THE QUARRY
By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl
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Summary: Five years after the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi has settled into solitary exile on Tattooine, spending his days in meditation and keeping distant watch on the young Luke Skywalker. When he rescues Stormtrooper A-186 from a sandstorm, he suddenly finds himself drawn into an ever growing web of lies and allegiances. SPOILERS FOR REVENGE OF THE SITH.
Categories: Action, adventure, drama, romance. Obi-Wan/Other Character pairing.
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns all, including my soul.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
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CHAPTER ONE: THE RESCUE
The thing that Obi-Wan Kenobi remembered most from that hellish duel on Mustafar was the searing pain of lava burning into his right shoulder. All throughout the fight, the molten lake had been spitting out sparks of fire like the surface of a carbonated drink, and he had managed to avoid the larger projectiles while tiny, fiery pinpricks assaulted every inch of his skin. But the flaming glob that he had let tumble onto his shoulder – the action had not been the result of fatigue, nor a slip of concentration, nor a failure to sense its presence in the Force.
It had been deliberate.
He had backpedaled upwards from the floating hovercraft and onto the crumbling, rocky soil, all the while hoarsely screaming at Anakin Skywalker to surrender. He now had the advantage of higher ground; it was useless for Skywalker to continue fighting now. But he had seen the boy coil down like a snake, then spring up at him with lightsaber brandished high, and as Skywalker hung motionless for that split second in the infernal sky, he had already finished calculating his options. He could have hopped three steps back and continued the duel, or he could have leapt forward and effectively offered his head for decapitation, or he could have stayed put in the path of a wayward ball of lava and ended Anakin Skywalker's life.
A single thought had passed through his mind then: Vader.
Anakin Skywalker? Already dead. Darth Vader.
Darth Vader, not Anakin Skywalker, had been sailing at him from one direction, while the chunk of lava had been hurtling toward him from another.
So he had stayed put. He had swung his lightsaber in an arc of blue, felt it slice almost unresisting through three limbs, as the fireball hissed into his robes and charred into the skin of his right shoulder.
A minute later, as he had stumbled away from the unrecognizable, burning thing, writhing and howling upon the blackened soil, he knew that the coin-sized wound he had been nursing with the heel of his left hand would forever remain to remind him of the infinitely greater burns he had inflicted this night.
In fact, Obi-Wan Kenobi mused, he could relive it even now, relive it as vividly as the actual event five years ago. The twinge of old pain at his shoulder. The unbearable swathes of hot wind and the painful pinpricks smattering into his skin. The dull, vacuous feeling of loss that threatened to overstep its Jedi boundaries and grow into something ugly. The smell of singed flesh. The screams. The screams, especially, he could hear, almost as though they were—
Kenobi opened his eyes. He noticed he was half naked, bathed in sweat, and seated crosslegged in a dark, cramped corner of his hovel. This corner he used for meditation, mostly, since it was the furthest removed from any windows, and it spared him from the harsh glare of the Tattooinian suns when he yearned for peace and serenity.
But this time, the coarsely woven curtain that he had hung from the low ceiling had slipped free of one of its hooks, and was fluttering noisily into his bare face and chest, scratching painfully at the scar on his shoulder. He heard the wind howling through the sand dunes in the distance, and heard it whistle fiercely through his window and make a rattling mess of his belongings. Through the rough weave of the curtain, he could see the strings of dried jerky that he had nailed to the kitchen wall flapping and twirling in the reddish-yellow dusk.
Sandstorm, Kenobi realized. The memory of Mustafar and Anak – no, Darth Vader – had crept into his meditation because of a sandstorm. He swatted the suffocating curtain aside and jumped to his feet, sand from the two open windows spraying painfully into him. He could usually tell when sandstorms would strike by the heavy, oppressive air that would envelop the atmosphere several days before, but occasionally, nature didn't bother with such a warning. Either that, or he had not lived long enough on this forsaken planet to sense its subtler indications.
He rummaged through the clutter for his tunic and heavy cloak, quickly shrugging them on and tying the cloak tightly around him with a spare length of rope. With one arm shielding his eyes from the windy assault, he struggled over to the nearest window and fumbled for the protective metal sand-shade. When he tried to yank it down, the gears squealed and reverberated in bones of his wrist; sand had jammed into the shade's hinges and left them immobile.
