Master Apprentice Archive A Kind of Genesis Quick search:

Archive: only on M/A and my homesite - http://home.iprimus.com.au/amacker

Rating: NC17

Warning: darkfic, contains rape

Category: AU.

Summary: Xanatos takes Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan into the darkness.

I believed I could bear anything, that no scar would lay upon me unhealed. All of my life's decisions I have accepted, but one. And it remains on my soul, remains to this day, coming to me in the middle of the night sometimes and nothing I do will completely heal it. Damn him.

Obi-Wan and I had been to Corellia to try and make some headway in the current rash of pirate raids. We'd been expected, but at the time I wasn't even surprised that an official aircar hadn't been at the starport to take us to the local Jedi enclave. Yes, it was overconfidence -- who would attack two Jedi in the middle of a busy city? So we'd called a handy private cab and had no more that settled into the seats when a hidden stunner lashed out and took the both of us so totally by surprise..

And when I woke, I was in pain and alone. Two metal chains fixed to the wall and attached to bracelets around my wrists had me suspended with feet barely touching the floor. However long I'd been there, my weight had hung on those chains, and the pain from torn and burning muscles, twisted joints and hands gone blue from lack of circulation ... the pain was terrible. I pushed upwards, biting my lips, tasting blood as I tried to take some of the weight -- and the moment I moved my shoulders every muscle in my back cramped and went into spasm. I whimpered like a child, gasping as wave after wave cramped its way over my spine.

It isn't easy to concentrate and relax when every part of your chest and back is screaming its abuse to your brain. There was, however, one way I could think of to gain some relief. Shutting out some of the misery, I visualised myself floating.lifting from the floor ... and as I did lift I felt for the link and sensed Obi-Wan somewhere close, alive at least.

But the other shocking thing it revealed to me was the presence of another Force user aboard. A very familiar one.

Xanatos.

There had to be someway out of this -- not letting my concentration waver, I looked around the room, hoping to find something I could will to me, to break the chains. But it was empty, except for a small sealed storage cabinet against one wall. The metal walls and floor radiated chill and the air stank of some stale, decayed odour. I had, all in all, been in better places.

As I swung back around on the chain to try and break it the door opened behind me and Xanatos entered. I twisted back and pushed against the wall, bracing myself, but I began to lose touch with the Force in the face of Xanatos' hate. Without saying a word his presence was a condemnation, and the pleasure he felt sensing my pain was obvious.

As usual, he had a flair for the dramatic. Black clothing to match his dark hair, to highlight his pale skin. He studied me as well, matching me stare for stare and when he spoke, his voice was a deep, satisfied whisper.

"I've been looking forward to your waking, Qui-Gon."

He'd always had a habit of slipping into the melodramatic. "I'm pleased for you."

Xanatos studied me with calm intent, the dark blue eyes bright in the pale, scared face. "I used you call me Master. I want to hear you do the same for me. I want you to call me Master."

"Sadly, not everything we wish for in life comes true."

The pale features twitched into a smile. "Jedi arrogance won't help you, not here. Sometime soon when the pain has become too much, you'll say and do whatever you need say to ease it. And if," he continued, as he'd turned towards away, "you attempt to draw on the Force to aid you, I shall have my servants cut out your padawan's heart and present it to you on a cushion."

It was the sort of coercion I'd been expecting and I made no answer, denying him a response. While I would do whatever was needed to protect Obi-Wan, I was damned if I would give Xanatos the pleasure of sensing my concern. But I dared not ignore it, and I let the Force slip away as I dropped back to the floor.

He glided forward to stand very close, so close that I could smell the sour odour of his breath. Leather slid over skin as he drew on a pair of black, unusual gloves, with the ends of the fingers tipped with small sharp claws. Those artificially clawed hands touched my shoulders and twisted me around on the chain I was pressed to the cold metal wall. The hands slid down my back and around my waist, slowed at the groin then moved up to undo the clips of my belt. Belt and sash dropped to the floor and I must admit I flinched as my tunics were torn from hem to neck, the two parts left hanging from my arms.

One gloved hand stroked down my back, the claws trailing lightly over the skin. They stopped at the top of my pants, hooked themselves inside and pulled them down, leaving them tanged around my ankles.

I had never been particularly prudish, but I admit I had the awakenings of vulnerability, standing there with the cold air chilling my skin. Xanatos had stepped away and I heard the rustle of material and leather. I managed to turn his head and as I did Xanatos was stripping, folding his clothing with restrained neatness and placing it on the floor near the door.

