Chapter 11

Darth Maul stayed at his brother's side until he saw him fall asleep. It was not a calm sleep, and despite the painkillers, Savage groaned every once in a while. He looked bad. The pallor was visible even under his tattoos, and sweat stained his face.

Maul was not comfortable with the room his brother had to use. It was not meant for longer stays. The net of metal strands that served as lying surface did great for Maul, but for a wounded person like his brother, it would be painful, and the rough blanket didn't help either.

The bacta patch that was pressed tightly to his left shoulder where the arm should be was the only thing Maul could do right now. He couldn't risk going to a med station. They were wanted criminals and although he could extort treatment for his brother, he would inevitably attract attention. And currently, every sort of attention was unseasonable.

He would have to patch him up as good as possible, and later they would have to get him a mechanical arm. His brother mumbled something incoherent and he put a hand on his forehead, feeling that it was slightly heated.

The anger about the state of his brother nearly overwhelmed him again, but he was acquainted with that, and he knew how to store the cause of his anger away for later use. But not much later. Ironically, Obi-Wan had consigned a new weapon to him with the whole new level of anger he evoked. A weapon that might be his downfall. He would use the force-lightning soon.

But as a start, he would resort to a more substantial weapon. He pressed his palm against a reader and the panel at the wall opposite the bed slid aside and revealed a neat array of weapons.

After short reflection, he settled for a finely engraved dagger. Obi-Wan had to pay in blood. How convenient that the dagger was used as a sacrificial knife on its planet of origin.

He cast one more look at his brother and left the room.

Some corridors further, he touched another reader. He heard a sliding metal sound and after that, the door disappeared into the wall. He silently complimented himself to the idea of the variable length of his prisoner's chains. When he entered the room, they would get short, and when he left, they would get long again. If he wanted them to.

Obi-Wan hid his surprise about the now extremely shortened wire that connected him to the wall pretty well, his face was a stoic mask. On his right, Skywalker was not as calm. Maul could make out the end of some Huttese curse, as he stared angrily at his hands, which were now locked in a position slightly above his head, forcing him to stand upright against the wall like his master.

He even had a small advantage because he was taller. Obi-Wan stood on his toes since it was the only way to get the weight off his wrists.

"What do you want?" the bearded Jedi asked. If you could call it asking. He sounded more like a regent that wanted to know what a random supplicant wanted of him. That insolence! The aquiline guard of his dagger pricked into his flesh as he clenched it tighter.

He approached Obi-Wan. "First, I will punish you for what you did to my brother."

"Punished? He should receive a medal for it."

Skywalker that little pest seemed to have absorbed the unwholesome smart mouth of his master, but Maul knew how to deal with it.

He flooded his mind with his anger, but didn't let it get out. He accumulated and concentrated it until he could no longer hold it, then he thought of what evil the man before him has brought over him, of every evil that was ever brought to him, and directed the raw and intense rage into his hand. And released it at Skywalker, without casting him the slightest glance.

As the lightning crackled from his hand, he felt the pure ecstasy and the raw power it contained push through him. He would have stayed inebriate like this if it didn't cost him that much energy. And so, he only gave Skywalker a short taste of what obstreperousness would bring him.

Maul didn't have to turn around to see that he was successful. The small crack in Obi-Wan's mask of calmness was his confirmation.

Now to the real fun.

"Do you see-" Maul began when he cut through the fabric of Obi-Wan's tunic, from wrist to waist, deliberately cutting a bit deeper than necessary.

"-the penalty-" he continued, making another slice, this time from neck to belly – more careful, he didn't want to disembowel him just yet.

"-for resistance?" The last cut was like the first one, on the other side.

Not till then he turned around to face Skywalker. Intelligent boy. He scowled at him but held his tongue. He was pale. And angry. The same anger that he felt during their battle. Still, both the physical chains in the cell and the mental chains of the Jedi restrained him from using his anger.

Maul turned back around with a sneer.

