thought to bring them on this mission, since they hadn’t exactly expected to be separated, but if there was one communicator here, then Maul certainly had the other.  Savage picked it up and merely hit a button to activate it, knowing that the device’s twin would register it - a subtle way to indicate that Savage was there and ready to get in contact whenever Maul was.

It was a good hour before he did, an hour in which Savage methodically treated his hurts and futilely but stubbornly told himself not to worry about the little Seer and what had happened after their trio had split up.  Savage had just sat down at the kitchen’s little table to see about fixing his lightsaber when his communicator let off a quiet beep, at which point he was immediately grabbing it and opening the channel fully.  “Brother?” he asked tentatively, unsure what else to say.

Savage expected Maul to immediately ask if his mission had been successful, if he’d found the Sith sword, his voice sure and commanding - always focused on the mission.  Instead, Maul’s voice sounded unsettlingly strained and exhausted, and he said nothing of the item they’d gone all this way seeking, “It took some doing, but I finally found a healer suited to treating the boy.”

Savage perked up.  “Is he well?”

“He is…”  The following pause was unnerving.  Maul was thoughtful, and chose his words when he spoke, but he was not uncertain.  “He will be,” was the eventual answer, which assuaged absolutely none of Savage’s rising worries.  “I will give you our location.  Come meet us here.”  Another weighted pause, and then Maul said in a heavy voice laced with unexpected anger, “The mining rig of Bandomeer has had more far-reaching consequences than we realized.”

Already standing, feeling almost more alert and battle-ready than he’d felt when seeking the Sith sword, Savage said, “Understood, brother.  I will… I will secure everything on the ship.”  Now did not seem the time to start discussing the sword… or the other object he’d found.  Or the fact that everything he'd seen beneath the droid factory had been eclectic, as if gathered by some madly nesting evil.  None of that mattered when his ears were ringing with Maul’s last sentence, and all he wanted to do was demand what Maul meant by them - and why his voice sounded thick with quiet fury.  Even the unbidden images of the boy when they’d first collected him from the mining rig were enough to make anger swell in Savage’s chest as well, memories of matted hair and dirty clothes, bones so prominent against pale skin.  Only recently had Kenobi started to look as though he were not half-starved.  

Savage reminded himself that he could not simply fly back to Bandomeer and raze the mining rig to the ground as he had done just now with the infested factory.

“I will be right there,” was all he finished with, and it was a further sign of how distracted Maul was that he still did not ask about Savage’s mission.  And Savage did not care.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Savage was surprised to see so many people awake despite the late hour as he made his way from the ship and into the city proper, following Maul’s directions.  He was glad that he’d hidden his blade and alien features well, a hooded cloak hiding most everything but his sheer size, because everyone who was awake also seemed very ruffled and disgruntled.  It got worse the closer Savage got to the healer’s.  In fact, when Savage knocked on the door, it was pulled open almost immediately by an incredibly frazzled-looking Rhodian.  Without even saying a word, the Rhodian just stepped back from the doorway and pointed deeper into the building, the jabbing nature of the point making it clear that Savage was wanted in that direction and the healer was in no mood to chat about it.  Savage was, in a word, baffled.  But he could sense his brother’s Force-signature in that direction, and if he focused, another entity that was starting to become familiar as the boy.  Heartened by further proof to his senses that the little Seer was alive, Savage pushed his hood back and headed down the corridor, hearing the Rhodian grumbling about “insane, pushy customers in the dead of night” behind him.

More reason for the Rhodian’s grumpiness - and perhaps the wakefulness of all the nearby neighbours - became obvious as Savage entered the room at the end of the hall.  Savage and Kenobi were both here, but the room around them was utterly trashed.

“Before you ask,” Maul said, sounding very irritable and tired, his posture matching as he sat slumped on the edge of the boy’s bed, “it was Kenobi throwing things.  Apparently he takes medication about as well from us as he does from anyone.”  Immediately, Savage recalled the sleeping draught that Maul had gotten down the boy’s throat, and how Kenobi had gone more or less feral before it had knocked him out.  It was not a comfortable memory… and this seemed worse.  Maul looked away and further admitted in a quieter grumble, “And perhaps I knocked over a few things with the Force, too.”  Considering what the little Jedi had managed to do with their cargo hold all on his own, to think of Maul (for whatever reason) joining in definitely explained why both the healer and the surrounding town were awake and on edge.  How the more distant citizens were awake, Savage was uncertain, but he decided to ask when Maul looked less prickly.

The boy himself was asleep on his right side, very pale but breathing more steadily than when Savage had last seen him.  He looked very small with white sheets pulled up to his neck.  “So how is the boy?  What was wrong with him?”  Savage had a million other questions, but managed to bite his tongue after just those two, trusting Maul to tell him what he needed to know.

The way Maul sighed and ran a hand down his face set off alarms in Savage’s mind.  Instead of speaking, Maul reached out and grasped Kenobi’s blanket, pulling it down to his waist; the boy didn’t so much as twitch, proof of how under he still was.  The boy was shirtless, so there was nothing hiding the line of red skin paralleling Kenobi’s lowest rib, clearly recently cut open and freshly sealed by a dermal-regenerator.  The cut was neat but extended about as long as Savage’s hand, and suddenly he was casting back in his memory for whether or not the boy had been bleeding when he’d last seen him.  There had been too many flesh-covered enemies for him to have scented the blood in the air, but Kenobi’s clothing had not seemed stained with-

“The boy told me,” Maul’s low, quiet words broke through Savage’s spiralling thoughts, his own eyes fixed almost dully on the healing wound, “that he’d dreamt that I’d dug through his side with my bare hand.  That was why he kept flinching from me.”  While Savage just stared, Maul covered the boy up again.  “It was the healer who cut into him instead, but under my orders.”  Maul rubbed a hand over his face again, speech muffled by his palm.  “Hence his panic, and refusal to fall asleep quietly.”

“Maul, what the fuck happened?” Savage finally demanded breathlessly.

Dropping his hands away from his face and just staring tiredly into the middle distance, the elder brother nonetheless finally started explaining, laying out facts bluntly as he built his story, “I was unaware until just hours ago that there is a particular type of parasite that lives on Bandomeer.  It only thrives in the deep seas, so the general populace almost never encounters it. It lives by attaching itself under the gill-plates of certain sea crustaceans, feeding off the air and blood that go through their gills.”  Savage did not know where this was going, but shifted uneasily because he already sensed he would not like what his brother was building up to.  “There are a few occasions when, in its larval stage, it has gotten into humanoid hosts instead. Usually from someone choking on infested water.”  Savage froze in growing horror, and Maul went on as detachedly as if he were reading this off a datapad, “Parasites are unpredictable in novel hosts, but they have been documented, apparently, to get into breathing land-hosts and live quite well by attaching to a lung.  There they grow until they are discovered.”  Only now did Maul look over, and in his bloodshot eyes Savage saw that his brother was in shock, not uncaring.  “The ocean krill they are used to are easily as big as you or I.  The one imbedded in Kenobi’s left lung was going to fill up his entire ribcage before long.”

Savage had no words.  He stumbled over to where a nearby chair had been overturned, righting it so he could sit down.  As Maul kept speaking, Savage just let the words flow over him, his eyes fixed on the boy who had been steadily suffocating in their care, and even now seemed a bit shallow in his breathing.  He got bits and snatches of additional information that Maul had gathered since the diagnosis: “The healer here had never seen it before, but the parasite turned up readily on their advanced scans.  My Force-healing did nothing because you cannot heal away a parasite.  You cannot even kill it, lest you’re ready to remove its carcass from the host before it rots.”  Maul’s voice dropped to a snarl midway through those sentences, some of his temper and frustration showing through.  Savage looked over to see Maul’s hands in fists, teeth bared and head bowed.  Still, he finished what he was saying, “The healer removed the parasite and I dissuaded her from asking questions.  But every time the parasite was… disrupted… it did damage to the body around it.  So the boy will need time to heal.”

That explained the stiffness still present in Kenobi’s breathing.  Savage felt his heart twist painfully in his chest, remembering how the Dark Jedi, Xanatos, had so viciously kicked the boy’s left side - Kenobi had to have already been infected by the parasite then.  Probably many of the slaves on the mining platform suffered similar infestations, untreated by uncaring masters.  Many things made sense if he imagined the young human trying to breathe around an ever-growing, air-and-nutrient-sucking creature in his chest cavity.  

Savage couldn’t hold back anymore; he didn’t care if Maul called him soft , or told him that this wasn’t how you treated a prisoner.  The larger Dathomirian Sith dragged his chair closer with an unabashedly loud scraping of metal legs on the floor, hated that even that didn’t get the boy to stir, and only came to a stop at the head of the bed where he could lean forward worriedly over the boy.  He reached out a big hand, gentling his grip to carefully stroke back tousled copper bangs from a sweaty brow.  

And Maul said nothing.  In fact, he just remained sitting close at Kenobi’s hip, wordlessly watching, shoulders slumped in exhaustion that could not be explained by the day’s fighting.  After a moment, he lifted his hand over Kenobi’s side and lowered his head in concentration, and Savage knew from seeing it before that Maul was reaching out with the Force to do some healing - for whatever good it could do.

~^~

Outside of the room, the Rhodian healer washed her hands of the demanding, inexplicable strangers, although only after washing her hands of literal blood did she go and sit on her porch.  She’d pulled some strange things out of patients before, but nothing like that lung-flea.  She hadn’t been able to dispose of it fast enough.  As curious as she was about the boy’s other injuries, and how he came to be travelling with such alien companions, she had absolutely no intentions of going back in there.  Unless that red-skinned monster didn’t pay her.  Then maybe she’d have a chat.  It was still hours until dawn, but it was clear everyone had been roused by the cloaked stranger banging on all of their doors.  And if they hadn’t, then the boy hurling things around the room had probably done the trick.  The healer had not dealt with Force-users before, but she knew the tales of the Jedi.  However, while she felt good about helping a Jedi (albeit a very young one; she didn’t know they came that small), it didn’t really make up for the rest of the trauma and the missed sleep.  

Another cloaked stranger walked her way, and the Rhodian stiffened, preparing a sharp comment about how, despite evidence to the contrary, she was not open for business.  But the stranger luckily seemed just curious.  “I heard the noise,” he said in Galactic Basic, the dim light filtering through the windows catching on the blue skin of his jaw as he talked.  One of the Pantorans that occasionally traded in the market, she suspected, although not one she’d met personally.  “I did not know you accepted patients at this house - much less such noisy ones.”

“I do not.”

He smiled and chuckled sympathetically, although what really softened the healer’s mood was the bottle of spirits he lifted from under his cloak.  “Here.  I was drinking at the nearby tavern - too late myself, so you certainly need it more.”

She took it and nodded her thanks, antennae twitching in apology for her earlier tartness.  It felt good to take a swig.  She liked this flavour, and even knew what bar it was from.  Therefore when the Pantoran asked, “Just what kind of patient makes that much racket?  I could swear I saw silhouettes of things flying past the windows!”

Usually, the healer was studiously tight-lipped around her patients’ ailments - but this was not an ailment, and that red-skinned brute had threatened to cut her hands off if she didn’t let him in and treat his ward.  So she felt a mean little bit of vindictive pleasure in spreading some gossip.  The blue-skinned man was understandably impressed and shocked to hear that a young Force-user was healing under her roof.  

~^~

Erada’kyo’tenu returned via quiet alleyways to the dockyards, eventually making his way to a ship that was purposefully nondescript on the outside, although more than a few had asked after its make and model - not recognizing it.  Dakyot and the other crewman had been well-versed in how to respond without ever giving a straight answer.  

Captain Shokla’ro’keo, unlike the citizens of Alvidera, was alert and showed no annoyance at receiving a report at the nocturnal hour.  “What did you discover of the disturbance in the city?”  The crew of the Silverbird had been stranded on Alvo-4 long enough to have learned the patterns of behaviour of the city around them, and despite being here for three weeks now, had not ceased to have crewmembers stations as watchers - for anything that could be a threat, or simply something important to be aware of.

Dakyot was stifling the urge to grin, because this… was definitely something important to be aware of.  “An injured Force-user was brought to the Rhodian healer.  A young  ozyly-esehembo .”

The captain immediately sat up straighter, her face for a moment frozen in hope and shock.  Then she was mastering herself, standing and issuing orders, “Awaken the senior members.  This must be discussed.”

“And Thlia’mra?”

For the briefest second, Captain Klarok froze again and grimaced.  The girl’s name had been a sore spot for longer than they’d been stranded.  But again the captain showed aplomb and simply nodded, saying neutrally, “Yes.  As a sky-walker herself, such that she is, she should be here for this.”  The ‘such that she is’ was said perhaps a bit darkly, but then the captain was stepping away; Dakyot, knowing when he was dismissed, rushed off to wake the other senior offices of the Silverbird with the potential news that they might be able to return home.  It had been bad timing and misfortune that had got them stuck here, but it seemed perhaps that fate was ready to deal them a better hand.

~^~

Maul was embarrassed at himself for taking so long to even think to ask Savage about the Sith sword that they’d come all this way for.  He was even more embarrassed when, after being told that Savage had found far more than that, he struggled to choose between returning to the ship to immediately check on the new treasures… and staying by Kenobi’s side.  It should have been an easy decision.  Yes, as a Seer the boy was valuable, but Savage was there now to watch him, and if Kenobi’s health took a turn, it was the healer who would have to do all the work.  And yet Maul found himself hesitating and dawdling until his brother (with a look entirely too knowing and sympathetic) encouraged, “You will want to see what I returned with.”  He refused to say more, so eventually Maul grumbled, threw on his cloak, and left.  Savage had been fairly detailed in the completion of his mission, the two of them talking of the battle, the burning, even the discovery of an old Sith sarcophagus that was the source of the massive Dark Force energy - all said in low, hushed tones, aware that Kenobi was sleeping and the healer was no doubt nearby.  But Savage had gone tight-lipped when they got to the part about what he’d salvaged versus what he’d burned, citing that he didn’t want to reveal sensitive information where it might be overheard.  

So now Maul was stepping into the Scimitar , still having to recite reasons not to turn back around.  ‘ Savage can watch the boy on his own ,’ he reminded himself, although at the same time another part of his mind reminded him that Savage was worrisomely soft where Kenobi was concerned.  He should never have let his brother tuck their Seer into a box like a pet…  ‘ There is nothing I could do there that the healer could not .’  This reminder was also less helpful than expected, because Kenobi by now had a proven habit of not only getting into trouble, but of hiding pain… until it nearly killed him.  Even the boy’s more recent coughing had seemed so minor, and then they’d found out he’d had a thrice-damned parasite taking up nearly a fifth of his chest cavity.  The boy also had a clearly dysfunctional fight-or-flight response, in that he only fought - evidenced by how he’d picked up Savage’s lightsaber and charged when most sane individuals would have run screaming.  

Somehow, despite the constant pressure to turn around and stomp right back to the healer’s home, Maul made it to the sealed transport container in the back of ship’s cargo hold.  It was one of the few things that Kenobi’s first Force-storm hadn’t wreaked havoc on, being locked closed and strongly enforced for carrier more precious cargo.  Right now, Maul didn’t need his brother’s instructions to know that their recent findings were here, as he had only to stretch out his mind a little to sense a Dark Force signature emanating faintly from this location.  As soon as he noticed it, he had an involuntary pang of worry: Kenobi was proving extra sensitive to Dark Force energy, likely due to the damage done to his mind when they’d first acquired him.  Would this hurt him?

Maul caught himself thinking that and gave himself an almost physical shake.  Stupid sentiment.  If anything, he should have seen the strategic benefits to this situation - after all, was it not a good thing to have a Seer so susceptible to the Dark side?  

Except Kenobi didn’t seem like he was about to fall to it.  Instead, all Maul could imagine was the boy fighting back and struggling until the weight crushed him into nothingness… and Maul could not deny that that thought made his heart twist painfully in his chest.

It was with some relief that Maul unlocked the opened the transport container to find the Dark Force signature barely any stronger than what Maul and Savage themselves gave off.  Clearly the true source of the Darkness had been back at the factory, perhaps the sarcophagus, now burned to nothingness in Savage’s wake.  

At that point all other thoughts fled Maul’s mind, for even as his eyes took in a mediaeval sword in an anachronistically modern-looking scabbard, he was distracted by something far more shocking - and no doubt the reason Savage had been so tight-lipped.  

There was a holocron sitting in the container as well.  And despite it humming steadily with Dark Force energy like a seductive beacon, it was shaped like a Jedi holocron.  

~^~

Kenobi woke up from a jumbled dream where he’d been flying a ship with a map he couldn’t read, and then the map had jumped out of his hands and folded itself up into a cube.  Either because the dream had ended with him flying straight into an asteroid or simply because he’d been deeply asleep, he awoke feeling foggy, just aware enough to notice that the ache in his chest was different from before but not enough to recall why.  As he started to get his eyes open, his senses sluggishly told him that he was in a bed, although it wasn’t familiar.  He frowned involuntarily as his mind tried to make sense of the fact that the pillow didn’t smell right, the blankets didn’t feel right - and at that point he got his eyes open enough to make out a silhouette standing over him.

Instead of the expected red or yellow skin patterned with black, dressed all in dark shades, Obi was faced by a blue-skinned man leaning over him, red eyes intense and focused as the stranger reached down towards the injured ex-Initiate’s head.

Obi-Wan immediately rocketed the rest of the way into wakefulness, everything in him focused on getting away.  In nearly the same instant, the image of the stranger disappeared - a hallucination - and instead there was Maul, just now getting up out of a chair to put his hands on Kenobi’s shoulder and hip to keep him from thrashing.  It was ridiculous how relieved Obi immediately felt, finding himself facing a Sith rather than a red-eyed stranger that kept haunting his dreams.  “At ease, Kenobi!” Maul hissed at him, the patterns of his face contorting with his frown.  At some point, Obi had started to read facial expressions despite the obscuring black marks, and only now did he realise it, blinking dazedly up at Maul’s perplexed, slightly pissy glower.  “You are safe, but you must be still.”

