Obi-Wan struggled to place one foot in front of the other as snow whirled around him in gusts more furious than Anakin had been that time when he had commented that Padmé really was quite a pretty woman. His feet crunched into the deep snow, making impressively large tracks, made all the more stunning by how quickly they were filled.
Pain pulsed like a drummer whose arms had long since cramped up, and who was only playing based on the episodic twitches of his or her hands, stabbing in his leg and his chest. He grimaced; why did he always suffer so? His Master had never cared about him; the one Padawan he had fully raised was self-involved and uncaring, and…
Suddenly, he realized he was starting to angst, which was never a good sign because it was usually followed by an outburst of Manly Tears, which would probably freeze on his face, thus making the situation much worse. To distract himself, he focused on his companions as they traveled ahead of him, their youthful strength far surpassing his elderly weakness.
Rhiannon was closest to him. Her hair, still perfectly in place, shone against the snow; a raven beacon that let him know exactly where she was. Ahsoka, her skin like a lackluster tomato, was ahead of Rhiannon, leading by several paces. Anakin was somewhere. You could never really tell where he was, which probably explained the stealth missions that the Council always sent him on, and why he always won at hide-and-seek.
Rhiannon shouted something in her bell-like tones, although above the howling wind, which sounded as though its hand had just been severed by a lightsaber, he couldn't be sure exactly what it was. "What was that, Padawan?"
She dropped back to stand beside him, a pale figure that would have easily disappeared into the snow, if it weren't for her violet eyes and midnight hair. "There's a cave up ahead. I managed to find it by sending out waves through the Force, and seeing where they led me, although Padawan Tano's insistence on going only where she wanted to go made it a bit difficult. Should we head out in that direction?"
"Well, that direction is as good as any." Besides up, which was probably the best way to go at the moment, but since their ship was nothing more than a mass of twisted metal and dying hope, they wouldn't be going that way anytime soon. "Lead the way."
"As you wish." She turned in a spin so graceful that it was a shame that it wasn't recorded and used as training videos for all of the dancers and ice-skaters across the galaxy. "Ahsoka! Master Kenobi says to head for the cave that I discovered."
"Master Obi said he's got our backs covered?"
"No!" Rhiannon raised her voice, still as clear and pure as an unpolluted stream beneath the gentle rays of a summer sun, but making it to be as bold as an ocean whose tides were pushing forwards against unsuspecting beachgoers. "Go to the cave!"
"Go to it yourself!"
"Oh, for my sake!" Rhiannon danced lightly over the mounds of snow to degrade herself by standing next to the lesser being. "Master Kenobi has given the command to go into the cave that I discovered."
Obi-Wan couldn't be sure what Ahsoka's reply was, since the wind was louder even than the sound of the eternal burning agony that had been in his heart ever since the death of the man he had regarded as a father. However, if he had to guess, he would have assumed that she snapped back, "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?"
Rhiannon, he noted, didn't demean herself by responding to such foolishness. Instead, she persevered on through the blizzard, the epitome of strength in difficult times, until her midnight locks suddenly disappeared into what Obi-Wan had been assuming was a solid boundary.
In its muddled state, the first thought to cross his mind was that he wasn't surprised that a Padawan of her skill could pass through walls. The second thought was that it was actually not a wall at all, but an entrance to the mysterious cave she had found. The third was that she probably really could pass through walls, even if she hadn't just demonstrated the ability to do so.
Then, he realized that he probably should stop keeping track of his thoughts quite so thoroughly, and actually follow her in. By now, Ahsoka and Anakin (who, as it turned out, had indeed been hiding behind his Padawan in some sort of pathetic effort to shield himself from the cold) had gone in as well.
Obi-Wan shrugged. Now or never, or possibly later, except he would probably freeze to death before the last one came, so scratch that. He was going to do it now, and damn it, he was going to do it well!
Enthused, he surged forward, and missed the opening of the cave by about a meter.
Cold snow leaked through the back of his shirt, doing nothing to make him feel better. Well. This was slightly embarrassing.
"Master? Master, are you coming in?" Rhiannon's voice floated out like an echo, whispery and gentle, carried on the great winds.
"Of course I am! I thank you for your concern, but I was just... resting." He scrambled off his feet, sore, tired, and now utterly soaked. In a slightly more coordinated move, he slipped through the opening (which was, in all fairness, extremely narrow) and scrambled in next to Anakin. "Push over."
