-
On the silent ship, he comes to understand how little he knows of numbness. He sees his Padawan's pallor has turned an ashen yellow, his eyelids thickly rung in shadow, and the unsteady lift and fall of his chest is the only indication that the young man has not died.
It is easier to focus on the injury, he decides, laying his hand lightly against the battered flank. Perhaps other Jedi have survived a worse series of…obstacles. It is about pushing past self-perceived limits, more than ever. All about teeth gritting and hoping.
He has never experienced such sharp fear.
Transcending the bitter spike of nausea in his throat, to the point where he is stilling his breath-his own heartbeat-to avoid the distraction of vomit on his boots. And it takes him several darting, choked seconds to see the fingers flexing weakly from under the sleeves of his stricken Padawan.
His Padawan's fingernails are imbedded with blood. Old blood from Qui-Gon's arm, or from the massive claw-scrawl across his side.
Soon, the fingernails are all he can think about.
--
The last image of her is scratched into his brain. A years-old battle injury can renew pain in otherwise healed flesh, if the air is chilled enough, or if the body twists in the wrong way.
Since her death, every thought has been like an icy gust, or a wrenching jolt to brittle bones.
--
These new thoughts are worse.
Obi-Wan is not unconscious, and that makes it more difficult for him to leave the room. His Padawan is looking at him, but the gaze is moistened and imbalanced.
Qui-Gon sees pain there, too. Remembers that he has stifled his own pain—a monster tried to eat him. Obi-Wan's eyes are bigger teeth to contend with. Biting deep and very deep.
"There're pirates in there," Obi-Wan tells him, looking past Qui-Gon to the cockpit. "Don't go."
He cannot be wrong about Obi-Wan. Even in a smeared world of infection and mirage, his apprentice sounds as if he is announcing the arrival of tea, rather than the imagined infestation of pillagers.
"I—have to go. For a moment only."
"I'll….I'll come with you." Before he is able to subdue him, Obi-Wan is lurching up and the crude dressings are unraveling.
When he reaches the pallet, he has little to do. His Padawan is already down again, waxen. Qui-Gon tightens the tunic, more red than tan, around the slashed torso, and rests his hand across Obi-Wan's brow.
"This is a solo mission." He tells him. "Your duty is to stay here and think about healing. Your body recovering from the fever, the wounds clearing, your heart beating. The Force will guide you. Think of these things, only these things, and the pirates will not harm us."
His Padawan nods. "Yes, Master." The two words are lucid as each time he has spoken them, even while the translucent skin of disorientation glimmers in his eyes.
He decides it is safe to go to the cockpit now. Even if it were not, he would have to, to search for the first planet that would usher them in, because it is the rational and necessary thing to do.
--
At first the flight screens overwhelm him. He is too ill and mangled and tinged by exhaustion to understand any technical process now.
But when he looks at one screen, the screen in front of the pilot's chair, he understands. There is a word there, at least six syllables shoved together with the errant flecks and dots of alien pronunciation, as well as coordinates and a glowing blue planet grid.
The ship is going there. Programmed to go there. Obi-Wan has already found their harbor.
Everything is errant flecks and dots.
--
In this dream, he leaves Obi-Wan behind when he injures his leg. She is safe, not dead, and he goes back for his Padawan.
He does not find him.
--
He thinks for a second that he is fading on the pallet again, and the cold on his face comes from Obi-Wan's hand. He moves his head; the cold is unyielding, and he sees he is on the cockpit floor.
He wishes it were his apprentice's hand.
--
He feels as if the Force has become a planet, turning him away. The sear of the bite seeks out his arm's socket, crux, wrist. In time, it will need more to be satiated. Heart, brain.
Obi-Wan's wounds burn far closer to the young man's vital organs.
If Qui-Gon dies, the Force will take them both into its infinite warmth—Obi-Wan will not last on his own, feverish and deteriorating. But he knows this is not fair. Qui-Gon took down the creature. Obi-Wan's death would be unjustifiable.
He gets to his feet.
--
The bandages are gone, as Obi-Wan told him, but he tucks the supplies his Padawan has not used from the ship's medical kit under his good arm. His body is not working fluidly; he has to jerk every limb forward with dogged concentration to the far off pallet.
Obi-Wan's closed eyes open. "You fell asleep."
"I know," Qui-Gon admits, "But it was out of my control."
"Can I go to sleep?"
"No. "
--
Qui-Gon starts to think whether someone like Obi-Wan was fated to die on a ship with a generic name before he was Knighted. Would it happen to him whether Yoda or Mace Windu oversaw it, or was this Qui-Gon's distinct mark on Obi-Wan Kenobi's life?