He watched me, motionless for a time, wearing only a pair of briefs, before he turned to the storage locker behind him. He returned with a black rod from which hung two long strips of leather tipped with a steel barb. Gathering the strips of the whip, he ran them through his long fingers.. "This is called a Tasker. When wielded properly, it can shred the skin in precise equidistant strips."

The thongs swung lazily, the metal tips brushed against my side, in rhythm with his voice and I didn't know which one was more chilling "I consider myself something of an artist with the Tasker. Let me introduce it to you -- you will come to know each other very well." And he drew back his arm and struck with all his strength behind the blow.

It hurt. Razor-edged pain, a tearing snap across the width of my back and into my right shoulder. It was impossible not to have some reaction, to hide or call back the small moan that skittered out between my clenched teeth. I wanted to deny him the pleasure of hearing me cry out. I wanted what it was impossible for me to have -- some kind of control over my own reactions. Each breath ended with a sob, each blow triggered a grotesque dance as I tried helplessly to push myself through the wall, to push away from the relentless cutting blows.

He worked his way into a rhythm then; strike, gather the thongs, flip them back and strike again. They blended together in a growing pattern; after the tenth I could feel Xanatos' deliberate placing of each blow, touching the spikes to a different area; one to the shoulder, one on the buttocks, one in the middle of the back. Nerves on fire, I was both hot and cold as shock began to take its toll. I was shivering, the moans coming with a sort of staccato hiccup matching the blows.

I could have used the Force, could have drawn on it to smother the pain, but Xanatos was expectant, his own Force sensitivity watching me like some predatory beast. I didn't dare. Didn't dare risk Obi-Wan's life for my own ease.

He finally stopped slicing open my back and pulled me around. But the relief was momentary; the thongs of the whip hissed as they sailed by my face, and I could see it now as it hit. The leather was shiny with my blood, and bits of skin hung from the spikes. And it was harder as well to hide the pain from him, now that he could see my face.

He took pleasure in his precision, almost as much as he did with the pain. I was learning even then, learning about pain, the sort of bone-deep, through-to-the-centre anguish I'd never known. And I started thinking of dying..

Between the bright flashing anguish I could see his face; it was peaceful, serene. Whatever the Dark Force was, it worked very differently from my own gentler version. To find such peace in another's travail was an abomination.

When he'd finished, finally, he'd flayed almost every inch of my skin and reduced me to a shaking mess. He stood back to observe his handiwork. I could sense every inch of my skin, could feel the blood dripping to the floor down my sides and legs. If I closed my eyes I could number every touch, remember every blow, branded in mind and body by his hunger.

Xanatos curled the whip and dropped it to the ground, stepped forward and grabbed a handful my blood-matted hair, pulling my head back to look into my eyes, apparently pleased by what he saw there. He stepped forward, pushing me back against the wall, pressing his chest to me, smiling as I winced when the torn mess of my back hit the cold wall.

I watched him lower his head and kiss the shattered skin of my shoulder, felt the hot tongue lap up the blood that had pooled on my collarbone, sensed his pleasure at the taste. Strong arms wrapped around me, pushing the hair back, as he whispered against my skin.

"You only need to ask me. To stop. Just ask. Nicely."

I hissed my hate at him and he laughed. "Shall I take that as a negative? You're as stubborn as I remember. But I'm a lot more persistent than I was. With a different set of ... appetites ..." He reached up to the chains and pulled me around to face the wall, forcing my head back so that he could see my face, and rotated his hips, pressing he to my torn back and the I could feel the swollen ...

Yes, that was what he had in mind, of course. Leather covered fingers trailed around my back and into the cleft of my buttocks, the leather slick with blood.

"Tell me, have you fucked your padawan yet? He looks as if he'd like you to -- the way I always wanted to fuck you.."

He was vile, the simple touch of his hand defilement. And he smiled at my revulsion and pushed one finger inside me, studying me for reaction.

I screamed then, control wiped away, for he still had his gloves on and the blades on the tip of it cut into the tender parts inside me, ripping through skin and muscle as he stroked me almost gently. The sound of my agony enflamed him, I could feel his erection growing behind me but all I could do was feel and sob, all control gone.

Then a second finger joined the first and I passed out again. This time, however, the darkness was brief: I was jolted awake by the even greater pain of penetration as he thrust his engorged penis in through the torn ring of muscle.

It was more than an invasion, it was a hell. Every bit of energy I had left I used to try and fight him, to push and kick, to drag myself away from that impalement. But each surging movement, each shuddering moan only enflamed Xanatos even more and the driving pressure increased until he was pumping deeply into me and I could feel the sharp tear of skin and muscle, the impossible stretching pressure. And all the time he groaned his pleasure, thrusting and withdrawing, pushing in further until he was stopped by his own body pressed flush against my arse ... and even then it seemed as if it wasn't deep enough, close enough ... that he wanted more.