Grimacing, Kenobi gave up his futile manual efforts and reached out with the Force instead. The Jedi Council would have balked at his using the Force for such menial household tasks like removing sand from a shade hinge, and indeed, he recalled the countless times when he had chided Anakin for using the Force to flip the pages of a book, or to impress a group of awestruck younglings. But of course, the Council was now no more, and neither was Anakin, nor the younglings…
The shade fell closed with a satisfying crunch, and Kenobi smiled grimly to himself.
He was almost finished clearing the sand away from the second window when he heard it.
It was that distant sound that had jolted him from his meditation, a prolonged keening that he had initially dismissed as the howl of the wind. But now, through his heightened awareness of the Force, he could clearly feel that it was no mere wind.
Yes, yes, he was almost sure now that it was a – scream. And it was a – he stretched out further – a human scream.
Obi-Wan Kenobi felt himself connect to the Force with an urgency he hadn't needed to use since his flight to Tattooine.
A human scream? Here? Now? He was certain of it. But he had not sensed a human presence near his home during the entire five years of his exile; in fact, he was the only advanced life form that resided in this part of the Jundland Wastes for kilometers around, save for the occasional passing of nomadic Tusken Raiders or Jawas.
He probed more insistently for the source of the scream, at the same time scanning the swirling, sand-filled distance for a visual sign. It came in the form of a small whitish figure that lay upon the sand, barely distinguishable behind the swarming veils of the storm. He gauged the body to be much closer than he had expected, perhaps thirty meters away in the northwest direction. The sandstorm must have greatly muted its presence in the Force.
Pulling his hood tightly about his face, Kenobi grappled for the front door, forced it open, and stumbled out into the storm. He found that he could barely breathe in the full onslaught, much less see. The ground sucked at his feet like quicksand, and the horizontal wind shot sand like millions of blaster shots into his cloak.
Coughing, he closed his stinging eyes and used the Force to guide him through the terrain. The trek out seemed like an eternity, and he fell several times before finally trudging up to the prone white figure. He knelt beside it, holding up a sleeve to shield the both of them as best he could, and ventured to open his eyes.
It was an Imperial Stormtrooper.
If Obi-Wan Kenobi had been any less of a Jedi, he would have reflexively clambered away from the armored soldier as though from a bomb. And perhaps, just to be safe, he would have whipped out the lightsaber at his side and sliced off the helmeted head – it was not the Jedi way, but it would have been the most practical given the circumstances – perhaps he would have clambered back to his hovel, gathered what few essentials he owned, and took off on the next starship that left Mos Eisley.
Instead, Kenobi remained frozen. Qui-Gon Jinn had taught him well. Never act on fear, never act on adrenaline. Only act on the signals flowing through the Force, and at the moment, the signals he received from the body before him were wavering and weak.
It didn't take an expert user of the Force to sense that the trooper was injured; the brown streaks of dried blood staining the white armor proved it. The Tusken Raiders had gotten to him, Kenobi surmised, surveying the distinct Gaderffii stick gashes on the torso and leg armor plates.
But why was a Stormtrooper here in the Wastes in the first place? Had the Empire found his hiding location already, or was Emperor Palpatine simply deploying troops to the nether regions of Tattooine as part of a routine border expansion? Either way, it was undeniable that the Empire was now powerful and vast enough to possess footholds in even the most hostile of locations – he would have to make plans to escape, if necessary, to an even remoter area. And as for the boy Luke—
"Who are you?"
The voice that warbled through the mouthpiece of the skull-like helmet sounded electronically distorted and tinny. The trooper stirred, attempting to raise himself up on an elbow, then fell back into the sand as the Force rippled through Kenobi in a wave of agony.
"Come with me," Kenobi said, his own voice dry from the sandstorm. Then he frowned. What had he just said? Why, in the name of the Force, did he just offer to save a sworn enemy? Was it because this man was injured? Was this the Jedi way? He could sense that the trooper didn't recognize him; he stood up and held out an arm. "Can you walk?"
The Stormtrooper said something over the wind about a broken leg, indicating his left lower thigh where the armor was punctured with a bloody hole.
