Obi-Wan is shaking.
Or, not so much simply shaking as convulsing, his entire body bucking and writhing wildly on the Temple's med ward cot.
The collapsible bed's metal legs bang continually against the floor tiles, pounding out a jarringly loud and frantic rhythm of distress that causes a flock of healers to descend, lab coattails flapping like great white wings, upon the ICU room in seconds.
"Chisszk, he's burning up…"
"Strip him down!"
In the ever-practical fashion of healers, not a single thought is given to the ailing Jedi Master's modesty or dignity as his garments are swiftly and unceremoniously cut from his flushed and sweating body.
"Out. Now!"
A tongue-tied, scared-to-death, sixteen-year-old Jedi Padawan is propelled into the hallway just as the transperisteel folding screen slams home behind him with the grinding crash of a wounded accordion.
Anakin presses his nose flat against the faux glass, the palms of his hands splayed out on the cool panes to leave behind twin imprints composed of sweat and salty tears. Raggedy breaths and hot scalding teardrops obscure his already-impaired view of the frenzied activity taking place beyond the barrier now separating him from his desperately-ill, weakening – possibly dying – Master.
White… The whole world has been bleached to a pure, sterile, blinding white. It's bright – much too bright – and it sears his eyeballs through their stiff slitted lids…
It is the color of everything that surrounds him within his blurry field of vision – even the giant cloth wings of the enormous birds wheeling about above him… It envelopes him like a newly-fallen blanket of Hoth snow, save for the fact that he does not feel cold.
Actually, he cannot feel anything at all, which strikes him as being particularly odd, for some reason –
And then the pain slams into him again with the brute force of an ocean wave.
Only this ocean is of acid.
"Get me his vitals – STAT!"
The flurry of medical personnel buzzes around the gasping, shuddering, wounded Jedi like a swarm of angry hornets.
"Master Kenobi – Master Obi-Wan, sir – can you hear me?"
Even down to the last of his strength Obi-Wan hasn't given up fighting, his arms raised to bat the voice away in an only half-lucent defense.
"He's hallucinating – "
The flaming agony engulfs him like a chemical spill – oh! ohohooohhh it burns, it burns burnsburnsburns – leaking, welling, out of his poor torn stomach as if from an overflowing basin, pain doubling him over like that fat armadillo creature that had so fascinated him on – what was the name of the planet? and he lurches forward, struggling to breathe, in protest against the onslaught, spine creaking as it curls, tighter – tighter! reminding him of how the little animal retracted its soft, vulnerable appendages into its hard, impenetrable shell…
Like the prudent armadillo, he must protect himself from these huge, strange birds fluttering around him, these white vultures eager for a taste of his miserable scorched flesh, beaks and talons poking and prodding him, cawing to each other in their squawking indecipherable tongue, and they're hurting him – it hurts! how it hurts! – while their great white wings fan his face…
Force, what is that?!
Healers bark sharp technical commands to an assistant droid that, armed with a plethora of insidious-looking implements that Anakin would describe as being better suited to the torture chamber than the healing wing, makes its approach –
SPIDER! It is a gigantic titanium arachnid, all shiny black appendages extended, carrying venom in the glass hypodermic it holds…
Obi-Wan reacts, instinctively and violently, and all present feel a mighty surge of panicked power through the Force before the droid crashes to the floor in a smoking heap of twisted wires and metal.
While alarms shriek and shocked healers scurry, another two droids rise, whistling animatedly, to take its place.
One is dead, but more spiders come to avenge their fallen brother, their metal legs click-clicking over the polished tiled floor even as their fanged jaws clack and chirp horribly with their swift advance…
The Master's back arches painfully as his body surges upward, face contorting in blind terror, and he tries to throw himself onto the floor in an effort to escape the droids that stand at the foot of his cot –
But the healers' strong arms are there to catch him, draw him back from the edge of the mattress, and press him down once more onto his back. Fearing self-injury to their patient, they are forced to shackle him hand and foot to the bedframe.
Obi-Wan's pain-glazed eyes roll in their sockets as wildly as a spooked eopie's. And then the screaming begins – tight, animalistic shrieks of terror that emerge without consent; cries Anakin has not heard since dusty Tatooinian winds scoured his skin raw-red as fellow slaves endured the wrath of Gardulla the Hutt…
And Anakin is as terrified as he's ever been in his entire life – maybe more so. This wailing wretch before him is not his Master. Those glassy panicked eyes are not the ever-tranquil azure gaze of legendary Jedi serenity.
Obi-Wan – cool, calm, collected, implacable Obi-Wan – never loses control, never betrays fear.
He does not scream.