Hey all~
I'm soooo sorry about the lateness of this chapter! I sent it to my betas a week ago, thinking I would be getting it back soon and post, at latest, mid-week. However, my internal diagram of the betaing process was, as I'm sure you've gathered, entirely *wrong* =) They have lives themselves and I neglected that factor in my prediction=) I'm sorry. So, I decided that I should just post this now and add revisions later, at my betas convenience. I went over the chapter and, though it's surely far from where I want it to be, I think it's decent enough to post...but that's just me, so tell me what you think!
Thanx to: skittles, Max452, Yoda, ~Becky~, iverson, Ginger Ninja, Freakizimi, BlueElli, Jay, siri, shen panda, Shanno, Emerald, sz2000, Kat, AngelAssassin
Thank you guyz soooo incredibly much! Hope you enjoy!
***Obi torture starts here***
"No."
"But I hav-"
"No."
Sighing, Mace Windu closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose in an attempt to ward off first signs of the impending headache. He sighed again before opening his eyes and matching his comrade's stare, neither backing down.
"Qui, listen to me. The Council knows that I went to find you. They know how long it would have taken me. I can't just *not* contact them," Mace was losing his patients, "We'll return to Coruscant and another team will be dispatched to search for him."
Frustrated, Qui-Gon pushed himself up from his sitting position on a makeshift sleep couch in Mace's ship and began to pace, stiffly. "Yes, Mace, that is exactly what the Council will do. They'll send a team which has no connection to him whatsoever, no idea where to *begin* to look, and have them search Force knows where until a respectable amount of time has passed and they return, without him, offering condolences and empty words of insincere sorrow. And what will I be doing? I'll be fulfilling my masterly duties by siting in a bacta tank, waiting." Qui-Gon's pacing had lead him squarely in front of Mace. He was face to face with the other Jedi, eyes gleaming, daring Mace to challenge him.
"I'm sorry Mace, but I cannot consent to sitting idly by, conforming to the Council's wishes as my apprentice suffers."
"Qui, you misunderstand me. I, as do you, want to see Obi-Wan back in the safety of his master's care, back in the safety of the Jedi, but we cannot rush into this. You're injured. If you go on a mission of this intensity, there is a good chance that you will not make it back alive," Mace tried to reason with his old friend, tried to force Qui-Gon to see things from his point of view. Qui-Gon, however, had a different outlook on the situation.
"You expect me to allow a sixteen year-old to face these people alone? Did you *see* what they did to our ship?" Qui-Gon was furious! How dare Mace even *think* to ask him to compromise his course of actions when it came matters of his apprentice's well-being!
"But how do you know he's alive to face them?" Mace asked softly, recalling the first few minutes both had been in the safety of his cruiser...
As soon as they were in, Mace laid Qui-Gon down upon a sleep couch began bandaging his wounds. As Mace was smearing the bacta, the injured man gasped and let out a soft yelp. Concerned that something had physically caused the outburst, Mace quickly did a Force scan of the now healing injuries. Finding nothing worse off than before, Mace questioned Qui-Gon. In a monotone voice, Qui-Gon replied that he could not feel Obi-Wan, that their bond had ceased to pulse with the boy's Force signature. Briefly pausing to release his own grief into the Force, (Mace had been fond of the boy, despite what Obi-Wan might have thought) he began to offer words of condolence to his friend. Qui-Gon did not acknowledge his comrades attempts at sympathy, but simply stared blankly, eyes unfocused. Around the third time Mace expressed his sorrow for Obi-Wan death, Qui-Gon broke out of his revelry, insisting the opposite.
"I know he is alive Mace."...
Mace shook the memory from his head. He had indulged Qui-Gon's insistent claims to Obi-Wan's living, but this had to be stopped. He had, himself, already, upon closer inspection through the Force, confirmed the lack of the bond's activity. "Qui..."
"Don't 'Qui' me! I know what you wish to say, but let me save you the breath. True, our bond does not confirm his life, but neither have I felt his death. I *know* he is not dead." Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Qui-Gon continued, "Do what you must in regards to the Council...and I will do what I must in regards to my padawan."
Walking slowly through the steel hallways, grasping the walls for support, Qui-Gon made his way to the small, two person escape pod which was located at the rear of the spacecraft.
