Lineage IX
Chapter 10
Siri Tachi spun about, instinctively taking up a bold protective stance in front of Obi-Wan.
Yan Dooku's silver brows rose, cool irony exuding off him in palpable waves. "Brave, Padawan Tachi, but…ah… unnecessary."
Rigid posture slackening into horrified realization as rational thought penetrated the haze of thwarted passion, Siri sucked in a shaking breath and bowed to the Jedi master standing limned in the opposite doorway's pale light. His shadow fell softly over the two padawans, a long hand reaching across the time-worn stones of the ancient meeting-room.
"Master Dooku," she muttered, flooding mortification threatening to drown her voice.
Obi-Wan was impressed; he had assumed that Siri was inherently immune to all forms of intimidation. In the next instant, all thought was driven from his mind by a sudden and thorough mental probe- one swift and uncompromising enough to leave him blinking mutely in its aftermath.
"I see." The Sentinel's voice floated in the memory-laden air of the ancient rotunda, echoing off walls groaning beneath the weight of the Temple's massive edifice.
"I can explain," Siri tried, her chin up and her shoulders braced.
The senior Jedi made her a gallant bow. "I assure you, my dear young lady, your enticements require no explication. - Though I daresay Master Gallia will desire some accounting of your actions and whereabouts this evening. Or should I say morning?"
His tone left no room for mistake: if Adi Gallia did not receive a thorough confession within the hour, she would later receive a scathing indictment via some third party. Siri's chest rose and fell once, twice, and then she bowed, accepting her dishonorable dismissal with as much grace as she could muster. She swiftly collected her cloak and cast one last longing and apologetic glance at her companion before disappearing through the far entrance, ascending back toward the present and the Temple's inhabited levels.
Yan Dooku strode casually across the patterned floor, his polished boots slapping gently upon ancient inset tile-stones. Obi-Wan faced him squarely, offering no hasty defense nor guilty excuse. He would not lie – not to her, not to the Force. Not to Dooku, either.
The older man seemed to appreciate this honesty – though a trenchant humor edged his next command. His thin mouth twitched. "Stand down, Padawan."
His apprentice frowned quizzically, unsure what more he could do to project non-hostilty—and then the barbed words hit home and elicited a violent blush.
"Master, I –"
"Do you know," the Sentinel mused, turning a slow and deceptively mellow circle in place, his hands folded placidly behind his back, "I too once enjoyed wandering these hallowed levels – there is a synchrony between the archaic and the modern, one more easily grasped here where the Force is…. compressed by time."
Obi-Wan did not make reply, watching the older man prowl in a tight circuit then come to rest in front of him again.
"You would not be the first to choose such a place for youthful indiscretion," Dooku continued with a tight smile. "Nor would you be the first to have escaped such foolish entrapments before it is too late." He fixed his apprentice with a meaningful stare, dark eyes glittering. "You will thank me later," he decided, when no effusive protestation of gratitude met his words.
When the padawan still made no reply, Dooku's silver brows lifted. "You are uncharacteristically tongue-tied, my young friend. I do hope your lovely companion did not inflict any permanent damage."
"Siri is not to be blamed," the young Jedi asserted, agile wit jumping ahead to the man's agonizingly delayed point. "Our lapse in conduct was entirely my fault, and I will take full responsibility before the Council."
But Dooku only chuckled. "I do not think that will be necessary," he replied. "And doubtless you would also prefer to spare the charming object of your affection such… humiliation as that would entail? I thought as much. Let us take the more effective route and discuss this privately instead."
Simultaneously wary and relieved, Obi-Wan hesitated before taking a step forward at the Sentinel's unspoken behest. "Yes, Master."
Dooku led the way through the rotunda entrance and into the sagging catacombs adjacent, wending his way through the ancient warren as though intimately familiar with its secrets. They came upon a modern pressure lock door blocking off the Archive basement levels from this historical section, but passed it by. The elegant senior Jedi did not seem angry, or even particularly disturbed by the illicit tryst or its implications. He merely gestured for his padawan to follow behind him as he wandered one level upward and made a right hand turning into a hallway locked with a heavy Force-sealed blast door.
And there Obi-Wan balked. "I've been here before," he said.
"Indeed," Dooku murmured. "But I think you still have much to learn. Come."
"Tuber fruits, and make it quick, you stinking ragpile!" the ship's cook hollered at his new underling.
The newest crew member was a filthy middle aged human, but at least he could work fast and efficiently. That knucklehead Kreebo was constantly dropping things, spilling the stew. Cooky was glad the moron got his throat cut, personally. Not that anybody ever asked his opinion.
One of the other galley hands, Jallu, was on pot duty. He casually threw one at the newcomer's head, just to establish rank and pecking order. The heavy crock seemed to swerve in midair, making an impossible curve around the stinky human, and slammed straight into the cook.
