DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters from Star Wars in any shape or form. I own any OC I can invent, though. I am not making a £ out of this. It is just for shits and giggles.
First of all, thanks a lot to everybody for the reviews. It's heartening to know that someone is still reading this. 3
In this chapter the drama continues, as expected.
Warnings: angst, some blood, very minor violence (like, really minor)
Enjoy!
As soon as the door closed shut behind Obi-Wan, Maul let himself collapse back onto the pillow.
He felt like he was shaking all over from sheer stress, something that had rarely happened to him before, but turning the Padawan away had been one of the hardest things he had done in his admittely hard life, and it had taken all his force of will to rebuff him when the Obi-Wan had reached out for him. Maul knew he had hurt him, and even though he derived no satisfaction at all from that, he knew that it had to be done, that there was no other way.
But oh, when that wounded expression had appeared on the Padawan's fair face, the temptation to reach out, to call him back had been strong and undeniable. He had nearly succumbed to the promise of comfort and to the siren call of hope, which claimed that Obi-Wan could help him, that he didn't need to run.
He would not yield, though, he told himself. He could not afford it. He would not cause the death of another being he cared for, not if he could help.
Sidious would not have Obi-Wan. The Padawan was his...
... yes, his, his nemesis, his equal, his to fight, his to kill, even...
... his even though this was the last time they would meet, and even though the last words they shared were exchanged in anger.
"It was bound to happen, sooner or later." he told himself, as meagre consolation. Sooner or later Obi-Wan would have realised to what depths of horror he had sunk, he would would realise that he was flawed, too damaged to change and become what the Padawan wanted him to be, and it would have been all over anyway.
He did not know if he could endure Obi-Wan's disgust and reproach. Better to have a relatively clean break, like this. With luck his Padawan would never know what had happened to him.
He had to go, and he had do it quickly, before he succumbed fully to the weakness that had become part of him him.
If Obi-Wan reached out for him again, if he spoke to him or touched him to comfort, he did not know if he would be able to break away again.
This was the time. It was early morning and the corridors of the palace would be mostly empty. He had sent Obi-Wan away, and Doc was not around either. He had not made a full recovery yet, but Doc had been optimistic about his recovery. It would have to do, and at any rate he didn't have to last a lot, just enough to get Sidious off the backs of his people, just enough to let them arrive at the Temple.
He was going to die, eventually, but he would make the time he had left count as much as he could, he vowed.
Maul closed his eyes, breathing deeply and evenly to help himself focus. He could do that.
He had escaped from Cog Hive 7, running away from a civilian building of which he knew the layout would be as easy as a walk in the park.
First thing, the Force-damned tubes and sensors would have to go. If he removed the ECG electrodes and the oxygen sensor, however, the terminal would send a distress signal to the doctor on call or to Obi-Wan, or both.
Priorities, always priorities, Maul thought, struggling to get rid of the tape holding the IV drip cannula in place on his left hand. He held the cannula beteween his right thumb and forefinger and slowly pulled it out. A bit of blood started dripping from the puncture, but he ignored it, raising the sheet and having a look at the bandages around his midriff. They looked clean and dry and there were no drainages.
Good, he thought. Time to get rid of the Force-damned catheter. At least no one had taped that in place. Gently pulling the thin tube out (how bloody long was that thing?!), he vowed to himself that if by any accident he survived, he would do his best never to end up in hospital again. He let the blasted tube fall to the ground and sighed in relief.
Time to deactivate the terminals. A small application of Force-lighting did the trick, shorting the machine into uselessness. He had figured out how to flow the Force in that shape only recently, when he had reached out in anger and desperation to rescue Obi-Wan from the sinkhole.
"How ironic is that?!", he asked himself, laughing under his breath as he detached the electrodes from his chest and wrists.
And now for the hardest part, he told himself, turning awkwardly in the bed to dangle his bare legs from the side.
