Ewan's girl This hopefully won't make Qui Gon worse. Uh…. Shanobi You are doing a great job with him - even though I want to smack him into reality. Hee hee..Thanks. The Obi-Wan perspective is gonna be incredibly difficult, and I'm not sure I have a good enough handle on him for it to come out at all believable. Athena Leigh Thanks!


Twenty: Venom and Betrayal

Simultaneously, the arena shrinks to a cell, walls closing in and smothering me, and stretches out into oblivion, pulling Obi-Wan further away in the endless chasm between us.

I hear my voice echo and I don't know if the trembling comes from within me, or from the intensity of my call, vibrating my surroundings.

But in either case it doesn't matter.

They were wrong. I know that, without a scintilla of doubt now. They were wrong and I was wrong…to leave him, for even a moment, to trust him to anyone, to close my eyes, although I wasn't the one shoving at the lids.

I run toward him, my head feeling detached, adrift in an atmosphere of regret, clouded with fear.

Gods no I knew this would happen I knew if I left him…

The pillow thrown off the bed in the Ejhlon palace.

His empty bed, in his empty room.

Him sitting on the hospital cot, his face a crosshatch of cuts and bruises.

And now…

Gods it will never end the fear will never end the pain will NEVER end…

At last I've reached him, just when my blood is at a nearly unbearable boil. I brace his shoulders with quivering hands.

"Padawan, what happened?!" I wipe at his sweaty face, where there's still a faded, purpled contusion from his imprisonment. "Are you alright?"

I half-expect him to vanish from my sight, for me, after my desperation, to ultimately be too late, to fail--again.

But he remains beside me, on a floor-level bench in the arena stands, a bandage wrapped in layers around his upper left arm.

'You won't have him'. I said it to the darkness, to the cruel, criminal hands of midnight…but I've tossed him into the murky palms, as surely as I'm standing here.

He's hurt. He's injured. So, in truth, I have failed. As a Master, I didn't protect him. And as…a father, I let my obligations to the Order eclipse my care for him.

"I'm fine, Master." He replies, a crease joining his brows. "I just missed blocking a blow. It's already stopped bleeding."

Bleeding? I shake my head, turning around, briefly touching the raised, unhealed puff of flesh on his lip.

Mace is a few feet away, and I make no move to close the gap. "You." I whisper. "You force me into a ridiculous, meaningless exercise, claiming it was done in worry, in friendship…But look at what it's caused. I am no different. I never even needed to--" I let the end of the sentence dwindle off. I am not what's at issue here. "I am no different and my Padawan is only worse off for your harmful efforts."

His dark eyes shift from me to Obi-Wan, for a sliver of a moment, before falling to me again. I never guessed, in all our years as compatriots, as partners in now-famous Temple exploits, he would do this. That he would turn out to be nothing more than a betrayer, someone who would prevent me from shielding my apprentice from pain.

Who would wield the instrument of his pain.

And gods I can barely look at Mace now. I find myself cringing inwardly as his voice fills the arena.

"Obi-Wan is a Jedi, Qui-Gon. If he shies away every time he's nicked by the blade--"

"Then he'll be unharmed!" I shout, the venom of my anger and frustration bubbling up my throat.

Mace merely blinks, his mouth in a solemn frown. "And he'll never grow. He'll never be anything but your apprentice."

I bite the inside skin of my mouth to keep from saying what resounds in my heart. What's wrong with that?

I hear Obi-Wan shift behind me and I turn around, feeling the heat drain from my face. "Let's go."