"Idiot!" Cooky spat at Jallu, the idiot, and fluttered away. He had other things to do, like check the mess boiling on the fusion cooktop. Day and half in hyperspace: five meals to provide. The last would be leftovers – hey, if anybody didn't like it they could take a quick dive into the garbage chute, see how that tasted, yeah.
Cooky sampled the first night's soup. Cheewaga. The garbage chute might be better stuff after all, heh heh. He spat his mouthful back into the pot and hovered over to the pot washer's station. Jallu had abandoned post.
Oh, there he was - he had a knife out, went to help the new guy chop the tuberfruits. No need for help, though – the stinky human was fast, you had to give him that. Kept his mouth shut too, a good trait in a human. Things looked peaceful enough, what with all the teamwork and all. The cook made a few notes on his greasy datapad. They would need to pick up a few supplies on Uagga. Some more grog, definitely. Tempers ran foul around here without enough booze on hand. He glanced up again.
Which is when Jallu's knife accidentally on purpose made a chop that missed the tuber in his hand and would have taken off the human's skinny little fingers, had he not moved his hand away at the last split second.
"Careful," the ragpile said in a low voice. "You don't want to lose a hand."
Jallu sneered and leaned in closer to hiss in the newcomer's ear. "You'll be the one missing a hand, dunghead. I don't like you here in my kitchen."
"It's a temporary inconvenience," the stinky human assured him.
"I don't like you," Jallu growled.
"You would rather sit elsewhere," the Stranger said softly, making an odd gesture with his left hand.
But Old Jallu was too stupid to take the hint or whatever that was supposed to be. Jallu didn't have enough mind to change his mind, or to mind his manners, if you asked Cooky.
"I'd rather slit your throat!" Jallu roared, lunging at the human with the keen-edged knife.
Faster than Cooky thought possible, the smelly ragpile human brought his own knife up, expertly parrying the thrust to his jugular and coming round in a tight sweeping spiral to neatly sever Jallu's hand at the wrist. The bleeding stump skittered over the clean decks and the long knife went clattering.
Jallu howled in agony and collapsed.
The Stranger just kept slicing tuber fruits, dead calm.
Cheewaga, Cooky thought. Captain's not gonna like that.
His lungs seemed to seize up the moment they crossed the arched portal into the ancient prison bloc.
"Master…"
Dooku paused. "Breathe, boy. It's nothing but an instinctive panic reaction. Control yourself."
"Yes, Master." Except that the universe was abruptly leached of color, of sound, of substantiality, fading to a hollow corpse of itself. The walls became an enclosing tomb, a trap closing in, crushing the very life out of existence, wringing the world dry and empty. Obi-Wan steadied his laboring respiration, but the crawling hand of dread still stroked down his spine. He hated it here.
"It is unpleasant, certainly," Dooku admitted, leading the way deeper into the corridor hewn of solid thanatosine granite. The Force lessened, attenuated, and dissolved into nothing. The padawan's heart raged against his ribs in protest, screaming a silent denial.
They stepped together into the open and unused containing cell at the far end. Dooku sat upon the rude bench set in its far wall, and gestured for his apprentice to join him.
Obi-Wan drew both hands through his disheveled hair as he sank down beside the Sentinel, enclosed in stifling void. He shivered, flesh crawling.
"A remarkable mineral," Dooku observed. "Very few natural substances have such properties- and it is perhaps fortunate that their uses are not well-known. In the ancient wars, a colloidal suspension of thanatosine was used as a toxin –"
"Yes, master, a Force suppressant," Obi-Wan interrupted. He had read the Histories. He knew, theoretically, of the diverse and ingenious cruelties wrought by the Order's now extinct enemies. And from what he could taste of such torture here, he knew that simple death was far preferable to suffering such practices.
"Hm. You do not enjoy being here."
"No."
"Let us discuss this matter of base passion, then," Dooku suggested, leaning back against the cold stone wall behind them, his relaxed posture and expression in no way betraying the acute discomfort he too must feel.
Obi-Wan would not be out-bluffed. He crossed his arms and shifted his weight.
The Sentinel reached sideways and grasped his apprentice's knee. Without the Force to reveal nuance and intention, the gesture was nothing but raw physical contact, a paternal touch like that of an alpha wolf lifting its pup by the scruff, a simple human interaction. It was… odd. Superficial, difficult to understand. The young Jedi blinked, swallowing carefully. He hated it here, in this tabernacle of emptiness.
"It has been many, many years," Dooku went on, "since I have had to contend with the imbalance of youth. You must suppose me a forgetful old man."
"No, Master." He would never attribute such lack of subtlety to the revered Jedi master.
