The first scene of this chapter may be PG-13, for a little blood. I don't think it's too graphic, but I just want to let you know. :)
SPINDLE OF FATE
by Cascadia
See Chapter One for notes, disclaimer, etc.
Reviewer replies are located at the end of the chapter.
OO OO OO
CHAPTER FIVE
The crash was exquisite. Too loud, beyond doubt, but there could be no reversal now. The ruins of the broken drinking vessel lay strewn across the floor like Alderaani diamonds glittering under a waterfall of light. Obi-Wan gazed upon the array of vitreous shards, his satisfaction mounting, his dusty blue eyes quickly examining each, searching for the one perfect in both size and finely-edged texture.
His gaze darted nervously to the door, then back to the newly created collection of glass. They would be coming soon; he had to be quick.
A slender fragment that curved to a distinct point was hastily snatched up and plunged deep into the tender flesh of his forearm. The dam broke, crimson rivulets streamed from the fresh wound, and pain bloomed.
He cried out from the pain. It hurt immensely, but he was determined to keep silent. He clamped down on his voice, gritting his teeth, keeping in every sound that gave utterance to the self-inflicted torture.
It had to be somewhere, he knew it did. He would search his whole body eventually. They could not stop him, unless they perpetually strapped him down, and in all this time they had never resorted to such a drastic measure. He searched fruitlessly through the gushing river of red, with trembling fingers that dug along the long puncture. It yielded nothing but blood.
Living droplets fell. A sticky red pool expanded where his knees touched the floor. Warm liquid seeped through the slate linen covering his legs, and his hands shook as the sheer reality of what he was doing sharpened as a razor in his mind.
He felt faint, slightly dazed by the immediate loss of blood. Slowly, his gaze rose and drifted about the room now touched by the shades of palest dawn. Yet the world around him quickly smudged into smoky fuzz, and sound grew muffled and dull. There was a deadened clattering, an eruption of voices too distant to be discerned.
They were coming.
He rested his head on one hand, the lacerated arm hanging loosely to his side as he hurriedly assessed his options. As his lightheadedness abated to some extent, he found a delicate thread of lucidity.
It would surely have turned up had it been there along the muscle of his forearm. Seconds quickly expired, then in they came, past the door that scarcely ground out of the way before three of them bounded in to halt his foolish attempts again.
He leapt up. Tiny pieces crunched under his bare feet, splitting open a multitude of cuts across naked skin as he scurried over a glass-littered floor to a barred window. He was beside the window before he realized his only weapon was forgotten on the floor in the midst of the darkly glistening crimson pool. No time to return for it now.
Light caressed his face in leaden morning rays when he grasped the unyielding bars. He was desperate for escape; it had eluded him too many times. But even as he lifted himself up to the view of the wide valley, there were hands latching onto him and dragging him back downward. The bars waxed slippery in his blood-covered hands; they slid free of his hold, and down he tumbled to a cold tile floor.
He felt a sting prick his neck; hands seized him, immobilized his struggles, and dragged him to his bed, where he was flung down on the slim mattress. His breath slammed out of him from the impact. He fought for breath and stared at the ceiling, which was embellished with moldy stains. Never had he noticed the quintpartite shape that uniquely resembled his temple home on Coruscant. The illusion was insufferable. Agonizing. He squeezed his eyes shut to escape the pain caused by that faraway memory.
"You gave him a glass cup," an imperative voice accused.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am. I forgot." Humbly contrite.
"Make sure you don't forget next time. He's only to be given metal, do you understand?"
"Yes, Ma'am. Of course, Ma'am."
Someone began bandaging his wounded arm. He fought them no more. Soon the anesthetic would take his consciousness, would take his fearful worries and put them to bed for awhile.
For awhile. And then -
Then he would face another day.
O
Where Obi-Wan lay he could survey thick fog beyond his barred window. Time had progressed to a deepening night, where only faint moonlight penetrated the heavy mists here and there as pearlized silver.
He shifted slightly, twisting uncomfortably in his straps, and glanced at the doctor just entering his meager room.
"How is my patient today?" the human woman asked, intolerably cheerful. A single tight braid of dark brunette hair wound around her scalp.
Obi-Wan turned away to scowl at the wall, and strained at the wide, black elasticized straps that efficiently secured him at wrist, ankle, and chest to his bed.
"In a sour mood, dear?" She advanced to the bedside and threaded an impersonal hand through mussed russet strands of Obi-Wan's hair and down along the woven braid. "Getting a little long again. Have to have another haircut soon." Her hand withdrew while brandy eyes thoughtfully studied his profile. "You know how much Mr. Crionti likes you looking like a Jedi padawan. Braid and all."
