The Jedi Temple Murders
by analise and Kirby CrowPart 12
"OBI WAN!" Qui-Gon roared as his apprentice - his love - slumped to the floor beside Be'el and lay there, seemingly lifeless, the whites of his eyes showing and long red scratches on his face and throat.
Seemingly dead.
He had felt his apprentice's agonized farewell through the Force, the tormented voice that cried its love and then - with a sweetness that ripped into him like knives - had let him go. He would not let it happen. He had taught his apprentice acceptance to the will of Force, to bend to its demands and live according to its dictates. But teaching and doing were two different things. He would not accept this loss. Never.
Never.
But there was no time. The dark energy was coiling over their heads, gathering into a red cumulus of swirling mist. Both masters knew that it was only searching for an opportunity to strike, an opening.
"No!" Mace screamed suddenly. "Obi-Wan!" Qui-Gon recalled, too late, that Mace would also have reason to sense Obi-Wan's touch through the Force. He could not even imagine the pain- to be helplessly in love with someone you knew would never return it, to see his beloved lying terrifying still, to know that his last thoughts were of someone else.
But he began to understand it when he found Mace's hands locked around his throat.
"It's your fault!" Mace shouted, face swollen with rage. "If you had let me send him away he would still be alive. You selfish bastard, it's your fault he's dead!"
"Mace!" *Damn it all, there's no time for this!* "Mace, listen to me!"
"Your fault!" Mace's fingers dug into his throat, cutting off his wind. "You just used him! You could never have really loved him!"
He could feel his own rage rising to meet his friend's, the resentment at his words, his fury that Mace dared to even imagine what was between him and his apprentice. His hands rose up of their own volition, wrapping themselves around the other Jedi's throat, squeezing even as black spots began to dance in his vision.
His rational brain saw the long dark force-filaments of murky red trailing down from the ceiling, swirling around both of them, feeding their resentment and rage, enhancing the negative anger that even now kept them battling each other rather than it.
Kept them occupied while Obi-Wan died.
With a roar Qui-Gon summoned the Force and used it to shove Mace away from him, breaking the death grip on his throat. The other Master crashed into the door, splintering the old wood, and fell back on his knees. He rose immediately, his hands outstretched, his mouth stretched into a feral snarl.
*This is not us, this is not who we are*, Qui-Gon began chanting to himself, even as another blinding storm of grief and fury howled over him, sinking into his bones. His mind was suddenly replaying the moment in the Moot only two days ago, remembering those hands on his Obi-Wan, recalling that terrible invasion and warping the meaning. The bastard had brutally forced his Padawan's mind open, rooting about in those most precious thoughts and memories like a rat in the harvest. And now, knowing that Mace had harbored feelings for Obi-Wan, the memory was twisting into something else.
"Bastard! You're as bad as that child-rapist!" he snarled, picking the other Jedi up by the front of his robes, lifting him clear off the ground. "How dare you even *touch* him!" And he moved to throw his friend once more.
But Mace, an unholy light in his eyes as he stared at Qui-Gon, twisted himself in the unbreakable grasp, brought his feet up and slammed his booted heels right into the bearded jaw. They both tumbled to the ground, Qui-Gon leaking blood from one corner of his mouth. Instantly they were on their feet again, circling warily, like wolves looking for a weakness.
"And Geen," Qui-Gon sneered. "What of him? You say you knew? All along? I think it turned you on. I think the voyeur in you *liked* it. All that interest in what *others* are doing. I think you allowed it because you wanted to do it yourself!"
The words were vicious, biting, and untrue. Somehow, Qui-Gon found himself shouting them, wielding them like weapons. Mace's face crumpled inwards, a look of unutterable pain and guilt crossing his strong features.
"That's not why I stayed out of it!" he shouted wildly. "That's not it! I wanted..." he trailed off, looking brokenly to the still form of Obi-Wan.
Qui-Gon's eyes followed, and it was enough to break him from his rage. He caught his breath painfully, feeling the terrible burn of his own anguish as he realized that if his Padawan were dead, he did not think he could survive it.