The silver haired man chuckled, a rich but muted sound texturing the echoing silence in the frigid chamber. "Very politic. The lower natural impulses, Padawan, can easily supplant your more refined connection to the Force. Did you sense my approach when I , ah, stumbled upon your tender vignette? No, I thought not. Let that be sufficient evidence of what I am about to tell you. One such dalliance will do you little harm. Perhaps even a habitual foray into such animal pleasures would be innocuous, so long as its seductive influence extended only as far as the senses. But let your heart become involved –"
Obi-Wan squirmed.
"-As I perceive it has, and you risk everything. If you wallow illicitly in attachment, and the carnal expression of such, you will choke out the flower of the Force with the weed of emotion and appetite." At the mutinous expression on his protégé's face, he hurriedly continued. "Oh, I know they can flourish together in seeming harmony – for a while. But heed my words: in time, one will consume the other. Passion will dominate, and blossom into seed, and die away as the body ages. And then, then…. " he gestured expansively, "-your inner garden untended, lying fallow for want of Light, you will be left with nothing."
The Sentinel was a born orator.
"Yes, Master." His apprentice frowned deeply.
"You are talented. You are destined," Dooku persevered. "Do not waste such gifts upon a fleeting illusion. You do not see it now, but love- as you term it in your private thoughts – is a prison. It is the walls of this very cell, that keep you from a truer and better communion."
The padawan tightened his arms' defensive knot, rubbing hands idly against his upper arms, goose-fleshed beneath his tunic sleeves. Siri. Siri.
The older man stood, and released a regretful sigh. "I had hoped it would not come to this – but I think a demonstration is in order."
Obi-Wan glanced up sharply, a dreadful suspicion forming in his stunned mind.
"You will remain here, and meditate – as best you can in such dismal surroundings – on the consequences of such reckless disposition of your heart."
The young Jedi was on his feet that instant. "No! Master – "
Dooku's brows lowered, a thunderous line of authority. "You have already disobeyed my direct order once. Do not compound your malfeasance with further rebellion."
The walls of the cell constricted about him, suffocating. Obedience, submission. He managed a curt bow, belly twisting.
"I shall return at dawn, and we shall discuss what you have learned in the interim."
Dooku's long cloak coiled sinuously over the threshold as he departed, sealing the heavy panel behind him.
Obi-Wan sank slowly to his knees upon the rough flagstones, the Force utterly absent, his wildly throbbing heart buried alive in nothingness.
Oh, Siri.
Yan Dooku folded his dark cloak across the low console table by the apartment's door and studied the dejarik board intently, lips pursed in concentration. He remained motionless for a long minute and then reached out a hand only to retract it before the holopieces could respond.
"Hm." He cleared his throat pensively and pondered the present configuration of gladiators from another angle.
"Good heavens." He decided to pour himself a small glass of wine instead. He was far too cunning to fall into the trap laid for him… but he had to admit that its existence gave him pause. He had very much underestimated the boy's potential for strategic treachery – and he had not been naïve in his initial generous estimation.
Apparently Qui-Gon had instilled a few lessons quite adeptly – or perhaps this was just another manifestation of his padawan's own unlikely constellation of talents.
In either case, the game had just taken on a far more serious aspect, inasmuch as the contest had thus transfigured from teaching exercise to subtle clash of will and intellect. He drained his cup and set the goblet down. Kenobi was just as much a handful as Qui-Gon had ever been. And that was saying something.
His ruminations were abruptly ended by the door chime. Despite the obscenely late hour, he opened the portal, sensing the identity of his visitor before she stepped gracefully in to his private quarters, Tholothian headdress glinting softly in the dimmed illuminators.
Jedi Master Adi Gallia's azure gaze skimmed over Dooku's collection of artifacts and oddities, arrayed upon their inset shelves, before coming to rest upon the man himself. She smiled ruefully. "You know, of course, why I am here."
He waved his fellow Councilor onto a meditation cushion and settled opposite.
"My padawan has claimed all responsibility," Adi stated flatly.
"As has mine, naturally," the Sentinel observed, with an amused lift of his brow. "I have addressed the matter already, in private."
The Tholothian woman relaxed visibly. "That is good," she demurred. "In Padawan Tachi's case, there are extenuating circumstances – a matter of personal history- that make an official Council censure problematic. Master Yoda concurs."
Dooku was indifferent to his former mentor's contorted logic and imperious pronouncements, but he nodded politely. "Then we are in agreement as well."
Adi's head dipped in a regal nod. "Do you wish to arrange a chaperoned meeting? A guided meditation? We are scheduled to depart from the Temple again in," – she grimaced slightly –"fourteen standard hours."
"Let us dispense with such formalities," he suggested. "Since fate has already provided the best remedy."
Rising to take her leave, Adi paused and fixed him with a coolly assessing look, but did not venture to make further reply.
He ushered her back into the hushed corridor and returned to his sober contemplation of the holochess board, and the intriguing problem of discipline that it posed.