He talked to me, reached to me, entwining me in the Dark, meshing his lust with my pain, his passion with my growing hate until I couldn't tell the one from the other.

"Can ... you feel.me.inside ... Qui-Gon? I'm ... so ... hard ... so big ... your arse feels ... so good ... Oh yes ..." He groaned louder, swivelling his hips, searching out some part of me that he hadn't defiled. He slowed then, eased back from the edge of orgasm so as to extend his pleasure. I was barely conscious by then, held up only by the chains and Xanatos' hands, and the pain that had become so much a part of me that I was almost accustomed to it. Finally, sobbing like a child with my face pressed to the cold wall, I knew I was beaten. There was simply nowhere to go inside myself that he hadn't touched, and no strength left to give to pride.

I simply stopped fighting it, as abused muscled gave out and I sagged against him. I had nothing left to use, even the Force seemed to have deserted me; except for the bright hot power waiting just at the edge of my need ... and all I had to do was reach out for it and I could ...

Xanatos sensed the surrender, sensed how close I was to turning, and drove into me again, pushing against the last restraints that held me grounded to the Light, tasting my agony with an almost equal pleasure to that which came to him from the abuse of my body. Amongst all the other bright pinpoints of misery the feel of his clawed gloves digging into my hips were a tiny thing, and insignificance.

His whisper cut through all the noises in my head, a whip blow, a breath away from madness. "To hurt you is wonderful, to take you from the Light is divine ... and to watch you betray your padawan's trust will be the best of all ..."

It was too much, a final abuse, a point at which torture and despair were equally matched. Desperation, Yoda had never mentioned desperation. I let the fire fill me, it was so easy, changing from one to the other as if a door had opened and I threw myself through it. I grabbed the chains in my hand as he screamed in climax and focused my hate on the metal and it snapped away from the wall.

I spun around, staggering, almost tripped by the clothing twisted around my feet, and swung the chains at Xanatos' head. Somehow he evaded them, leaping backwards, arms up in an instinctive cross-armed defensive move ... I had taught him that ... there was even a moment for pride in his dexterity that wasn't swallowed by furious heat.

And then he stopped and spread his arms wide, turning his palms upwards, locking his eyes to mine. I had almost over-balanced but somehow I kept my to my feet, watching those dark, beautiful eyes growing moist with some unfathomable emotion.

"You want to destroy me, Qui-Gon? Kill me then. You have the right if anyone does. And then Kenobi will die and you will probably kill yourself. End it for all of us."

Whatever energy I'd managed to dredge up deserted me then and my legs buckled and I fell onto my knees. As I began to topple backwards Xanatos was behind me, catching me, lowering my head onto his lap. I looked up into the pale, marked face, my vision swimming in and out of focus and felt him touch my face. He'd taken off the gloves and his skin was warm and surprisingly soft.

"You'll stay with me now, won't you Qui-Gon? You won't leave me again."

And then everything went black finally, and I passed out.

Could I have killed him? To this day I'm not sure. I had enough pain and anger in me to shatter steel but the idea of using that power against him didn't occur to me. Something made the choice for me and I was as a child within its grasp, with little will of my own.

It was a kind of genesis, but as always where the Dark is concerned, something had to die to give it birth.

A KIND OF GENESIS 2: Obi-Wan

The moment I came awake in that cold, foul-smelling little room I knew we were in deep trouble. A perfectly ordinary day had descended into disaster.

Coming awake on a metal floor that radiates cold through you, sitting up and realising you are completely naked and unarmed, that's a pretty good indication that something bad is happening. Realising you are alone, that your Master is somewhere close by but in terrible danger, that the sense of him along the link is weak and getting weaker -- that pushed the situation from bad to horrifying. I have never been truly frightened. Never. The courage of the Jedi, it was legendary, but I was frightened then. For him. For myself.

The room was empty of furniture, without even a bed, and the door almost seemed to be sealed shut. There was no handle, no sign of a lock. It was a claustrophobic box that smelled as if something had died in it recently. I'd never liked being in small, tight places and I searched the walls almost irrationately for a way out when there was obviously no way out. For once, the Force didn't help me; there was no-one to persuade to open that door, no weapon to use on it and I couldn't budge even though I threw everything I had at it. It didn't even wobble. A well-made door, a well-sealed box. With a well-scared Jedi Padawan inside it wanting very badly to get out.