Simply the realisation that the alien reaching for him wasn’t real had already left Obi-Wan dizzy with relief, so he went limp again without any further prompting needed.  As he lay on his right side and just collected himself, Maul backed away and sat back down, too, regaining some of his natural, ominous composure.  “You may stow away your fear of me, Kenobi,” the Zabrak said, and for a moment Obi-Wan was bewildered until he realised that Maul thought Obi had been reacting to him a moment ago.  Before Obi-Wan could decide whether or not to correct him, Maul went on, “Your vision already came true, although it was not me who had a hand in your side.”  Maul lifted a darkly-patterned hand and flexed it for emphasis, and a few more foggy memories drifted back, making Obi-Wan frown.  “Your dreams, it would seem, are somewhat allegorical, but ultimately quite accurate.”

“What…?” Obi cut himself off before he could ask what had happened, determined to instead fight his way through the disjointed memories that were slowly piecing themselves together.  He did not know how he’d gotten in his room, or why he felt so dazed and weak - and instead of figuring that out, the memory that snapped back into focus was the factory with the bloodred sand and the flesh-covered droids.  Maul defending him.  The other Sith being pulled under the monstrous tide.  Panic over-road fatigue, and Obi-Wan scrambled to get up again, eyes casting about the room as he called out involuntarily, “Savage!”

Once again Maul bolted out of his chair to hold the smaller figure down, and under other circumstances, it might have been funny to see what a look of naked surprise Obi was able to put on the Sith’s usually stoic, fearsome face.  “Kenobi-!” Maul hissed in annoyance, then focused his energy for a moment on holding Obi-Wan still.  “Savage is fine!” he finally blurted out, and Obi-Wan stopped struggling to just stare up at him.  Maul’s red-gold eyes were narrowed at him, clearly miffed.  “He merely stepped out to speak to the healer - your healer!”  This time Maul made a face that said he didn’t trust the boy to stay still - so instead of backing away to his chair like before, the Sith sat down on the edge of the bed, although he did take his hands off Obi-Wan again.  “What do you last remember?” he asked with tired patience.

Letting his head fall back against the pillow and staring up for a moment at the ceiling, Obi tried to cast back in his jumbled memory.  “I remember the droid factory.  Everything had been warped by the Dark side of the Force,” he started.  He fidgeted uncomfortably at the additional memory that had come up, “And Savage was swarmed…”  He bit his lip and tried to push through the recollection, helped by the fact that apparently Savage was safe.  Before he could think too hard on why he cared so much about the continued survival of a Sith who’d actually scarred one of his arms, another memory surfaced and he asked in bewilderment, “Did I pick up his lightsaber?”  

“You did.”  Maul nodded, then paused and frowned.  “Don’t do it again.”

For once, Obi-Wan acquiesced easily, just nodding back.  “After that I remember you and I making a run for it, but after that-”  Obi-Wan frowned.  Memories of incoherent hurt and rage and a voice telling him his feelings weren’t wrong for him to have.  Memories of firm hands on either side of his head, steadying him, while a sharp Dathomirian horn pressed against his forehead just enough to centre him like a tether.  Memories of… talking about his mother .  Giving his head a shake, Obi-Wan didn’t so much dismiss that information as purposefully shove it into his ‘probably a hallucination’ box.  Then he shoved the box to the back of his mind before he was forced to accept that those memories were most definitely real.  He was already trying to handle too much without also having to ponder that much physical and emotional closeness shared with a Sith.  “After that it’s a bit fuzzy,” was all he said, reassuring himself that that was not entirely a lie.  Everything really was something of a blur.  A disturbing, embarrassing blur.  

Luckily, Maul accepted that with a nod.  “Understandable.  Perhaps due to your head wound, back before our paths crossed, you seem very sensitive to Dark Force energy - it was clear to see that it caused you great distress,” the Sith said, and despite himself, Obi-Wan appreciated how Maul was choosing his words carefully.  If it were Obi describing things, he’d have said that the Dark Force energy had made him unmanageably insane for a bit there.  “It is probably best that your memory is fogged.”  For a moment Maul was silent, staring off at nothing, and Obi-Wan wondered if perhaps even the Sith wished for a bit of fogginess right now.  

‘ Clearly dealing with me is no picnic ,’ Obi-Wan thought to himself with a grimace.  On days like this he understood why Jinn hadn’t wanted him as an apprentice - especially if the older Jedi had sensed what a mess Obi would evolve into.  He was driving even two Sith spare.  

Maul’s explanation continued, saving Obi-Wan from sorting out his own memories any further, “I was ultimately able to get you back to Alvidera to find you a healer.”  Maul gestured to the room around them, finally explaining the strange environment.  Then he looked at Obi-Wan sidelong.  “What do you remember of being treated?”

“I remember…”  That was actually, sincerely unclear.  Obi-Wan’s mind was clearing slowly, though, revealing bits and flashes.  “I remember not cooperating?”

For some reason that caused Maul to release a little coughing noise and then rub a hand down over his mouth.  “You never cooperate,” he mumbled, the words muffled by his palm before he dropped his hand with a sigh and said more clearly, “The healer was able to determine that you had… been infected by a parasite.  Back when you were in the middle of the ocean on Bandomeer.  The parasite was why you could not breathe.”

And with that… some of the memories came back, and Obi-Wan felt remembered horror crawl coldly up his spine.  He had a moment to feel his stomach turning over, and then he was being sick - luckily, Maul must have seen something on his face to herald the vomiting, because there were hands hurriedly helping Kenobi to lean over the side of the bed.  He thought perhaps there was a bucket there.  Mortification joined with pain as his side screamed, and for a moment there was no more room for thought inside of his head.  

“Brother, why did you just tell him like that?” he heard Savage’s voice chide as he came back to himself.  

“I was factual about it!  I didn’t tell a single gory detail,” Maul defended himself in a hiss.  Obi-Wan was still lying mostly on his side with his head hanging over the edge of the bed, body curled in on itself as the left side of his chest throbbed.  The throbbing reminded him of why it hurt, and he nearly vomited in horror all over again.  He felt a large, warm hand rubbing his back soothingly.

“See?” Savage went on in a judgmental whisper, voice coming from behind Kenobi and closer now.  It was probably his hand sending warmth down Obi-Wan’s spine as the brothers bickered above him.  “You do not simply tell a child that, especially not when they’ve only just woken.  The healer told you he was fragile still.”

Honestly, it was a bit entertaining to hear Maul getting lectured by his younger brother, especially since it was usually the red Zabrak who seemed to be in charge, so Kenobi decided to hold very still and pretend that he’d passed out again.  Almost immediately, however, Maul’s voice was growling at him, “I know you’re awake, Kenobi.”

“Let him sleep, brother,” Savage defended him before Kenobi could give in and pry his eyes open, “The healer said he should sleep.”

Maul’s sigh was deep and long-suffering.  “Fine.  But be aware that he’s going to be eavesdropping on everything you say.”  As Maul spoke, the bed shifted and his voice got further away, belatedly letting Kenobi know that he’d just now had two Sith hovering over him - Savage was still close enough to be touching him.  That probably should have been terrifying, but either Kenobi had finally become desensitised to this level of threat, or he was too exhausted to care.  

“I see no harm in that,” Obi-Wan heard Savage grumble under his breath - and then, after a pause, there was a hand giving his head a pat.  It was so startling that Obi’s eyes flew open, to be immediately met by Maul’s gaze.  The older Sith was back in the chair again, sitting in front of Kenobi, whereas Savage was apparently behind him and still oblivious, but Maul’s mouth quirked up wryly on one side.  Notably, however, Maul made no comment when Obi-Wan decided to quickly close his eyes again and go back to feigning unconsciousness.  His life was already hard enough right now, he figured, and it was easier to work through the shock of it all when he didn’t have to be part of any conversation.  He now fully remembered being told that there was… a creature, a parasite… attached to his lung and feeding off him.  Even now the recollection made him shiver, and all he wanted to overhear now was that it was gone.  Kenobi knew that he was stripped to the waist, and even after someone (no doubt Savage) pulled the blankets up to his neck again, he felt vulnerable.  After all, Maul had not actually said that they’d gotten the parasite out .

Obi-Wan struggled to keep his breathing even, even as he tried to ignore how breathing still felt stiff and painful.  Feigning sleep had seemed like an easier option until he’d started thinking again, the quiet of his mind too full of questions.

Therefore it was a relief when Savage (who sounded like he’d retreated a bit but was still on the bed) declared, “The healer said that the removal of the parasite has left him weak.  He can’t travel.  Not for at least a week.”  Honestly, Kenobi was so relieved to hear that he didn’t have a parasite in his chest that he didn’t care about the long timeline.

He would have gotten a bit more uneasy upon hearing Maul’s response, if not for the calm way in which the Sith spoke: “Was the internal damage so severe?”  He sounded factual and thoughtful rather than deeply worried.  

“The healer said that any time a living thing takes up residence inside another living thing, there is damage,” Savage said sagely.  Kenobi tried not to cringe as the simple words made him think very viscerally of his own body.  He quietly moved a hand to press it against his ribs, flinching involuntarily as he found tender scar-tissue there.  Honestly, at this point he was fairly certain that neither Sith thought he was unconscious, so he tilted his head and snuck a subtle look under the blankets - the bandages on his forearms were still there, and he wondered how the Sith had explained those to the healer, but under the shadows of the blanket he could see signs of a recent, long, curving cut upon his side.  Thinking he might be sick again, he pressed his face down into the blankets and held his breath to the count of ten.

Either out of awkwardness or mercy, the Sith soon started talking again as if they had noticed nothing.  “Alvidera is primitive.  This healer is the best one in the area, but even she does not have a bacta tank,” Savage said, sounding displeased, “But she claims that while his healing will be slower, Kenobi will nonetheless be able to fully recover under her care - providing that he is not moved.”

“Considering he has already tried to get up twice in the past ten minutes, that will be a struggle,” Maul replied in a drawl that was definitely meant to be taunting.  Kenobi couldn’t help but take the bait, slitting his eyes open just enough to fix Maul with a glare.  As before, golden eyes were already watching him, and while Maul did an admirable job of keeping his expression unchanged, his eyes did perhaps narrow a bit in either frustration or amusement.  It was probably one of those emotions that caused the elder Zabrak to extend a leg and nudge the bed with one booted foot, proclaiming, “You hear that, welp?  Bed rest is in your future.  No excitement.”

Obi-Wan deigned to open his eyes fully then, the farce over.  Glaring at Maul’s nudging foot, he retorted, “Oh delightful.  More sleep.  Because that works out so well for me.”  Sarcasm fled as he suddenly recalled that ‘sleep’ (or at least the ensuing dreams) were what had gotten him here in the first place, and he hadn’t even learned how that had turned out.  Obi-Wan twisted his head to look back over his shoulder, finding Savage with a questioning gaze.  “Wait - the Sith sword.  Did you find it?”

At first Obi-Wan wasn’t sure how to feel, because Savage hesitated.  So apparently the mission had been a failure - but was that a good thing or a bad thing?  Then Savage rather obviously looked over Obi’s head at Maul, and must have gotten some kind of encouragement before Obi-Wan could look at the other Zabrak, because then Savage was saying, “...Yes.”  Now deeply suspicious, Obi turned to look forward again, letting his distrust in that answer show all over his face.

Maul took in the expression and gave his head a little shake like Obi-Wan was unbelievable, but at least he elaborated without any attempt at feigning ignorance, “Savage found the resting place of an ancient Sith, boy.  Your dreams told you of a sword, but it would take far more than just a Sith sword to poison a place like that.  Most of the poison Savage left behind, to burn to the ground.”

Obi-Wan blinked and took that in for a moment.  While he was pondering that, his mouth moved of its own accord, however: “Rich of you to say ‘poison’ so disparagingly - I thought you used the Dark side of the Force yourself.”

Maul’s mouth twitched like he was struggling to not find Kenobi amusing.  “Contrary to what you may have been taught, you can have too much of a good thing,” he parried the verbal dart smoothly.

And maybe it was because Obi-Wan was exhausted, or maybe because he’d been given something awfully strong for the pain (he suspected as much, since every time he stopped moving, every discomfort disappeared like magic), but in that moment, it was almost possible for him to forget that these were two Sith who had kidnapped him and were likely to kill him before this was all over.

Chapter Text

The next few days were jarring.  Despite all the sleep he’d had back on the Scimitar before this, Obi-Wan continued to sleep now at the healer's - and a lot of it was actually real sleep, only mildly interrupted by disturbing nightmares.  Still, the new dream about the self-folding, uncooperative map was better than the horrors of most of his other dreams, so he was okay that that dream seemed to be the current item on his subconscious menu… although he was getting sick of each dream ending with him navigating into a planet, star, or asteroid that he didn’t see coming, all because he couldn’t seem to keep his hands on that map.

The real surprise was that Maul and Savage, despite being constantly present and therefore no doubt aware of the visions that were jarring their charge awake, didn’t press him for the contents of those dreams, and maybe that somehow contributed to the dreams dying back.  Another possible cause for the reduction in visions might have been the destruction of the cursed factory.  Savage had been quite eager to regale Obi-Wan with that tale.  In fact, almost as soon as it was clear that Kenobi truly was awake, the larger Zabrak had started all but reenacting the event, which was how Obi-Wan learned a few more details about just what had caused such a Dark disturbance in the Force.  While Savage got a bit cagy about the details of all he’d found at the heart of the nightmarish factory, he painted a pretty clear (and rather rewarding) image of finding an old Sith sarcophagus and then also finding fuel to douse it all in.  The downside of a factory being built upon the old grave was that it had led to those flesh-covered droids - the upside was that factories like that carried a lot of flammable liquids.  All of that was perhaps a reason why Obi-Wan felt more settled and his mind was less troubled.  When Savage was gesturing and story-telling, it grew harder and harder to remember that this was a dangerous Dark Force-user that Obi-Wan had to keep his guard up around.

As if to balance out those strangely amicable moments, there were still plenty of episodes to remind Obi-Wan where he stood in the world, though, and he told himself that he needed to be grateful for that.  He couldn’t let himself forget that he was a prisoner, a failed Jedi who had been captured and was still being used as a pawn in a dangerous game.  One such reminder came when Savage left to go fetch the healer, saying that she had wanted to check on Kenobi once he’d woken up.  Still a bit foggy and feeling ill-equipped to move from where he was lying on his side, Obi-Wan startled when Maul silently came to crouch before him.  His surprise faded to grim recognition as the Sith’s hand darted out and caught his chin, intense red-gold eyes meeting guarded blue eyes before Maul said, “It should go without saying, but you are to reveal nothing to this healer.  She has been told that you are an orphan that we found some weeks ago, badly injured.”  Maul’s eyes narrowed, searching Kenobi’s face as if to see signs of him rebelling against this made-up story.  “We have told her that you were unwilling to tell us all that had happened to you, and have informed her that it is not her place to pry either.”

Perhaps what jarred Obi-Wan the most was realising that he hadn’t even been thinking about trying to talk to the healer.  How had that not occurred to him?  The realisation that he’d gotten so used to being with Maul and Savage that he’d forgotten to consider escape made something rotten twist in his gut, and maybe that was why he tried to look as rebellious as possible despite his compromising position.  “And what if I don’t do as you say?” he challenged, anger at himself making him reckless, “You’ll what?  Fulfil my prophecy for real this time, tearing me open with your bare hands?”  For some reason, saying ‘my prophecy’ was more unsettling than actually describing his own mutilation.  Maybe it was whatever they’d given him for the pain; maybe it was the fact that up until recently he’d had a lung-leach living inside of his chest; or maybe it was the continued sense that he was drifting further and further away from the Jedi way.  Whatever the reason, he felt sick.

But he hid all that, instead baring his teeth in a silent snarl as he stubbornly maintained eye-contact with Maul.  

The defiant facade worked, insofar as Maul didn’t seem to sense anything amiss - although it didn’t work well enough to intimidate the Sith.  Instead, Maul merely showed his own teeth in a small but unsettling smile.  “Oh no, Kenobi,” he said, firming up his grip a little until Obi-Wan grimaced and tried reflexively to wriggle his face free - to no avail.  Maul went on in a wry tone, “I’ve learned that you’ve got a troublingly nonfunctional survival instinct.”  Well that was just insulting.  “So threatening you is a waste of time.  You barely care for your own safety.  No, if you start trying to get the word out to the healer-”  Now Maul leaned in closer, and as much as Obi-Wan wanted to maintain a brave, unaffected front, it was reflex to snap his hands up now and grab at the Zabrak’s wrist, increasing his futile attempt to get loose.  Close enough that breath warmed Obi-Wan’s nose, Maul said quite calmly, “-Then it’s her that I’ll punish.  I’d rather not, but if she becomes a threat because of what you tell her, then I’ve been trained to remove threats by whatever means necessary.”

Obi-Wan stopped struggling, blood running cold in his veins as the quiet but sincere threat sank in.  

Maul let him go and backed off, although he remained crouched at the edge of the bed, their heads of a height.  “Do you understand?” Maul asked.  It was baffling how there was no gloating in his voice, no malice - just firm factuality.  Meanwhile, Obi-Wan felt torn up inside, realising that once again there were lives around him made more fragile and imperilled by his involvement.  

“I understand,” he said in a voice that felt muted by the shock sinking in.

And for some reason Maul did not look happy at that, his eyebrows and the edges of his mouth tipping down instead as if he were troubled by something.  But then he merely stood.  When a hand came Obi-Wan’s way, he flinched without caring that it was obvious this time, his healing side twinging as his muscles contracted.   All Maul did was rest a palm briefly on his head.  “Just say nothing, Kenobi,” the Sith murmured.  With Maul’s hand weighing down his head, warm and heavy, Obi-Wan couldn’t angle to see the Sith’s expression, but was bewildered by how his voice seemed softer than it had up until now.  Almost like it was intended to be reassuring.  “All will be well.”

