Obi-Wan floated in a lazy sea of nothingness. He was aware that he had a physical body and that something had happened to him to place him here in this void but none of it mattered much to him anymore.
Once he thought he heard a voice that had meant something to him at one time in his life calling his name but he had already slipped into this place of no feeling. He had escaped to this place of safety from the pressure that had been building in his brain after he had been shot by that second stun bolt.
Another time it seemed that he could see himself in a featureless room, as if he were outside his body and floating in the air above it. A man with a scar on his face had been using a knife on his body, shouting things at his unconscious body that Obi-Wan could not hear. He watched in detached fascination as the knife traced patterns of red across his bare torso, seeing the muscled chest split easily beneath the knife as if it were fruit. The knife only went too deep once, near his neck, extremely close to his jugular vein and he jerked slightly with an echo of the pain that he knew he would be feeling were he not in this safe place. Tired of watching blood, his blood, running in rivulets down his stomach and sides, he had faded back into this void.
And here he planned on staying.
Very faintly, he thought he heard words that should make sense to him. Words that seemed like a command but he simply lacked the will to try to make sense of them, or to try to remember the person who the words belonged to.
One word drifted toward him, almost tangible, and he idly reached for it to try to understand what it was. After several half-hearted attempts to grab the floating word, he was about to give up when it bumped into him and absorbed into his mind.
Frowning, he began to make himself think to try to remember what the word 'padawan' had meant to him.
Qui-Gon hung limp in his chains, not noticing the metal digging harshly into the skin of his wrists, sunk deep into his healing trance. He focused all his energy on repairing the two broken ribs that he had sustained in his beating, knowing that if he did not have them fixed by the time Scarface returned, he would perish in his next encounter with the dark Force user.
Slowly, he coaxed the rib that was perilously close to his lung back into a semblance of its rightful place below the other broken rib. Swirling the Force around the jagged pieces of bone inside himself, he let his healing strength absorb into the two ribs. For eternity and for no time at all inside the trance, the ribs finally healed so solidly that they did not seem to have been messed with at all.
As he awoke slowly from his healing trance, tired but not exhausted and feeling somewhat better, he was aware that he still had many injuries that needed to be tended to. Bruises began to darken his chest at various places and the blaster hole in his arm still bled, the blood running down his muscled arm to mingle with the newer cuts on his chest from his previous beating.
Sighing, he suddenly noticed a bowl of somewhat clean water that seemed to drift directly in front of him. No one held it and no one else was in the small chamber with him. Curious but cautious, Qui-Gon used a tiny amount of the Force to guide the bowl to his mouth. Right as he was using the Force to tip the bowl so that water would run into his parched mouth, an unseen Force presence shoved the water in his face so that water ran over his chest, missing his mouth and chilling him in the coldness of the chamber. As the bowl crashed to the floor in front of him, he did not have to wait long to see the person responsible for his bathing.
Scarface entered the chamber, once again leaving the door wide open to reveal the featureless hall directly opposite from Qui-Gon's chamber. He seemed angrier than ever and dried blood stained his tunic, blood that Qui-Gon knew was not his own.
His blue eyes flashing, Qui-Gon had to calm himself considerably before he could make himself look at the dark Force user again to face what he knew to be Obi-Wan's blood.
"I can't understand it," Scarface was muttering, angry and pacing in front of Qui-Gon, a whip held in his hands. "Your stupid apprentice doesn't even make a sound and what I've done to him should have at least gotten me a flinch through the Force. But nothing. I can't sense it but I know it has to be you. You are either protecting him from me or he needs more persuasion to come out of wherever he's hid himself in his mind. Either way, it means I get to take my pleasure with you." He growled, sounding very unhappy but Qui-Gon didn't care.
"What have you done with Obi-Wan?" He demanded to know, straining against his chains. "I can't reach him, you tyrant! He doesn't respond to me so get over it!" He was hoping that if he made Scarface mad enough, he would concentrate only on working Qui-Gon over and would leave Obi-Wan alone.
With his taunts, Scarface's face turned a dark, angry red, leaving his scar a dead white contrast. Bringing his face close to Qui-Gon's, he screamed, spittle flying out of his mouth to land on Qui-Gon's face and chest, "It's got to be you, Jinn! He's not old enough or skilled enough to resist me! Xanatos told me all about the stages of Force development that coincides with age. At sixteen, your little Jedi should be awake and squirming by now! Why isn't he? Why!"
Smiling calmly, Qui-Gon relaxed against his chains to lean against the stone wall. Very quietly, in a voice that carried down the hall, he answered, "Because Obi-Wan Kenobi is more powerfully connected to the Force than you will ever wish to be, even at sixteen. Xanatos was wrong about a great many things, my friend. This is simply another."
Scarface's anger receded slightly. "That can't be possible. No sixteen-year-old Padawan has that much control of the Force to be so strongly connected. None of his friends do. I researched…None of them do…"
Qui-Gon chuckled, a real chest-heaving laugh that swelled and bounced off the walls of his cell as he lost himself in the humor of his captor's inability to figure out his apprentice. Obi-Wan was complex, but a kind-hearted soul to those who knew him best.
Qui-Gon's laughter provoked a wild frenzy in the man before him. "Stop it!" Scarface screamed in renewed anger. "What's so funny? Stop it, I say!"
With an effort, Qui-Gon ceased his chuckles as he prepared himself in the Force for the reaction he knew his next words would create. "I find it amusing," he said slowly, "that my Padawan has beaten you so thoroughly and he's not even conscious."
Like he knew it would do, Scarface was driven to the breaking point of his control. With a wild cry, he swung the whip in his hand and brought the separated points of the end of the whip crashing down across Qui-Gon's chest. Qui-Gon sucked in a breath as the strong leather cords tore into and across his chest, ripping the skin with an audible sound. Pain shot straight to Qui-Gon's brain and it was all he could do to keep from crying out from the hot shock of it. Again and again, the whip flashed down, tearing into untouched skin and into already opened welts. Soon, Qui-Gon was hanging limply from his chains, trying to focus into the Force to shunt the pain around his nerves but he simply could not concentrate enough to accomplish his task.
The whip paused after what had seemed like hours but in reality were only a few minutes. Qui-Gon fervently hoped that Scarface was done now that the skin on his chest was hanging down in tattered strips and blood gushed around the tips of his boots in the dirt floor to make a muddy puddle.
He hoped in vain. Dimly, above his haze of pain, he felt himself being turned around on the chain to face the wall and he knew with sinking horror what awaited him next.
With a fury that surprised Qui-Gon, Scarface sunk the whip into Qui-Gon's back again and again, driving the breath from his lungs. The strength of the force of the whip pushed Qui-Gon's torn chest into the protruding stone of the wall, crushing bits of dirt and stone into the gashes that bled there, doubling the pain of his chest as his back was being torn apart.
Qui-Gon could feel himself sinking fast into unconsciousness and he welcomed the release from this torment. As if Scarface could also feel Qui-Gon's descent into the blacking of nothingness, he doubled his intensity. Qui-Gon's mind cried out as he lost consciousness.