Good Souls:

At his former Padawan's alarming sentence, Obi-Wan did as was suggested (ok, emphatically ordered) and blinked his eyes open only to gasp in quickly suppressed fear.

Not fast enough, though, if Anakin's, "Easy. We're in a bit of a situation here," was anything to go by.

A bit of a situation was an understatement in Obi-Wan's opinion. The view of a seemingly endless elevator shaft below him was not something he'd ever like to see again and definitely left him feeling nauseous. The blue, red, and white lights hung at equal intervals around the shaft seemed to spin dizzyingly, making it hard to judge just how far down they went. And then there was Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, also in his line-of-sight and clinging to the ankle of a shiny black boot and looking absolutely terrified as their eyes met. Obi-Wan could sympathize.

And even worse, Obi-Wan realized the only thing preventing him from falling down into that blurry abyss was someone (presumably Anakin) holding him with the Force, the pressure on his bones unmistakable but alarmingly shaky every few moments.

With some effort against the Force hold keeping him still, the bleary Jedi Master bent his neck so that he could look upwards. And thus meet Anakin eyes, his young face creased into lines of pain and effort. Oh dear.

"Exactly." Anakin grumbled back into his mind.

In a move that was more desperate than well executed, Anakin spun Obi-Wan around in his Force hold at the same time that Obi-Wan grabbed for the younger man's chest and shoulders, hanging on tighter than was probably necessary. Anakin grunted as he was holding three men's worth of weight again on his… ugh, that's bad… prosthetic arm. From his current position, Obi-Wan didn't see a way to take the pressure off of it either – the small electrical cable Anakin was grasping left no room for another hand and there were no nearby places in the walls of the shaft other than tiny nooks for him to cling to without dropping down. And Obi-Wan wasn't keen on either idea. On the other hand, it was a miracle the cable and the prosthetic arm was still holding all of their weight. "Are you going to be okay like this?"

"Don't really have a choice," Anakin replied, even his mental voice sounding strained.

Obi-Wan grimaced in sympathy as he tried to figure out how they'd gotten themselves in such a horrid situation. The last thing he remembered was fighting Dooku on the upper platform of the Observation Deck. Trying to remember what happened after that only made him aware of a throbbing headache that originated from the vicinity of his right temple and a very concerning tingling in both of his legs. Bloody hell.

Obi-Wan readjusted his grip on Anakin as he felt himself start to slide downwards again. "Soooooo, what did I miss?" He tried to sound jovial about it.

Anakin's answering huff said he failed. "Oh, not much. Just the usual."

Which meant everything had gone shebs-side up, like always.

From below them, somehow still hanging off of poor Anakin's leg (boy, was he ever going to feel that tomorrow!) Palpatine made a moaning sound to back up that theory.

Obi-Wan decided that now was not the right time to ask about how it went with Dooku. Based on past history, his traitorous Grandmaster had undoubtedly escaped and Anakin likely would rather not admit that he'd failed in capturing him. Again.

The good news (if you could call their current situation of hanging for their lives good news) was that Anakin had managed to rescue the Chancellor and his unconscious self.

And he was slipping again and having to fix his grip again. "Hold on!" Anakin berated him as he used his free left hand to help prop Obi-Wan's apparently weak arms.

A rumbling, rattling noise from above drew their attention upwards. "What is that?" Obi-Wan asked only a fraction of a second before Anakin said, "Ahhhhh, Ooops."

Obi-Wan's eyes widened as his question was answered and the noise became louder as an elevator car descended rapidly into view.

"Oh kark!" Anakin thought very loudly as he grabbed for his comm with Jedi speed. "Artoo! Artoo! Shut down the elevator!"

Obi-Wan appreciated the irony of asking the astromech to stop a lift instead of start it, he really did, but… "No time! Jump!" he commanded.

Realizing he was right, Anakin and the Chancellor did, both letting go and all three of them sliding down the wall of the not quite vertical shaft at a rate that didn't even come close to matching the speeding elevator that was out to kill them.

They weren't going to make it to the bottom of the shaft before the elevator flattened them on its way by.

Anakin was more than clever enough to figure this out as well, judging by his somewhat panicked, "Master!?"

Fortunately for them, Obi-Wan had spent a good deal of time climbing up and down elevator shafts over the course of the war and even during his Padawan days with Qui-Gon, mostly for reasons he'd rather not think about. (Though, there was that one time he got to carry Satine up an elevator shaft with her clinging to his back while they made an escape from yet another group of bounty hunters out to kill her - now that one was worth remembering.) This meant that he knew there had to be some cross-bracing somewhere, likely above an entrance to a utility tunnel or something like that.