~^~

The healer was not friendly.  Obi-Wan was used to some fairly brusque medical droids from the Jedi Academy, and actually found it quite natural to slip into the friendly persona that he knew worked even on mechanical nurses.  Falling back onto hold habits paid dividends, because not only were his smiles and happy obedience designed to be disarming (the academy healers were less grumpy about healing a training accident when Obi buttered them up a bit), but his vapid attention also distracted people from asking him the questions they really wanted to (because even Jedi healers asked fewer questions about how Obi-Wan could fall asleep in an actual training session if he was taking up their attention by asking about their medical interests).  Obi-Wan had learned ages ago that showing genuine, kind interest towards people tended to keep them from looking at him too closely when he didn’t want them to.  Before, that had mostly been to hide his inadequacies at the temple - now it meant the healer was too flustered by Obi-Wan’s indomitable friendliness to ever quite ask him about all of the unsettling array of injuries already healing on his person.  

When the Rhodian healer had first come in, shooting looks at Maul and Savage in a way that made it clear at least some of her grumpiness was because of them , it had been reflex to smile at her.  Obi-Wan didn’t know what else to do.  He’d been so panicked about not giving Maul a reason to kill her that he’d been nearly trembling, and it was honestly a good thing that his instincts had kicked in - as weird as those instincts were.  Maul and Savage had sure seemed startled when Obi-Wan had turned on his smile, Obi trying immediately to accommodate the healer by sitting up and then just as quickly obeying when she snapped at him not to move around.  His apologies had been quick and self-effacing, and even though the Rhodian had clearly been glowering, her expression had begrudgingly softened a bit when Obi-Wan had started asking her just what she’d done because the incision on his side was really quite neat for something so invasive.  He lied about it barely even hurting.  Just thinking about the procedure he’d gone through made bile climb up his throat and he felt a sweat break out down his back as he tried to keep his stomach from turning over, but luckily he’d had a lot of practice keeping up this smile and chatter.  Soon the Rhodian was speaking of exactly what she’d done, proud of her craft, and Kenobi was forcing himself to follow along so that he could make pertinent comments here and there.  In reality, there was probably nothing he wanted to hear about less - but that became the topic of conversation instead of more dangerous things, so it was worth it.  Besides, if the poor healer had been dealing with Maul and Savage, then she truly was quite harried, and deserved to have at least a good patient.  It was only towards the end of her check that she eventually got around to mentioning “So these two say that you had a hard life before now?” while gesturing at the healing burns on his arms, then to where he’d taken the electro-jabber to the ribs and blaster-fire to the shoulder.  

Internally, Kenobi had felt fear light him up like a solar flare in the cold dead of space; outwardly he just reconfigured his smile a bit so that it would seem humble and shy.  He took Maul’s advice and just nodded, saying nothing.  He didn’t look over to check, but he imagined Maul and Savage (who had been silent, watchful, looming presences this whole time) relaxed.  ‘ I’m doing what you want me to do! ’ Obi-Wan was screaming in his mind in the meanwhile, for once wishing that Maul were reading his thoughts, ‘ I’m behaving!  No one has to die! ’

Despite nothing happening besides the healer checking his vitals and incision and applying more bacta to it, Obi-Wan felt exhausted by the time she left.  He actually sagged against the bed, breath puffing out of him and eyes closing despite the dangers still in the room.  He’d averted violence.  Just this once.  He gave himself exactly five seconds to regroup, and then opened his eyes and turned to look at Maul and Savage for the first time.  His intention was to glare at them balefully and sarcastically ask, “How was that?” but the looks on their faces made him forget his words.

Both of the Sith were staring at him with shocked expressions, as if he’d been speaking Lothcat or something this whole time.  

So instead of something snarky, Kenobi ended up just asking, “What?” in bewilderment.

Maul recovered first, blinking hard twice before his face reverted back to something more closely resembling his usual implacable scowl.  “Is it really so surprising that seeing you be friendly would shock us?” Maul scoffed, standing.  Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes, not quite sure that he bought that, but unsure what else to make of the Siths’ reactions.  Maul kept grumbling as he picked up and began fastening his cloak, “Especially after what a mouthy little terror you’ve been in our care.”

“To be fair, the healer didn’t kidnap me,” Obi-Wan pointed out.

“So you’re just that friendly to all strangers?” Savage asked now, and by the tilting of his head, he was sincerely curious.

“No!” Obi-Wan rebuffed, then faltered as he thought about it.  “Yes?”  Even as a child, being polite and charming had been one of the few things that made his life easier - honestly, those had been his only traits that people universally seemed to approve of - and since those personality traits hadn’t exactly hurt him at the Temple either, he’d kept them up.  Was he a good student?  Clearly not.  But was he still well-liked by most of his teachers because he was congenial and pleasant?  Yes.  

Maul snorted under his breath but otherwise ignored the exchange.  “Savage, keep an eye on him.  Make sure he eats and sleeps,” Maul ordered, only pausing at the door to look back at Kenobi out of the corner of one eye as he added in a low growl, “And preferably stays out of trouble.”

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes at the way Maul said that like it was a tall order, but otherwise just sank down into the pillow as Maul swept out of the room.

~^~

Knowing that Kenobi was too fragile to be moved was incredibly unsettling, and Maul, back at the Scimitar now, blamed that distraction for his issues with the holocron.  The damn thing wouldn’t open.  Palpatine had a few holocrons, and he’d shared some with Maul as part of his training, so it wasn’t that he lacked knowledge of how they worked.  However, those had been Sith holocrons, and while this one felt a lot like a Sith holocron, still radiating Dark Force energy like radiation, its design was Jedi… and it was refusing to reveal its secrets like a Jedi holocron, too.  Palpatine had taken great delight in explaining that Jedi always designed their holocrons to hide away secrets, whereas Sith holocrons were almost eager to open - eager to share their Dark knowledge with anyone who was brave (or foolish) enough to give it a try.  So while Savage was left predominantly with Seer-babysitting-duty, Maul struggled to recall what Palpatine had ever said about Jedi holocrons, while also being perpetually befuddled by how this holocron could somehow be both Jedi and Sith.

It took three days for him to make any headway whatsoever - and even then, his only accomplishment was learning that the holocron demanded two people be present to open it.  Maul tried to deny that fact for the rest of the day, until he was so enraged and frustrated that he nearly threw the thing across the cockpit.  In fact, he came very close to trashing the place as Kenobi had done the cargo hold.  Swearing at full volume because there was no one there to hear it, Maul eventually settled down again and accepted the reality of the situation.

This holocron would only be opened by a Master and Apprentice.

And while Maul and Savage seemed the obvious choice, Maul had already deduced that his brother wouldn’t do.  Which meant he was going to have to convince Kenobi.

~^~

Being bedridden was starting to drive Obi-Wan stir-crazy by the time Maul stormed into the room.  The healer only entered after knocking, and with nothing else to do, Obi had started focusing on reading the Force signatures all around him - he already knew that there were four other patients currently in the building, plus the healer, and it had been pretty easy to recognize and follow Maul’s fiery signature through the building.  In fact, Savage was the one to jump as the door jerked open, while Obi-Wan just watched curiously from where he was now propped up against the headboard with pillows (courtesy of Savage).  Painkillers kept his side and chest perpetually numb and oddly chilly, and Obi-Wan had been repeatedly warned about moving around unnecessarily, but now he sat up a bit more as he took note of Maul’s obvious pique.  The Sith was clearly in something of a mood.  

“What is it, brother?” Savage demanded.  He’d already reached for his lightsaber, usually carefully hidden in the folds of his robes.  Due to their lack of supplies, he hadn’t managed to repair all of the damage left in his last battles with the Force-twisted droids, but he’d gotten at least one of the dual blades to work again.

Instead of answering, Maul merely met his brother’s gaze and then sucked in and let out a tight, huffing breath.  Then he swung his gaze to Obi-Wan.  

It didn’t take a genius to know that this wasn’t great.

Staring (glaring) at Kenobi but words directed at his brother, Maul ordered, “Watch the door.”  That raised more alarm bells, although when the red-toned Zabrak then stalked towards Kenobi, Maul only threatened, “I can feel you pulling at the Force.  If you throw something at me I’m going to throw it back - but harder, and you won’t like it.”  Then he boldly made himself at home at the foot of Kenobi’s sickbed, sitting cross-legged and facing him.  Obi-Wan forced himself not to do exactly what Maul had warned him not to.  “Now, what has my brother told you about what he pulled from beneath the droid factory?”

Savage had done as ordered, shifting his chair until it was in front of the door, but now he turned and started in a defensive tone, “Brother-”

Maul cut him off with a raised hand.  Obi tried to suss out the situation, suddenly feeling as though he were feeling his way across a thinly frozen lake, testing for what would hold his weight and what would betray him.  He felt his heart-rate kicking up, but since he couldn’t follow his instincts and reach for the Force with telekinesis, he just fisted his hands in the blankets over his lap instead and watched everything  for clues as to what to do or say to keep himself safe.  

Because Maul was wrong.  Obi-Wan did have a survival instinct, and he did not like being hurt. 

Maul’s eyes were still on Obi-Wan, watching and awaiting an answer with dangerous patience, so Obi-Wan wet his lips and reflected back on everything that he knew.  He decided to play it safe, relying on what he’d been told in Maul’s presence rather than risk a lie that couldn’t guess the result of.  In all honesty, he didn’t know that much - there’d been a dusty old Sith corpse in a dusty old Sith sarcophagus and the sword he’d been dreaming about.  “I’ve gotten the impression that you’ve found more, but I don’t know what,” he finished warily.

Perhaps that was the right answer, because neither rage nor violence followed.  Instead, Maul merely nodded and then said, “In that, you are correct.  We did find more.”  Then he reached into his robes, and Obi-Wan tensed up enough that he felt the healing flesh in his chest twinge sharply in pain.  Maul wasn’t reaching for his hidden saber, though, and instead finished with, “I did not expect to be sharing it with you, however,” and pulling something else out.

It was suddenly like his dreams and the current world collided, and Obi-Wan almost groaned in resignation as he realised that the cube in his dream - and the cube in front of him - was a holocron.

“By your reaction, you’ve seen one before?” Maul guessed, although who the fuck knew what he’d seen on Obi’s face to reach such a benign conclusion.  The reality was that Obi-Wan had been staring at one in his sleep but had been too drug-fogged to realise what it was until he saw it in real life.  The all-new reminder that he was a Seer left Obi wanting to hide under the covers like a child.  

“I’ve seen replicas and holograms of Jedi holocrons,” he answered stiltedly, still off-balance and flooded by too many feelings at once, “At the Jedi Academy.  Never a real one in person.”  He had a very, very bad feeling about the fact that he was seeing one now - in the hands of a Sith.  

But Maul had more to add, even as he balanced the metal and glass cube upon his palm between them, “That is where things get interesting.”  His tone was wry.  Obi-Wan, who had found himself staring at the holocron (structured by golden filigree and sharp angles, its surfaces an oddly colourless glass or maybe crystal), flicked his eyes back up to Maul’s expression.  The Sith looked vaguely peevish.  A quick glance at Savage showed the younger brother as merely being baffled, as if he hadn’t expected this interaction to happen at all.  Maul continued, “Reach your hand out, boy.  You’ll learn something about this Jedi holocron.”

Wary and confused but now also curious despite himself, Obi-Wan raised his hand mostly out of a sense of obligation… but also a little bit out of true interest.  Maul instantly obliged to hold the cube closer, before Obi could test his healing torso by leaning forward and reaching.  He and the other Initiates had all been taught what a Holocron was, along with a healthy fearful respect of them - knowledge was power, but too much of the former could easily lead to an addictive hunger for the latter, and that was a teaching that had stuck with him.  Still, Jedi holocrons were carefully made so that they could not be opened by accident or even by novices, so-

Obi-Wan yelped and dragged his hand back as, in the second his fingers touched down on one of the holocron’s geometric edges, he felt a wave of Dark Force energy.  He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed it before.  Then again, he’d been in the company of two Sith for so long that a certain amount of ambient Dark energy had become normal, and this holocron had blended right in - right until he’d touched it, and now it was like his eyes had been opened.  The shock (and perhaps the quick cry of surprise) set off a coughing fit, but even as he coughed painfully he kept his watering eyes on what was most certainly not a Jedi holocron, despite its looks.

Minor pandemonium reigned for a bit after that: Savage left his perch to immediately come to Obi’s side, hands heavy on his back and chest as if holding him together and words sharp as he lectured his brother. Maul backed off, muttering something about how he’d been sure that would work before turning to defend himself against his brother’s sharp words.  Then the healer, hearing the commotion, came in and started lecturing everyone.  By then, the holocron had disappeared back into Maul’s robes.  

Obi-Wan got medication that made him dizzy but luckily stopped him from trying to [what felt like literally] hack up a lung, and he wished he were in a better mood so that he could have enjoyed the abashed looks on both of the Dathomirian’s faces as the healer told them that they’d almost killed their ‘adopted orphan.’  By the sounds of it, she wasn’t exaggerating.  Lying back against the pillows again, Obi-Wan briefly mulled over that near brush with death, trying to decide how he felt about it.  Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was all the pressure and stress, but he came to the conclusion that he didn’t actually feel any which way in particular.  

Maul and Savage had been talking in sharp, hushed whispers in what Obi was starting to recognize as their native language (he was starting to even recognize words, but nothing to make sense of through the medication now).  It ended with Savage looking deeply displeased and Maul looked ruffled, but stepping back towards Obi-Wan again.  This time he took up a seat on one of the chairs nearby, once again revealing the holocron.  Obi just stared at it dolefully, refusing to speak first.  They were back upon the thin ice again, only this time Obi-Wan wasn’t moving until Maul had shown him where he could safely step.  

“Look, Kenobi,” Maul finally got around to speaking plainly, “If the fates were less fickle, I’d have opened up this holocron on my own rather than showing it to you-”

That sparked Obi’s attention, and he sat up a bit straighter despite the recent warnings not to move.  “Wait - you can’t open it?” he blurted, barely believing it.

By the way Maul glowered, inhaled slowly, and then exhaled gustily out of his nose before speaking, the answer was obviously ‘no.’  “Not alone,” the Zabrak hedged, “While this may have the Force signature of a Sith holocron, it apparently follows the rules of one of yours .”

“So…”  Maybe Obi-Wan really did have no self-preservation.  “...You really can’t open it?”

“No, brat, I cannot!” Maul exploded at him, lips curling back from his teeth in a snarl that Obi would have taken more seriously if he weren’t still letting these new facts sink in.  “Whatever hybrid this is of Jedi and Sith, its maker was entirely too enamoured with the Jedi’s insistence of hoarding knowledge!”  Maul took a breath then and closed his eyes for a second as if that might calm him before he was the one who started telekinetically throwing things.  He pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand.  “Answer me this,” he started again, patience clearly grasped by feeble means, “You have learned of Jedi holocrons, but were you ever taught of Sith ones?”

“I know they exist and look outwardly different,” was all Obi felt safe saying.  He glanced over uneasily as Savage moved, but the other Zabrak was merely taking up his post at the door again.  

Maul just grunted as he accepted that answer, intense eyes flashing open again and hand dropping away from his face.  “Besides being pyramidal instead of cubical, the main difference between a Sith’s holocron and a Jedi’s is that Sith do not believe in the gatekeeping of knowledge,” he started to explain, “While a Sith will protect their holocron physically, if someone is able to take it from them by force, they have earned the right to that knowledge.  You Jedi ensure that your holocrons are maddeningly difficult to access regardless of how they are acquired.  Some require a matching memory crystal, although this one appears to not follow that pattern-”  The way Maul cut off made Obi-Wan suspect that he’d been on the verge of saying ‘ thank fuck .’  He regained his composure and went on without swearing, though, “A Sith holocron could be accessed even by the most mediocre Force-sensitive.”

“Sounds like a good way for a lot of dangerous knowledge to fall into unskilled hands,” Obi-Wan dared to opine.

The Sith’s mouth merely quirked up slightly at one corner.  “You forget how many Sith - the old ones even more so - favored chaos and entropy over order and safety.  Better than hoarding all information, guarded by stuffy, self-righteous dead people who didn’t believe that their knowledge should be passed on at all,” he retorted snidely without missing a beat.  When Obi-Wan opened his mouth to argue back, Maul raised a hand to cut him off, small smirk falling away.  “We can debate everyone’s right to knowledge later.  I did not bring this to you for a philosophical discussion.”

“Then why did you show it to me?”  Even as he asked this, Obi-Wan felt the bottom of his stomach sink.  There was an inkling at the back of his mind, and it made fear coil tight against his breastbone.  He started reaching for the Force again without consciously deciding to do so.

This time Maul didn’t seem to notice, instead answering, “I have been trying to open this holocron with little success - all I have learned is that its maker put one restriction on it.”  Maul’s eyes felt like they were boring through Obi-Wan’s head as the Zabrak finished, “One alone cannot open it.  It must be opened by a Master and Apprentice.”

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan felt like the world was abruptly crushing in on him, while simultaneously crumbling away beneath his feet.  The amorphous fears at the back of his mind crystalized into glass shards, sharp and cutting.  “I will not be your apprentice,” he heard himself saying as if from the bottom of a well.  The pulsing of his own blood in his ears was suddenly thunderously loud.  If he hadn’t been given a new tunic, he was sure someone would have been able to see his heart as it fought against his ribs, unable to slow down no matter how he tried to control his breathing.  The healer had said not to ruin his lungs while they were still fragile.  