--
He wants to channel all the skills of all the master healers, possess their knowledge. Instead he looks at the tubes and hypos and feels near panic, a quarter of a breath from helplessness.
A healing trance would be best—if he could be sure he could bring them both out of it. Suddenly he thinks how elusive everything is beyond the physical present. He grazes his fingers across his Padawan's jaw.
It is real, as the creature's severed, mobile head, as the walls of their ship-tomb are.
His Padawan's jaw and hands and shoulders can be physically touched; he touches them.
And it seeps in: Obi-Wan, his Padawan, is real.
--
On a fevered plain he comes to understand how much he feels for his Padawan. He stares at his eyes, eyes that long to close, that he will not allow to close, and he can only think of what a fool he has been.
It is easier to think of a brighter tomorrow, he reasons, and assures himself that after the monster's venom is purged, the wasting disease of guilt can be cured. Perhaps Obi-Wan's regard for him has survived the years in wilderness. It is about amends and confessions and pressing hands together until the sweat is slick between their palms.
He has never experienced such dizzying, nauseous epiphany.
Transcending the sick yellow whiteness of the ship lights, to the point where he can only see the sick blue of his Padawan's eyes, and knowing that he needs nothing beyond this. And it takes him less than a heartbeat to decide he will not die and neither will his Padawan.
His Padawan's eyes are trying to close again. Qui-Gon can see the bruised rings of exhaustion that darken otherwise pallid skin and he wants to touch the eyelids and erase the unnatural shadows.
Soon, his failures- to heal, to protect, to be selfless-are all he can think about.
--
Too much. He feels his bones pound on the cot as he falls beside Obi-Wan.
--
He is frightened by dreams that are different; he has almost died before, but not in haze. Yet he has heard death is supposed to bring clarity and he clings to that because nothing is clear and so he cannot be dying.
Instead he is walking with his Padawan across a narrow line and the line is made of stone he thinks with either side of the line a gray ocean. He has his hand on his Padawan's shoulder and he keeps pressing harder into the shoulder to make sure it is still there.
The water slaps hard, so hard that it feels like it is slapping inside of him, maybe the waves are stomach juices and he is going to vomit on his Padawan's boots. But when he looks at the boots, which are very close to his eyes now, they have blood all over them and the water vomit sucks back down into him.
He makes sure his hand is still on Obi-Wan's shoulder and he is so shaken by the boots that he waits until Obi-Wan is a step ahead of him and then puts his other hand onto Obi-Wan's other shoulder. He is not pushing him, though and Obi-Wan is not leading him. They are just walking on the stone and not talking because the waves are too loud anyway.
They both stop at the same time, close to the edge of their walkway and Qui-Gon tightens his double grip.
"I'm going to jump now, alright?" Obi-Wan says to him, very measured.
Qui-Gon does not answer, does not move his hands.
"It isn't very deep," Obi-Wan tells him, "I don't know how to…."
Swim, he doesn't finish, but Qui-Gon knows what he means. Obi-Wan looks at him over a shoulder and his face is covered in dry, cracking blood.
Qui-Gon lets go of Obi-Wan's shoulders. He does not push him, but his Padawan falls in anyway.
--
He wakes choking on "no". He swallows over and over until he can breathe. But something is too bright for him to see, he presses his eyes shut against it.
A touch on his arm is bright, too. Not bright, no---cold.
"Master Jedi?"
He is frowning deep into his face. "No," he says again, with the force of cognizance. The touch persists.
"Master Jedi, your ship landed here under emergency circumstances two standard days ago."
He does not know the voice. He does not know the bed; it is softer than the pallet and there are blankets over him, covering his feet. The water vomit rushes to the back of his throat. "Two?" He opens his eyes, feels sicker, but looks intently until the face materializes. Female. Loose lines. White clothes.
He does not know her. He does not know the world, cannot remember where Obi-Wan set the coordinates---
"Obi-Wan," he says but it is a raw, awkward whisper.
"Medical personnel treated you and a younger Jedi for multiple puncture marks and scratches made by a large, unknown creature."
No, he knows the creature. The creature he knows.
"You have been significantly ill, Master Jedi. Your assailant was both vicious and toxic to your species. "
"Obi-Wan." He is searching the Force, his mind, "He was hurt worse, he—"
Another cold touch. "Is very tired. His injuries were more extensive. I do not expect him to regain consciousness for at least another day."
Her hand is not any warmer when he grabs it. "Where?"
"He has been under intensive supervision while we waited for the vaccines to take effect. " She answers, and places his hand back on the bed. "But he is ready to be moved, if you are ready to share the room."
"Yes," he relaxes against the pillow, for as she tells him this, he slowly senses the subdued aura of his Padawan within the walls and the Force. "Yes, I'm ready."
--