Maul pushed himself out of the bed, steeling himself against the vertigo that was sure to come. His vision nearly blacked out and his ears filled with a roaring noise, but he held on tight to the bed and the stand and managed to remain upright until the wave of weakness passed.
Gingerly, he let go of both supports and took a step. He wobbled a bit, but at least he could walk. Another small victory for him, he thought.
Now he needed clothes. There was no way he was going to run away buck naked as he was.
The door to the nurse's room opened with a soft hiss under his touch. It smelled like the Padawan, and he wished he did not know his smell well enough to recognise it.
Obi-Wan's Jedi robes were folded onto a chair, slightly rumpled from use but still reasonably clean. Maul picked them up and brought them close to his face. They smelled mostly like fabric conditioner, but also a lot like him...
"Damn!" he thought, feeling his eyes sting.
He rubbed his face none too gently and quickly donned the robes. With the hood up, most of his face would be hidden and few people would be observant enough to notice that the clothes were slightly too long and slightly too tight across the shoulders. The decision to take them had everything to do with tactical considerations, he told himself. The fact that he liked the idea of having something to remember him by had no bearing on his decision, he thought, nodding wisely. Unfortunately, neither his mutilated sabre, nor Obi-Wan's were anywhere to be seen. He would have to improvise.
His left hand was still bleeding, dripping fat drops of dark red blood on the white floor of the ward. He bound it with a leftover piece of bandage and went back to the main room of the ward.
He was crossing the floor to get out, when he became aware of a presence. Switching to high alert, he ducked back in the nurse's room, just in time to avoid detection.
The main door opened and the woman the Padawan had called Doc came in, taking the scene with the empty bed, the bloodstains and the busted ECG machine with a confused expression.
Her confusion, however lasted for a brief instant, before she moved to the terminal, aiming for the alarm, but Maul had always been silent like a shadow and now desperation made him fast like lightning too. He slipped behind her and hit her in the back of the head with the heel of his hand, not as hard as he could, but hard enough to render her unconscious. Doc folded to the floor, but Maul held her up, protecting her from the fall.
He didn't want to hurt her. She had been kind to him, and he was doing this, all of this, for her as well, to protect her from further harm.
Thankfully the chair which Obi-Wan had been using was close by. Maul dragged Doc to it and arranged her in a sitting position as well as he could. A roll of tape was close at hand. He wrapped it around her and the chair, sealing her mouth with a strip of tape as well for good measure. It would not hold her forever, but it would do for a while, he judged.
Doc was a tough woman, though, and she must have had regained consciousness at some point as he was tying her up. When he looked at her face, her eyes were open and on her face was painted a confused and hurt look, that quickly turned to anger and disapproval.
He could almost hear her: "After all we have done for you..." she would probably say, if she could.
"This is not how it seems. - Maul said, even though he should have darted out of that door as quickly as possible - I didn't want to do any of this." he tried to explain, but her expression didn't soften.
She had defended him, gone against Fisto for him, and this was how he repaid her? It must feel like betrayal: painful and lonely.
"My Master has found me. He told me he would hurt you and Obi-Wan because of me. - he continued - I won't let this happen again. This time I'm fighting him, that's why I am leaving." he added, and this time her expression did change, first to something like surprise, than to something like pleading.
"You don't have to do this..." she seemed to be trying to say.
"I don't want to... I would stay, if I could, but I have to, do you understand? - Maul replied, continuing that one-sided dialogue - I am doing this because I want to protect you. Please, Doc... don't tell Obi-Wan. I'd rather him think me a traitor than risk his life for me again. He can't save me, this time. Don't let him come after me. I don't want him to die because of me..." he pleaded, feeling his eyes sting again.
Doc's eyes filled with tears too and she bowed her head down, averting her eyes from him.
Maul wiped his face with an overly long sleeve and turned towards the door, but again he hesitated with his hand on the switch. It didn't seem right to leave like that.