Maul’s teeth flashed again in a briefer snarl of frustration than before, stifled more quickly this time.  “I am not asking you to be,” he replied with exasperation, but Obi-Wan didn’t believe him.  After all, wouldn’t that be the one thing more valuable than a captured Seer?  A Seer apprentice, loyal to his master’s teachings?  Any flimsy veil of safety that Obi had been feeling since waking up in this room vanished, replaced by the reminder that he was a valuable tool, surrounded by Sith.  

Maul turned his head just enough to look back at Savage out of one eye, having words for him, too, “And before you ask, no.  This you cannot do for me, Savage.  Strength in the Force you have, but this calls for dexterity you lack.”  Golden eyes shifted back to Obi-Wan.  “It will take the work of two Force users both deft and skillful with the Force to open this, and we’ve clearly seen your capacity to manipulate objects around you with the Force,” Maul finished wryly.  

On a certain level, some of this was reassuring: it sounded less like Obi-Wan needed to be officially Maul’s apprentice to do this, and more like he just needed above-average telekinetic skills.  He couldn’t push down the terror sitting like a lump in his throat, though, threatening to choke him.  He did not doubt that this Sith holocron wanted a Master and Apprentice, and this just felt like it was taking him one step closer to being exactly that.  It felt like invisible hands were dragging at him, pulling him slowly but inexorably deeper into a tarry dark pit with every day that passed in his captor’s hands.  

And the worst part was that he couldn’t think of any way to pull himself out.

“Have I made myself clear, Kenobi?” Maul was saying.  If he was aware of Obi-Wan’s internal struggle, he was ignoring it - or perhaps bypassing it, as he clearly wasn't asking Obi’s opinion on any of this.  Then he cut right to the quick: “The Sith sword has been found.  That vision has been followed to its conclusion.  If you wish for me to delay my hunting for another day, now you must give me this new task - for if I cannot get your help in opening this holocron, then I will have to find someone else who can.  Or turn my skills to other endeavours.”

Obi-Wan’s blood turned to ice.  His breathing had still been feeling stiff and cramped up until this point, but now he stopped entirely for five long seconds as the threat sank in.  These were Jedi-killers, and they could always go back to hunting Jedi rather than relying on a failure like Kenobi.  The realisation that he’d never had a choice in this made it hard to get his lungs to start breathing again after that.

Eventually instinct won over, if nothing else, and Obi-Wan inhaled shallowly to say very quietly on the exhale, “Okay.  I’ll do it.”  He meant to add, ‘ But this doesn’t make me your apprentice ,’ but there didn’t seem to be any point now.  He was already doing despicable things that the Jedi Order would never forgive him for anyway.  

Sinking in on himself against the pillows, he felt the urge to cry but no tears came out.  It was like he was a puppet in the most physical sense now, made of wood and cloth and string, just an apparatus waiting for orders to move.  He watched as Maul (shoulders relaxing and demeanour softening now that he’d gotten an agreement, as if there’s been any doubt that he would) got up and once again took a seat upon the bed, facing his small captive.  Obi-Wan moved his tired eyes to the holocron, sitting up a bit straighter as he laboriously told his body that it would have to move a bit soon.  At least this was not beyond his physical capabilities (moving things with the Force was unlikely to exacerbate his injuries), even if it felt far beyond his psychological ones already.  “What do you want me to do?” he said, and once again it was like he’d fallen somewhere deep inside of himself, his voice very far away. 

He listened passively but attentively to Maul’s instructions, nodding.  He’d always been a good student, even when tired.  This was no different than at the Temple.  Maul had managed to basically ascertain that the holocron was like a puzzle, and that it needed to be disassembled and reassembled into an ‘open’ position quite precisely - but it would take two individuals using the Force to do so successfully, given the puzzle’s complexity and number of pieces.  

A small, probably self-destructive part of Obi-Wan chuckled internally, wondering just how angry Maul would get if he found out that a failed-Padawan wasn’t any more skilled than Savage.  Maybe the Sith would finally snap and kill his prisoner then.

No such luck.

Soon the two of them had the holocron floating between them, pieces of it coming off like flower petals in a river, and they got it reconfigured and open in one try.  It was the most painful victory that Obi-Wan thought he’d ever experienced, and his healing wounds had nothing to do with it.

~^~

Maul was elated.  He’d been worried that the boy’s current condition would make him unable to perform this task, and had been prepared to call a stop to it if this form of exertion was too much.  As Maul had guessed, however, this was an exercise that called more upon the boy’s mind than his muscles, the only movement being the careful, dexterous shifting of both their hands throughout the process.  It had been like watching poetry unfold, the holocron coming to pieces perfectly in midair, then falling back into place again - rearranged - as Kenobi and Maul’s combined focus willed them to.  Maul had noticed early on that Kenobi really was quite skilled in the Force, and this cemented that, impressing the Sith deeply.  This proved that the boy not only had the power to mindlessly trash an entire cargo-hold, but the skill to go with it.  A small part of him actually mourned the fact that Kenobi was not his apprentice, but that regret was short-lived, doused by Maul’s own words right after the battle with the droid abominations: he still truly did not think that this stubborn little boy would ever turn to the Dark Side.  

Content with the current state of things and with a now-unlocked holocron in his hands, Maul was not expecting his brother to immediately stalk up to him and all but drag him out of the room, his Force signature heavy with temper like a storm cloud crackling all around him.

“What is it?” Maul demanded, shaking his arm loose when Savage marched him right out of the building entirely.  “We must watch him-”

“We can see every entrance from here,” Savage snapped.  The hardness of his voice brought Maul up short, because while his brother could be as harsh and firm as a landslide, he almost never did so with Maul himself.  Savage’s entire expression was twisted into a furious scowl, and for a moment Maul was struck by just how much larger his brother was than him, thanks to the Nightsisters’ intervention.  “You push him too hard, brother.  Do you not see?” Savage nonetheless kept his voice quiet to hiss.  

Maul looked around them; it was midday, but no one was around.  He turned back to Savage, brows lowered.  “Whatever are you talking about?”

“The boy.  Do you not-?”  Savage cut himself off and looked away with an uncharacteristic growl of breath, as if his words were beasts that he needed to tame before letting them past his teeth.  He came back to the conversation sounding less furious, but no less fervent.  “The boy’s tolerance is not endless - far from it.”

“His health-” Maul started again, wanting to show that he understood and was not being reckless, but once more he was cut off.

“I speak not of his physical health, brother.  You push too hard at his heart,” Savage snarled right into Maul’s face.  

Maul was stunned.  He couldn’t remember a time when his brother had been this aggressive to him, and that combined with the unexpected words left Maul utterly speechless.  He could only stare, eyes wide and weight shifted back on his heels, as Savage leaned away again - this time to sigh and drag a hand down his face.  He seemed unused to this level of angry forthrightness, too.  “Brother, he is trained in the Jedi ways, but he is but a child,” Savage started explaining more slowly, and his voice sounded sad and almost pained as he laid things out before Maul, “Combine those two things, and you have a pup who holds tightly to his values with hands that are easily broken.  You cannot keep pushing him like this, Maul.  Can you not see how close he already is to breaking?”

The use of his first name alone was another dash of metaphorical cold water, causing Maul to open his mouth three times before words came out.  “What are you talking about?” he growled, but the defensive tone sounded thin.

Savage’s own expression was quite the opposite: sure of itself and strong despite its quiet volume.  “He came to us a prisoner, and survived on his own defiance,” he said with an accepting gesture of one hand, as if that were to be expected.  Then his voice darkened.  “You forced him to accept your help in meditation, necessary but against all of his Jedi instincts - he bent to your will.”  Savage kept going, and somehow his voice just grew more and more full of regret.  “Then we sought after his dreams, and he held out until threats against his kind forced him to bend again.  He acts now as our Seer.  Now, before he’s even had time to rest, you’ve asked him to bend further still - to open a holocron for a Sith that he cannot trust.”  Savage gave his head a slow, sad shake.  “He’s still trying to hold onto himself, Maul.  And even if he were not so stubborn, he has not had time to adjust.  Every time he’s forced to betray what he knows, it is a wound that no healer can remedy.”  Savage drew himself up, and Maul felt as though he were being stared down by a disapproving god, towering and inevitable.  “The boy needed time to recover, but instead you have just pushed him again.”

~^~

Obi-Wan had curled up on his side under the blankets before the two Sith had even left the room.  If they’d asked, he’d have told them he was tired and needed to sleep, but they’d left without a word, just leaving Kenobi with his thoughts.  ‘ You’re a fucking monster ,’ he told himself, biting the inside of his cheek until the taste of copper sprang across his taste-buds, ‘ You just opened a holocron for a Sith .’  He didn’t know what to do.  He barely knew what to feel, besides guilty and terrified and awful.  He could already feel hot wetness against his lashes and pressed his face down hard into the pillow as if that could crush the tears back into his skull.  When he tried to suck in a steadying breath, the left side of his chest throbbed with pain despite the drugs he was on.  The brief agony centred him a bit, though, and he fisted his hands in the blankets, telling himself, “Pull it together, Kenobi.”  This time he inhaled slowly but still forced a deep breath, gritting his teeth through the pain until he could exhale, “No time for a pity party.”  If his words were wobbly and uncertain, he blamed it on the pain rather than on the fact that he really did want a moment to just feel sorry for himself right now.  But Jedi didn’t do that, and even if he clearly had no business ever aspiring to be a Jedi, he at least didn’t want to let the Order down any more than he already had.

Lifting his head from under the blankets, Obi-Wan confirmed that he was indeed alone in the room - something that hadn’t happened since his ill-advised storming of the cockpit on the Scimitar .  Guilt gnawing a hole in his belly, Obi focused on action, realising that he could have easily figured out he was alone another way: through the Force.  Being without a lightsaber still made him feel like he was missing a limb, but it meant that he’d been relying on other facets of the Force for a while now, including sensing the life around him.  

He could work with that.

Sniffling but otherwise refusing to acknowledge how he had sobs stuck at the back of his throat, Obi-Wan closed his eyes again, a plan already forming in the back of his mind.  Was it a good plan?  He wasn’t sure yet, but it probably wasn’t.  All he knew was that if he did nothing, then he’d feel even more complicit in playing the role of a Sith apprentice and giving Maul and Savage access to all the knowledge in a holocron.  Just thinking about it made him hear those words again - “It must be opened by a Master and Apprentice” - and the memory alone all but froze him with horror.  He had to take another shaky breath and force himself back into the moment.  

Through the emotions rioting inside of him, the haze of drugs, and despite the fact that he’d nearly died of a coughing fit under an hour ago, Obi-Wan somehow still managed to focus enough to pinpoint the different life-forces in the building around him.  

Technically he’d never seen the building, but he got a surprisingly good sense of it once he started mentally mapping out living beings.  It was like recognizing the silhouette of a tree in the dark by the stars that it blocked out, and people outside of the building were moving around a lot more than the patients within it - with three outliers: the healer herself was familiar to him, and moving from room to room, person to person, and as Obi-Wan stretched his senses even further he eventually found Maul and Savage.  They were also familiar, of course, but he recoiled as if burned, not wanting further reminders of their permanent presence in his life.

Maybe he could finally do something to make it less permanent.

Obi-Wan had noticed that the healer kept returning to one spot, like a bird to its nest, but since there wasn’t another life-force there, it couldn’t be another patient she was checking on.  Plan solidifying, Obi-Wan opened his eyes and glanced around as if to be sure that he was, well and truly, unsupervised.  

Then he sent his senses out one last time, ensured that Maul ans Savage were still unmoving where they were, and pushed himself into a sitting position.  Just that movement made his head spin and his arms shake, but he needed to do a lot more moving than that.  Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he sat for a moment to collect himself, already cringing internally at the inklings of pain he was getting.  If coughing could just about kill him, what would happen if he fell?  The thought of death hadn’t scared him earlier, but with the renewed little kernel of hope in his breast now, he found himself afraid of the possibility now.  Plus, on a purely logical side, anything short of death was going to hurt a whole fucking lot, and he really wasn’t keen on that.  

Therefore it was with great care that he eased forward until his bare feet were situated on the floor, then exercised all of the balance and care he’d ever learned just to make sure he stood without trouble.  Nothing bad happened, although when he went to breathe a sigh of relief his chest cramped, reminding him that while he didn’t have a parasite in his chest cavity, he was by no means healed.  Swearing softly under his breath, he steadied himself again and then looked determinedly to the door.  As much as he knew he had to be careful, he also knew that he couldn’t waste time, because he had no idea how long it would be before Maul and Savage would come back.  Unsure if he was shaky from weakness or nerves, Obi-Wan headed out into the hallway - glad at least that healing establishments didn’t have locks for him to get past.

Half-baked though it was, Obi-Wan’s plan wasn’t escape.  He wasn’t stupid or hubristic enough to think that he could outrun two Sith hunters even when he was healthy, much less when he’d just undergone a disturbing invasive surgery.  His mind still shied away from thinking about exactly what had been inside of him; just another addendum on a long list of ‘If I think about That I’ll go mad’ things.  As much as he wanted to run right to the healer and cry out his whole story to her, he also knew that he couldn’t dump his woes on the Rhodian woman.  In fact, the only thing scaring him more than the possibility of hurting himself now was the thought that Maul and Savage might find out what he was up to and hurt her.  Instead, when he stopped to lean against a wall and gather his strength again, he closed his eyes and delved into the Force just to be sure that he avoided anyone and everyone in the building.  He was lucky the Rhodian nurse didn’t seem to employ medical droids.

It was a pattern that worked well, as he had to rest often, although he got quicker and quicker at identifying all of the Force-signatures around him.  All in all, it still felt like hours but was probably only five minutes before he was slipping into the room that his doctor kept returning to.  He’d already checked and knew that she was with a patient, and by now had deduced that any room she checked in on without a patient had to be a personal office or supply room.  He wasn’t sure which he was hoping for when he slipped in, wincing as he twisted through the door and pulled it shut behind him.  He briefly wished for Dathomirian eyes, as he’d long-since determined that they could see in the dark; before all of this, Kenobi would simply have pulled out his lightsaber to light up the room.  Instead he cradled one arm gingerly against his chest and felt around for a light panel.  When illumination filled the room, Obi-Wan’s eyes scanned around it rapidly, and he nearly sobbed with relief when he saw that it was indeed a little office - and he could see an ancient-looking comms system.  

His joy faded rapidly, however, as the next question came up: Who was he even supposed to contact?  And who would believe a failed Initiate trying to tell them that Sith existed?  Maul and Savage were an incontrovertible part of Obi-Wan’s life now, but before Bandomeer they’d been just old myths.

Time was of the essence, so even as he was swamped by the hopeless sense that no one was likely to answer a communication from him even if they did know exactly who it was coming from, Obi slid into the little desk chair and familiarized himself with the system before him.  Much like the Scimitar , it wasn’t exactly a make he had used before, but a lot of comm systems were standardised.  It was with a sinking heart and ever-increasing resignation that he realised this device was not particularly long-ranged. Even if he did feel like going all-in and trying to reach the Jedi Council, he’d seen enough of the star-map aboard the Scimitar to know Coruscant was out of range.  

For a moment Obi-Wan just leaned his elbows on the desk and put his head in his hands, chest throbbing now.  

Realising that he didn’t have any specific comm-wave that he either knew to transmit to or which he knew to be within range, but also knowing that any minute the healer could finish her latest patient-check and come back with a million questions that he couldn’t answer - and that any minute Maul and Savage could likewise start to head back inside to check on his now-empty bed - Obi-Wan ransacked his mind for a plan.  The best he could come up with on short-notice felt pathetically useless, but soon he was pushing buttons anyway.  He was careful to cover his tracks, and as soon as his message was sent, he put everything back to the frequency he’d found it in, leaving as if he’d never been there.  

The walk back to his room felt more like an urgent shuffle, and it was harder to focus on sensing where everyone was because it was also harder to remember why that was even important.  He’d had a moment of freedom to do something, and it felt like he’d wasted it, even if he had gotten a message out.  

Without a viable receiver, Kenobi had been forced to simply send out a general signal - a lone call into the darkness, one that he doubted would even make it very far given the relative weakness of the comm system.  But without any knowledge of who might even hear it… and aware that possibly even the Scimitar could pick it up, no matter the measures he’d taken to avoid that… he’d also been forced to keep his message vague.  So instead of shouting to anyone in the stars who would listen “There are Sith here!  I’m not crazy!  They’re real, they’re back!” he’d limited his words and moderated them even though it hurt to do.  All he’d sent was: “This is a message for Master Qui-Gon Jinn.”  He’d wanted to say “Come find me,” but hadn’t had the guts to ask that again, not after he’d been wishing it every night aboard the mining platform, only to learn that his almost-Master had prioritised seeking out a Dark Jedi instead.  So Obi-Wan had instead put his needy, desperate feelings aside and finished, “To any who receive this message, please relay to him these coordinates and that a Dark Jedi has been sighted.”  It was a feeble lie, one that Master Jinn would likely see as a trap more than anything else, but Kenobi knew that at least it would catch his attention.  That was the most he could hope for.  He knew, if nothing else, that Jinn would come for Xanatos.  

What little luck Obi-Wan had somehow managed to hold, and he snuck back down the halls and to his room without being noticed.  At one point he had to press himself into a little window alcove, the thick glass cold against his side as he waited for the healer to turn down a hallway nearby.  Eyes closed, mind focused on reading the Force like little ambulatory flames all around him, Kenobi tracked her progress while also praying to any deity he’d ever heard of that Maul and Savage would keep doing… whatever they were doing… on the far side of the building.  It wasn’t until the healer started moving away again that he opened his eyes and sighed in relief - and only at that point did he notice someone outside was staring at him through the window, no doubt finding his antics very strange.

Obi-Wan was in such a hurry to slip away (finally making it back to his room where he could more or less collapse onto the bed, almost disturbingly exhausted now) that he didn’t notice the watcher from outside was blue-skinned and red-eyed, just like in his dreams.

