Part 1 | Part 2 | more to come

Once again, thank you to @dogmatix for the plunnie, and for encouragement!

---

Refraction

Fandom: Star Wars Prequels Trilogy
AU: Darkness In the Light
Characters: Maul, Obi-Wan Kenobi
Word Count: 1608 (2998)

---

Maul wakes to a droid pulling him from the water, with one hand still tightly clenched in the tunics of the Jedi apprentice – small, barely competent with a lightsaber, but resourceful – that had brought him down. He shifts, making sure he and the Jedi are both tumbled into the container the droid is dredging things into before he lashes out with the Force, crumpling the housing with the droid’s processor.

He tries to take a deep breath, and ends it coughing some water out of his lungs – Maul is surprised there is so little. He couldn’t have been in the water long, even if he had passed out after hitting the water.

Checking the little Jedi supports that thought, as the boy is still breathing. Apparently Maul’s attempt to break their fall with the Force had borne more fruit than his own survival. The little Jedi apprentice might be disappointed to be alive, when he wakes up, but it will be fair recompense for denying Maul his chance to kill both Jedi.

Propping the boy up against a sodden pile of junk the droid had already dredged from the water, Maul extends himself in the Force carefully, seeking a way out that will let him get back to his ship, if it remains hidden.

That nothing seems to have found his ship, or even stands in the way of getting there, makes him frown. The Jedi Master should have been looking for the boy, at least, or barring that, looking for Maul’s ship. Trying to make sure that Maul is dead or incapable of escaping, not… absent.

Frowning, Maul finds the controls for the barge, finding the place the droid began from, and hauling the Jedi apprentice with him while the contents of the barge are dumped into a capsule. There is a maintenance corridor, and he easily – too easily – makes his way back to the hidden hanger his ship waits in.

The Jedi Master is nowhere nearby, and Maul cannot feel him approaching even when he keeps his senses stretched nearly to their limits. Not even the faint brush of another presence against his own, searching for him or the boy.

A boy who still hasn’t woken, and Maul snorts quietly, keying open the Scimitar’s rear airlock. Perhaps the Jedi Master is like Maul’s own, and expects the apprentice to effect his own escape when captured. Except that everything Maul had studied about the Jedi suggested they put value on the lives of even the most miserable apprentices. It makes no sense.

Perhaps the Jedi is waiting to see what will happen, and will follow when Maul takes the apprentice away from the planet.

He uses a touch of the Force to open the closer bunk, dumping the Jedi onto the bare shelf. Better for the boy to be here, where his sodden clothes can’t soak the only proper bunk.

Maul takes long enough to trade his own soaked robes for dry ones before going up to the cockpit. Listening to the frequencies the Naboo use and the Federation uses, frustrated when he hears only the news from Naboo to Coruscant, that the Viceroy has surrendered. There is nothing from the Jedi, though, and either the Master is looking for him, or has decided to hold onto the information that he’s escaped until he can speak to others in person.

He hopes it is the former, since it will mean the Jedi will follow him, and he will have another chance to destroy him. Not here, though. Not after being taken out of the fight by the little Jedi, and not with the Federation surrendered. There’s too great a risk the Master will have assistance.

When there is still no pursuit as he leaves the system, Maul wonders again why the Master seems to have so little regard for his apprentice. The boy isn’t useless, to be discarded for failure, even if the Jedi were inclined to be as ruthless as Maul’s own Master.

Setting coordinates, he makes the jump to hyperspace, leaving the ship on autopilot while he goes down to check on his Jedi prisoner again.

---

Obi-Wan wakes up chilled and shivering, wondering how it is he woke up at all. He’d expected to die, falling down that shaft. Die to take the Sith with him, and prove he was a Jedi, even if he wasn’t as good a Padawan as he should have been. Taking a deep breath, he opens his eyes, not sure what to expect.

That the first thing he sees is the inside of a cabin, rather than somewhere in the Naboo royal palace makes him bite back a cry. Not even given the chance to dry and wake up before shipped off in disgrace, then.