What would Qui-Gon do now? He might have answers to questions I didn't even know how to ask -- but he would probably say, meditate on it, a way will be shown to you, or something equally profound. So I meditated. I sat on the floor, folded my legs and relaxed, ignoring the discomfort as much as I could and opened myself to the Force. I reached out with every ounce of my training, looking for answers -- and was wide open when a wave of pain exploded into my brain.

I had my back to the wall as I tried to be somewhere else, somewhere that didn't have that ever-expanding wave front of agony pulsing along my nervous system, making me whimper. Qui-Gon. It was Qui-Gon. He was being hurt terribly. I was caught up in it, fixed to his torture, impaled by each urgent lance into my brain.

I gave up trying to shield from it. It seemed like it would never end. I forced myself to separate some part of my mind, took hold of my own command of the Force and willed my strength into him. I don't know if it had any effect but if I had to try, I couldn't just sit there and do nothing. Then the pain stopped suddenly. Instead of shielding I reached out, searching, desperate to know. I could feel him again, weak, faint, but alive. I hung onto that, tried to send some comfort to him but there was no response, no change, no sign that I'd reached him. All I had was the echo of pain and some sort of darkness that swallowed him and pushed me away.

I paced the small room, back and forth, six steps, stop, turn, six more, repetitive, frustrating, each turn taking me no closer to where I needed to be. I walked and walked until my knees ached and then I sat, crouched on my toes, back against the wall. The floor was cold and if I sat too long I became chilled and cramped. I could only stop so long before I had to walk again, driven to action by the fear for Qui-Gon and the cold around me. There was no quiet, warm place to rest, in my mind or in that place.

I don't know how long I was there before someone thought to bring me food. A half-bowl of some odourless sludge that turned my stomach to look at was shoved through a gap in the bottom of the door and I let it congeal for a while before I finally tasted some. It tasted as bad as it looked, just on the edge of inedible -- perhaps it was the remains of whatever had been in the room last. Hunger forced me to eat the rest, hunger and the need to keep my energy levels up for any chance of escape.

When I woke up from a dazed and heavy sleep I realised that the food, and probably the water, had been drugged. I tried not to eat, not to drink, but it was either be drugged or die of hunger and thirst and I finally gave in, consuming as little as I could, pacing it, trying to work it out of my system. I suppose I was being observed and when my unseen captors noted this I suspect the amount was increased. However little I ate or drank no longer mattered; the hours wound by me in a perpetual haze which even the cold didn't penetrate.

I don't know for certain how long it lasted, except that I had a decent growth of beard when I realised the door was opening. The thought of trying to escape hadn't even formed in my mind when rough hands pulled me to my feet and dragged me out of the room. I was taken past blank doors and along corridors into another small set of rooms where silent faceless droids cleaned the dirt and mess from my body, shaved the beard, washed and combed my hair and dressed me in a loose long sleeved white robe tied at the waist with a white sash.

Cleaner, still bare-footed and barely able to stand, I was taken to a door, which was opened and through which I pushed before it was closed behind me. I staggered, blinking, trying to keep my feet and looked about, dazed.

It was warm in the room, dimly lit, with one wall entirely made of window. A mass of motionless stars filled the view with cold white pinpricks of light. Part of the window was obscured by a figure and I squinted to see who it was. Then he turned, I had a flash of recognition and stumbled forward, heart thumping, the words tumbling out.

"Master! Qui-Gon ... are you ... all right?"

He turned and I stopped, wavering a little on the edge of a fall. He was dressed in a tunic somewhat like mine, except that it was floor length and black, tied at his middle with a red sash. I took another step and totally lost my balance. Before I could hit the floor he was there, taking hold of me, lifting me and I felt the welcome sense of his presence.

His face swam into view and it was Qui-Gon ... and not Qui-Gon. There were differences, odd variants to the way things should be but I couldn't finish that thought before he bent and laid me on something wide and soft. A bed, black quilted, wide, and wonderfuly warm after my metal resting place of days past. He sat beside me and stroked my forehead and I blinked, trying to focus.

It was the eyes, mostly. There were other things, like the two wide streaks of white at his temples spreading back into his hair like wings. His hair was tied back into a severe tail, pulling his face tight. But the eyes, which had always shone with such wisdom and deep strength, were changed. These were burdened by shadows, hollowed, lost in a face of bitter angles that stared down at me with hardly any expression beyond a hint of something dark. His mouth was held tightly, lips curled back as if he wanted to speak but wouldn't like the sound of his voice.

Perhaps it was jut concern for me or my own drugged imagination. "I am all right, Master ... drugged, I think."

"I know." It was Qui-Gon's voice, though tired. "Rest, padawan. Sleep."