Kenobi stretched out with the Force and numbed the pain. He was still puzzled as to why he was doing this. He searched his feelings for the expected warning sign to tell him to run his lightsaber through the Imperial foe, but it never came. He told himself again to walk away – it was not yet too late. He couldn't. A thought occurred to him that at this moment they were the only two living humans in the Jundland Wastes, and that if he turned his back on the man now, that number would undoubtedly fall.
He eased the Stormtrooper to his feet, and half-carried the figure through the toiling sand.
When they entered the door of the hovel several minutes later, Kenobi set the Stormtrooper on the floor in an awkward heap of white durasteel, then swiftly secured the remaining windows and doors. The room settled into a muffled, stuffy darkness, the storm buzzing mutely against the metal sand-shades.
He retrieved a fallen light orb that was lying haphazardly at his feet, plugged it into the nearest electrical socket. He turned to the trooper in the flickering red glow.
The armor-clad figure must have been watching him all this time, because now he spoke to the Jedi master, his broken mouthpiece distorting his words with uneven static. "Don't you know who I am?"
Kenobi couldn't help the smile from spreading across his face. It was just the thing he was going to say. Don't you know who I am? You're Obi-Wan Kenobi, renegade Jedi. And he would have been compelled by duty to kill the injured man on the spot.
"You're an Imperial Stormtrooper," Kenobi answered the man, walking to him. "You're one of the hundreds of thousands of clones that have been grown for this job, and you pledge allegiance to the Empire. Am I right?"
The Stormtrooper emitted an electronic bark that must have been a laugh. "Impressive knowledge… for a moisture farmer."
Oh, blast. "Is it?" Kenobi backtracked. That had been inexcusably sloppy of him. "It's simply talk I overheard from the cantinas in the city. Amazing what one might learn there." He peered into the Stormtrooper's blackened eyepieces and searched his trained instinct for any twinge of danger, for any sudden sign of recognition that would betray the fact that the trooper no longer simply thought of him as a "moisture farmer." To his immense relief, none came.
But nevertheless, when the Stormtrooper reached up to remove his helmet, Kenobi let one hand slip down to the lightsaber that was concealed beneath his robes – he had already made one mistake, and couldn't afford to make another. "I try to keep up with the news," he continued, feigning nonchalance as the trooper lifted the helmet away. "Everything is quite interesting, what with the new Empire—"
The sentence died on his tongue.
The man inside of the armor… well, it was a female.
More specifically it was a young woman with tumbling black hair, large honey-bronze eyes, and a full mouth that was currently curved in a weak smirk.
For a moment, there was nothing Kenobi could do but raise an eyebrow. How could he have not sensed that inside of all that armor was this – this girl? His Jedi skills were growing woefully dull indeed.
The woman's smirk widened in the brief silence, her tongue darting out to lick a cut in her chapped upper lip. "It's not polite to stare," she said in a raspy contralto that carried the undercurrent of pain and exhaustion.
Kenobi found himself. "Those – those wounds on your leg – they're from the Tuskens, aren't they? This is Tusken territory, and you shouldn't have worn Imperial armor here. I overheard that last season several Tuskens were killed in Mos Espa during a routine Stormtrooper inspection, and the tribes are still out for revenge. It may be effective for you to dress as a Stormtrooper in the cities – you'll earn the respect of most of the fearful degenerates there. But here in the remote areas it's safer to travel in your civilian garb."
"You say these things as though I have a choice in the matter, moisture farmer," the woman replied. The lilting grin continued playing on her lips, but her tone had become audibly firmer, more authoritative and sharp. "What do you think would happen to the Empire if all military personnel, like myself, decided to switch to their civilian clothes?"
"But I thought that real Stormtroopers—"
"Trust me, moisture farmer, you're not the only one who can't seem to believe I'm not an Imperial army brat playing dress-up with Father's spare armor."
"I was led to believe the Empire only used male clones for the job."
"And exclude the valuable services of its patriotic citizens?" She shook her head, grimaced in pain at the effort. "The clones are machines, nothing more. All they can do is follow orders and kill when they see red. So three years ago the Emperor opened the first Imperial Academy to recruit natural-borns like myself. Now that the war's over, he wants us to become an intelligent, skilled military that can root out all of the hidden Rebel scum. Tell that to your cantina friends."