Obi-Wan's jaw tightened; his fists clenched. He dearly wished to be left alone, to not be reminded -
"He missed you today," she continued, unaware of the turmoil inside the young man. "I think Tasten missed you too; I saw him crying."
Obi-Wan's fiery blue eyes flew to meet her calm gaze. "He had better not have hurt him." Obi-Wan's voice quavered with anger.
She blinked, unperturbed by the apparent threat. "If you hadn't done that foolish thing this morning you wouldn't have had to spend the day in a bacta bath."
Obi-Wan looked away, knowing she was right in her accusation, knowing the boy may have suffered for it. Anger diminished, and he felt the persistent ache in his heart swell. His desperation to escape incited much imprudence on his part. And he was not the only one to pay for his recklessness.
The entire episode that morning shimmered like a delirious dream to him now. Or more like a small component of an endless nightmare that he had been clambering through for too long -
Much too long.
As soon as he had seen that cup of glass every cell of his being had screamed to act - immediately. Though why he had flown to the window remained a mystery. Perhaps too many hours spent gazing out at that pristine expanse had planted a phantom hope of freedom in his weary mind. Else he was going mad.
"Mr. Crionti wants to see you tomorrow," she informed. "Perhaps he'll dish out some punishment for your disobedience. I hope you're up to it."
And if he wasn't?
Obi-Wan jerked against his restraints.
O
He walked carefully among moist shadows, earth squishing lightly underfoot the only sound that fractured the haunting silence of the deep wood. Foliaged tree limbs confronted his path. They stretched out to grasp at him, something told him, in warning.
But he went on. What else could he do? Where he was, he knew not. Nor where he was going -
"Obi-Wan!" a voice fiercely whispered.
Somewhere close. Somewhere nearby.
His mild hesitation elapsed, and he advanced on through the gloom-painted wild. Alone.
Trees parted, and he suddenly confronted a deadened pool, stagnant and reeking in the embrace of slick gray trees that bent over to caress its greasy surface in an anemic splash of sunlight.
He held his breath and twisted a glance back the way he had come. The path lay in somber hues too dark for eyes to penetrate. He looked to the pool again, green and covered in festering decay.
"Obi-Wan!" The voice beckoned.
He registered his heart hammering, his pulse increased, but he felt compelled to continue, to search for -
What?
"Obi-Wan!"
He jumped in alarm, for a feathery touch tingled along his nerves. The summoning inexplicably had substance neither defined nor visible. Yet it seemed to touch as it spoke to his very soul.
"The death of this pool is so symbolic of your own death as a Jedi. You will never again be as one again. Never."
He clamped down on his mental barriers on impulse. Keep the voice out, keep it away. It was lying, like it always did.
His eyes widened frantically, roaming over his surroundings. The trees stood still, nary leaf nor insect moved. By all accounts he was alone. There was no one. Nothing. Nothing but -
The pool abruptly turned sickly gray, and began drying and dissolving even as he surveyed it. He stood paralyzed for scarcely a moment, eyes large and horrified, watching the slime shrivel up on itself, then he backed away an unconscious step.
A laugh intruded, bearing an eerie chill that touched him where nothing could reach, where nothing should reach, into the most vulnerable parts of his awareness. He realized that it sounded familiar - the voice, the laugh - in a very upsetting, very unsettling way.
His breath caught in the penetrating coldness, and when the laugh repeated -
He ran.
Back the way he had come. Away from the stagnant pool. Away from Xanatos' mocking laugh. He tripped over upraised roots, felt the stinging slap of reaching limbs, and he was soon drowned in a murky ocean as his world slipped into the deepest dimness of an autumn night.
"Oh, Obi-Wan! You really are a coward, aren't you?"
Obi-Wan could see nothing. On he ran, but the voice relentlessly followed, rumbling throughout his surroundings, remaining stubbornly inside his head.
"It's truly no wonder Mighty Master Jinn didn't want you. He wasn't completely blind, you know? Not completely. Only when he wanted to be."
A formless void of the blackest pitch rose before him, and he crashed into a rock-hard solidity that sent him sprawling backward to the damp soil. Light utterly died. And when corporeal hands touched him, he screamed -
"Why does he have to do that?"
"It's the drugs, or a nightmare, or some other unsavory thing. Do I always need explain everything to you?"
The voices edged into his awareness. Distant at first, but shifting to a distinct clarity that could not be ignored. He suddenly realized - with a certain degree of mixed emotion - that he had been dreaming. The nightmare was over, but the nightmare that was his true life was simply continuing. Never-ending.
"No, but -"
"Then help me to get these straps off him," the first woman said. "Mr. Crionti wants to see him. Come on."