"Jinn, you can't. Look at you, you can barely stand. You can't possibly carry out a rescue mission in your condition! What am I to tell the Council?" Mace grabbed his friend's arm, turning the man and giving him a pleading stare.
"Tell them the truth, tell them a lie, it's not my concern. You could say that I was so grief stricken that I jumped out the hanger door in hyperspace, or that I impaled myself on my own lightsaber. You could tell them that I choked on a large piece of bantha meat for all I care. Now let me go." Qui-Gon words were eerily calm and his midnight blue eyes were as hard as ice, betraying no glimmer of weakness. Mace was not going to win this and he knew it.
"My mission was to rescue you and bring you safely back to the Temple. I have never given up on a mission without a fight and this will *not* be my first," He released Qui-Gon's arm and stalked over to the com unit. Qui-Gon scowled and resumed his journey to the escape pod, he had to get out before Mace finished reporting him. However, it was what Mace said into the device that stopped Qui-Gon dead in his tracks.
"Master Yoda? I have a problem. Yes, I won't be returning to the Temple as scheduled. Yes, one of my engines blew a circuit..."
*****
"Now, shall we try this *one* more time?" Demar strolled around Obi-Wan as he spoke, "You know, I could do this all day...or perhaps all night...I've lost track of time in my fun," he said with a smirk.
"Just tell me what you know, then I can make it stop..." Demar let his sentence trail off as he stuck another one of his play things into Obi-Wan's chest.
The favored item seemed to be a collection of needle-like metal shards which served to turn Obi-Wan into a living, bleeding pincushion. The only difference was that these pins had a small addition which allowed them to, once in the flesh of the victim, latch under the skin by way of five sharp, retractable "claws." Though they did not cause, relatively, much damage, the extraction was extremely painful. Obi-Wan had not had to suffer from this part of the torture yet, but what goes in must come out...
Obi-Wan surpressed a yelp of pain as Demar pressed another needle into his right shoulder. The inserting of the needle was not *that* painful, but the sound and feel of the metal claw tearing the under layer of tissue had made him nearly gag more than once.
Demar quickly stuck three more needles into the boy's stomach then stood back and stared with delight as the padawan's face flickered with each sickening rip of the muscle.
Picking up another needle, Demar gazed thoughtfully at Obi-Wan and cupped they boy's chin in his free hand. Obi-Wan closed his eyes, biting back a flinch, as Demar used the point of the needle to trace the curves of his face, which had yet to be marred by the torture. The padawan winced as the needle made an accidental incision along his jaw line, Demar, surprisingly, pulled back.
"No...no, we don't want to scar you there yet. No, not yet..." Demar muttered as he staightened, and Obi-Wan watched as his captor grabbed the bag of needles, placed it back in the cabinet and pulled out an empty metal bowl after he wiped his hand on a towel hanging from the inside of one of the cabinet doors.
"Is there anything you would like to share yet?" he asked as he went around behind Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan ignored the question and simply closed his eyes, bracing himself for the next form of pain, whenever it would befall him.
"That's too bad. Not that any revelation would have mattered. I still would have gone through with the extraction. I'm sure you understand. I wouldn't want to leave you like this." Smiling, Demar traced a finger through the maze of needles which peppered Obi-Wan's back. "267 needles and I haven't a clue where to begin..."
Demar continued to ponder for what seemed like several excruciating hours to the padawan, but what only must have been, at most, several minutes. Finally, choosing a pin which had dug down deep near the boy's collar bone, Demar gripped it tightly between his thumb and index finger and pulled. The extraction of the needle was accompanied by the sickening tearing of skin and tissue. Obi-Wan barely managed to stifle the moan of pain and suppress wave of nausea which washed over him.
In an unconscious effort to escape the present, he turned his mind away from the horror of this individual moment, and to the horror of his entire situation. The Force was of no use to him, he had been cut off. His master was perhaps dead and, if he wasn't, probably too disgusted with his apprentice's actions to even bother to look for him. He had no clue as to where he was or what was in store for him...For the first time in his life, Obi-Wan felt truly alone.
The ping of metal hitting metal brought Obi-Wan out of his mental anguish and back to the physical. Demar had dropped the needle into the metal bowl and was now in the process of choosing his next extraction, " Decisions, decisions..."
Well, what do you think? I have no experience writing Obi-torture, so tell me what you think about it. As always, be a good lil Jedi and review, I wanna know what your thoughts are!