Kenobi smiled outwardly, letting her words sink in. So the Empire had opened an Academy. Well, that was no surprise in itself. What made him anxious was that it had happened three long years ago and he had not heard anything about it during all this time. Apparently it was no state secret – this Stormtrooper hadn't hesitated telling a total stranger about its existence. It unnerved him that if she hadn't said anything, he could have stayed oblivious for decades, and when Luke came to be of Academy age, he could have let him slip right down the trap without knowing any better.
Suddenly, Kenobi felt old. Out of touch. Ineffectual. Here he was, a man in his prime, and already a remnant of the former Republic, still clinging to non-existent Republic ideas and fighting defeated Republic enemies. He ran his fingers through his untrimmed hair, shook out the gritty sand. "Look at you – you're injured badly and I've been carrying on idle chit-chat. I apologize," he said. "I'll dress your wounds, then take you to Mos Eisley when the sandstorm blows over. There, you can tell your story to my cantina friends yourself. It's about time they grew out of their chauvinist ways, don't you think?"
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It was only after Obi-Wan Kenobi had removed all of the Stormtrooper's armor plates that he realized the full extent of her injuries. The red gash across the abdomen, the blaster burns on the arms, the deep puncture wound on the left leg, still pulsing out a small stream of crimson. Blood, and the dirt and sand that had seeped through the armor's joints had turned her inner beige jumpsuit into a mottled ruin.
He laid her upon the narrow cot and patched her up the best he could with water, speed-heal bacta salve, and strips of cloth from an old tunic. She remained quiet through most of the ordeal, save for the suppressed winces and sharp intakes of breath, but when he lifted up the midsection of the jumpsuit to dress the wound on her narrow abdomen, she asked him, "Are you married, moisture farmer? Children?"
He stopped abruptly. She was regarding him with that odd, haughty little smile that bordered on a smirk. "I'm just trying to start a conversation," she rasped when he didn't respond. "You don't have to answer me."
Kenobi shook his head, resumed dabbling the cooling salve on the gash. "No, I'm a…" – he caught himself in time – "I'm a widower."
"When did she die?"
"More than five years ago," he said, almost without realizing it. "She died in childbirth at the end of the war. She was carrying twins. They didn't survive. And you? Are you married? Children?"
The trooper laughed quietly, a sound that Kenobi sensed was saturated in bitterness. "Married? Of course not. Stormtroopers aren't encouraged to form any romantic attachments while in service. But… I fell in love anyway, or at least in lust. His name was Nima, and he was in the same squadron as I was. We secretly pledged ourselves to each other. You could call it an engagement, I guess. We were deployed here last week in search of a hidden Rebel base, and just this morning our unit of five troopers set out to scour this region of the desert. But two hours into the journey, my betrothed…" She shrugged stiffly. "I'll save you from the syrupy details, farmer. It turns out he's a Rebel sympathizer, along with the rest of the unit. But he couldn't bring himself to kill me when the time came. Just settled for taking away my weapons, water, rations, speeder, and destroying the comlink in my helmet. Then he left me. They all left. The Tuskens came for me an hour later. Then the sandstorm. You know the rest."
What a small galaxy, Kenobi thought to himself, shaking his head in wry amusement. He blinked, and found that his eyes were slightly damp with ancient memories of a time that seemed so far removed from the present it hardly felt real. Carefully wrapping a band of cloth to her wound, he replied, slowly, "I know a long-time acquaintance who underwent a similar experience. His dearest friend – his former friend, I should say – betrayed him one day, and betrayed his beautiful young wife, and went on a fool's journey and never came back. But it all happened a very long time ago, and the last time I checked, my acquaintance had put the past behind him and created a new life."
"Was he happy in his new life?"
"I don't remember. It was all so long ago."
The girl snorted disdainfully. "Human dramas. They're all the same across the galaxy. People falling in love, then falling out of love, then letting their silly little emotions end lives and create new ones. I prefer a state-of-the-art blaster, and the knowledge that what I'm doing for the Empire now can go down in history forever."
He looked at her. "Is that why you joined the Imperial Academy?"
"I had two options. I could remain on Naboo as the baroness's daughter, and stagnate for the rest of my life in an arranged marriage to a man three times older than I was. Or, I could enlist in the Academy and finally put my combat skills to use. I chose the latter."
