With supremely grateful thanks to And I'm all out of bubblegum, whose incredibly thoughtful and detailed review caused me to strike a compromise with the Muse and get this chapter posted. After obediently following the story outline up til this point, the Muse has suddenly decided that the ending we had long agreed upon maybe isn't quite right, and that there should only be one ending for poor, beleaguered Obi-Wan. We'll see who wins.

New Arrangements

By: Syntyche

Chapter Fourteen

Qui-Gon Jinn opened gritty eyes, slowly forcing himself to ignore the consuming exhaustion gnawing at him, trying desperately to focus his mind against the building panic beating a steady tattoo against his wakening thoughts. Something was very, very wrong, but he needed to stay calm if he wanted to discover what it was.

The answer came very quickly as he attempted to lift a hand to rub at the relentless ache across his forehead:

He couldn't move anything below his shoulders.

Terror erupted across his drowsy mind but Qui-Gon forced himself to be composed, willed himself to study his situation before giving in to the sick dread that was clawing hungrily at his gut. He wanted to focus - but was immediately distracted as a tiny, irritating jolt of white-hot electricity skittered across his skin, effectively disrupting his concentration.

What the hell?

A flicker of cerulean, accompanied by another small twitch of current, distracted him again, dancing across his vision around the region of his right shoulder. The room was disturbingly dim, illuminated only by the regular flashes of stinging blue that were making it so hard to think clearly. His eyes were adjusting slowly, however, and he thought he caught a small stirring across the room - not something that would have caused him any nervousness in his usual state, but confined as he was, he couldn't keep a small quiver from rippling through his chest.

He hoped it wasn't rats. He hated rats. Give him all of the creatures so loved by the Living Force and he would welcome and care for them with open, accepting arms… except rats - clearly they were a foul manifestation of the Dark Side sent to terrify a large Jedi Master who routinely conducted missions of mercy within Coruscant's lower levels.

He was understandably but irrationally irritated by the waver in his voice when he asked shakily,

"Is anyone there?"

Qui-Gon cleared his throat, a little embarrassed by the warble showing through - barely a trace of his normal strength boomed through at a time he really would have liked to sound in command. His followup attempt was a little stronger, but not much: "Hello?"

If he could have moved his body, he still would frozen in surprise at the familiar voice that answered him.

"Master Jinn."

Obi-Wan Kenobi had always sounded tired to him, like someone who had wearied of life long before they should, but now he just sounded utterly emptied, his voice almost unrecognizably him but for the undercurrent of his Core accent. The anger he had displayed toward Qui-Gon in the docking bay earlier was still there, alive and poisonous, dripping with hatred and it echoed in Qui-Gon's mind, though even wearied as he was Qui-Gon could sense a lack of conviction to the emotion Kenobi struggled to present.

And there was the hum, always the hum that accompanied young Kenobi, jangling just on the edge of Qui-Gon's awareness.

"Padawan," he rasped tensely; not a greeting, merely an acknowledgement and he hoped he sufficiently masked the uncertainty in his voice. Even confined, he would still be in control.

Qui-Gon waited for Kenobi to emerge from the shadows, but there was no other movement forthcoming in the dimness. His grasp of the Living Force told him that Kenobi was hiding something from him beyond the wild trembling in the Padawan's Signature, but Qui-Gon was having trouble concentrating past the disruptive crackles of electricity shooting through his body. Whoever had designed this captivity device was, Qui-Gon was realizing ruefully, a genius; combining the body's natural rebellion against immobility with incessant jolts of electricity that disrupted the captive's thinking process … even as focused in the Force as he was, Qui-Gon was finding it difficult to maintain a coherent line of thought for more than a few moments.

He shook his head unhappily, wincing at the restricted movement.

"What are you doing here?" was Kenobi's question, the words stunted and slow, angry and bitter, biting at him from the darkness. They were also, Qui-Gon noted worriedly, filled with a fear that bordered on terrified and that unnerved the Jedi Master. There were too many emotions emanating from Kenobi, too much dividedness within the young Padawan. Kenobi was extremely unstable.

"I don't know," he admitted, deciding the best route was to be cautiously honest with the volatile Padawan, though a hazy memory was pushing at the front of his mind that he couldn't quite clear... "Aren't I here because of you?"

"I don't know. In what sense?" Kenobi asked, the smallest trace of humor diffusing some of the anger in his tone, the rapid shift in emotion somewhat unsettling.

The lights blared on, blinding them both with their sudden painful intensity. White screamed across his vision and Qui-Gon blinked hastily, wishing he could bring a hand up to cover his eyes and brush away the tears that had sprung through reflexively. He heard Kenobi gasp at the brightness, followed by a shuddering sigh, and then a mumbled, "Hooray, the one hour of light a day." A pause. "Seems early, though," Kenobi murmured thoughtfully, a frown heavy in his voice.

Qui-Gon kept his eyes closed, waiting for the pain to fade, trusting that he could sense it if Kenobi approached with the intention to do him harm; it was hard not to sense the presence of the aggravated Padawan, always lurking in the back of his mind … almost like they shared a …

More blue light from his prison, more pain, and Qui-Gon paused quizzically. Where had he been going with that…?

