#twelae

[the-last-kenobi]

For the bad things happen bingo, I Will Punish You For Your Friend's Failure, with Obi Wan and Rex during the Zygeria arc with Rex being punished by the slavers.

Oooooh, happy evil brain twinkles.

TW for blood, child death, and mildly graphic torture. No specifics because spoilers but do be cautious.

•••

There is an enemy, and it is within, the Jedi taught.

You will encounter foes of all forms in your years as a Jedi. There will be cruel tyrants and selfish politicians, ruthless criminals and violent terrorists. Possessive lovers, radical reformists, slavers and desperate people willing to do whatever it takes to achieve what matters to them. And then the next thing, and the next.

But these are not the enemy.

The Jedi have only two natural enemies.

The Sith have been extinguished from the galaxy, lost to ruin. What the Jedi did not destroy, the Sith themselves did, locked in the raw emotion of the Dark Side, turning on one another.

And the Jedi are left with the true enemy.

You are the enemy, the Masters warned. Your weaknesses are your real enemy.

All obstacles can be overcome as long as you master yourself.

Fear will lead you astray. Push through it.

Anger will corrupt you. Abandon it.

Envy will poison you. Purge it.

Grief will break you. Overcome it.

And if you fall, you will fall as yourself, at peace. A true Jedi perishes for the right reasons, where not even self-possession could stop the sheer numbers of the opposition.

The enemy is within.

•

Obi-Wan Kenobi took a deep, steadying breath. The enemy is within, he reminded himself. My fear is the enemy. These people cannot destroy me.

The broken wrist, clumsily bandaged and still forced to work, whispers that otherwise. The bruises along his spine groan in misery. There was a cut on his upper lip that had bled and dried in his beard and lips. Someone had driven the handle of a whip into the muscles of his left leg, and it could not bear his weight.

He opened his eyes just in time to receive a stunning blow across the face.

Despite the fancies of holodramas, a strike to the face is nothing to brush aside.

The Jedi reeled, his head exploding, his face stinging. White light erupted behind his eyes and his nose burned as if he’d dived too deep into water.

“Who is your Master?” a voice demanded.

Obi-Wan blinked rapidly, gasping for air. His entire head throbbed; he was on his knees but his back had arched back so far his head was a foot from the floor. Wincing, he dragged himself back up and stared passively into the snarling Zyggerian’s eyes. “I am.”

A roar of discontent. “Wrong!”

The hand came back, but this time it closed around his throat.

•

Qui-Gon caught him by the shoulders, one hand moving upwards to press against the side of his Padawan’s neck.

“You are stronger than your fear,” he said. “Because your fear is only part of you. Your strengths outnumber your fear, Obi-Wan.”

Behind the boy’s young eyes, though - flashes of remembered horror, children dead in the streets of Melida/Daan and the screaming sound a blaster bolt made as it grazed close, so close, to his ear - and hit another boy instead —

Obi-Wan gasped as if drowning, his mind convinced that he was not getting enough oxygen.

Fear was going to kill him.

Fear was the enemy.

“Oh, Padawan,” sighed his Master. And then the hands left his neck and his shoulder, leaving Obi-Wan bereft, plunged into ice cold waters of terror and trauma, his failures haunting him like the ghost of Cerasi.

•

Obi-Wan choked, bucking involuntarily as the meaty hand clenched around his throat, crushing his air pipe.

He couldn’t breathe.

Still. What did it matter, if this monstrous slaver killed him in a fit of rage? Obi-Wan was more than this man and his pride, his greed, his disregard for life.

Obi-Wan was a Jedi.

His body’s automatic response to being abused and killed was nothing.

He was more than his fear.

“Damn Jedi!”

The hand released him, and the red-haired General slumped to the floor, unable to stop his forehead from colliding painfully with the uneven slag flooring. More blood. He tasted it in his mouth, he felt it dripping down his forehead.

“Very well,” the same voice continued. “The punishment must suit the prisoner, in some cases. How lucky of you. So special.”

They cannot hurt me, Obi-Wan reminded himself. My body is not my soul. I am more than my fear.

And then two more slavers entered the room at a summons, dragging a struggling figure between them.

Rex.

Obi-Wan’s fear spiked so sharply he felt his chest stab with physical pain.

No, he told himself. No. Fight it. Fight it—

The Zyggerian behind him sensed his rising emotion and grabbed him roughly, one hand on the thick collar around the Jedi’s throat, and the other dug painfully into his hair.