Obi-Wan's heart was still pumping rapidly from the frightening dream, and now he felt his stomach nervously twisting up. Facing Mr. Crionti - as they called Xanatos - lately had that effect on him. His eyes cracked open to regard the two women bent over him, loosening the restraints, and behind them hulked Yulo with an eager set of manacles dangling from his large hands.
The elder woman noticed his wakefulness and paused. "Ready to see Mr. Crionti?" Her tone was unbearably cheerful.
Obi-Wan shook his head.
O
"Xanatos eventually grew tired of the game, I suppose. He was in control, but I was not letting him win." Obi-Wan stood and walked a few paces away, his back confronting Qui-Gon.
There was a deepening of silence and perfect stillness in the room, almost a foreboding of ill fortune, that Qui-Gon felt afraid to move and could not until Obi-Wan spoke again.
"He . . . killed the boy." Obi-Wan's voice wavered, trembled like an autumn tree's last leaf harassed by cold wind.
Qui-Gon's throat went dry. He watched Obi-Wan, eager for more, for something beyond that disturbing disclosure, but the young man remained stock-still and quiet as a forgotten twilight.
Without another word, Obi-Wan trod purposefully away, withdrawing down the hall.
After a measure of heavy heartbeats, Qui-Gon rose and followed. Not only was he puzzled by the young man's sudden departure but worried over his emotional state as well.
He heard Obi-Wan before he found him in the 'fresher, bent over the toilet rim, heaving heavily, face ashen and covered in a sheen of mingled tears and perspiration. Qui-Gon lent his two strong arms for assistance, wrapped them round the smaller man until he had emptied his stomach and swayed feverish with insides sore.
Qui-Gon gently laid Obi-Wan on the floor, cradling his head and humming a sweet melody of unremembered origin. The tune passed out of memory and he continued on repeating it in a continuous loop.
Obi-Wan kept his eyes sealed tightly, mind latched onto that drifting song and thought he heard the music of the Force in gentle, trembling strings, ebbing out and flowing in again; a song strong yet delicately fragile. He opened his eyes to focus on the aging face above him.
Qui-Gon's eyes were closed, locked away in another place.
Obi-Wan stretched a wavering hand up to caress the softly bearded jaw and smiled when Qui-Gon opened his eyes. "Thank you," Obi-Wan said softly when the music slipped away.
Tears surfaced in the Jedi master's eyes, and he attempted a smile that failed and only brought tears to Obi-Wan's eyes.
Obi-Wan struggled to sit up, helped by Qui-Gon's strength, and then hugged himself insecurely. "It's not . . . just the boy's . . . passing. It's . . . it's a lingering effect of the drugs." He pulled more into himself. "Sometimes I feel nauseated . . . . Like this."
Qui-Gon snaked a hand to Obi-Wan's back and rubbed tenderly, his love needing an outlet. They sat quietly, in companionable silence, as Obi-Wan battled back the charges of nausea until they settled into calm seas.
"I still remember," Obi-Wan said, resuming his story, "the day . . ." he sniffed and looked away, fighting to not lose control and weep uncontrollably. "The day we buried Tasten. . . ."
OO OO OO
Sheila: Yes, Obi-Wan's had a horrible time. Thanks! Glad you like! :)
Fudge: I guess that's what makes Obi-Wan such a popular character. Sometimes, as a writer, I just write what I think a character would do without analyzing how to get across a specific aspect of that character. When I do present something spcific like that I'm always surprised, LOL! Thanks for letting me know!!! :)
shadow warrior: Thank you so much! :) Hope you enjoy!!!
Athena Leigh: I love writing (or reading) descriptions. I'm glad you liked the clothes scene; it was just a strange little idea I had, so I'm relieved it didn't take away from the rest of the chapter. Thanks! :)
Clover Brandybuck: It's okay now. I've got Xanatos locked in my cellar closet. ;) And thank you for the review for 'Breath of Night'! Go on, give Obi a big hug! :)
LuvEwan: I enjoyed making the moments between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, their conversations and actions-reactions. And I have a love for writing descriptions! Just have to keep myself focused on the story, LOL!
Antigone: Thank you for your comments on BON. I'm glad you liked the subtlety of Obi-Wan's reactions, etc. It's too easy sometimes to let go and leap into melodrama, or to let it all fall flat…. I'm happy you found this! :) What is Qui-Gon hiding??? Oh, you think Qui knows something he's not saying, huh? Well, I can't say either. ;)
Pokey1984: I'm thrilled you like the Chapter One addition. It was just for you! :) And don't worry about having nothing constructive to say! Just so you're having fun reading, I'll be satisfied. Hope you have fun with your family visitors. :)
Aneiki-Rose1: Welcome! I like Qui-Gon and try to portray him as I see him. Glad you like my interpretation of him!!! :)