Back to his task.

He flung the hated Jedi around so that he had to face the wall. Darth Maul leaned forward and – because he saw how uncomfortable Obi-Wan was with it – came even nearer. The material of the Jedi tunic was repugnantly soft on his skin and in his hand, as he grabbed the Jedi at the collar. Only centimeters separated his mouth and Obi-Wan's ear.

"If you pass out," he whispered, "I'll continue with your boy." That promise made, he pulled back and yanked at the collar hardly. The tunic landed on the ground, now a mere set of rags.

Obi-Wan shivered slightly before he went rigid again.

It was not cold in the room.

A sneer tugged at Maul's lips as he placed his dagger on the now bare left shoulder of his enemy. Obi-Wan wanted to evade it, but there was no leeway.

Maul began with a shallow cut over the shoulder-blade. Just beside the spine, he cut deeper, through muscle. That earned him a groan.

Not quite enough for him.

He continued his bloody work, carving various lines into Obi-Wan's back, until he crossed a hardly visible white line. There were more of them. Old scars, neatly healed but still there. The pattern argued for whiplashes, but who could they be from?

Maybe...he had heard stories, but they couldn't be true. Only Ventress' intervention prevented him from exacting his revenge on Obi-Wan much earlier. It was highly doubtful that she tortured him to the brink of death two years before that.

He shoved these thoughts aside, there were enough other people who could be responsible for the scars, Obi-Wan Kenobi was a person with more than enough – and more than dangerous – enemies.

He started shivering now, the blood loss showing effects.

From the other side of the room, he perceived a growing cloud of anger and hate around Skywalker. Maul just had to wait and see who lost it first. In both cases, Skywalker would be the one who had to suffer.

With clinical interest, he wondered what would happen first? Would Obi-Wan faint or would his apprentice get carried away to say something?

He stroked the blade over the bloody back, trying to decide where to cut next.

His prey breathed heavily and his eyes fluttered. He already fought against oblivion. Maybe he should do something to wake him up.

He lifted the dagger and cut into the reddish flesh around the burn on Obi-Wan's shoulder.

Darth Maul contentedly drank the expression of surprise and shortly afterward that of pain on Obi-Wan's face. As he drank the guttural scream like a cure for his churning soul. That was revenge, sweet revenge.

"Stop it!"

The exclamation brought him back into the room. He slowly turned around to the other occupant.

"And why should I? Because you want it?" Maul laughed deridingly before he sent another jolt of lightning at the impudent boy, longer this time, because he wanted Obi-Wan to hear his apprentice's screams.

"Don't..." he heard the raw voice behind him. Obi-Wan was at the end of his rope, he hung in the chains aslant, so that he could get a look at Skywalker, his whole weight on the wrists. He used the last of his strength to hold his eyes open, but he wouldn't keep it up for long.

"Don't worry, Obi-Wan", Maul said with a hard clap on the Jedi's shoulder that not even a blind bantha could mistake for affection – for the very reason that Obi-Wan moaned and seemed to collapse into his chains even more, "I wouldn't lay a finger on him were you unable to spectate."

He felt how Obi-Wan's consciousness slowly faded and made sure that the last thing he saw was his apprentice, encased by lightning.

He went to the door, his blood thirst momentarily stanched.

At the entryway, he tossed a can of water into the cell. If his prisoners wouldn't get something to drink, they would die soon, especially after the huge amount of blood Obi-Wan lost today. They would certainly think that it was drugged, but he was not the kind of person to do that. He preferred his victims clear and capable of thinking. He knew that the human brain was one of the most effective torture devices of all. One had to realize the entire dimension of misery one was stuck in to really know what the word fear stood for.

The two unconscious Jedi disappeared of his visual field as the door slid close. He was satisfied with himself, but a bit of worry about his brother still gnawed on him. And the heavy sound of his "feet" on the floor reminded him that his apprentice would begin to assimilate him not just in mind, but regretfully in appearance, too.