"Yet when you met Nima you decided to pursue just the thing—"
"Call it a young girl's curiosity, moisture farmer," she interrupted, frowning. She sounded offended. "And besides, the experience has given me a new purpose."
"And what is that?" He finished tying together the ends of the cloth bandage, and stood up from his seat at her side. "That's all I can do for now. I'll fetch you a glass of water. I sense that you're parched."
"My purpose?" the trooper answered him as Kenobi walked to the closet-sized space that served as a kitchen. "To continue working for the Empire, of course. To bring the Rebels to justice and spread unity throughout the galaxy."
Kenobi retrieved the water jug from the shelf, popped off the cap, and filled an aluminum tumbler. "What about revenge?" he asked as casually as he could, returning to his chair at the bedside and handing her the tumbler.
She snatched it almost desperately from him, draining it without pausing to take a breath. He regarded the little streams trickling from the corners of her mouth and sliding down her slender neck, before finally soaking into the collar of her jumpsuit. When she finished, she was panting lightly; she wiped her lips with the back of her wrist and tossed the empty tumbler on the nightstand. "I wouldn't mind revenge," she said, grinning. "Revenge would taste very sweet."
"Experience has told me revenge is quite useless and sour," Kenobi replied amiably.
She scoffed. "What are you, a hokey Jedi warrior the Empire wants to see dead?"
He kept his pleasant countenance; she wasn't in earnest. "From what I gather, all the Jedi were killed during the war."
"No one knows for certain. In either case, they were a bizarre cult. Powerful, I'll grant you, but bizarre. They followed a ridiculous list of rules that banned them from everything – no feelings, no sex, no happiness. No revenge. Effectively, they were the mindless assassins of the Rebel movement. Machines, if you ask me. If I were a Jedi, I'm not sure I would have wanted to live."
Kenobi looked down at his blood-streaked hands, at the barely visible lightsaber scar running across his palm. Another memory of Mustafar. He had been clambering up the newly collapsed tower with Darth Vader pursuing several feet beneath him when the tip of Vader's saber had grazed his skin. It had been the slightest of touches – there had been no blood, nor pain, and he'd only discovered the wound when the scar began to rise. "Every life form across the galaxy feels the need to belong," he said finally.
"Not to a cult that doesn't let you live the way you want to."
He met her proud, unabashed gaze. "I agree."
"I choose to belong to the Empire, because it lets me live. It gives me options. It encourages me to seek revenge against the Rebels… and the Jedi assassins who work for them, if they exist at all. And you, moisture farmer? What do you belong to?"
Kenobi smiled dryly, chose not to offer a reply to this one. He turned away from her and rinsed his hands in the shallow basin on the nightstand. "You haven't yet told me your name," he remarked.
"In duty my code number is A-186," she answered with a grin, "but given the circumstances, you may call me Lena. What about you?"
Obi-Wan Kenobi considered this, watching the blood from his fingers swirling and dissolving into the water. "Well, Lena, A-186," he said at last, "given the circumstances you may call me Ben."
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The Imperial comlink from Lena's helmet was broken, but not beyond repair. Kenobi held the pellet-like device gingerly between his thumb and index finger, turning it so the bright, post-sandstorm moonlight shone on its silvery surface. He observed that the body was crushed, and several wires torn, but the damage was nothing that a skilled technician in Mos Eisley couldn't fix. Chuckling to himself, he dropped the comlink into his trouser pocket.
He remembered what Qui-Gon had always told him – the Force moved in mysterious ways, and often, negative events had the habit of transforming into blessings. There was never a moment he believed his old master's teachings more than now. This woman Lena had effectively given him a direct connection to the Empire; with some modifications, he could wire the comlink to receive Imperial communication interceptions, and the knowledge he could gain could be vast. Knowledge for himself, but more importantly, for that little tow-headed boy, Luke Skywalker…
Kenobi leaned against the rocky outer wall of his hovel and stared out into the evening desert, now flattened and still and quiet. The calm moments following sandstorms never failed to fill him with an immense, cool tranquility, but, like desert flowers, they always disappeared much too soon; the temperature would always skyrocket within a few hours and by morning the twin suns would resume baking the dusty earth with their relentless rays. He almost regretted that Lena, sleeping soundly upon his low cot, would wake to the unforgiving Tattooinian dawn without having experienced this quiet and gentle evening.