~^~

Despite being shockingly exhausted by such a small mission, Obi-Wan didn’t fall asleep.  His mind was still whirling too fast, and besides that he ached.  It felt like his insides were sticking together, pulling every time he moved, and he imagined that this was what scar tissue felt like when it was form, got torn, and formed again.  He honestly didn’t want to know what his chest cavity looked like, and tried not to think about if he’d ever breathe the same way again.  The healer would murder him if she knew he wasn’t just lying still and healing like she’d told him to.

Nonetheless, Obi-Wan was feigning sleep reasonably well by the time the door opened, and since he’d still been extending his senses to feel the Force around him, he knew it was the two Dathomirians even before Maul said his name: “Kenobi?”

It was tempting to reply, ‘ Yes, it’s still me.  Shocking, I know, ’ but Obi-Wan just felt tiredness where his snark usually resided.  Nonetheless, he did sigh and push himself into a sitting position, deciding to face whatever came next sitting up instead of faking sleep like last time.  The strange light-heartedness of that memory, the Sith knowing he was awake but playing along, was jarring to remember, and caused a new sort of ache to settle in Kenobi’s chest.  Before he could try and determine what that feeling was, Maul stepped forward from where he and Savage were in the doorway - pulling out the holocron again.  Obi-Wan’s feelings got pretty damn simple then, as he frowned and leaned subtly away from the thing, hating how it reminded him about what he’d been a part of.  

As Savage took up his seat before the closed door again, Maul merely came forward to stand at the foot of the bed, fiddling with the holocron with more awkwardness than Obi-Wan thought he’d ever seen from him.  It was enough to allow befuddlement (and almost baffled amusement) to push through Kenobi’s dark mood.  “I wish to make a deal with you,” the Sith finally said, raising his head and meeting Obi’s eyes with a businesslike expression.

Now Obi-Wan was fully perplexed.  It was enough for some of that lost sassiness to actually resurface, as he deadpanned before he could think better of it, “Why?  You’ve already got more than enough leverage to get me to do just about anything.  A deal sounds like a waste of your time, pardon me for saying.”

Maul’s expression got sour, but Savage muttered something to him in probably-Dathomirian.  When Maul gave a snarl, it was brief and unexpectedly turned on Savage, not Kenobi.  Neutral-faced again (or as close as he could get with his fearsome tattoos), Maul turned back to Kenobi, and this time pulled the second chair close enough to sit.  It was nice not to be loomed over, and Obi-Wan started to feel curious despite himself.  “The situation has changed,” Maul said, still formal and a bit stilted, but it was a novel change from his usual threatening demeanour so Kenobi just sat and listened with one eyebrow raised.  Maul turned the cuboidal shape over in his hands, and he stared down at it as he continued.  “It would seem that the holocron not only requires two skilled Force-users to open it, but also… to keep it open.  I discovered this upon leaving a moment ago.”

“Wait, it-?  What?” Obi-Wan fumbled the process this new information.  He sat forward a bit, only to feel his chest and side remind him that he’d done far too much moving already.  With a little grimace, he held his side and subsided against the pillows again.  

“I am reliant upon your continuous cooperation to maintain access to the holocron,” Maul responded bluntly.  It was what the red-patterned Sith said next, though, that truly caught Obi-Wan by surprise: “Instead of tediously repeatedly threatening you into assisting me, I wish to compromise with you.  Play your part in opening the holocron whenever I wish, and I will let you direct what information we access from it.”

Dozens of emotions flooded through Obi-Wan, and he just stared for three long seconds of silence before finally settling on suspicion.  “Why would you want that?” he demanded to know.  He couldn’t help the slight hitch to his voice that was due to hope, though, because he felt some of the crushing weight of responsibility and betrayal lift from him.  Maybe he could still salvage this situation; maybe he still had some control over the things around him.

Maul shrugged, at least feigning ease very well.  “Limited information is better than none.  Anything that I can learn from this holocron will be more than I have now.”

Obi-Wan eyed both Sith suspiciously, eyes sliding back and forth between them.  As much as he liked this turn of events - perhaps even wanted to rub it in a bit that Maul couldn’t access his prize without Obi’s help - he was nervous that it was too good to be true.  “You’ll really let me decide what information we seek out?” he checked.

The surprises continued, as Maul nodded.  “My other option is fighting with you endlessly, and while I might be physically superior by a wide margin, I assure you it’s still an exhausting prospect.  I would rather not,” he huffed.  

“Agreed,” Savage chimed in unexpectedly.  Obi-Wan didn’t know whether to be chuffed or offended to be labelled as so annoying.  

“So what do you say, Kenobi?” Maul brought his attention back to him, “Is this an acceptable proposition?”

It was honestly more than Obi-Wan could have hoped for, and he was struggling not to let ridiculous elation take over.  He couldn’t remember ever being so relieved by such a small thing.  Yes, he was still giving Sith access to a holocron, but at least he could hopefully mitigate the damage if he could steer them away from the more dangerous things they found - and if Maul didn’t listen, Kenobi could just stop being helpful and the Sith would be locked out.  

He nodded eagerly, and was surprised to find that his lashes felt wet when he blinked.  He blinked hard and kept any embarrassing, stupid tears from falling down his face, though, as Maul immediately got down to business and took up his previous perch sitting across from Obi on the bed.  Savage went to find food and drink, stating firmly to Maul, “You still will get nothing if he wastes away.”  

Obi-Wan was surprised to find that he actually had an appetite.

He also felt less like his world was imploding as he lifted his hands yet again, following Maul’s careful instructions, and began to play his part in delicately deconstructing and then reconstructing the holocron between them.

Chapter Text

Maul had lied.  The holocron, once opened by a Master and Apprentice, stayed open just fine, and there really was no need for Kenobi’s continued cooperation on that front.  It had seemed the best way to give Kenobi some of the mental breathing room that Savage had made such a vehement argument for.  Maul was not prepared for how immediately his brother would be proven right, as the impact on Obi-Wan’s whole demeanour was shockingly obvious.

Maul had noticed, to his disgruntlement, how the boy’s sarcasm had been fading of late.  It would have seemed a boon had this not been a negative indicator of Kenobi’s health, and to hear not a single word of snark upon re-entering the room emphasised all that Savage had said.  Kenobi had suddenly looked… very small, in a way Maul somehow had not noticed but Savage had.  It was humbling and also faintly horrifying to realise.  

The moment Kenobi had heard Maul offering him some semblance of control over the situation, however, it was like something had reignited behind the boy’s blue eyes.  They were bright again, flashing with almost avaricious interest that grew by the second - grew so fast, in fact, that Maul was reminded of when he’d used the Force to coax the boy into drinking medicine and the mind-trick had worked too well.  This was no trick of Maul’s, though, beyond the allure of his simple lie and the obvious desperation of Kenobi’s to believe it.  Maul wasn’t sure if he felt better or worse about lying as he saw the boy almost physically struggling to think it through rather than pounce on it like a starved Nydak.  Clearly Kenobi was elated to hear Maul’s offer, to the point that it was making the Force crackle around him.  It wasn't the same frenetic buzz of nerves that Maul had begun to get used to, but an effervescent tremor that was almost infectious.

Tamping down Maul’s own positive response was the unavoidable conclusion that Savage had been right.  The boy was desperate for any port in a storm.  

As Savage (who had the decency to not rub it in that he’d been right) went to find food and drink, Maul focused on maintaining the current ruse.  He also knew that he couldn’t overtax the boy, as eager as Kenobi was to be involved now, because then the healer would certainly raise a fuss - she already hated how imposing and bossy her patient’s two guardians were.  Kenobi also had a disturbing habit of hiding pain and injury as long as possible, and this renewed vigour that was lighting up his eyes was also erasing some of the more transparent exhaustion Maul had been seeing earlier.  He’d have to watch carefully.  

The fact that he should have been far more entranced by the contents of a holocron than by the physical wellbeing of a Jedi whelp did not cross his mind.  

As soon as they initiated one final twist of the components and the holocron opened, however - one further step than they'd taken it before - Maul cursed.  A holographic figure, incredibly alien with a tentacled, cephalopod appearance, sprang into view.

Kenobi immediately glanced up at the sound of Maul swearing, and somehow the boy’s concerned blue eyes was enough to get Maul to admit, “I had hoped that this particular trait of Jedi holocrons would be absent.  Sith rarely find it necessary to encode a guide in their holocrons.”  

Already their guide was talking, cycling through languages to ask what they spoke - luckily, Galactic Basic seemed on the list.  

“I think they seem very useful,” Kenobi dared to argue.  He seemed… guardedly fascinated.  

Maul, on the other hand, was guardedly annoyed.  “Usually when the creator of a holocron finds it necessary to input themselves into the holocron itself, their goal is to make access difficult rather than easy.  That’s why it’s a Jedi habit,” he growled.  

“Jedi?” the holographic figure immediately said, and damn, it was fairly well-programmed.  The one Sith holocron that Maul had encountered with a holographic guide in it had been fairly rudimentary, responding only to the most basic of prompts and just hovering motionlessly if anything outside of those prompts was said.  Honestly, now that he thought back on that frustrating experience, Maul wasn’t sure what he preferred: an alert hologram that listened and responded, or one that kept people out just because it took ages to puzzle through what phrases it was waiting for.  Sounding almost smug, the hologram went on, “This one has knowledge of both the Jedi and the Sith to share, and many other things.”  

“No!” Kenobi barked instantly, then seemed to falter.  It was unclear what he was saying no to, and by the way the boy floundered afterwards, he wasn’t sure either.  

Maul met the boy’s gaze unblinkingly, and just raised one eyebrow.  “It’s a choice between Sith knowledge and Jedi knowledge.  Which do you find more dangerous to let me hear?”  Honestly, Maul was quite curious about how Kenobi would respond to that - but the hologram definitely showed that responsive programming was worse than unresponsive, as it responded to parts of the discussion not directed at it.

“This one is - or was, depending on when you are viewing this - a great gatherer of knowledge,” the hologram began to babble, although Maul could not even guess where the alien’s mouth was; he guessed somewhere below the pair of ink-black, bulbous eyes.  “It’s pointless to label it as good or bad, dangerous or not, or even Sith or Jedi.”

“I believe my young companion would disagree,” Maul couldn’t resist saying with a significant smirk Kenobi’s way.  The boy wrinkled his nose back in a pissy look.  

“Are you a Sith then?” Kenobi nonetheless chose to ask.  It was a good question - also a safe one.  The holocron’s denizen seemed happy to answer any questions, and this information was likely the least problematic information the holocron contained.

Tentacles that were maybe but not certainly limbs rippled a little as their guide turned more towards Kenobi.  More strange shapes shifted beneath the simple cowled robe.  “This one is called Kalamalka Marqa, Mindsharp of the Gree,” it said, and its head lifted enough from its cowl to reveal what looked like a breathing contraption - theoretically hiding a mouth.  “Forgive the humble abode this one speaks from.  This Mindsharp came across this holocron and it suited this one's purposes better than wasting time making one of my own.”  Its body was largely globulous besides the tentacles, but it seemed to stand up a bit straighter as it finished almost smugly, “And this one is also a Sith.”

~^~

Kenobi looked visibly disappointed that this wasn’t secretly the holocron of a Jedi, despite what the Dark Force signature had hinted at, so Maul decided that today he would not push.  He let Kenobi ask what questions he liked, even though those questions focused primarily on the holocron’s maker rather than its contents.  The story behind it all was rather fascinating, even Maul had to admit, as he sat with one elbow on a knee and his chin propped in the cup of his hand, idly watching.  While Kenobi asked questions and the hologram eagerly answered, Maul read between the lines and gleaned still more - firstly that Kalamalka was most certainly not the same Sith whose corpse they’d burned at the factory.  This was apparently an oft-stolen holocron.  Kalamalka Marqa (or Darth Omniphous, as he pompously titled himself from time to time, as if Kenobi and Maul should know of him) had all the pride and ambition typical of a Sith, but his disinterest in physical violence (or his laziness to go out and get his tentacles dirty, Maul suspected) had led him to living a life of obscurity.  Darth Omniphous was so eager for knowledge that it sounded like he’d thought of little else all his days - although there were hints of cold maliciousness that Maul picked up here and there.  In a way, this Gree Sith was more dangerous than Maul or Savage, as he fancied himself a harmless scholar but almost certainly had murdered the Jedi who had originally made this holocron.  At best he’d stood idly by and watched with all the analytical interest of a scientist as the Jedi had died.  The details were unclear, but even Kenobi had glanced uneasily across at Maul when Darth Omniphous had danced around a question regarding the holocon’s original maker.  

By then Savage had come back in, and while he did not step forward to interrupt (his arms full of food and drink), he swiftly started glaring distrustfully at the holocron’s guardian.  In fact, Savage joined Kenobi in trying to occasionally catch Maul’s eye, as if to ask if he, too, found this cephalopod unnerving.  

Maul just found Omniphous annoying.  

Omniphous appeared to be an omnibus of other people’s information; Maul was unconvinced that the ancient Gree had learned anything himself firsthand.  Apparently a quite long-lived species, the Gree was more than happy to belabour Kenobi with all manner of history lessons, although the stories inevitably took a dark turn.  For example, Omniphous started a topic about ancient versions of hyperdrive that was really quite fascinating - and for some reason Kenobi became very focused on it, too.  It was a pretty safe topic to be discussing in front of Sith enemies, as it seemed to be a millenia-old topic.  But when Omniphous suddenly started blathering on about how it was run on Force-users (not by - on ; even Maul sat up a bit in surprise and Savage jolted visibly in his seat), the pleasant topic quickly became dark.  Apparently long before most of the known galaxy had even been populated, a hyperdrive had been created that used Force-users like batteries, creating ships capable of jumping from place to place so long as those places were strong in the Force - and therefore potential ‘refills’ to keep the ship running.  Kenobi started to look a bit sick and even Maul was becoming glad that this was ancient history by the time Omnipihous suddenly cocked his globulous head and murmured thoughtfully, “Although this one does not think that a modern version of it is still in use in what you call the Unknown Regions.  It doesn’t drain Force-users dry anymore, mind you, but at least one innovative species found a way to connect Force-users quite intimately into their ship’s systems. In a place where there are no maps, it’s the only way to fly. This one wonders if they even know the dark history of that technology?”  Omniphous made a bubbling sort of noise that was perhaps his version of a judgmental laugh.  “The disadvantage to short-lived races - no memory at all of what came before.”  

Kenobi had sat frozen for a moment after that, but before Maul or Savage could ask if he was all right, the boy closed his eyes and gave his head a little shake before pointedly changing the subject.

Things did not get better.  Every story after that either started out dark or got there by the end, no matter Kenobi’s valiant efforts.

A talk about kyber crystals devolved into commentary about ‘bleeding’ crystals to create Sith lightsabers, a topic that made Maul flinch quietly because while neither he nor Savage had 'bled' any crystals, he actually knew of that topic from Sidious, so Omniphous at least wasn’t totally full of shit (unfortunately).  A seemingly benign story about the history of the Jedi Order suddenly detoured into talking about a Sith temple, which Gree insisted was built beneath the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.  Then Omniphous started talking about a Sith holocron hidden in said Jedi temple like some sort of bug.  At that point Kenobi began arguing with Darth Omniphous, the boy clearly defensive about the Jedi Order - meanwhile, Omniphous was equally defensive about his knowledge, and seemed to take it quite personally whenever the validity of it was brought into question.  

“The original maker of this Holocron gathered that knowledge - do not shout at this one just because your Jedi did not share that information!” the holographic guardian was now hissing quite heatedly, whole body roiling and moving in unsettling ways beneath layers of clothing.  

Blue eyes bright with temper, Kenobi didn’t hesitate to snap back, “I don’t care if you personally gathered all of that shit out of your own ars-!”

Savage stepped forward to cut the boy off with a big hand over his mouth.  “I think that is enough for one day,” the younger Zabrak said firmly enough that everyone (even Omniphous, the hologram belatedly taking notice of the trio’s third member) shut up and looked to him.  Savage even shot Maul a gimlet, warning sort of look, to which Maul raised his hands, palm-forward to indicate that he’d had nothing to do with this.  He hadn’t said a word for ten whole minutes, in fact.  It seemed Savage did not find his brother innocent in the matter, but his glower was cut short as Kenobi started coughing into Savage’s hand (which he swiftly removed).  All of the arguing had apparently overworked the boy, and Maul abruptly felt stupid for forgetting that their young Seer was recovering from some pretty serious damage to his lungs.  Maul snapped the holocron closed with a flick of his wrist just as Omniphous started to ask what was going on.

“I’ll fetch the healer,” Maul offered without prompting, even as Savage went to belatedly gather up the food he’d gathered earlier.  Maul left the room before he had to see too much of his brother trying to feed their prisoner like a mother bird trying to fatten up a sickly fledgling.  

~^~

‘ In a place where there are no maps, it’s the only way to fly .’  Obi-Wan kept running Kalamalka Marqa’s words around in his head, thinking back to his most recent spat of dreams.  The moment the hologram had said it, Obi-Wan had been rocketed into a flashback, and while it had been a blessedly brief one, he still hated how unsettled it had left him.  Truthfully, he hated any reminder of how connected his dreams were to real life.  It would have been lovely to simply have a basic nightmare about crashing a starship because he forgot how to fly - instead, he apparently had dreamt of flying a ship where there were no working maps and his only salvation had been a little cube that was actually a holocron full of dubious secrets.  Whatever that meant, his brain apparently thought it was important, because he kept dreaming about it.

And thanks to all of the disturbing information spewed for by that fucking holocron, the dreams managed to get even worse.

