A Jedi Wizard Tale
Chapter 1
"You can't be serious!" Obi-Wan exclaimed.
Mace, Yoda and Chancellor Palpatine all looked at the wizard-knight with varying degree of—nonplussed. Obi-Wan hid white-knuckled fists behind his back. Surely they couldn't all think this was a good idea!
"Knight Kenobi, the Council did not make this decision lightly. We've been debating it for the better part of the last three days since we got this damned cease-fire request!" Mace snapped, half out of his chair, his brows furrowed so deeply, Obi-Wan thought his eyes would pop out of his skull.
"Unwise, it would be, to send a more—or less—experienced knight, we have decided," Yoda chimed in.
"So I'm expendable—!"
"You have faced Skywalker," Chancellor Palpatine interjected, "more times than anyone and lived to tell the tale." One more nail in the coffin, Obi-Wan felt.
"It's a trap!" Obi-Wan blurted, his hands flying above his head. How could they not see that it was a trap?
"You think we haven't considered that?" Mace exploded, fully out of his chair and one step closer to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan found himself taking a step back, despite most of the council room still between him and the dark-skinned master wizard. "That's a risk that we've had to consider! That's why we need it to be you! If it is trap instead of a peace negotiation, you stand the best chance of pulling out of the situation instead of just becoming another casualty!"
"And you think this because of my past record?" Obi-Wan seethed. "Skywalker—he, well, um…"
Obi-Wan faltered, memories of his last encounter with the dark wizard fizzing through his mind like a static shock. Skywalker had had him, and it was only that weird spark that happened whenever the two of them got too close together that had thrown Skywalker off and let Obi-Wan escape yet again. Skywalker had wanted to touch him on purpose that time, as if he was trying to work out this strange phenomenon in his head, and he just needed a little more information. Obi-Wan had felt like a bug, crushed by Dark Side energy against the face of the bluff as Skywalker deliberately removed his glove and stretched out hesitant fingers to stroke his cheek.
The resulting charge in his own energies had been enough for Obi-Wan to throw Skywalker back and flee back to his own troops' line. If Quinlan and Aayla had not also been there, though, Obi-Wan feared that that would not have been enough to stop the dark wizard mounting another assault to corner and trap Obi-Wan.
…this was his own fault, he realized. He shouldn't have excluded these strange encounters from his field reports to the Council.
Mace's brows were now as far up his head as they had been into his eyes before. What kind of muscle control did it take to do that? They screamed 'Well?' to Obi-Wan. He needed to come clean.
"Skywalker—he, um, he reacts, um, anytime we…come into contact…" Obi-Wan trailed off, unsure of how else to explain the alarmingly powerful energy that flowed between Skywalker and himself. "He's after me!" he blurted.
"Skywalker couldn't possibly know that we would send you, young Kenobi," Chancellor Palpatine soothed. "I see no reason for the amount of alarm you are expressing."
"Do your duty, you must," Yoda insisted. "Allow fear to cloud your mind in this, you should not." He tapped his wizard stick on the floor, like a judge's gavel, final and resolute. The miserable troll.
Obi-Wan nodded stiffly, bowed and left the room. He was a general after all, and he knew when retreat was in order.