Author's Notes: OK - I lied. I thought there would be 6 parts. I was wrong. There will definitely be at least one more, plus the epilogue...
DISCLAIMER: Star Wars and all publicly recognisable characters, names and references, etc are the sole property of George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd, Lucasarts Inc and 20th Century Fox. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Obi-Wan could see Auriga's finger tightening on the trigger, the barrel of the weapon aimed unerringly at his chest; could see the deadly intent in her eyes, and knew there was no time to save himself. There was nothing he could do to avert what was about to happen. Nevertheless, he tried. She had been right...a Jedi doesn't give up. Ever. He was coiling damaged muscles, preparing to fling himself at the woman in the hopes of somehow knocking the weapon aside...
...when another form launched itself at Auriga, reaching out for the gun. The figures seemed to blur together in the shadows, becoming one. Voices, and motion. And then there was a burst of light and sound, bright and sharp, burning an image onto Obi-Wan's retinas. A cry...and the sound of something falling...
...and time resumed its normal pace. Obi-Wan was standing beside the stone wall, blinking the spots from his eyes. Auriga, unmoved, the weapon still in her hand. And, at her feet...
Altos.
Obi-Wan drew in a sharp breath. At the sound, Auriga looked up, meeting his eyes. Her own were wide and frightened, her face pale. Then, almost reluctantly, she looked down...and with a low moan sank to her knees beside her Aide, the weapon slipping unnoticed from limp fingers.
Obi-Wan walked stiff-legged toward them, reaching out with senses he no longer had, for some sign of life. There were none. The man on the floor did not move; his chest was still. Ignoring Auriga, Obi-Wan painfully lowered himself to his knees, his left leg complaining at the motion. He reached out for the man's throat, noticing the faint bruises on Altos' neck -- bruises that matched the fingers that were now searching for a pulse. Fingers that were shaking...
"Is he...?" Auriga's voice was unsteady, brimming with unshed tears.
Obi-Wan sat back tiredly, unable to look away from the marks on Altos' chest and the glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling. "He's dead." He should be feeling something, Obi-Wan thought. Some emotion -- remorse, sorrow, gratitude... Another man had given his life for him. He should feel something...
There was nothing. It was as if everything within him had burned away with Altos' sacrifice. Fear. Anger. Hope. Sorrow. All gone. There was nothing left. Obi-Wan looked back at Auriga, wondering vaguely if she would kill him now. It wouldn't matter if she did, he thought emotionlessly. Nothing mattered.
He had been through too much, he recognized distantly. Too much had happened. He had done too much, seen too much...too much had been done to him. At some point, even the most resilient mind will shut down. It was understandable. No one would blame him for giving up.
Qui-Gon was talking again. Somewhere deep inside, a flash of despair went through Obi-Wan. "Damn all these lectures," he thought listlessly. "I've had enough. I won't listen." He shut his eyes. The voice was insistent though, the memory beating against his mind until he was forced to hear it.
"There will come a time when you will want to surrender," Qui-Gon had said, in response to a question from the youthful Padawan. "Someday you will be called upon to do something you cannot do, overcome some obstacle you cannot overcome."
"But if I cannot overcome it," Obi-Wan had replied, "surely there is no shame in surrendering?"
Qui-Gon had smiled, but the smile had not touched his eyes. "No. There is no shame in surrendering. Others will not condemn you for it. But you will have to decide, in your own heart, if you can live with that surrender."
"I don't understand, Master."
Qui-Gon had looked away, his eyes distant, as if remembering a time when he had faced the same decision. "When the time comes, you will have to decide for yourself if it would be better to die standing against the darkness than to surrender and live with defeat."
"But...how will I know which to choose?" Obi-Wan's voice had been clouded with confusion.
Qui-Gon had laughed then, and touched the Apprentice's shoulder, lightening the mood. "I cannot tell you how to decide. You must do that yourself. But I can tell you this. I know you will make the right decision..."
"How do you know?"
"I know you, Padawan..."
Qui-Gon's voice faded away, leaving Obi-Wan feeling wearily resentful. Damn his training and damn his own memories. It would be so easy to give up, to let the darkness carry him away. But he couldn't. And Qui-Gon had known it. He had known Obi-Wan wouldn't be able to surrender. His Master had been right. Sometimes it was better to die standing...
With a bone-shuddering sigh, Obi-Wan opened his eyes. Only a few moments had passed. Auriga had not moved, her head bent over Altos' body, one hand touching the burnt chest. Obi-Wan glanced down at the gun lying on the floor beside her. Not even trying to be silent, he leaned over the corpse and picked it up. She did not look up...did not move. Obi-Wan took a cursory glance at the weapon, figuring out its controls, then tucked it into the waistband of his trousers. He looked back at Auriga.
"Where is my lightsabre?" His voice was empty and tired.
She did not respond. Obi-Wan touched her shoulder. "My lightsabre," he said, more insistently, shaking her lightly.
At the motion, the Regaidian looked up. There were no tears in her eyes - it might have been better if there were. Instead, she looked...lost. The arrogance and certainty were gone from her, leaving only a confused kind of sorrow. "She really cared for him," Obi-Wan thought. Incongruously, a faint spark of sympathy for her went through him. "I need my weapon," he said a third time, speaking slowly and clearly.
She hesitated then reached blindly into an inside pocket on her gown and pulled out his lightsabre. She stared down at it for a long moment, as if wondering what it was. Then, still moving automatically, she held it out to him.
Obi-Wan's fingers brushed hers as he took the weapon, and she flinched, then looked back at the body. "What have I done?" she said brokenly. "I...I never intended..."
The Jedi shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he said, fighting down the surge of relief that went through him to have his lightsabre back in his hands. "It's too late. And there's no time. We have to get out of here."