Any sense of triumph that Obi might have felt about successfully sending out a message was long gone even before the healer came in and he forced himself to smile and be friendly again.  She wasn’t happy.  Apparently he’d strained his healing wound again, and for a terrifying moment he thought she’d somehow find out that his condition had worsened because he’d gone sneaking around the building.  Luckily, she seemed eager to blame the two Sith, and if Kenobi were less tired and stressed maybe he’d have been more amused by how she berated them until even Savage seemed to grow small.  Then she came back and undid the bandages around Kenobi’s forearms, declaring them healed enough to not need covering anymore, and that made his mood worse.  While no longer raw, oozing burns, the marks of the two lightsabers against his flesh were blindingly visible, and Obi-Wan couldn’t imagine the scars ever going away.  “One mark from your new masters, to remember who you belong to - and one from me, to remember who put you there,” he remembered Xanatos saying as clearly as if the Dark Jedi were whispering even now in his ear.  

As inconspicuously as possible, Kenobi had tucked his forearms amidst the blankets pooled at his waist, although it was a struggle to appear friendly and chipper after that.  It felt like he was venting fuel out into empty space, or every smile was a hole in a ship’s hull, energy being lost into space at a rate he couldn’t keep up with.  

After eating he was eager for sleep - only to have dreams rocketing him back into wakefulness over and over again.  Now he was flying a ship within space so starless and black that it was like being in the belly of a beast.  The controls made no sense, but he tried anyway, something in his head screaming - screaming - that there were whole planets looming up in his way, whole starfields waiting to appear so he could crash into them and rip his ship into a million pieces.  In the way of dreams, he somehow started to figure things out even as the panic made his chest tight and unbreathable with pain.  

But just as he started to get the hang of flying this strange ship through this strange darkness, he looked down and realised that his hands were dissolving into the controls.

He was vaguely aware of waking up with a choked-off scream in his throat.  Obi-Wan thought he might have been panting something about the ship eating him, but it was all a shadowy blur in the darkened room as he held his hands up in front of his face and just stared at them - needing proof that this finger and palms were still there, and hadn’t melded together with a strange ship’s hardware.  

When something shadowy touched the back of one hand he jerked them tight against his chest, hiding them so that he wouldn’t lose them.  He gripped the front of his shirt so tight his fingernails cut the skin along his collarbone.

“Easy, little thing, easy,” a low, quiet voice rumbled, soft as faraway thunder.  The next touch was on Kenobi’s head, and he’d already tucked his chin down over his hands, so he couldn’t physically pull away any further.  Dreams and reality separated a bit further, though, as he recognized the weight of a large hand.  Obi-Wan shuddered through another wave of mindless terror, the dream still clinging to his mind and senses.  The warm hand gave a slow stroke, too solid and warm to be a dream, body heat seeping through his hair and into his scalp.  “Your dreams hold more weight than most, but are still dreams.  You are awake,” the familiarity of Savage’s voice came next, although perhaps it was good that Kenobi didn’t wake up enough to overthink that - or overthink the comfort and relief that was sinking in along with it.  A massive hand that had created one of the lightsaber burns on Obi-Wan’s arm kept petting him softly, and Obi felt his body slide forward a little as the bed dipped.  In his dream, in the strange ship, he’d been dragged inexorably towards invisible black holes, but now he just followed gravity a bit closer to the weighty warmth of Savage sitting at the edge of the bed.  Another gentle stroke across Kenobi’s hair, dangerous claws merely brushing his scalp.  Obi-Wan started to relax his hands from their rigid position under his chin.  The tight fist of panic loosened from around his heart.  

The absence of terror left room for exhaustion to slip back in.

Kenobi faded back into sleep again, still hearing “Shhh, little thing,” and feeling a hand big enough to crush him instead brushing his hair back in a steady, gentle rhythm.  

~^~

Dathomirians could go a truly shocking amount of time without sleep, having been born and trained for endurance, but the last few days had been particularly taxing, and Savage and Maul had opted for one of them staying awake through the night to watch Kenobi while the other went to sleep on the ship.  Therefore, it wasn’t until morning that Maul returned to find the healer angry, Savage worried, and Kenobi twice the problem that he usually was.  It seemed that the healer was upset because the boy was not resting and therefore not healing well, setting off metaphorical medical alarms in her head and starting a few arguments where she claimed the problem was the two “tattooed brutes” who never left her patient alone.  Maul shut this down as he had before, since their presence at Kenobi’s side was not up for discussion.  That made Kenobi anxious, though, and after his enlightening chat with Savage, Maul knew why - the boy was no doubt worried about Maul’s threats to murder the healer if she learned too much.  As necessary as the threat had felt at the time, Maul was beginning to wish he’d never made it, because it made the little Seer almost painfully eager to divert the healer’s attention.  That, in turn, was mindbogglingly strange to watch, because Maul had gotten so used to the copper-haired little boy being mouthy and snarky and sharp - but when trying to get the healer to talk about anything other than the two Sith in the room and the injuries on his body he became excruciatingly people-pleasing.

For better or for worse, the healer didn’t seem to notice that it was odd, and fell for it fairly quickly.  Maul exchanged a look and a shrug with Savage, both of them probably trying to imagine what it would be like if this nice, friendly, charming Kenobi was the only version of him that they knew.

Savage pulled him aside not long after that, out of hearing- but not sight-range of Kenobi and the healer, and explained that the night had indeed been a rough one.  Savage was clearly worried about how plagued by dreams the boy had been, but for once, Maul’s mind was elsewhere - picking up the parts in the story where his brother had comforted the little Jedi.  Glancing over at Kenobi now, and understanding keenly the inner workings of pride, Maul began to guess at the cause for Kenobi’s fickle mood.  The boy was being nice to the healer because she was not involved - but he was being extra sharp to his captors to make up for the comfort he’d accepted from one of them last night.  

Since there was no point in telling the boy that his shame was unnecessary, Maul just held his tongue and weathered Kenobi’s acetylene-torch glare after the Rhodian healer finally left them.  The boy’s breathing was still tight and his body tense despite the medications the healer had gotten into him, and Maul wasn’t surprised; pain wasn’t the boy’s problem right now.  Anxiety was, not to mention the exhaustion Maul could see putting shadow’s under his eyes.

“So,” Kenobi started, speaking up bluntly and first to control the conversation.  “Time to dig into that holocron again?  Or are you going to threaten me first?”  Despite the bold challenge of his words, the boy tensed further and curled his body up subtly tighter as Maul drew level with the bed.  The boy had the blankets at his waist and was trying to hide how he was fiddling with them, hands and forearms buried behind folds of cloth.  

“No holocron today,” Maul surprised everyone in the room (even himself, a little) by saying.  He’d come to this decision while walking over, but was now determined to follow through with it, even as his brother and his captive abruptly looked at him with bewilderment.  Maul pretended not to notice. “Or at least not yet.”  Now Kenobi’s belligerent scowl was back, so Maul went on quickly before it could transform into a catty response that would set his teeth on edge, “Meditation first.  Savage, watch that the healer does not barge in while I’m trying to set our Seer’s mind to rights.”

While Maul said all of this, he was circling around to the head of the bed.  He gestured impatiently with a hand for Kenobi to scoot forward, so they could get to their usual arrangement as quickly (and without embarrassment, hopefully) as possible.  The boy was already acting up because he felt like he was ‘playing nice with the enemy,’ but the boy’s nightly tribulations would likely just continue if Maul didn’t help the boy get his thaumaturgic abilities under control.  “Move, Kenobi,” he said, words gruff so that Kenobi wouldn’t take this as more unwanted kindness like Savage had given him last night, “You got a reprieve from your lessons until now because you were too weak to sit up, but now you have no excuse.”

“Still hoping to sort my dreams out?” Kenobi sniped back, although he did shuffle forward a bit on the bed, eyeing Maul warily all the while.  

Maul gripped Kenobi’s elbows to slide him forward a bit faster, and was rewarded by a burst of energy through the Force that made just about everything in the room shudder.  Savage weathered it with widened eyes and Maul swore but let go.  The boy’s cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, but as a testament to his bellicose mood, Kenobi made no effort to apologise for the outburst.  Since Maul was not an idiot, he decided not to start that fight.  He just answered Kenobi’s question instead as he slipped into a position behind the boy like they’d always done before, “I’m trying to make sure your gift doesn’t shatter your mind, as it seems eager to cause trouble when unattended.”  They hadn’t meditated near each other like this in some time, and Maul tried to remember the necessary mindset even as Kenobi’s unease crackled around him like a storm.  “You’re more valuable than a holocron.”

It had been an absentminded final comment, but Kenobi still froze for a moment, an obvious cessation of movement when they were so close.  It was after a strange pause that the boy, facing forward so Maul couldn’t see his face, scoffed, “You mean my gift is more valuable than a holocron.”

Savage spoke up from where he’d settled his chair in its customary place in front of the door, “No, my brother meant what he said.”  To which Maul stared at Savage over Kenobi’s head, because no, he certainly had not.  That had most definitely been a slip of the tongue.  Savage was ignoring him, though, focused on the boy, whose face the younger Zabrak could see, “Now do as my brother says and focus.  The sooner you learn how to master your mind, the sooner you can rest and heal.”

Proving that he was overcompensating for his weakness from the night before, Kenobi muttered grouchily, “And the sooner you can cart me off to gods’ know where to be a future-seeing machine.”

“Kenobi!” Maul growled reproachfully.  He lifted a hand to thump the boy’s shoulder with one finger, which Kenobi brushed off.

Surprisingly, though, after that Kenobi settled, and meditation went surprisingly smoothly.  In fact, despite the cantankerous start to the day, it was possibly more peaceful than any attempts they’d made thus far.

Unable to contain his curiosity, Maul did - just once - brush a bit closer to Kenobi’s thoughts (easily done with them already sitting almost close enough to touch, and their minds necessarily close, too, as Maul sought to ‘tune’ Kenobi’s errant mental Force signature into something resembling his own calm rhythm).  All his nosiness got him was an unexpected word on repeat, though - ‘ Valuable valuable valuable ’ - sometimes with a question mark, sometimes a statement, but always with a painful vibrato of longing or an inexplicable ring of relief and almost happiness to it.

Baffled and unsettled, two things he could not be if he was to help the Padawan’s mental state, Maul withdrew before he could learn more.  

~^~

Savage watched with secret amusement as his brother settled his body a bit closer to his small charge.  Already sitting at Kenobi’s back (both of them like mirrors of one another as usual, cross-legged), Maul leaned forward more until he looked like he wanted to envelope the child.  Savage fought back a smile and likewise suppressed the temptation to tell his brother that he was acting protective .  ‘ And the boy is in need of it ,’ Savage thought, his heart doing strange warm things in his chest as he watched Kenobi settle into the powerful shadow of Maul.  The little Seer’s eyes were closed, his body relaxed.  Savage wasn’t as gifted at reading the finer nuances of the Force as his brother was, but even he could tell that progress was being made, Kenobi’s presence in the Force going from erratic to something more resembling Maul’s calm.  Resembling, but not the same; two different instruments playing a note of the same pitch.  

The only thing that seemed off and made Savage frown was how Kenobi’s hands, instead of being rested on his knees in a typical meditative posture, were curled in his lap.  The boy had been more or less perpetually tangled in blankets ever since coming to the healer, so maybe this was nothing, but Savage was not convinced.  

Before Savage could ponder that further, Kenobi spoke up out of the blue, “I dreamt that I needed the holocron.”

Maul’s eyes had been closed, too, head hovering above and just behind Kenobi’s, breath deep and even, but now his eyes snapped open and his breathing stuttered.  Muscles flexed in his tattooed forearms as Kenobi’s words startled all of them.  Blue eyes still closed but mouth now turned down in a tense little frown, Kenobi continued quietly for no reason that either Sith could understand, “Before you brought it out.  I’d dreamt of it opening up when I needed it.  But I didn’t recognize what it was until now.”

Savage winced at how quickly his brother moved, but at least Kenobi seemed to be expecting it, as Maul leaned over and reached around to catch the boy’s chin in one hand.  Maul used his grip to make Kenobi look back at him, and Savage watched the little human somehow respond with both a rebellious expression and by physically shrinking down to make himself smaller, body twisting uncomfortably.  He also tugged the blanket closer over his lap, and it was only then that Savage suddenly noticed that Kenobi was actively hiding… not his hands.  His forearms.  The shock of understanding hit the younger Zabrak even as Maul started talking.

“What exactly was your dream?” Maul demanded, voice quiet because he hardly needed the volume with his proximity.  

The boy squirmed a little but didn’t try to wrench his chin free.  He did grimace, understandably uncomfortable with having his head twisted around like that in such an unyielding grip.  He also kept the blankets tucked over his forearms, and Savage could not stop staring.  “I keep dreaming that I’m flying a ship I’ve never seen before, and there aren’t even stars to navigate by,” the boy answered with surprisingly little reticence, “I don’t know.  It’s as weird as my other dreams.  But at first, that holocron would appear and unfold into a map and it was the only thing that kept me from crashing the ship.”

“At first?” Maul pressed, as predatorily keen as ever.  Savage rather wished his brother were not so hyper-focused right now, because then perhaps he’d also notice Kenobi hiding his healing arms.  Neither Dathomirian had thought twice about it when the healer had removed the bandages, beyond being pleased that the healing process no longer required constant coverings.  But now that he was thinking about it, and putting himself in the shoes of the young human who was wearing these scars, Savage felt guilt and sympathy knotting up his heart like a fist behind his breastbone.  Growing up in one of the male colonies on Dathomir, Savage and Maul had been no strangers to wounds that scarred, and now in their adulthood respected the tales that old wounds told, but this was a Jedi Padawan who had clearly been raised very differently.

Kenobi breathed out a huffing little breath through his nose and almost rolled his eyes, mostly just flicking his gaze off to the side, avoiding Maul’s intense stare.  “Well, now that we have the holocron, I just keep dreaming that I can’t get the controls to work, and then my hands start melting into them.”  His nose wrinkled in the start of a snarl, and his next words held more of an edge, “I don’t exactly know which dreams mean something and which ones are just normal nightmares.”

Worried about how his brother sometimes handled Kenobi’s disrespect, Savage said lowly in their own tongue, “ Maul, he is on edge.  Do not blame things for biting when it is you who corner them .”

“ I know ,” Maul answered in the same language without missing a beat or turning his gaze from Kenobi.  Luckily his voice sounded calm, though, and even as the boy shifted a bit in discomfort and looked between them warily (not understanding the exchange), the elder Zabrak remained thoughtful.  After a pause all Maul said was, “Why are you telling us this, Kenobi?”

Kenobi had been balling up the blankets more and more around his arms, making Savage frown at the boy’s priorities: he seemed more focused on hiding his scars than the discomfort of having to look over his shoulder at Maul.  Notably, though, the boy froze and simply blinked as the question was posed to him.  

~^~

Obi-Wan had no idea how to answer the Sith’s question.  Because now that he was forced to think about it, he had no good answer as to why in all hells he’d suddenly started volunteering information.  

Except… maybe he did.  He didn’t want to admit it even to himself, but in and amidst all of the fear and the pain he'd felt comfortable in that meditative moment - no one was threatening him, no one was hurting him, and at some point Maul’s Force signature had gone from overwhelming and threatening to familiar and comforting.  It like like a hood over the head of a hunting hawk that Obi-Wan had seen once, in an exotic market in Coruscant, and as much as he recoiled from the idea that he was becoming that hawk - taking comfort in being all but swallowed up by darkness - he couldn’t deny the little bubble of safety he felt.  It was a bygone conclusion that Obi’s own brain was out to get him, but it had also become an accepted fact that his thoughts would behave while Maul was meditating with him.  What should have signified evil and danger signified the only hope for peace Obi-Wan had.

And then there was the vividly recent memory of Maul calling him ‘valuable.’  

No one had ever found Obi-Wan valuable.

But maybe he wanted more of that.

Sickened at his own traitorous thoughts, Obi-Wan belatedly pulled his chin out of Maul’s grip so that he could look at the knot of blankets in his lap.  Suddenly he wanted to see his scars, to remind himself who the enemy was, but he didn’t want to bring more attention to himself by ripping the blankets away.  “It’s better than talking about the holocron,” he finally muttered an excuse.  Which was true: so long as they were talking about his dreams, they weren’t turning their attention to the once-Jedi-now-Sith holocron.  Kenobi started twisting fretfully at the blankets, working up the courage to pull his arms out and stare at the damage.

Savage muttered something else in their language, no words familiar but voice low and soft.  Maul grunted back.  

Then a black-patterened red hand slid into view, reaching around Kenobi slowly and, almost hesitantly, splaying his hand across the blankets.  Kenobi jerked in surprise, holding his breath and instantly tensing for he-didn’t-know-what (but something bad, because this was a Sith), but the foreboding hand merely pressed Kenobi’s arms into stillness.  The weight of Maul’s grip through the blankets was firm but gentle, as if he cared about the healing flesh beneath.  “Meditation first.  Then… Then we can talk more about this dream,” Maul’s voice came from close behind his head, and like Savage’s voice in the Zabrak’s own language, it was a soft rumble - surely because angry yelling was hardly necessary at this range.  “Focus, Kenobi.”  Maul’s hand retreated, and Kenobi turned his head enough to warily watch it return to its place on Maul’s knee.  He was caught off-guard by Maul’s next quiet words, “You are doing better.”

‘ Like fuck I am ,’ Kenobi wanted to say, but his tongue felt frozen in his mouth.

He didn’t know what to do with any of this.

But Savage was nodding his horned head encouragingly to him from across the room and Maul was settling into stillness again, and apparently Kenobi didn’t need to talk about his dreams or the troubling things said by the holocron.  Bewildered and feeling more adrift than he had in his dreams - without a map, without stars - Kenobi simply closed his eyes and went back to what he’d been doing.  He tried to shut out Maul’s unprompted praise just like he’d tried to shut out the sound of the Sith calling him - him , not his gift - more valuable than a holocron.  He didn’t need to think about how many people he’d craved that from, only to get it from two brutal Sith.