I'm soooo sorry about the lateness of this chapter! I sent it to my betas a week ago, thinking I would be getting it back soon and post, at latest, mid-week. However, my internal diagram of the betaing process was, as I'm sure you've gathered, entirely *wrong* =) They have lives themselves and I neglected that factor in my prediction=) I'm sorry. So, I decided that I should just post this now and add revisions later, at my betas convenience. I went over the chapter and, though it's surely far from where I want it to be, I think it's decent enough to post...but that's just me, so tell me what you think!
Thanx to: skittles, Max452, Yoda, ~Becky~, iverson, Ginger Ninja, Freakizimi, BlueElli, Jay, siri, shen panda, Shanno, Emerald, sz2000, Kat, AngelAssassin
Thank you guyz soooo incredibly much! Hope you enjoy!
***Obi torture starts here***
"No."
"But I hav-"
"No."
Sighing, Mace Windu closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose in an attempt to ward off first signs of the impending headache. He sighed again before opening his eyes and matching his comrade's stare, neither backing down.
"Qui, listen to me. The Council knows that I went to find you. They know how long it would have taken me. I can't just *not* contact them," Mace was losing his patients, "We'll return to Coruscant and another team will be dispatched to search for him."
Frustrated, Qui-Gon pushed himself up from his sitting position on a makeshift sleep couch in Mace's ship and began to pace, stiffly. "Yes, Mace, that is exactly what the Council will do. They'll send a team which has no connection to him whatsoever, no idea where to *begin* to look, and have them search Force knows where until a respectable amount of time has passed and they return, without him, offering condolences and empty words of insincere sorrow. And what will I be doing? I'll be fulfilling my masterly duties by siting in a bacta tank, waiting." Qui-Gon's pacing had lead him squarely in front of Mace. He was face to face with the other Jedi, eyes gleaming, daring Mace to challenge him.
"I'm sorry Mace, but I cannot consent to sitting idly by, conforming to the Council's wishes as my apprentice suffers."
"Qui, you misunderstand me. I, as do you, want to see Obi-Wan back in the safety of his master's care, back in the safety of the Jedi, but we cannot rush into this. You're injured. If you go on a mission of this intensity, there is a good chance that you will not make it back alive," Mace tried to reason with his old friend, tried to force Qui-Gon to see things from his point of view. Qui-Gon, however, had a different outlook on the situation.
"You expect me to allow a sixteen year-old to face these people alone? Did you *see* what they did to our ship?" Qui-Gon was furious! How dare Mace even *think* to ask him to compromise his course of actions when it came matters of his apprentice's well-being!
"But how do you know he's alive to face them?" Mace asked softly, recalling the first few minutes both had been in the safety of his cruiser...
As soon as they were in, Mace laid Qui-Gon down upon a sleep couch began bandaging his wounds. As Mace was smearing the bacta, the injured man gasped and let out a soft yelp. Concerned that something had physically caused the outburst, Mace quickly did a Force scan of the now healing injuries. Finding nothing worse off than before, Mace questioned Qui-Gon. In a monotone voice, Qui-Gon replied that he could not feel Obi-Wan, that their bond had ceased to pulse with the boy's Force signature. Briefly pausing to release his own grief into the Force, (Mace had been fond of the boy, despite what Obi-Wan might have thought) he began to offer words of condolence to his friend. Qui-Gon did not acknowledge his comrades attempts at sympathy, but simply stared blankly, eyes unfocused. Around the third time Mace expressed his sorrow for Obi-Wan death, Qui-Gon broke out of his revelry, insisting the opposite.
"I know he is alive Mace."...
Mace shook the memory from his head. He had indulged Qui-Gon's insistent claims to Obi-Wan's living, but this had to be stopped. He had, himself, already, upon closer inspection through the Force, confirmed the lack of the bond's activity. "Qui..."
"Don't 'Qui' me! I know what you wish to say, but let me save you the breath. True, our bond does not confirm his life, but neither have I felt his death. I *know* he is not dead." Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Qui-Gon continued, "Do what you must in regards to the Council...and I will do what I must in regards to my padawan."
Walking slowly through the steel hallways, grasping the walls for support, Qui-Gon made his way to the small, two person escape pod which was located at the rear of the spacecraft.