Lena. He let his thoughts ruminate over her. Beneath the scratches and dust she had an almost… delicate face, he decided. That is, when she wasn't toying with that haughty smirk, or pinning him with the inquisitive, yet completely merciless stare. He had observed her sleeping figure warily as he'd rummaged through the Imperial armor at the foot of the cot – he had realized how noble her features were, and how her large eyes and full, bow-shaped mouth reminded him of the ancient statues of female Jedi masters that used to line the temple. Didn't she say she was a duchess on the planet of Naboo? He no longer found her claim to be quite as difficult to believe.
Awake, however, she was as vicious as a krayt dragon. Duchess or not, she was first and foremost a Stormtrooper, and a loyal, fiercely intelligent one at that, with a tongue that talk through durasteel. And perhaps, in time, the pain of her lover's betrayal would harden her into someone infinitely more deadly, as betrayal often had this unfortunate effect on higher life forms—
"Lovely night."
Kenobi wheeled around.
She was standing in the open doorframe, the blanket draped around her like a cloak. He hadn't sensed her coming, and he admonished himself for focusing too much of his attention inward, for losing himself in his thoughts and failing to stretch out with his senses. He smiled apologetically. "You surprised me. You should be in bed."
"Not during a night like this, Ben. I woke up feeling as though I was back on Naboo during one of the rainy seasons."
"How is your leg?"
"The salve's working remarkably. I'll manage," she replied, hopping to him on one foot and steadying herself against the wall with her hands. "It's so beautiful now. It was never like this during all the previous nights I was here."
"It is nature's way of ending a sandstorm." He watched her as she neared him, felt the Force ripple with – something – that he couldn't quite place. A tension of sorts, like the vibration from a taught wire after it has been plucked. "Are you in pain, Lena?" He searched her with his gaze. "How are your other—"
"I'll manage," she repeated. The unmistakable tone in her voice signified the end of the argument.
Still, something was out of place…
A heartbeat later, the confusion did not dissipate when Kenobi found that she had closed the distance between them and was now leaning against him, threading her arms around his waist and nestling her head in the base of his neck.
What in the name of the Force–?
He couldn't seem to move, resisted the urge to pull back from her. It would have been the Jedi way to do pull back, to pull far back, because he was not supposed to – but no, that wouldn't have been the right thing to do. She was holding him in an embrace, pressing her small, warm body into his, and she was whispering into his chest, her heated breath tickling his skin through the tunic fabric, "Oh, Ben. Oh, Ben."
"What… what's the matter?"
"I can't bear it any longer, Ben. He left me. He left me! I'm so alone. Hold me. I don't want to be alone. Please, just hold me."
Oh, dear. He hesitated, then wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. "I'm sorry."
"Why? It's not your fault! It's his fault!" She peered up at him with her devastating bronze eyes. "If it weren't for you, I'd be dead. Thank you, Ben. You – you've done so much for me and I don't even know you. How can I show my gratitude?"
Before Kenobi could speak, she had taken his face between her palms and she was kissing him. Her lips were crushed against his and they were hot and soft and pliant and tasting vaguely of the sweet dried fruits he had given to her for a dinner meal.
Blast it. He closed his eyes…
And the kiss was over.
She had pulled away, and once more, she was observing him with that wondrous gaze. "Heavens, I shouldn't have done that." She timidly lowered her hands, stroking his beard on the way down. "That was horrible of me."
"No, no, it was…" He searched for words, faltered.
"You're very handsome," she resumed. "You're so handsome and kind, and it's a shame you're living alone out here. Because you're just so… wonderful, and… you know what else you are?"
"What?"
A small, murmuring silence settled between them. Then, "You're also a thief!"
Kenobi felt the Force explode through him in warning; he attempted to duck away, but too late – the glinting steel blade was already pressed to his throat.
"Did you really think I was interested in you, Ben?" the wielder of the knife hissed. "What would a first-class Stormtrooper like me want with Bantha fodder like you?"
"Don't try it, Lena!"
"I'm the one giving the orders, moisture farmer," she snapped, digging the knife into his skin for emphasis. "Don't underestimate me – injured or not, I can kill you with a finger. Do you understand? Now tell me. You took something from me. Where is it?"