Chapter Text

Three days.  Three days in which Maul could not chastise his brother for coddling their Jedi prisoner because then he’d open himself up to accusations of doing the same fucking thing.  For three days he’d done nothing but help the boy meditate and watch the boy sleep.  Maul wished that he could say the holocron had even been a temptation, but whenever he thought about bringing it out he just kept remembering Kenobi saying that talking about his prophetic dreams - which both Maul and Savage knew the little Seer hated with a vengeance - was better than helping Maul open up the holocron.  And while Maul had been lying about needing Kenobi’s assistance to keep it open, the fact remained that once it was closed (as it was now), it did indeed take two Force-users to open it up.  

Maul was very glad that he hadn’t informed Mother Talzin about the holocron.  She was already getting impatient enough with the delay as it was, with only a questionable Seer to whet her appetite.  He’d gone back to the ship to inform her of his weak condition, and had since gotten a typically cryptic message back about not wasting too much time.  Maul and Savage had interacted with the Nightsisters enough to fear their wrath, and Maul in particular could read between the lines and interpret the impatience - yet despite the indisputable shiver of unease that crawled down his spine like an old weakness, he found himself reading the message, walking back to the infirmary, and saying nothing to Savage or Kenobi about having to leave soon.  

The fact that he returned to Savage helping Kenobi through another nocturnal fit perhaps played a role.  At least Savage had somehow learned that soup calmed the boy’s temper and fragile ego after nights like these, although Maul couldn’t imagine anyone who could stay angry after eating their father’s family recipe.  If the boy created an excuse for Savage (the better cook of the two Zabraks) to make it, then Maul wasn’t going to complain.

Kenobi’s healing did provide more dedicated time for meditation, however, and it was helping - or, at least, Maul and Savage saw that it was helping.  The boy himself seemed frustratingly blind to his own progress.  It quickly became apparent that just because Kenobi wasn’t fixing himself perfectly overnight, he saw it as failure, and Maul couldn’t help but judge whoever had instilled that mindset.  Given what he knew about the boy (precious little, but still), it was safe to say that the Jedi were at fault.  Maul had always taken issue with how young the Jedi snatched up their apprentices, and even after Kenobi’s Dark-side-fuel rant about “They didn’t even fucking find me as a child when they were supposed to!” Maul had enough evidence to know that the Jedi had largely shaped the child’s personality.  

Maul had to be careful about not pondering that while he and Kenobi were meditating together, because that inevitably caused him to remember the rest of Kenobi’s screaming - about Master Jinn and his abandoning tendencies, about Kenobi’s mother and how she’d apparently tried to drown her son .  Before he knew it, Maul’s mind would be in as much a tangle as Kenobi’s was, and it took effort to steady his thoughts.  Once he actually emitted a growl, right behind Kenobi’s head, and when the boy understandably snapped out of meditation to ask, “What is it?” Maul had had to choke the noise back down.

“Nothing, boy,” Maul had grumbled, putting a hand on the crown of the boy’s head to get him facing forward again, “Focus.”  For the Sith, anger had its place - a very important place, even - but that place was not here and now, as Maul tried to provide Kenobi’s mind with a stable blueprint to follow.  “Even the mind of a Master is not calm at all times.  That is a lesson to remember as well.”  The current situation meant he also couldn’t give vent to his curiosity, as Maul’s anger was only matched by his burning curiosity to know more about both of those horrendous stories.  

‘ Someday I’ll ask ,’ he told himself, ‘ Someday after the boy’s mind is strong and he’s able to look after himself .’

Even as he told himself that, however, common-sense caught up to him and snarled back, ‘ And when will that be?  Before or after you deliver him to Mother Talzin, at which point he’ll be no responsibility of ours? ’ 

In much the same way that Maul thought no more about his last missive from the Nightsisters, Maul made the executive decision to think no more about that conundrum either.  A good hunter focused on the here and now.  Yes.  And for the most part that worked, as Kenobi’s nights grew quieter, filled slowly with more sleep than prophetic dreams.  All the while, Maul determinedly thought not at all about how he was potentially reducing the boy’s usefulness, and rejoicing whenever they made it through a night and the boy told them no stories of disturbing, twisted futures.  Maul’s argument was that the bits of dreams weren’t really that useful anyway (and were mostly about the same thing right now: a ship the boy couldn’t fly through a strange space with no stars, and sometimes controls that ate Kenobi’s hands - or occasionally nightmarish ‘space-ghosts’ that came at him through the ship’s hull, or red-eyed blue people grabbed at him), and what use was a Seer at all if his mind ended up shattering and breaking beneath the force of so many uncontrolled dreams?

“So you think that I’ll learn to actually control this?” Kenobi said at one point, when Maul defended their continuing meditation.  The boy’s voice was scoffing and he did not sound convinced.

So Maul just gave him the truth and said bluntly, “No.”  Blue eyes turned to him, and Maul wasn’t sure what it was in them that made him look away uncomfortably and then amend, “But ships upon oceans do not expect to control the waves either.  They merely learn to navigate them.”

There was an unreadable pause, followed by Kenobi barking out a little laugh, soft enough that it didn’t strain his still-healing chest.  “Oh, well that’s terribly comforting,” he drawled with his crisp, dry accent that always made Maul glower involuntarily.  Apparently grown immune to the look, Kenobi pushed his hair back from his face (it was getting a bit moppish) and continued, “Because if there’s anything my dreams have shown thus far, it’s that I’m the last person we want navigating any ships.”

“Finish your soup,” Savage interjected before Maul could snap something back.  It was unclear who he was talking to, as they all had a bowl, but he looked like he was traitorously close to smirking.

Some nights were still bad.  They’d been on Alvo-4 for a week now, and the doctor had grudgingly admitted that the boy would at least be safe to travel in two more days - barring any bouts of unforeseen chaos.  When she’d given that last warning, the healer’s ink-dark eyes had looked at the two Sith accusingly, a reminder that she still clearly suspected them to be the cause of her patient’s every injury.  She’d mostly gotten into the habit of ust leaving them alone, though, only checking in one a day to monitor Kenobi’s progress.  If she heard anything strange (at night in particular), she knew better than to ask about it by now.

The previous night had been rough.  It had seemed Kenobi was making progress, his mind on a more even keel and his Force-signature likewise less ragged - perhaps to match his head-wound, which was all but invisible now if Maul or Savage were to hold Kenobi still long enough to push the hair at his nape out of the way to check.  The burns from having two lightsabers pressed to his forearms remained, and Maul told himself he was not troubled by them, even as he noticed the regret darkening his brother’s eyes whenever he saw the mark he himself had left.  When had all three of them suddenly begun wishing that the bandages had remained on, so the scars were hidden?

The day before the rough night had been strange, at least compared to the usual monotony of eating, sleeping, meditating, and trading off on who went back to the Scimitar and who babysat their prickly charge.  It had been a surprise when the Rhodian healer (whose name Maul still couldn’t be bothered to remember, mostly because by now their hatred was mutual) had tried to shove the door open, only to have it budge up against Savage’s well-placed (and occupied) chair.  Maul and Kenobi had been meditating, and it was jarring to come out of that quiet space - and to feel the electric crackle of Kenobi’s mind as he startled back into the here and now, too.  Maul hadn’t really thought about how accustomed he’d become to the boy’s mind, although it made sense: ever since their first tumultuous meeting of minds in the destroyed cargo hold, much of Maul’s attention had been focused on monitoring the mental state of his captive.  It was still a bit unsettling to realise that he’d become as tuned to the metaphorical frequency of Kenobi’s mind as Kenobi was becoming to his through their echo-meditation.

Maul carefully removed himself from the bed, not thinking about the hand he briefly placed on the boy’s shoulder as he ended their close proximity.  Once Maul was back in a chair and at a more polite distance (Fanged God knew the Rhodian healer was looking for more excuses to revile the two ‘child abusers’ in the room) he nodded to Savage to move the chair and let the healer in.  Kenobi scooted back towards the head of the bed, only the buzz of his mind - still so clear to Maul’s senses - showing an uptick in nerves.  

Those nerves rose higher still as the Rhodian healer stuck her head in, narrowed dark eyes at everyone, and then said, “There’s an incoming message for you.”

And thus began the strangeness of the day that would end in one last rough night for their Jedi pup.

~^~

Obi-Wan had almost forgotten about the message he’d clandestinely sent out, in the hopes that Master Jinn would hear it.  With every passing day in which the Jedi Master did not appear to rescue Obi-Wan, his hope shrivelled up and atrophied, until he’d been forced to just stop thinking about it - because thinking about it hurt .  If he didn’t think about it then he didn’t have to see every passing day as further proof that possibly no one was even looking for him.  There were even moments where he’d wished he’d never sent the message, because at least then, he’d have more excuses to tell himself if Qui-Gon Jinn didn’t immediately come to his rescue.  After all, it was difficult to find one ex-Initiate who’d been whisked away by two Sith, right?  

Then there were moments like this, where he wished he hadn’t sent it because there was always the possibility of it getting back to his captors.

The moment the healer said “There’s an incoming message for you” it was like Obi forgot how to breathe.  He hadn’t had any prophetic dreams about Maul and Savage finding out about his little stunt, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen, and right now all Kenobi could think about were all the warnings Maul had given him about behaving.  The Sith had treated him quite carefully as of late, but that had been because he wasn’t causing trouble - and this was more trouble than anything he’d done thus far.  Struggling to remember how to breathe (it was like the parasite was back in his lungs again), Kenobi unconsciously wrapped a hand around his right forearm, the strange smoothness of scar tissue like a prophecy all its own beneath his palm.  

He opened his mouth, wanting to stop what was coming, but didn’t even know what to say.  If someone was answering his stupid, foolish message, how was he supposed to explain it away?

But then the healer looked pointedly at Maul and Savage, adding, “It’s for the two of you.  Now.”  Her voice was no more or less tetchy and grouchy than it usually was with the two Zabraks.  

Obi-Wan wheezed out as subtle a breath as possible as he felt some of the panic gutter and fade, or at least take a back-seat to the blank, white-noise of bewilderment in his head.  Was this about his message?  Feeling adrift but still very much on the edge of a panic attack, he didn’t notice how Maul gave him a funny look before turning to frown at the healer as Savage was doing.  

“From whom?” Maul demanded, not moving.

The healer’s eyes narrowed to glinting dark slights.  “Wouldn’t say.”  She glanced between the two Zabraks and only then looked at Kenobi, albeit briefly.  “Just said that they needed to speak with both of you.  Immediately,” she tagged on, and even gave her fingers an impatient tap on the doorframe.  

Caught in limbo between panic and relief, Kenobi just ended up looking between everyone’s expressions and just being grateful that no one was asking for his input.  Savage was looking predictably to his brother, while Maul himself wore a suspicious look, red-gold eyes also narrowed as he and the Rhodian stared each other down for a moment.  Then Maul stood - but when Savage moved to do the same, the red-patterned Sith held out a belaying hand.  “I will see to this.”

The healer’s eyes had briefly widened again, and she straightened up as if affronted, saucer-like antennae doing a brief swivel.  “The caller wants to speak with both of you.”

“And I will determine whether or not they warrant that,” Maul said stalwartly.  When it didn’t look like the healer would immediately understand his reasoning, Maul made his point immutable by simply stepping forward - body language making it clear that he’d walk right over her if she didn’t move.  With a quietly alarmed little noise, she backed out of the way.  Maul closed the door behind himself before she could try and implore Savage to answer the summons as well.

Leaving Kenobi with Savage and such a tangle of emotions that he didn’t know what to do with them.  The sucker-punch of hope had hit him so hard that he just about had tears in his eyes, and logic couldn’t gain so much as a toe-hold on the part of him screaming ‘ Qui-Gon finally found me! ’  At the same time, total terror was taking his breath away as he stared at the closed door and imagined Maul inexorably making his way closer and closer to the comm system and - Obi was sure - the truth.  

Things around the room started rattling despite Obi-Wan’s best efforts to stay calm and collected on the outside.

~^~

There had been no message.  Or, as the Rhodian kept sputtering as she harried Maul’s every step, the messenger had closed the line before they could get there.  Beyond that, the healer could offer no insight into either who had been reaching out through the comm system or what they had wanted - although she did blame her old system for perhaps having a glitch.  She switched between blaming the glitch for cutting off the signal as well as for fabricating the incoming signal entirely.  She was also still clearly displeased and flustered about Maul’s unilateral decision to not drag Savage along with him.

When he finally rounded on her and pointed out how suspicious she was acting, the Rhodian narrowed her bulbous eyes and finally shut up entirely before storming off.  Maul gave up with a huff, deciding to puzzle this over with Savage’s help.  The healer had stuck with Maul, so it didn’t seem as though she’d just been waiting for an opportunity to… what? Kidnap Kenobi from his terrible, ferocious keepers…?  But something was clearly going on, and Maul was getting increasingly eager to leave this place.  

Regardless of what the healer said, the boy was getting stronger by the day, so perhaps by tomorrow they’d be ready to risk him travelling-

Maul was mid-thought on those plans when he opened the door to Kenobi’s sick-room only to freeze midway into the doorway.  It was like the cargo hold all over again, although thankfully to a smaller degree.  Maul still had to duck aside smartly as he came the rest of the way into the room and gave the door a quick kick closed (not needing the nosy healer to realise just what a chancy situation she truly had on her hands), because an empty wooden bowl came flying at his head.  

“He’s been like this since you left,” Savage said, from where he was standing at the bedside and catching random objects as they took flight.

Kenobi, for his part, was hunched up on the bed, head and arms tucked behind drawn-up knees.  “I’m fine!” he insisted, muffled by the fabric of bunched blankets.  

Something else rattled on a nearby shelf and this time Maul reached out with the Force to push it back into place before it could skitter off towards the floor.  “If this is a Jedi’s definition of ‘fine,’ then you should count yourself fortunate for falling into our company,” he drawled.  The words were mostly hiding his surprise and unease, however, as he exchanged a look with Savage - who just gave a helpless shrug.  The blankets on the bed gave an almost-sentient ripple and Kenobi curled in on himself tighter until the movement stopped.  “Kenobi…” Maul started to growl, not even sure if he was starting to speak a warning or a concerned query.

The boy cut him off.  “The message.  What do you know now?”

Maul and Savage both froze (another exchanged look; more confusion as neither understood where this was coming from), then Maul edged a step closer to the bed as if this were a spooked Rancor and not a small human child.  “You are awfully nosy about a signal that was not even for you,” he observed carefully.  Kenobi twitched, head lifting slightly so that Maul could just see a flash of one blue eye past a ruffled auburn fringe.  Maul narrowed his eyes and came a step closer, analytical brain starting to tear through the little bits of data being presented to him.  “Unless you think you know what it was about,” he mused out loud - and was rewarded as his watchful eyes picked up the way Kenobi’s shoulders went stiff.  Savage swore and had to jump forward to catch something before it physically fell off another shelf and onto Kenobi’s head.  So the boy was panicked about a message he should have known nothing about…

Maul reached out to catch a handful of hair at the back of the Padawan’s neck, like someone scruffing a small animal, physically enforcing his words as he commanded, “Look at me, Kenobi.”

He got a wet-eyed glare for his troubles.  He could read fear beneath it, though, in the tight clench of Kenobi’s jaw to the sharp dilation of his eyes - not a happy response, but the body’s attempt to take in all possible light, all possible visual information, anything to see danger incoming.  Maul had hunted enough beings to know the look.  “Who do you think was calling?” he asked in a low rumble, not loosening his hold.  

Of all the reactions Maul was expecting, he did not expect Kenobi’s face to fall.  At first the boy’s brows beetled in brief bewilderment, a few sharp blinks as if this wasn’t what he was expecting either.  But then something like painful realisation came in like a flood and washed everything else away, and suddenly the boy’s pale-blue eyes held devastation.  The whipping of uncontrolled telekinesis stopped.  The room went quiet.  Kenobi stopped looking tense and instead just looked small and tired.

“No one,” he answered in a quiet, resigned tone.

And that was the only answer Maul could get out of him.  In fact, when Maul even gave in and admitted that the signal had probably been fabricated by the Rhodian healer entirely (truly a pathetic admission from a Sith trained in ruthless interogation, but it wasn’t like he was going to use torture get some answer out of the boy), it looked like Kenobi was pushing back tears.  Kenobi didn’t cry, though, and eventually his shocked sadness morphed into sullenness and then sharp temper - the latter was pretty familiar by now, both Savage and Maul quite used to Kenobi’s sharp tongue, but it felt different now in light of the mercurial emotions they’d just seen.  Usually, Maul saw Kenobi’s brattiness as a sign of good health.  Now he saw it as a thin defence mechanism, and one he didn’t know how to get past without breaking the boy beneath it.

And all of that led to a return to the rough nights.  Maul barely resisted the urge to dig into Kenobi’s mind, if only to find out what exactly had destroyed all of their progress.

~^~

Erada’kyo’tenu stood in the shadows across the street from the infirmary.  If the Chiss were good at anything, it was gathering information, and now he lowered a set of goggles that had allowed him to see through the shuttered windows to some degree - enough to see things flying about the room as if by magic.  It was unsettling to see, especially with the realisation that they had a similarly skilled individual in their crew.

Or, at least… they had.

“Can the ozyly-esehembo here really do that?” asked a fellow office in Cheunh.  Since becoming stranded on this side of the Chaos, only Dakyot had managed to adequately learn Galactic Basic, although some other crew members knew enough Si Bisti to interact with traders on the planet.  Considering that they would have not ended up here at all had not their sky-walker suddenly lost her Sight so suddenly, Dakyot couldn’t blame them.

Dakyot shrugged, uneasy but hopeful.  “It was one of the signs pointed out in my research.  I am simply glad that it makes ozyly-esehembo easy to spot.”  Because they needed one desperately, if they were ever to make it home again in one piece.  