He sits up, letting his feet dangle off the side of the bunk, scrubbing at his hair a moment as he studies the room he’s in. Bare even of the minimum comfort of a pallet on the metal bunk, and only a table bolted to the wall beyond the bunk. Even his lightsaber is absent, though it could have been lost to the shaft he fell down, rather than taken from him. He thinks that might be worse.

When the door to the room opens, Obi-Wan looks up, and scrambles backward, pressing himself against the bulkhead at the back of the bunk. He’s not sure if he should be glad he doesn’t have to face the disgrace he would surely find if he’d been pulled out of the water by Qui-Gon, or terrified at the possibility he’s going to die far from anything and anyone he knows, at the hands of the Sith.

“Good. Here. Change.” The Sith doesn’t come into the cabin, dropping a pile of black fabric on the table. “I won’t help you if you fall ill.”

Obi-Wan blinks, staring – first at the Sith, and then at the closed door – for a long moment.

“You shouldn’t take long, Jedi. When we land, you’re not staying in there.”

The Sith’s voice is muffled by the door, though it’s clear enough. Obi-Wan doesn’t know how long the trip to wherever the Sith is going will be, or how long he’s been unconscious. Soon, perhaps, and far too long.

He pries his boots off his feet first, turning them upside down in case there’s water in them, before peeling down to his underclothes. Even wet, he’s not going without his own. The black fabric the Sith left him is a tunic, long on Obi-Wan, leggings, and a sash he uses to both tie the tunic and hold up the leggings, though it is a little awkward. The leggings he has to roll up at the bottom so he doesn’t trip, but it’s all at least dry.

Obi-Wan tries the door when he’s done dressing, surprised to find it opens for him. Not locked, as he’d have expected, if he’s a prisoner.

The Sith is waiting in the open space, arms crossed as he looks Obi-Wan over. “You’ll do as I tell you, or I will leave you on Mustafar when I leave, and let the planet kill you.”

“You’re not just going to kill me now?” Obi-Wan raises his chin, trying to release his fear and confusion into the Force like he’s supposed to.

Snorting, the Sith shakes his head. “Not unless it will bring your Master running.”

Obi-Wan wants to say of course he will, but he hesitates. Reaches out for the bond he’d held with his Master, and finding it not only blank, but vanished. It doesn’t feel like the blow he’d been expecting. Just. Numb.

“It won’t.” His voice sounds far away, and he wonders how he managed to sound so calm. “He already thinks I’m dead.”

The Sith doesn’t respond right away, and Obi-Wan looks up to meet the Zabrak’s yellow eyes. Staring at him, unblinking. “He didn’t even bother to look for your body.”

Why would he? Obi-Wan knows he’s not what Qui-Gon wanted, never has been. That he took him on as Padawan out of pity, and dropped him for someone better once he found Anakin. He’d be glad to know Obi-Wan is dead and no longer an obstacle for him to train the Padawan he wants.

“There were likely more immediate concerns. Someone would have found me.” Obi-Wan shrugs. Someone did find him, and he’s not sure what to think about a Sith having more concern for him than Qui-Gon. “Thank you for not leaving me to die.”

The Sith blinks, his brow furrowing. “I didn’t rescue you.”

“I know.” Obi-Wan doesn’t expect anyone to rescue him. And even if he does rescue himself, there’s no going back to the Jedi. They won’t take him back a second time, he’s sure. “What are you going to do with me?”

His only answer is a long silence, and the Sith turning away, beckoning him to follow. Up a lift, and into the cockpit of the ship. “Sit there. Stay put.”

Obi-Wan takes the co-pilot’s seat as instructed, and straps himself in. Watching the control panels, but not touching, as they streak through hyperspace toward Mustafar. He doesn’t recognize the coordinates, but assumes that’s where they’re going, since the Sith had mentioned it earlier.

Somewhere outside the reach of the Jedi, and a planet that is not entirely friendly to human life.

“What happens when we reach Mustafar?”

“We wait.” The Sith is settled in the pilot’s seat, watching the streaking light of hyperspace. “And if my Master comes to Mustafar, you hide.”

Silence falls after that, heavy and forbidding. Obi-Wan can only hope there will be more answers later.