The comlink. He couldn't give it up so easily. Blast! How in the name of the Force had he fallen into these circumstances so quickly? How was he, a Jedi master, now pinned helplessly against a wall by a girl with a broken leg? Inexcusable. He had felt the warning signs from the very beginning, and yet like a Padawan he had disregarded them and opted to act from visual cues instead. This forsaken desert was destroying him from the inside, eating at his judgment, corroding his mind. Inexcusable.
Kenobi gathered his meager options. He could disarm her with the Force, which would give him the time he needed to grab his lightsaber and – do what? Kill her? She did not pose a mortal threat, so to end her life would be forbidden by the Jedi code. But if he used his lightsaber to defend himself and did not kill her, he would leave open the opportunity for her to reveal his Jedi identity to the Empire. All would be lost then, for Luke and for the future of the Jedi Order…
Or he could play along with the charade, feign ignorance. It was as good a plan as any other. "Lena, I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
"Don't pretend to be so innocent. I saw you snooping through my armor. But you weren't just poking it around in curiosity – no, you knew exactly what you were doing. You took the comlink, didn't you? Now why would a moisture farmer take an Imperial comlink? Or are you a moisture farmer, Ben? After all, no sane individuals would choose to live out here in the Wastes except for moisture farmers… and people who want to hide from the Empire!"
"I admit I have a passing interest in mechanics—"
"Oh? That's good for you, Ben," she cut in. She smirked, then dropped her expression into a cast-iron glare. "Give me back my comlink."
"Lena, please, can we negotiate—"
"How's this for negotiation?" She punched him in the stomach.
But not quite. Kenobi sensed the disturbance a split second before her fist made contact; he trapped her wrist, twisted her aside, and pivoted from the wall. She stumbled forward on her good leg, clambering for balance.
"Don't fight me, Lena."
"I've been in worse situations." She spun to face him. "And won."
She launched herself at him; Kenobi bent away, but she grabbed his arm and used the leverage to balance herself in the air. And then he sensed it. He attempted to avoid the hit, but her grip held him immobile. She backhanded him squarely in the temple with the hilt of the knife.
Stars erupted behind his eyes. Then fire, then darkness. Kenobi floundered backwards, unable to see through the momentary blackout, the agony reeling throughout his head. He finally found his footing against a rocky protrusion in the ground, and clung on tightly to the moment of clarity it offered. He struggled for the Force, used it to numb the pain spiraling through him. He felt warm liquid trickling down the side of his face.
When his vision swam back from the blackness, it was to an image of Lena, standing before him with the knife poised at his throat. "I have good reason to believe you're aiding the Rebel movement," she said.
So now she knew.
Kenobi willed the fuzziness in his mind to go away. The deadliest enemy for a Jedi was an unclear mind, a loss of focus. Focus. Focus! He sucked in a breath… and found the way. He reached out with the Force and touched Lena's presence. It was strong, blinding, but not unbendable. All it needed was a little persuasion…
"You don't believe I'm aiding the Rebel movement," Kenobi intoned. His voice was soothing, vacuous, foreign. Precise.
He sensed Lena's presence hesitate, then waver like a licking flame. "I don't believe…" she repeated, a tiny, confused frown marring her forehead, "I don't believe you're aiding the Rebel movement."
"You don't want to kill me. You'll take the weapon from my throat and hand it to me now."
The response came quicker this time as the connection gathered strength. "I don't want to kill you. Here's the knife," she obeyed. She lowered the blade and put it in his outstretched hand.
It was his own utility knife that he kept in the toolbox on the shelf beside the cot; he folded down the blade and slipped it into his pocket. "You want to forget about all that has happened tonight."
"I want to forget about everything tonight."
"And you want to sleep now. You want to sleep and forget."
"I want to sleep now…" Her heavy lashes quivered, drooped, and finally closed over misty, honey-colored eyes. "I want to sleep…" She fell forward limply; Kenobi caught her and scooped her up in his arms. He observed her cautiously. She was thoroughly relaxed and lost in a deep sleep, her head lolling back and breathing soft, even breaths through parted lips.
Kenobi sighed and carried her back to the hovel.
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To be continued. In the meantime, please leave feedback!