Auriga did not move, except to run a trembling finger along Altos' cheek. "No. Go if you must. I won't stop you. But leave me here. With him..."
Obi-Wan was climbing painfully back to his feet. He swayed for a moment before regaining his balance, then bent down and seized her by the arm. "Sorry, Auriga," he said, "but you have to come with me." He pulled at her.
"Why?" She didn't sound as if she particularly cared. Wonderful. Both of them in the same mental state. They wouldn't stand a chance against whatever guards might happen by... On the other hand, Obi-Wan thought, taking all his weight on his right leg and hauling her to her feet by an act of sheer will -- at least she's not fighting me. Given his current physical condition he wouldn't be able to cope with anything stronger than passive resistance.
Auriga looked as if she wanted to sink back down to the floor. The Jedi knew he wouldn't be able to hold her up if she did. Clenching his teeth, he tightened his grip on both of her arms and said insistently: "Listen to me! You know how to get out of here, and you know how to avoid the guards. You're going to help me escape." It wasn't a question.
Auriga did not meet his eyes. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know," she said dully, "just leave me here. I have to...make sure Altos...is looked after properly. I can't leave him...alone."
"He's dead," Obi-Wan said ruthlessly. "He won't care if he's left alone. And you have to come with me. You have information the Jedi Council needs."
"No."
"Yes!" Enough. The time for talking was over. Obi-Wan was uncomfortably aware of how much time had passed since he and Altos had left the cell. Whatever Auriga had done to send the guards away, he couldn't rely on it for much longer. They had to go. Now.
Shifting his grip so his left hand was clamped tightly around the woman's wrist, he set off down the corridor, dragging her behind him.
It was difficult. His left knee had not improved...the injury had worsened, if anything. The effects of the concussion...well, he could ignore that, if he tried hard enough, but the results of the torture... That he couldn't ignore. Part of him wanted to sink to the floor and curl up around his injuries, and wait for the pain to go away. He did not acknowledge it though. Instead he continued down the hallway, his focus narrowing to a single goal. Escape.
Despite the Apprentice's determination, he could not have done it if Auriga had put up more than a token fight. Fortunately, after a brief struggle, she settled down, trailing wordlessly after him, her wrist still imprisoned in his left hand. In his right he carried his lightsabre.
They reached a crossroad, where the corridor split in two directions. "Which way?" Obi-Wan whispered urgently, looking both ways. The stone hallways were deserted.
"What?"
"Which way? Altos spoke about a ship..."
Auriga flinched at the mention of her Aide's name, then hesitantly pointed left. "The hangar is that way..."
Obi-Wan paused, wondering briefly if he could trust her. She stared back, uncaring, her whole being focused inward. Then he sighed and set off down the left-hand corridor, pulling her after him. Like so many other times since he had come to Regaid, he had no choice, not really. He could trust her or not. And Obi-Wan had the unpleasant feeling that it wouldn't make a difference which he chose.
They met no one and saw nothing but empty corridors, for what seemed like a lifetime. Finally though, they reached a large hangar, empty save for a single ship, facing toward the open portal. It was night again, Obi-Wan realized with a shock, looking out at the stars twinkling in the cloudless sky. He had lost all sense of time since he had been brought here. Was it really only a single day since he had been captured, or had more time passed than he was aware of? He sighed and put the thought from his mind. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except escaping... He took a closer look at the ship -- a Regaidian T-11 freighter -- and smiled grimly. He could fly it.
The sight of the ship seemed to draw Auriga from her detachment. She looked down at her wrist and began to pry futilely at his fingers. "Let me go," she hissed, more life in her words now. "This won't work. You can't escape. They'll stop you. You don't know them!" Fear was beginning to colour her voice.
Obi-Wan was actually a little surprised that it had taken this long for her sense of self-preservation to overcome her grief. She might have truly cared for Altos, he thought, but the real Auriga - the survivor, the zealot - was beginning to return. Damn. Well, all he had to do was get her into the ship, take off, and set a course to Coruscant... He calculated his remaining strength. He could do it...he hoped. "Come on," he said curtly, setting off across the hangar floor, limping heavily, the unwilling Auriga in tow.
They were halfway there, Obi-Wan just starting to allow himself to believe they might make it, when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw motion. He turned. Darkness was coalescing in the corner, weaving itself out of shadows and nightmares, into a form that was...and was not...there. A chill shot through him. Beside the Jedi, Auriga came to a sudden halt, her abrupt movement throwing him off balance. Taking advantage of this, she wrenched her hand out of his grasp and took several quick steps towards the creature, falling on her knees before it.
"I had nothing to do with this," she was saying hurriedly, desperately. "It was... I would not betray you. You must believe me... Please."
The creature ignored her. It moved past the kneeling woman then stopped, a dozen or so paces from the Apprentice. Tendrils writhing, it began to...sing. That was the only word Obi-Wan could think of to describe what it was doing. But it was a song of shadows, of evil so old he couldn't even begin to imagine its beginning...or end. The sound went through him like shards of ice, leaving him chilled and shuddering. And then something made him turn his head...to see another alien emerging from the darkness. And, there on his left...a third. Fear, greater than anything he had ever experienced, leapt through him.
"I'm going to die." There was no doubt in his mind, only grim certainty. "I'm going to die here, alone." Somewhere deep inside, the scream that had never quite left him, returned.
And, for one last time, he could hear Qui-Gon's voice: "Sometimes it is better to stand against the darkness than to surrender and live."
Obi-Wan closed his eyes, took a deep breath...and opened them again. The fear was gone. In its place was only calm acceptance. He would die standing.
He was smiling as he assumed a battle stance and activated his lightsabre.