"Tell Obi-Wan that I'll be forever grateful to him for everything he has done for me. - he said quietly to the doctor, without turning towards her - Say goodbye to him for me, Doc." he finished wistfully.
The door opened and he walked away without looking back.
The corridor of the hospital level was empty. Maul could feel some presences inside the other wards, but as long as they remained behind their doors, they were not his problem.
From what he remembered of the plans his Master had showed him, to get to the main hangar he would have to take that corridor to the end and go down a few levels and then into another corridor.
Thankfully Obi-Wan's Jedi robes allowed him to blend in without any problem. He had forced himself to walked calmly, as if he was just taking an unhurried stroll in the palace, even though he wanted to run away as fast as he could, and, as expected, no one had looked at him twice. He had walked right next to patrols of Royal Guards, close enough that he could touch them, and nothing had happened, not even a hint of alarm.
It looked like luck was on his side, but as soon as he left the most densely populated areas of the Palace, he quickened his pace and cloaked himself in the emanations of the Force, so that he would be nearly invisible to all but the most experienced Force-users. There was no way of telling if his luck would hold, and it was always better to plan in advance for adversities.
He actually made nearly halfway to the hangar, before he sensed a strong Force-presence coming from an intersection. It wasn't his Padawan, and this only left Master Fisto.
"Damn and double damn!" he thought. A door to a room empty of Force-presence was nearby and he lost no time in slinking into nearly tripped over a janitor droid as he crossed the threshold.
Bloody droids, he thought with a grimace as the wound twinged and deactivated the bloody lump of metal with some more Force-lightning before it could do anything more than whirr in surprise. It was over in less than a handful of seconds. None seemed to be the wiser and no alarm was sounded.
Maul sighed in relief. Hopefully the droid would not have been alarmed for manumission. He had already precious little time before either of the Jedi sensed that he was using the Dark Side, or someone happened on the bound and gagged doctor.
Breathing slowly to calm himself down, he dropped most of the Force, stilled his thoughts and lowered his vital signs, trying to blend in with the environment. A few, quiet and tense minutes passed, then the presence turned away, weakening as the Jedi Master moved in a different direction.
Maul allowed himself a sigh of relief and slinked out again, resuming his jog.
Strapped to a chair in the isolation ward, doctor Sade Amidala was fuming with rage.
The nerve of the boy was incredible! He had caught her completely by surprise and overpowered her completely, as if she was nothing more than a helpless child.
And now she was stuck fast to the bloody chair, while he was running around, nowhere near fully healed. Whatever the hell was he thinking? And especially, where did he think he was going?
If his Master had really found him, he had every reason to panic, but surely he would realise that he had much better chances with them than striking off alone, no?
But the poor boy had not been concerned with his own safety, only with theirs, hers and Obi-Wan's, but even with the help of the Force and a Zabrak's natural imperviety to pain, he would end up collapsing in pain and exhaustion before long, and then, weakened and alone, how would he be able to fight against an older, more experienced and clearly sadistic Sith?
He had said farewell like he knew he was going off to his own death, and judging from what she had gleaned from his Master, it was a good hypothesis as any. Well, she wasn't going to let that happen. Not a chance.
She had fought for him once already, now it was time to do it again.
Trying to relax on the chair, she forced herself to calm down by taking a few deep breaths.
While her midi-chlorian count was a mere of 4000, she had spent ten years of her life training in the use of the Force before the Jedi Council decided that she was hopeless at it.
She had been, no mistake, but she had developed, over the course of the years, a marked attitude to a single, mostly useless manifestation of the Force. Now, at last it was going to prove vital.
Sade took one last deep breath and tapped into what little flow of Force she could sense, using it in its entirety to project a wordless, but very loud, distress signal which any Force-user and Force-sensitive would hear in the whole building.
Hopefully it would be enough, she thought, slumping back against the chair in exhaustion.