"Mace," his voice was raw as he forced himself to straighten and spread his hands out, not threatening. He could feel the twisting of the Dark Energy trying to find a foothold, throwing warped memory after memory at him, scrabbling for purchase. He ignored it as if it were inconsequential, instead holding his hand out to his friend.
Mace blinked. His voice lowered to normal tones as he looked away from Obi-Wan, tears in his eyes. "Qui-Gon...I should have done something...Geen. That poor boy." Mace was confused, shaking his head, one hand rubbing his temple. "I could have..."
Qui-Gon leaned forward and grabbed Mace's hand, pulling him up to his feet. *No time for subtleties,* he thought grimly as he backhanded his old friend.
Mace rocked against the wall of the narrow room and came back with fire in his eyes, fists clenched at his sides."What the HELL do you think ---"
"Look!" Qui-Gon shouted, and Mace did. The Dark Energy was swirling furiously around both of them, luminescent to their Force-sensitive vision, lent a red hue by its simple malevolence. Qui-Gon could fairly smell the thing's outrage and fury at being denied another host. It *wanted* them. It wanted them at each others throats. Most of all it wanted to consume them.
Mace reached out and seized Qui-Gon's forearm tightly. //Together,// he said, mind to mind, his inner voice raw from emotions he had not quite reined in yet. //Together we kill this thing once and for all. For Obi-Wan. And for Geen and Sandor and Bacco and Elspeth.//
Qui-Gon slanted one last glance at his Padawan. *Obi-Wan...*
There was no answer through their bond. Obi-Wan still lay unmoving on the floor. He did not see his chest rise. Terror lent him strength.
*Obi-Wan please live, please be alive, please, please...*
No answer. The silence was nearly his undoing, and so he turned away instead. Turned to face the dark energy that had tendrils extended like hooks, ready to rend and claw, and the fury in his blood began to sing, demanding action.
*No Padawan's here,* he broadcast to it. *No corrupted mentors or tortured children. Let's see how you fare against a real Jedi Master.*
//Two.// Mace sent the thought, gripping his wrist. Windu was haggard in his grief, his eyes reddened and raw, but there was steel in his voice.
*Begone.*
Two powerful minds joined against it, willing it into oblivion. And they were sucked inside the maelstrom. Never had either of the two Masters, in all their long experience in the galaxy, ever dealt with such a thing. It was not simply the Dark Side of the Force, it had gained a near sentience through all its hosts. Greed culled from a Slaver, hatred from a politician, lust from a Queen...all the twisted, hidden emotions of a hundred hundred people on a hundred hundred worlds. Alien despair and human misery. None of it evil at the base of it, but made so by the Energy as it fed. Every dark secret or painful memory that either Mace or Qui-Gon had ever had was ripped from them, twisted and fed back...the attempts of a desperate consciousness to survive.
Because it was losing. Step by painful step, the two Jedi clung to each other and through that contact, the truth. Mace was NOT guilty of abusing Geen. Qui-Gon had NOT taken advantage of his apprentice. Each lie was turned back by the other as they strained against the storm of hate and fear. And when they had gained enough of a foothold, they began to use their own strength of will, their own considerable control of the Force, to dismantle it from the inside. Alone, each of them would have failed, but together, they were able to fight back the choking untruths the Energy tried to feed them.
The thing began to dissolve, atom by atom, before their eyes. Thoughts and feeling, images of hosts long dead, shed from it like snakeskin and blazed quicksilver through their minds, leaving behind fleeting impressions that - thankfully - faded almost as soon as they were identified. Even Geen's brief period as host, and the impression of a weeping young padawan struggling beneath him, was experienced. Qui-Gon shuddered and sought to cast that image forever from his memory.
Neither master knew how long it lasted, but it ended suddenly, without flourish. Only a long chorus of screams echoing against the barriers of the Force that neither man ever wanted to hear again. A shrieking refrain of all the souls the dark energy had claimed throughout the millennia of its existence. Blending into the diapason roar of the Force itself as the energies, good and evil, were absorbed and dispersed into the vast milieu of many, many others. Fading away.