•

Obi-Wan shuddered.

A bomb - Twela, Bruin, Conno, Toorun, and others went flying, flailing helplessly in the air.

Toorun rolled on his side and got back up.

Conno collided with a vehicle and lay still.

Bruin landed on his feet and stood up, grinning in shocked relief, and then dropped with a bullet in his head. Blood spattered stone.

Twela landed on a pile of rubble.

When Obi-Wan found her, she had been lying there for an hour while the battle wore on, a rebar shoved through her stomach.

It took her two days to die—

Cerasi, falling into his arms. Gasping. Blood everywhere. Her father screaming. Blood on Obi-Wan’s hands—

Nield, his friend, telling him he didn’t belong - kicking him out of the camp to die alone - blaming Obi-Wan, rightfully, for the death of Cerasi and the peace she had helped create—

But as quickly as they had been taken away, the warm and solid hands of Qui-Gon Jinn were there again, this time on his back. Pulling him. Tightening around him.

Obi-Wan blinked rapidly, gasping and shaking, pressed into a warm embrace while his Master rocked him gently, whispering encouragement into his hair.

It was good to be held.

•

Obi-Wan twisted, struggling in near-panic to get away from the arms restraining him.

“Stop it!” he yelled. “Stop!”

They did not stop.

The Zyggerians had been on Rex for over two hours, holding him down, methodically slicing the soles of his feet, throwing their fists into his abdomen and face and throat, slamming his head against the unforgiving ground.

The Captain was a mess; bruised and bloodied, involuntary tears making his damaged face glisten.

Rex had finally started to scream five minutes ago, and still they would not stop—

“Stop! You’ll kill him!” Obi-Wan shouted, his bound hands clenched so tightly that his palms were torn and bleeding. “Stop!”

“And now the bird sings,” the slave master crowed, laughing down at him. “So high and mighty, Jedi?”

“Leave him alone!” Obi-Wan demanded.

The slaver’s face darkened.

Two things happened at almost the same moment.

A knife was drawn from seemingly thin air and without hesitation or fanfare was plunged into Rex’s thigh; the Captain screamed again, writhing.

A button was pressed, and the collar around Obi-Wan’s neck blazed with electricity that made him convulse, blinded, agonized.

“You don’t give the orders here,” the master snarled. “Haven’t you learned? You’re not in control here!”

•

“You are in control, Padawan,” Qui-Gon murmured, rubbing his hand up and down the boy’s back, following the still too-prominent line of his spine. Up and down, up and down.

“I’m not,” Obi-Wan sobbed. “I’m a failure.”

“You haven’t failed until you’ve let yourself down and decided not to get up again,” his Master replied firmly. “You are master of yourself, Obi-Wan, and therefore master of the situation. You can rise above. Even if you need help to do it. You are not a slave to fear.”

•

“Slaves are not masters,” the Zyggerian bellowed, and Rex screamed again.

Obi-Wan shuddered and twitched on the floor; he felt filthy, ragged, used. Now useless.

“You don’t make the rules!” A kick to the abdomen that deprived him of air. Once again suffocating. Drowning.

All he could see was the bloodstained floor. All he could hear was the voice, and Rex screaming through gritted teeth.

“Every time you cross me, I’ll punish your freakish friend. And anyone else that crosses your path. I! Am! In! Control! Here!” Each of the final words was delivered with a sharp jerk on the chain that had been attached to the collar.

Obi-Wan choked and wheezed.

Pain.

Terror.

Helpless.

I can’t —

“Who is your Master?”

“You are,” Obi-Wan told Fear, eyes glazed, blood spattered across his vision. Maybe permanently. Like a brand. Like Cerasi’s lifeblood on his shaking hands.

“Who is your Master?” the slaver asked again.

Obi-Wan stared vacantly upwards.

Fear looked back at him. Outside him. Inside him. Triumphant.

“You are,” whispered the Jedi, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

He slumped to the floor.

Rex’s screams faded as the punishment abruptly ceased; the Clone lay on the stone floor, limp and in terrible pain, staring with abject fear in his eyes at the fallen Jedi.

His utter relief that the pain was over, that they had taken their hideous hands off of him, was warring with his worry.

And his growing terror.

If even General Kenobi could be controlled...

“A good start,” the slave master said thoughtfully, trodding deliberately on Obi-Wan’s damaged foot. “And I was told Jedi did not feel fear.”

•••