"I can't. It's too dark in here, and so if we go more than a meter into the cave, we're likely to meet some sort of wild Hoth beast. It's safer this way."
"Safer? Anakin, I know you like droids more than people, and I know you don't tend to get along with not-so-sentient lifeforms, but you're taking that to an irrational level. We're perfectly-"
"Master? I hate to interrupt your conversation," spoke Rhiannon in a quick and breathless voice as she leaped to her feet in a smooth gesture and twisted around, like a vine twisting and strangling the life out of a great oak, "but there's some sort of snow beast coming at us, and he doesn't look too happy."
"-safe. Oh, goodness." Obi-Wan lumbered up and yanked out his lightsaber, fully prepared to do his part, since apparently neither Anakin nor Ahsoka was particularly interested in making themselves useful at the moment -but, he realized with a start, that wasn't necessary. Rhiannon had it covered.
She moved smoothly, like raindrops sliding off the tallest towers of the Temple and falling towards the end of their short, wet lives. Her lightsaber was a silver blur, like an extension of her arm; so smooth was its motion. Even in the dim light he could see how her eyes flashed deep and predatory, the twilight moving into nighttime as she attacked with fierce speed.
The Snow Beast, of course, stood no chance against her great skills. It roared, a noisy swan song that blended in perfectly with the roaring winds outside of the cave, but all it received for its vocal efforts was a lightsaber planted square in the chest.
With a thud it fell to the ground, dead. Rhiannon stood over its corpse for a moment like a wolf who had just brought down a kill, before deactivating her lightsaber and turning to face Obi-Wan and his companions.
"It's dead, Master," she said brightly, with no hint of having exerted even a mild effort to bring down the towering creature.
"Padawan, that was... that was phenomenal! How did you manage to defeat it with such speed?" He usually didn't believe in praising students, but the level of prowess that she had just displayed was so much that his words didn't even begin to do justice, and even if he had a thousand of them, the picture that they painted wouldn't be anything even close to what he had just seen.
"Speed? Oh, Master, please don't say that." A soft, rosy blush spread across her cheeks, which had remained a perfect imitation of alabaster up until that point, despite how cold it was.
"I was three and one-tenth of a second behind my usual time. I fear that the chill will soon begin to impair my abilities, even with my tolerance for extreme conditions, which works both ways, in case you were worried about if we ever went to a desert planet, like Tatooine."
"I'll keep that in mind. You never know where the Council will send us next. And don't you worry; the cold seems to have had very little effect on you." Unlike with Anakin, who had his arms crossed and who wore a frown that was unquestionably close to a pout.
"That's very flattering of you to say." Rhiannon stepped lightly around his former Padawan and his former Padawan's Padawan (whose skin was starting to look rather blue, although that might have just been because of the poor lighting) and knelt down beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder and pushing him back into a sitting position as he tried to get to his feet to further assess the cave. "Master, you're injured! Stay still."
"Oh, am I? That's unfortunate." Yes, injuries would account for the pain. That was logical. He was lucky to have such a logical, intelligent apprentice.
"I was able to get a rough idea of what wounds you had encountered in the battle against the ship, but healing would have taken too long –at least two minutes, I'm afraid; my skills simply aren't what they should be. Now that we're out of the ship and in a proper shelter, please, let me help repair whatever physical damage you may have suffered."
He was tempted to take up the offer immediately, and he almost did, but then he realized that he was a Jedi Master, and he was supposed to be selfless. Or was it selfish? He was able to vaguely recall Yoda preaching the first one, but hadn't he practiced the second one, that time in the cafeteria, with all of those muja pastries? This was confusing.
At last (which was really only after a few seconds of mental debate) he concluded that it was indeed his original conclusion that was right. "Rhiannon, it's very kind of you to offer to do that, but I can't accept. I need to make sure that you save your strength –which, surely, must be depleted after what you just did to the snow beast—and to make sure that all others are uninjured before I can heal myself. I need to be self-sacrificing; it's in the Code."
His Padawan's eyes blazed unexpectedly, a strong passion setting alight the gloaming-shaded pupils. "No, Master! You must be healed yourself first. I would be a terrible Padawan, if I insisted it be any other way! Regardless of that; Master Skywalker and Testy Togruta Tano are fine. Ask them yourself, if you doubt my words!"