It was over, and Qui-Gon was finally able to determine that only minutes had passed. It had seemed like a lifetime. He felt unclean. Panting, he cast around, loosening his death grip on Mace's arm. Be'el lay dead on the floor, and Obi-Wan...
"Obi-Wan!" Qui-Gon crumpled to his knees beside his Padawan and lifted him into his arms, cradling him, noting the stillness of his chest and the thin line of white showing between his half-open eyelids.
"I'll get help!" Mace ran out of the room and past the chamber into the outer halls, shouting at the top of his lungs.
Qui-Gon laid his cheek near his apprentice's mouth, listening for even the faintest of breaths. Nothing. His broad fingers dug into Obi-Wan's tender neck for a pulse, hissing at the ugly purple bruises ringing his throat. A shadow of rhythm, deep under the skin, so slow and faint that no other could have detected it.
Other than the contusions, Qui-Gon could find no visible injury. *Neural shock,* his mind raced. *When the dark energy let him go. Must be.*
He pinched Obi-Wan's nostrils shut with one hand and leaned over him, fitting his mouth over the icy lips and breathing into him. Once. Twice. His own heart was growing cold with dread when Obi-Wan coughed and moved under him. Qui-Gon gave a shout of pure joy when the jeweled eyes opened and Obi-Wan looked up at him curiously.
"Master," he whispered, his voice raw from his injured and swelling throat. "Why are you crying?"
++++++++ EPILOGUE ++++++++
Months later, under the sun of another world, near the waters of a fall as unlike Kitthurin as they could find, the young man shivered.
Strong arms encircled his waist as he stood in the hip-deep water, pulling him back into a warm embrace. "Cold, little love?"
Obi-Wan craned his neck and gave his lover a look of vast indignation. "*Little?*"
"I apologize. What else should I call you? Big hunk of man-love?"
Obi-Wan snorted. "Away with you."
"Just try and make me." Qui-Gon bent and nuzzled the back of his neck, teeth scraping gently against flesh, sending uncontrollable tremors down his back.
"You're shivering again."
"Yeah, but I like this kind."
"Mmm." Qui-Gon kissed a line down the young man's neck and across, pausing to nibble on one curved, sun-warmed shoulder. "Ready to go back to the Inn?" he whispered in his lover's ear.
"In a minute." Obi-Wan pulled Qui-Gon's arms more tightly around him. A long moment passed. Qui-Gon was patient, giving him time, simply glorying in the feel of the relaxed - and very much alive- body in his arms.
He found he had to keep reminding himself that Obi-Wan was alive.
*So close. So close to losing him forever. Of all the young ones targeted, only he survived.*
"Master," Obi-Wan began hesitantly. "What will happen to Master Windu?"
"He will be reprimanded, of course." He allowed his fingertips to trail across his apprentice's ribs, lightly skimming the satiny skin. *Soft,* his inner voice whispered seductively. *I'd like to run my tongue over every single -- *
"But," Obi-Wan interrupted his thoughts. "Surely they won't blame him for what Be'el did to Geen?"
//You dwell too often on the future, my Obi-Wan,// he sent through their bond. //Learn to be content in the moment.//
"Blame?" he said aloud. "No. But he had knowledge of the wrongs done to Geen and decided not to act on it. That in itself is a heavy thing. Don't worry, Padawan." Qui-Gon pulled him close again in a sudden hug. "Mace will be harder on himself than the Council could ever be. And as for you," Qui-Gon captured a delicate lobe between his teeth and sucked gently.
"When I finally convince you to come back to that room with me, I'm going to be harder on you than you ever thought possible." And the Master pushed his hips slightly forward so that Obi-Wan could feel the insistent stiffness pressing there.
Obi-Wan closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the broad chest behind him. He listened to the roar of the waterfall, rumbling and chuckling to itself up the wide river and he imagined that perhaps the river was a lagoon, the waters aqua instead of blue-gray. That the wind rustled the tops of tropical trees instead of the slender leafs of a more temperate variety. He imagined laughter and voices echoing off the water. And he imagined a pair of green eyes smiling at him. Forgiven.
And then he let his mind fill with butterfly wings of many hues, and the slant of dawn through a terraced garden. He made a contented noise and allowed himself simply to be held.
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