A thought flicked across his curiosity, breaking through the cluttered discord of his mind. "Why are you so angry at me, Padawan?" he asked gently. "Were you not the one who left me?"

He heard the snort in Kenobi's voice. "Left you?" he asked derisively, bitter but not mocking. "Do you even remember what happened, Master Jinn?"

Qui-Gon felt his back stiffen - or at least, he would have if he'd had the ability to move. The sensation was the same, though; Kenobi's disdainful attitude rubbed him the wrong way. He opened his eyes, prepared to chastise the young man for his flippancy - even if he was a prisoner of Kenobi's, he would not suffer the Padawan's rudeness.

He opened his mouth to speak, his gaze locating and settling on Kenobi at the far side of the room, and the words died in his throat.

"Charred wreckage" was the phrase that bounced in his mind, along with an odd memory from the day he had met Obi-Wan Kenobi. He had been pacing his apartments, awaiting the arrival of the Padawan, grousing to himself about the ridiculous arrangement facilitated by the Council - that he, Qui-Gon Jinn, the Master who had vowed to never take on another apprentice, was being forced to accept Kenobi for training. And in his mental complaining, he had referred to Kenobi as "charred wreckage." He'd been facetious, mildly annoyed, angry about the unwanted change to his routine and the even more unwanted Padawan. The label had been frivolous, something thought up by a silly, bitter old man irritated about his schedule being thrown into chaos.

But, tragically, Qui-Gon realized, the moniker suited Kenobi quite well now.

Barechested and bloody, with staggeringly dark circles that hung under red-rimmed eyes burning with overstimulated emotion, Kenobi was braced, Qui-Gon could see, awkwardly against the spattered wall behind him to keep the restraints around his wrists from dislocating his arms. How he was keeping himself upright, Qui-Gon couldn't even fathom; Kenobi looked like he was about to crumble into a shuddering mass of mangled flesh at any moment. There was no unscathed area, no ashen skin unmarked by dark smudges of crimson and a peppering of bruises from his hairline to his hips, disappearing into the torn waist of his trousers. In some places it looked as if his skin had been ripped away; Qui-Gon hastily averted his eyes from these seeping patches of spongy pinkness, swallowing quickly and repeatedly to keep from vomiting in sheer revulsion.

Kenobi held his body in an unnaturally awkward way, his weight shifted against the bloody wall behind him and to his right side, and Qui-Gon could see the lower half of his left trouser leg was saturated in crimson, leaking down over his bare foot to pool across the floor. Bootprints tracked through the spilled blood, marking a grotesque and sticky trail to the door.

He didn't want to keep looking, to keep cataloguing the staggering array of hurts, but even the crackling forcefield around him couldn't sufficiently distract him, though he very much wanted it to.

Kenobi watched his examination quietly, clearly exhausted but simmering, anger still humming in the air around him mixed with shame at Qui-Gon's blatant perusal. The Padawan was clearly waiting for an answer to a question Qui-Gon had already forgotten, lost to his horror and the mind-disrupting properties of his prison. Kenobi's gaze turned inward, perhaps remembering that day so many months ago he had disappeared from Qui-Gon's life, and answered the query Qui-Gon had posed so incredulously.

"I did not leave you, Master Jinn. Not intentionally." He sighed, his anger sliding away slowly. "It wasn't supposed to be this way," he added cryptically, numbly and a little sad considering his present state.

Another thought danced through the scattered jumble in Qui-Gon's brain, a sickening notion he wished hadn't occurred to him at all. Qui-Gon waited impatiently until the burning from the electric crackle across his thigh receded, grasping for the thought he'd been trying to hold on to. It couldn't be true, surely; hadn't his old master inquired so gently after Kenobi, so earnestly? Hadn't Dooku always shown the most kind of natures? But he had to ask, to calm the nagging that had popped up as he too thought back on that day.

"Padawan … does Master Dooku know you're here?"

Had he known what the lie would eventually cost him, Kenobi might not have let the falsehood slip so easily from his lips, but the young Padawan well remembered Dooku's warning.

"No, Master Jinn," he replied quietly. The Padawan's answer should have been suspicious to Qui-Gon - how could Dooku not know? - but relief flooded his senses and he let the matter drop.

Silence descended on them, awkward but somehow not uncomfortable - a surprise to Qui-Gon, considering their present circumstances. He could still barely bring himself to look at Kenobi; the spirit may have been intact, but the body was battered beyond a point the young one should have been able to bear. He focused instead on his own prison, intrigued yet again by the intelligence behind the design, hoping too to draw a little more information from the Padawan.

"What is this? It's damned uncomfortable," he murmured aloud.