“Will he be able to take Thlia’mra’s place?” Dakyot’s companion asked.  His eyes were hidden by goggles (the better to pass as Pantorans, which were much more expected in this part of the galaxy), but the dubious expression was still clear to see.

Unsure himself but unable to afford the possibility of doubt (if they could not find a replacement ozyly-esehembo , then they would either be stuck here indefinitely or would probably die trying to traverse the Chaos), Dakyot murmured back as firmly as possible, “Our navigational systems are designed to connect to sky-walkers .  This alien sky-walker should be able to do it as well.”  ‘ Or at least do it well enough to get us back into Chiss space, so we can call for help .’  Hopefully before any Starweirds came upon them.  It technically wasn’t impossible to navigate the constantly changing wild-space known as the Chaos without a ozyly-esehembo to find a safe path, but it was incredibly tedious, dangerous, and slow without on.  Even other species in the Chaos used some form of… how did they call it?  Force-sensitive… individual to travel through the constantly changing space.  

But even those ships got caught out by Starweirds sometimes.  Speed was valuable in the Chaos when there were predators that could float through walls and ignore blaster-fire.  

Dakyot’s crewmate heaved a sigh and still didn’t seem settled.  The other Chiss pointed out with rising frustration that Dakyot could sympathise with, “But how are we to get the ozyly-esehembo with his keepers always present?  Your ruse failed.”

It had indeed, although it had had the added bonus of further verifying that this human boy was a ozyly-esehembo .  Chiss officers were always taught to proceed with caution and confirm their findings.  “We will try again.  The healer is on our side.”  Dakyot had first heard about the potential sky-walker through rumours, when he’d been brought into town with such noise and fuss.  Since then, however, Dakyot had found an easy source of information in the Rhodian healer taking care of him.  While initially wary of strangers, she continued to be eager to speak to Dakyot now that she knew (or assumed she knew) he was on her side in being suspicious of the two big aliens accompanying the boy.  Dakyot was more than willing to play upon her suspicions if it got the ozyly-esehembo two minders out of the way.  He suspected that they, too, were sky-walkers (something that made no sense to him, as Chiss sky-walkers lost their sight by age thirteen… or in Thlia’mra’s case, age eight), but he and Captain Shokla’ro’keo had instantly agreed that they could not afford to mess with the older ones.  The Chiss Ascendency was not yet ready for its presence to be known, especially her in the inner galaxy, and it was much easier to ensure the silence and secrecy of a single child than two powerful adults.

The healer had warned him that she couldn’t keep stalling the trio, however.  So Dakyot knew he’d have to come up with another plan before the sky-walker’s keepers stopped believing that he was still too fragile to be moved.  He lifted his goggle again, flicking through the settings and seeing if he could gather any other useful data.

~^~

The rough day led to a rough night almost inevitably.  Maul had suspected it would happen, even if the past nights had been quiet, so he ordered his brother to be the one to go sleep aboard the Scimitar while he himself stayed up to keep an eye on their strange little prisoner.  Kenobi had been so withdrawn after the strange events of the probably-faked-message that Maul had actually dragged out the holocron again just to get a reaction.  It had worked, although not in a particularly satisfying way: Kenobi had gone from quiet and lost-looking to defensive and angry, and before long Maul had had a shouting match on his hands between a Jedi pup and a hologram.  It didn’t even feel like they managed to learn anything useful, as Darth Omniphous just continued to spout disturbing historical facts at random.  Maul had finally put the thing away again because it had looked like Kenobi was about to cry even as his young face was twisted with frustrated anger.

‘ Quite a Sith you are ,’ Maul thought to himself uncharitably as he sat back in his chair and idly watched the boy sleep, ‘ Letting your actions be dictated by the emotions of a Jedi Padawan .’

But Obi-Wan Kenobi wasn’t a Jedi Padawan, was he?  Maul frowned in the dark, eyes narrowing as his mind inevitably tracked down the uncomfortable path of knowledge that he had about the boy.  Kenobi had been largely abandoned - almost not collected by the Order at all - and had never even been given the official title of ‘Padawan’ despite how much the boy dearly seemed to want it.  Maul and Savage were possibly the only ones in the galaxy who kept referring to the boy as ‘Jedi’ or ‘Padawan.’

As Maul was mulling that over (while ignoring the fact that, Jedi Padawan or not, he was still letting his actions be dictated by this boy’s feelings), Kenobi started twitching fretfully. By now, these signs of nightmares were familiar.  Maul did what he usually did, which was focus on his own personal presence in the Force - the boy seemed to notice his Dark Force-signature regardless of whether or not he was conscious, and if it didn’t outright wake him it seemed to knock him out of his dreams and return him to a deeper sleep.

Which, again… Maul shouldn’t have been doing.  He should have been doing everything in his power to make Kenobi dream, and mine those dreams like the boy had been mining minerals on Bandomeer.  

This time, Kenobi sensed Maul’s presence enough that it woke him, the boy jerking into full wakefulness with jumbled words already falling out of his mouth.  Maul caught something about “needing the sword” again, and something about blue-skinned aliens again - which, by Kenobi’s tone, he was afraid of and trying to get away from.  “Easy, Kenobi,” Maul rumbled, and was pleased despite himself when the boy gave his head a hard shake and seemed to come further out of his prophetic dreams. By now, Maul was starting to recognize the particular fluctuations in the Force that indicated when the boy was seeing things beyond mortal ken.

As Kenobi shook in fading terror and clung to Maul’s voice - something else that the Sith had become perceptive to, after so much proximity with the boy’s mind - Maul found sadness tugging at his hard heart.

“You have no normal nightmares,” Maul found himself saying quietly, almost as if he were detached from his body and just watching himself speak.  This was an observation he’d had for some time now, but it had never slipped out.  “Despite having good reason to.”  Kenobi froze, mouth snapping shut and his eyes sharpening quickly in the dark like some prey animal sensing danger.  The more awake the little Jedi was, the less he accepted help in shaking off his dreams.  The Force still rippled around him, an unnatural static charge, albeit a less dangerous one now that Kenobi’s mind was being strengthened to handle it.  Maul couldn’t seem to keep his words back, however, and he continued speaking into the quiet dark of the room, “And tomorrow you will be in a foul mood, not for sleep deprivation - which would be understandable-” Maul gestured generally to Kenobi, and his obvious wakefulness at this early hour.  Then the Sith dropped his hand, still gripped by strange regret, tone sober, “-But out of anger for accepting comfort.”  Realising how soft he was sounding, Maul’s brows lowered and he made himself add more haughtily, “ Irrational anger at yourself, I should note, because you hardly have a choice in accepting it.”  The boy really had no choice in whether or not he accepted anything the two Sith gave him, yet Kenobi tolerated cruelty faster than kindness.  

By now, Maul’s night-vision was painting a clear picture of Kenobi glaring at him even as the boy slowly pushed himself up from his belly to his elbows and finally up into a sitting position, blanket falling away from his shoulders to reveal a rumpled shirt and his messy fall of hair.  He was trembling almost imperceptibly, and even if he hadn’t been able to pick that up, Maul would have known that he’d poked at a sore spot by the way the Force was heating up with anger and frustration.  

Maul opened his mouth to say that those emotions weren’t very Jedi of Kenobi, but something stopped him, lips parted, and he closed his mouth again without taunting.  

The boy was quick to fill in the silence.  Clearing his throat roughly, he nonetheless spat out in a voice that rasped from crying out in his sleep, “Stop pretending you care.”

Immediately Maul was frowning again.  He did care - that was the problem!  Before he could reflexively defend himself, angry at being called a liar, his better sense caught up with him and he remembered that he was a Sith and this boy’s captor and he should definitely not be caring at all, much less admitting to it.  What the fuck was wrong with him this night?

Flustered and frankly disgusted with himself, Maul opened and closed his mouth wordlessly a few more times, and once again that just gave Kenobi room to speak up.  It seemed Maul wasn’t the only one who found his tongue particularly loose in this moment. “I might not be a fully-trained Jedi, but I’m not stupid.  And I haven’t forgotten what side we’re all on - I’m not just some baby you can coddle until it loves you.”  Kenobi seemed spitting-mad now, and clearly barely holding it together.  Maul could all but see the battle between the ‘ good little Jedi Padawan ’ and the little boy who just needed to scream and shout and find an outlet for some of the emotions he was drowning in.  Instead of raising his voice further or lashing out with the Force, Kenobi clenched his hands so hard that it made the scars on his forearms pale.  “So you and Savage can just both stop this fucking farce, okay?”  Kenobi’s voice cracked on the last word, but before Maul could decipher what that vulnerability meant, the boy firmed up his voice and went on twice as harshly to make up for it, “I won’t give in and I won’t fall for any of it , so you can stop just pretending that you care about anything besides the stupid prophetic dreams I keep having!”

Maul was many things, but one thing he was not was someone accustomed to being berated so viciously by a child, so he felt his hackles rising.  “You presume to know quite a great deal about my motives for a child,” he retorted when he could get a word in.  He felt he should have earlier, but whatever had made his words slip out too fast earlier had tangled them up now.  He wasn’t sure why that was.

Kenobi surprised Maul by suddenly throwing back the blankets and sliding off the bed.  “Oh, so I’m wrong?” the boy challenged.  Despite himself, Maul sat back a bit further in his chair, uneasy - reminded that of the many things Kenobi was, one thing he was not was someone blessed with a lot of self-preservation.  Case-and-point: Kenobi was now stalking up to Maul like he had a death-wish.  Up until now, the healer had been forcing bedrest, but Kenobi had been making regular trips to the refresher just fine - and right now he seemed a lot more nimble than the healer had said he should be.  Maul found himself trying to grasp that thought and strangely failing.

His next thought was that the little Jedi was right in front of him, anger making him brave, even though he was only as tall as Maul was while sitting.  He wasn’t hurling things around telepathically at least, but there was still that… strange crackle in the air.  Maul was reminded of the feel of Kenobi’s mind when he’d been released from the Force-suppression collar.  

The boy was surprisingly steady on his feet for someone that the healer had been calling an invalid for days.  And somehow, in this moment, quicker to react than Maul as he reached out to hit him - Maul growled and barely got his hand up in time, catching a slim wrist in his grip.  In response, the Force crackled, and Maul realised that the floor felt like it was tilting.  

Kenobi must have been feeling it, too, as his other hand slapped down against the arm of Maul’s chair, but the boy was still full of spiteful determination.  “Tell me to my face that you don’t just care about my prophetic dreams!” he now shouted in Maul’s face as if the Sith weren’t on the verge of breaking the bones in his wrist.  Maul would have liked to think that something so small and fragile would not have been threatening had the situation not been so alarming, but he wasn’t sure.  “Tell me you don’t care about the Sith sword I found you, or the holocron, or ‘ “You shall have a Master, as all Sith do.  But you shall do my will,” or-!”

Maul stood up sharply as his mind was catapulted back into the past - back to when Mother Talzin had first told him this.  “What did you say?” he hissed lowly even as the room swamp a bit more.

He still had hold of the boy’s right wrist, so when Kenobi stumbled back, he didn’t go far.  He didn’t seem eager to anyway, instead tipping his head back to stare up at his captor pugnaciously.  “That was one of the first things I saw when we met,” he said, the tone of the last word making clear that ‘met’ was a polite way of phrasing their crossing of paths.  “I saw her and I saw you, and I saw Savage and I saw your Master destroying them around you.  Happy?  Or would you rather I have normal dreams?”  Maul tried to say something but couldn’t; the room was swaying more and more and he didn’t know when he’d lost the ability to react to it.  Instincts that usually alerted him to danger were sending up muffle warnings like a voice lost in a tar-pit.  Standing up had made it worse.

Kenobi didn’t seem much better.  The boy swayed again and this time Maul managed to react, his other hand coming up to catch the boy’s shoulder and keep him from falling.  The boy also didn’t seem able to stop talking, words flowing out of him like blood from a wound, “There - I’ve told you a prophecy just for you.  What more do you want from me?”  The last sentence tried to rise to a shriek, but then the Padawan nearly collapsed, eyes fluttering and legs buckling.  Maul, in trying to prevent him from falling, found himself stumbling as well until they both collided with the bed - Kenobi toppling onto it, Maul crashing into the side of it, on his knees and barely holding onto the boy’s forearm now.  Something was very wrong, and had been wrong, but Maul hadn’t noticed until it was too late.  His brain was barely even working enough for him to panic.  

“He’s only using you,” Kenobi’s voice was slurred now.  Whatever was muddling Maul’s head had sunk Kenobi deep into whatever it was that made him a Seer.  “He likes the power he can have over apprentices, but he doesn’t want apprentices to have power.  You’re halfway to being a threat already - but he’ll kill those around you first.  So long as you’re in his shadow, everything will be dark.”

At this point, everything had the quality of a dream, prophetic or otherwise.  Maul tried and failed to make sense of what Kenobi was saying, but ultimately ended up giving his horned head a hard shake - he needed to figure out what was going on first.  Letting the boy go, he gripped the edge of the bed and tried to pull himself to his feet, but just ended up keeling over onto hands and knees.  “Obi-Wan…” he tried to get out, unsure what other words he wanted to say but knowing he wanted to shout a warning.  Something was so very, very wrong.

The young Jedi was still sprawled in a tangle on the bed; one of his feet hung off the side, and presently nudged Maul’s shoulder even as the Sith’s body further detached from his control.  “You only say my first name when things are very bad,” the boy murmured, sounding sleepy and dazed.  Then he seemed to lose the thought - or else fell back into his prophecies again, “You said I would not like falling into his hands.  How is it for you, already in his grip?”

Maul’s only available answer was a snarl as his arms and legs became too weak to hold him and he collapsed onto the floor.  

On the bed above him, the only sign that Kenobi knew something was wrong was the next thing he murmured, a tinge of fear sinking in, “I wonder if this was now Nim felt.  When the slicer-dart hit her.  I’m told that it disconnected her mind from her body, and that’s why her Jedi Master had to kill her.”   

By the Fanged God, how many disturbing things was he going to learn about this Jedi pup?  Right now Maul was too busy trying to just get his body back up again, getting one arm under him while his other clawed clumsily at the comm system on his belt - he mentally kicked himself for not grabbing it earlier, but whatever poison had gotten him and the boy, it had snuck in too subtly.  And now it was all but too late to react.  His fingers felt clumsy, although he thought that maybe he managed to at least flick the channel open, which would connect to Savage.  He hoped his brother was sleeping shallowly…

Bleary and almost nauseous now as he fought the vertigo to raise himself up, Maul saw out of the corner of his eye as Kenobi flopped a slim hand over the side of the bed.  It ended up finding Maul’s head, fingers guilelessly catching against one horn even as the boy slurred, “Now that I’ve told you the prophecy you need most, do you even really need me anymore?”

The first thing this poison (or whatever it was) had done was make Maul’s emotions fickle and close to the surface, and how as he heard the almost-sadness, almost-yearning in Kenobi’s voice, the Zabrak felt his heart give a wretched twist in his chest.  He tried and failed, without fully understanding why, to lift an arm and touch the young hand on his head.  

He felt two fingers curl tighter around the nearest horn at Maul’s brow and then slip away.  Kenobi dragged in a sharper breath than before and suddenly let out an animal little keen, his fear a sharp ripple through the force.  “They’re coming.  The ones I dreamt about,” he said even as he stopped lying limp and tried desperately to move, bedsheets tangling around limbs as useless as Maul’s.

That sound of fear somehow galvanised Maul, though, and he managed to get his knees under him.  Leaning heavily on the bed and barely able to keep both eyes open, he got his lightsaber in his hand.  It was as much the Force as actual dexterity that allowed him to ignite it, one end burning a ragged furrow in the floor as it extended, Maul barely able to lift his arm.  He managed to drag his other arm onto the bed behind him, though, and when he felt Kenobi thrash weakly nearby he managed to hook two fingers over the boy’s hand without looking.  “Stay behind me,” he grated out, even as he felt his body break out in a sweat from the mere effort of keeping his head up and it was clear Kenobi wasn’t going anywhere on his own anyway.

When the door opened - as the boy had foretold - Maul instantly took a swing at it, nearly halving the first person to walk through.  Maul had lost depth perception, though, and the single swing nearly overbalanced him.  He heard a sharp swear in an unknown language.  Saw the Rhodian healer and someone else, both wearing masks over mouth and nose.  Saw that the stranger had blue skin and suddenly remembered so many of Kenobi’s frightened dreams - and jerked his lightsaber up again with a ragged roar.  

“He should be unconscious by now!” the Rhodian healer said from behind her facemask, sounding alarmed, backing up.  

The blue-skinned stranger, eyes hidden by goggles, didn’t retreat.  He did stay outside of the range of Maul’s blade, however, attention fixated on the smoking burns in the floor.  

Maul swayed.  Heard Kenobi give a soft, weakening whimper.

“He will be soon,” the stranger said in an accent Maul couldn’t decipher, even as the last of Maul’s strength bled from his body and he slumped to the floor.  The room darkened as the blade retracted.

Footsteps moved around him in an ever-shifting blur, and Maul was distantly aware of someone reaching down and… pulling his lightsaber from his hands. He felt it leave his possession like a last breath being dragged from his body, especially as he hazily saw the stranger tucking it into a pocket.  Nothing compared to the hollowness Maul felt as he saw the same blue-skinned alien reaching over him and scooping Kenobi up.  “He’ll be better off with us, I promise,” the stranger said to the Rhodian, before walking away with the boy’s limp form caught in his arms.  

The last things Maul was aware of as blackness finally descended were the Rhodian healer standing over him - saying something ludicrous about “Now you cannot hurt that child again, you beast” - Savage’s voice crackling through the comm still on at his belt - “Brother?  Brother, what has happened?” - and a sense of loss deeper than he’d ever expected eating a hole through his heart.

~^~

End Part 1