"Jinn, you can't. Look at you, you can barely stand. You can't possibly carry out a rescue mission in your condition! What am I to tell the Council?" Mace grabbed his friend's arm, turning the man and giving him a pleading stare.
"Tell them the truth, tell them a lie, it's not my concern. You could say that I was so grief stricken that I jumped out the hanger door in hyperspace, or that I impaled myself on my own lightsaber. You could tell them that I choked on a large piece of bantha meat for all I care. Now let me go." Qui-Gon words were eerily calm and his midnight blue eyes were as hard as ice, betraying no glimmer of weakness. Mace was not going to win this and he knew it.
"My mission was to rescue you and bring you safely back to the Temple. I have never given up on a mission without a fight and this will *not* be my first," He released Qui-Gon's arm and stalked over to the com unit. Qui-Gon scowled and resumed his journey to the escape pod, he had to get out before Mace finished reporting him. However, it was what Mace said into the device that stopped Qui-Gon dead in his tracks.
"Master Yoda? I have a problem. Yes, I won't be returning to the Temple as scheduled. Yes, one of my engines blew a circuit..."
*****
"Now, shall we try this *one* more time?" Demar strolled around Obi-Wan as he spoke, "You know, I could do this all day...or perhaps all night...I've lost track of time in my fun," he said with a smirk.
"Just tell me what you know, then I can make it stop..." Demar let his sentence trail off as he stuck another one of his play things into Obi-Wan's chest.
The favored item seemed to be a collection of needle-like metal shards which served to turn Obi-Wan into a living, bleeding pincushion. The only difference was that these pins had a small addition which allowed them to, once in the flesh of the victim, latch under the skin by way of five sharp, retractable "claws." Though they did not cause, relatively, much damage, the extraction was extremely painful. Obi-Wan had not had to suffer from this part of the torture yet, but what goes in must come out...
Obi-Wan surpressed a yelp of pain as Demar pressed another needle into his right shoulder. The inserting of the needle was not *that* painful, but the sound and feel of the metal claw tearing the under layer of tissue had made him nearly gag more than once.
Demar quickly stuck three more needles into the boy's stomach then stood back and stared with delight as the padawan's face flickered with each sickening rip of the muscle.
Picking up another needle, Demar gazed thoughtfully at Obi-Wan and cupped they boy's chin in his free hand. Obi-Wan closed his eyes, biting back a flinch, as Demar used the point of the needle to trace the curves of his face, which had yet to be marred by the torture. The padawan winced as the needle made an accidental incision along his jaw line, Demar, surprisingly, pulled back.
"No...no, we don't want to scar you there yet. No, not yet..." Demar muttered as he staightened, and Obi-Wan watched as his captor grabbed the bag of needles, placed it back in the cabinet and pulled out an empty metal bowl after he wiped his hand on a towel hanging from the inside of one of the cabinet doors.
"Is there anything you would like to share yet?" he asked as he went around behind Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan ignored the question and simply closed his eyes, bracing himself for the next form of pain, whenever it would befall him.
"That's too bad. Not that any revelation would have mattered. I still would have gone through with the extraction. I'm sure you understand. I wouldn't want to leave you like this." Smiling, Demar traced a finger through the maze of needles which peppered Obi-Wan's back. "267 needles and I haven't a clue where to begin..."
Demar continued to ponder for what seemed like several excruciating hours to the padawan, but what only must have been, at most, several minutes. Finally, choosing a pin which had dug down deep near the boy's collar bone, Demar gripped it tightly between his thumb and index finger and pulled. The extraction of the needle was accompanied by the sickening tearing of skin and tissue. Obi-Wan barely managed to stifle the moan of pain and suppress wave of nausea which washed over him.
In an unconscious effort to escape the present, he turned his mind away from the horror of this individual moment, and to the horror of his entire situation. The Force was of no use to him, he had been cut off. His master was perhaps dead and, if he wasn't, probably too disgusted with his apprentice's actions to even bother to look for him. He had no clue as to where he was or what was in store for him...For the first time in his life, Obi-Wan felt truly alone.
The ping of metal hitting metal brought Obi-Wan out of his mental anguish and back to the physical. Demar had dropped the needle into the metal bowl and was now in the process of choosing his next extraction, " Decisions, decisions..."
Well, what do you think? I have no experience writing Obi-torture, so tell me what you think about it. As always, be a good lil Jedi and review, I wanna know what your thoughts are!