Kenobi somewhere worked up the energy to shrug a pale shoulder. "Some sort of levitation device designed by giant insects, I think," he offered knowledgeably, adding, "And I agree, it's horribly uncomfortable." His raspy voice was thin, but to Qui-Gon the young man actually seemed encouraged to be able to speak to someone. The Jedi Master presumed months of almost solitary confinement - had Kenobi been here all of the months since he'd disappeared? - could erase even the harshest bitterness when the opportunity for personal contact presented itself.

"I hear it's just a prototype, but I can't imagine the improved design being much better." Kenobi's ginger eyebrow lifted thoughtfully. "I really don't think it's designed with the prisoner's comfort in mind, at any rate."

"No, I suppose not," Qui-Gon grumbled, still surprised by the torrent of words from the Padawan who had barely spoken to him during their brief, stunted apprenticeship. A flicker of electricity lanced across his thoughts and he almost lost the thread, but he caught it at the last second. "How do you know?" he asked curiously.

Kenobi's lips quirked wryly, pale lines set in a dirty, bruised face. "I get to test all the new toys. It's a perk of the job."

Qui-Gon was struggling to piece together what was different about Kenobi - something not quite right. Not even the obvious on the surface, but something deeper, something … disconnected underneath, below the flippancy where something dark was lurking … and Qui-Gon thought he remembered reaching for Kenobi's face, touching his cheek, Kenobi was so angry, white light, and Qui-Gon had begun to feel afraid at the untapped power swirling behind Kenobi's too-calm eyes -

And then there was another crackle of electricity and he forgot that he should have actually been terrified.

OOOOOOOOOO

"Padawan Kenobi … "

He wasn't certain how to phrase the question, but the quiet that hung over them was beyond oppressive, broken only by the sizzle of the levitation device and Kenobi's wheezing breaths. But Qui-Gon couldn't take the silence anymore, not with his connection to the Living Force being constantly disrupted by his prison. He needed to touch someone, and the wounded, confusing Padawan was all he had.

"Why are you in your present state?" It was an awkward way to phrase the question, but it was all his scattered mind would allow.

Kenobi lifted his head, grey eyes amused, the anger in his aura quiet for now. If Qui-Gon had been able to think clearly, he would have realized how dangerously fractured Kenobi was, but the thought didn't cross his mind in his own disrupted state.

"I misbehaved," Kenobi said simply.

He could barely look at the battered Jedi without wincing. "Do you often misbehave, Padawan?"

A clatter of manacles as the Padawan shifted and Kenobi sighed. "I do have trouble controlling my tongue," he admitted darkly. "It's one of my many weaknesses."

"Is it worth it?"

"Master Rhagos would do it anyway," Kenobi answered quietly. Qui-Gon noticed Kenobi's fingers were twitching as he spoke, a restless, unthinking gesture of helpless. "A Padawan actually in control of his faculties is useless to him ."

"Yes, but isn't a useless Padawan useless to him?" Qui-Gon pressed.

The cold smile he got wasn't what he'd expected, and Kenobi glanced away into the darkness as he answered dryly, "I suspect the Sundari would be more gratified if I were useless - even now, I am not as weak as I appear, Master Jinn." There was no pride in his voice, only a clear stating of fact mixed with bitterness. Again, Qui-Gon experienced the thought that he should be alarmed - afraid, even - of Kenobi, but again it was gone in a flicker of blue that danced across his spine and left tiny pinpricks of pain in its wake.

"Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon said gently, falling back on his innate nurturing nature, ignoring his own discomfort. "Look at me. Look at me, young one," he encouraged quietly, watching the long ginger hair slide back from Kenobi's eyes as the other man slowly lifted his head, shame and disgust written clearly across his bruised features.

"You needn't feel so upset, Padawan. Everything will be okay. We can return to the Temple and Master Yoda will be able to help you."

A ghost of a smile flickered across Kenobi's lips, disbelief glinting in his tired grey eyes but he nodded his head respectfully, and his voice lacked conviction. "Of course, Master Jinn."

"We will escape, Padawan," Qui-Gon insisted. "Master Rhagos will yield."

Kenobi smiled weakly, dangling in his restraints like a damaged puppet, crimson dripping from innumerable places, and then he looked pointedly at Qui-Gon, confined within his own prison.

"Yes, he'll certainly cower before us now, Master," he agreed.

Qui-Gon couldn't reign in the surprised bark of laughter that slipped past his lips. "Nice to see you've a sense of humor after all, Padawan."

OOOOOOOOOO

He watched the monitor, seething at the easy though mostly unapparent bond that had indeed formed between Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, whether they were aware of it or no. Dooku had been right, loathe as he was to admit it.

He grit his teeth, his eyes blazing black as Kenobi accepted with only a nod Jinn's assertion that they would return to Coruscant, to the Temple where his Padawan would be further corrupted by Yoda.

He wouldn't let that happen.

A hateful smile stretched across his lips as a malevolent idea began to take shape in his mind: a punishment so cruel Kenobi would have no choice but to submit - if there was enough left of him by that point to form a coherent thought. And Jinn would be punished just as his former Master had been.

Rhagos felt his spirit lift as he embraced the darkness dancing around him, filling him with warmth and power.

It was time to end this.

OOOOOOOOOO

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