His inherent sense of 'knowing' things thanks to his connection to the Force told him that they would pass something appropriate in only a few seconds. "Grappling hook!" he told Anakin via their bond, talking about something that was standard in all Jedi's utility belts now, thanks to the war.

They slid past the cross beam he was looking for, sitting on the far side of the shaft, just like the Force had told him there would be. "There!"

Obi-Wan was relieved to see Anakin throw his hook at the same time he did. "Now we just need a handy lift door to be open and for the Chancellor to somehow attach himself to one of us again so we can chuck him through as well!"

"I got the door!" Anakin said, closing his eyes and holding the hand not taking care of the grappling cable out and down.

I suppose that leaves me with the clingy Chancellor, Obi-Wan thought wryly. He held his free hand out as well and grabbed Palpatine with the Force, slowing the older man's descent enough so that he could latch on to Obi-Wan's boot, which was now all but in his face. Fortunately Palpatine got the idea just in time as they reached the end of their lines and the door that Anakin had opened in the correct location. (The Chosen One always had been good at judging distances. One of the reasons he was such an outstanding pilot.)

Using their momentum, a bit of a Force push, and the jerk of their bodies from hitting the end of the grappling line, Obi-Wan threw Palpatine and then himself through the open doorway and into the realm of relative safety only one quarter second before the elevator whizzed past the same doorway.

Half a second later, the out-of-control elevator car crashed into the bottom of the shaft with a horrific boom that shook their floor and sent a concussion blast back up the shaft that ruffled their hair on the way by.

"That was too close!" Obi-Wan thought from his prone position on the floor beside Anakin and Palpatine. There hadn't been time to land with anything resembling grace, so he'd hit the floor hard, skidding on his back a little before his already sore head had hit the floor too with a painful thump that only worsened when the floor shook under it at nearly the same time.

He was still squeezing his eyes closed and willing the pain away when Anakin answered with a hint of humour in his tone. "Might even be our closest save yet, Master."

"Unfortunately, one save of way too many, my dear one."

From his position on the floor, head more or less buried in Obi-Wan's chest, Anakin snorted in skeptical amusement at the old endearment that Obi-Wan hadn't used in something like a decade. He also sounded like he was trying to talk his lungs into remembering how to breathe properly after having the wind stolen from them, much like Obi-Wan was currently doing. "Well, you know us... If we're not on the verge of dying, then we're not doing it right."

"Ugh. It pains me to admit that you're probably right." Deciding that lying on the floor for the next hour while he properly recovered wasn't an option, Obi-Wan brushed Anakin on the shoulder fondly before he forced his (thankfully no longer tingling) legs to fold underneath him and bear his weight as he pushed himself off the floor with his hands. He stared at the empty elevator shaft for a second and couldn't help the small shudder that shook him. That's definitely going to be added to my many nightmares, no question.

"Probably mine too," Anakin added as he climbed onto his feet as well. Even the old Chancellor was managing to sit up.

They both glared at the elevator door for half a moment in silent commiseration, Obi-Wan barely braced upright as things still swam around a little thanks to too many head injuries and legs that were definitely protesting his weight. It felt like he'd been hit by a speeder from the upper thigh down.

"You going to make it out of here, Obi-Wan, or do you want me to carry you again?"

The elder Jedi scoffed. "Don't even try it. I'll be fine."

"Uh hunh," Anakin thought back with full sarcasm as both of them ignored the hand that Palpatine put out, expecting help up off the floor. (Obi-Wan was kind of surprised that Anakin didn't jump to assist his friend, but maybe he was finally getting disillusioned with the man responsible for keeping him away from his wife for five months straight and pulling him away from Ahsoka only an hour after he finally got to see her again.)

"Hush, bratling. How's your arm?" Turnabout was fair play, after all.

Anakin shot him a look, flexing the gloved metal fingers on his right hand slower than normal, accompanied by a quickly hidden grimace. "It'll be fine."

"Un hunh." Obi-Wan gave back the same disbelieving tone that had been used on him. "You are definitely seeing a healer as soon as we get back to the Temple."

"Fine. Then so are you."

"Fine," Obi-Wan grumbled good-naturedly, hurting enough that a short stay in the Halls of Healing actually sounded nice for once. Maybe I'll even see the beautiful Shaak there. That would be… something. Obi-Wan gave himself a mental shake as Anakin smirked at him, resolving to work on rebuilding his shields… later. "But first… Back to business. Considering that the Chancellor has finally managed to find his feet." Pretending that they hadn't just spent the last five seconds talking in their heads and ignoring the old man, Obi-Wan continued as if absolutely nothing was physically wrong with either himself or Anakin, "Let's see if we can find something in the closest hangar bay that's still flyable."