Given the closeness of their quarters, neither Anakin nor Ahsoka was bothering to pretend that they weren't listening in on the conversation. "Don't worry about me, Master Kenobi! My fingers haven't fallen off yet. I think that the Force is acting as a bit of an insulator. It's doing about as good a job fighting the cold as Rhiannon is fighting with me, but seeing as I haven't fallen into a pleasant sleep yet, I guess everything is fine with me. Except that I can't feel my toes." Ahsoka shrugged, which was a mostly-pointless gesture, given that it was so dark in the cave that Obi-Wan probably wouldn't have seen the Sith Lord himself coming towards them.
Anakin's response was far more prompt. "I'm suffering terribly, but you don't really care about that."
"Fair enough. Okay, so it seems we're all okay? Good. Now, we need to start figuring out what to do."
"And first, I heal you." Before he could object, Rhiannon reached out and pulled off the tattered remnants of his shirt, revealing his pristine abs to the world. "Just as I thought –minor fractures. Easy to heal." She pressed a hand to the gentle, subtle outline of his ribs, and Obi-Wan felt the warm flow of the Force's healing energies transfer, coursing through his body. "That should take care of your leg as well," added Rhiannon, and indeed it did, expelling the tiny bits of shrapnel that the explosion had lodged in there, and binding his flesh again.
It was a masterfully done job, neater and quicker than the care he typically received at the hands of the professional healers. It made him feel almost guilty for a moment, using
Rhiannon's talents like this when she could be back on Coruscant, saving lives with those magic hands -but the guilt didn't last long. He wasn't that selfless.
"You have my eternal gratitude for that, Padawan," he said, rising to his feet and feeling better than he had for a long time, possibly since before Qui-Gon had introduced him to the sport of extreme sparring. "Now, to assess the situation-"
"Master?" Anakin had apparently found some motivation in him, for he was standing up. The simple act took leviathan strength, since it was cold, and Anakin withered like a flower when it wasn't at least half the temperature of the surface of a sun. "We have a problem."
"Don't tell me that there's another snow beast." Actually, that wouldn't be so bad, since he knew that they could deal with those. Better the snow beast that they knew than the... whatever that they didn't.
"No. See, I was exploring, and there's a door at the end of this cave -not too far down. Turns out, this isn't a cave after all! It's actually an entrance-way leading to the droid factory we were sent to destroy."
How wonderful. "Very serendipitous. The one cave we find just happens to lead into a droid production center? This is unfortunate." If anyone other than Rhiannon had been the one to suggest they take refuge here he would probably be rather annoyed at them, but it was hard to take fault with his new, shiny Padawan.
"We should probably start moving," added Anakin, as an afterthought. "The prospect of the three of us against several dozen -possibly hundreds; I didn't get too good a look- legions of battle droids doesn't frighten me, but I think that the snow beast is starting to smell."
"How wonderful it is for you to be prioritizing." Not that Anakin was incorrect, at least not this time. It did have a bit of an odor, although he had smelled worse: the time that Qui-Gon had insisted he try fried Tauntaun came to mind immediately. He had heard that those things smelled bad when they were alive, but cooked, they really put up a stink.
Silence fell over the group for a moment, letting them all mull over in their own private thoughts.
It was Anakin who killed the silence, because, putting it simply, Anakin was good at killing things. "I'll let you figure out a way out of this one, Master."
Ahsoka, for once, agreed with her Master. "Definitely. Master Kenobi, have I ever mentioned how great you are at problem solving? It's, like, really great, the way you can get us out of any sort of situation. Really. It's no surprise you're a Master, with that sort of skill -you deserve that rank far more than I can ever say."
Rhiannon, at least, was loyal. "If we use your patience and my patience and my intelligence, I'm sure we can come up with something," she said, as light and optimistic as a spring day that has yet to be crushed by a winter storm that had yet to get the memo about seasons changing. "It is, after all, partially my fault we ended up here -although I must say, Padawan Tano was the one insisting that we take this direction. In all fairness, I mean. Regardless, I'll do my best to rectify the mistake, even if it was hers."
"Thank you, Rhiannon." Yes, there was one person worthy of knighthood in the group, at the very least. Things could be-
"-the snow beast is decomposing pretty rapidly."
-no, best leave that thought incomplete.