Following his lead, Anakin grabbed his comm again. "Artoo, get down here."

The droid replied almost immediately. "Okay, where are you?"

Anakin looked around until he found a marking on the wall. "Level three." Obi-Wan shared a grimace with Anakin and Palpatine as they realized just how close to being crushed they really had been.

"Okay. I'll find you," Artoo beeped.

"Good droid, that R2 unit," Palpatine said as they started power walking away from the elevator bank in an unspoken communal decision that moving was much more productive than staying put. "He's been of great assistance to you many times that I recall."

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes. Somehow, he's always encouraging Anakin's attachments. Not that I'm much better. I think 'enabler' would be an appropriate term for what I let him get away with all these years. Don't know how many times Yoda or Windu scolded me about teaching him better.

Anakin grinned at the Chancellor, ignoring Obi-Wan's mental grumbling. "I know, right? He's definitely one of a kind."

"There's literally thousands of R2's just like him in the same colour and everything," Obi-Wan couldn't help saying snarkily. (Maybe the head injuries had broken his filter.)

Anakin gave him a truly betrayed look that made Obi-Wan instantly regret his words. "That may be so, but they don't have the same brave and cheeky soul."

Obi-Wan wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose in an effort to settle down the throbbing in his head, but he didn't want to show that kind of weakness in front of the Chancellor. He did sigh heavily, though, and decided to start something that would help keep his mind off how much his head and legs hurt. "Anakin… I'm sure we've talked about this before. Droids don't have souls. They aren't living beings. Just programming and learnt personalities."

Anakin pouted. There was no other term for the way his bottom lip stuck out. Obi-Wan would have to be touched in the head to find it adorable…. Oh right. He was.

"And I disagree," the beloved bane of his existence said petulantly. "Droids learn and adapt. They have feelings. They care. They're loyal if you are. To me, that makes them more worthy of a soul than half the so-called intelligent beings in the galaxy."

"I will grant you that last point," Obi-Wan said, feeling Palpatine's interested gaze bounce between himself and Anakin like he was watching a sporting event. It was more than a little unsettling for reasons Obi-Wan didn't really understand. "But… droids don't have Force signatures nor any midi-chlorians, which means that they can't have souls to return to the Force when they stop functioning."

Anakin made a frustrated sound as he turned around in the deserted hallway and walked backwards so that he could glare at Obi-Wan dead on. The entertained Jedi Master helpfully slowed down to a more sedate walk. "Surely not every single thing in the universe has to fall under the category of 'has the Force or doesn't'? What if there's a galaxy or twenty out there that our Force doesn't touch? Would you call all the beings in those galaxies soulless as well?"

Obi-Wan blinked at his former student. "I'm impressed. You've gotten much better at debating."

Anakin's mouth twitched upward ever so slightly, but he didn't let up on his glare. They were having way too much fun performing for their captive audience for that. "Blame Padmè."

Obi-Wan laughed in his mind, but kept his expression stern out of long practice. "If you really believed that droids had souls, then how come you have such an easy time dissecting them in battle and whenever you feel like tinkering on one?"

"That's different! The battle droids are trying to kill me first and the ones I 'tinker' on are being fixed, the same as us going to the healers!"

"Hmmmmm." Obi-Wan stroked his beard thoughtfully. "All right. Answer me this, then, oh clever one. If the B1 battle droids have souls – which I seriously doubt, because, Force are they ever dumb – why have I never seen you mourning them the way I saw you do when we had to put down that pack of rabid wild charhounds when they interrupted our scouting mission on Ephrona last year? Animals have midi-chlorians but they've never been described as having intelligent souls like you're giving to droids. What makes dirty, slavering, killer animals more worthy of your sorrow over droids that can arguably hold a conversation and only kill because they've been commanded to?"

Obi-Wan knew he had officially stumped his former Padawan by the multiple expressions that crossed Anakin's face as he opened and closed his mouth like a landed fish for a solid ten seconds while he tried to come up with a good answer. He even started looking around him, as if the monotonous grey walls and bulkheads would provide a proper comeback.

And then, for a moment, Obi-Wan thought Anakin had finally had a breakthrough, because his expression settled into one of triumph. The words that followed quickly disabused that idea, however. "Oh, look! There's a hangar down that way!"

Obi-Wan laughed as Anakin all but bolted down a connecting hallway, spotting the marking and arrow on the wall that the younger Jedi had seen. "You can run, but I still win!" Obi-Wan called cheerfully as he followed at a somewhat slower pace, earning a breathless chuckle from Palpatine and a mental, "Kark!" from Anakin.