There were so many questions bobbing around in my mind but rest in the warmth of that room, in the grateful sense of his presence, seemed perfect and I drifted in a light doze. I felt him move away and I began to stir and his voice whispered to me as a tendril of power slipped into my mind.

//Be still. Rest. I am here.//

And there was someone else too, someone whose aura I recognised but couldn't quite place. I heard them speaking, the other one hard and pressing, and Qui-Gon answering in kind.

"... and I have told you your alternatives. Is there any part of it you don' t understand?"

" I cannot do this. Even if I wanted to I am not physically able to ... to do what you want of me."

There was silence for a few moments, and the rustle of fabric and a soft laugh. "Even after the Phenerol? Your resistance is amazing. Yet it is something I can help you with."

I turned my head lazily and saw something that had to be some sort of a strange erotic dream: Qui-Gon was standing, his tunic open, while another figure knelt before, touching him. I went to sit up and my head spun as a wave of dizziness hit me between the eyes and I fell back with a frustrated groan.

I tried to concentrate but awareness popped in and out like scenes from a damaged vid. Black and white, fade in and then out. I became a little more awake when I felt hands sliding the sash from around my waist, lifting me to pull the tunic away. Doped out as I was, that caught my attention. I forced my eyes open, blinked repeatedly to try and focus. As I did the bed moved and I rolled slightly as a heavy weight moved next to me. I sensed Qui-Gon though there was something wrong, the aura was his but it was darker, heavier and if I didn't know better, I would have sworn ... frightened. No, not frightened ... but ...

No, not Qui-Gon, it was the drug warping my judgment. I finally found some visual focus and looked up as he loomed over me. His face was distorted, he wouldn't accept my eye contract and I could have sworn he was grimacing. I was about to ask him what was happening when he took my arms and rolled me over onto my stomach.

I fell face first into the mattress and tried to roll sideways to get some air but he held me in place, one hand in the middle of my back and the other lower, over the base of my spine. That lower hand moved away for a few moments and then I felt a slick warm finger being pushed between the cheeks of my ass.

Some small thread of astonishment was starting to work through my drugged brain. I think I may have wriggled, tried to move away until the familiar voice shushed me and told me to be still. I obeyed automatically, as I always had. There had to be a reason, I supposed.

Fade to grey, return to awareness, as my hips were lifted and something was pushed under me. I had to turn my head to breathe -- and then I was pressed even lower as Qui-Gon slid on top of me. His chest rubbed across my back as he wrapped his legs around me. He was a big man, heavy against me and I think I tried to talk again, to ask him to move, to ask him what was happening ....

He said something about forgiveness and he moved. Moved down and in and something hard was pushed inside me.

Even drugged as I was, doped out and stupefied, I knew what that something was. The shock sizzled along my nerves and I didn't seem able to know what to do. My Master was fucking me. What do you do at such a moment, when the Universe has obviously just gone completely insane?

As he probed into my body, his mind touched me as well, blanketing me with a buzz of confusion, as if he were trying to make me forget what was happening even as it was happening. He wasn't hurting me, my body was too uncoordinated to even be tense -- but gentle or not, mostly painless though it was, some vital part of me was ripped by a sense of betrayal and left whimpering in the dark. I couldn't move, I was pinned down as much by my shattered trust as I was by his large, familiar hands.

When, after long minutes of easy penetration he'd gone as far as he could he stopped. My heart was hammering against my chest and I was beginning to pant for air, perspiration running into my eyes. I'd never felt so insignificant, so helpless, so ... used.

As he moved inside me again I shivered under him, he touched somewhere that shocked me with another sort of reaction and I shivered again as electric sizzles of pleasure ran up from my groin. Even my own body was betraying me, reacting to that internal stroking when the last thing I wanted was to feel good about any part of what was happening.

I groaned then, part response and part misery, clutched the bedding and felt something snap inside. Not possible, not possible ... but it was. Our link was gone. The connection we'd had since I'd become his Padawan all those years ago, gone. I did something then I hadn't since I was a child. I sobbed, shaking with each in-drawn breath, my throat aching from the stress of wanting to scream.

Somewhere, someone laughed. The voice said something and after few moments the pressure was removed and I was turned on my back. My legs were pushed up to my chest and I looked up dazedly into Qui-Gon's face, the tears making wet tracks down beside my nose, running into my hair. I tried to talk, to question, to ask why but the words came out as gibberish, running together with the shivering sobs. He took my legs and propped them over his shoulders before moving forward to enter me again.

It was even easier then, his cock sliding into the warm, prepared opening and I felt him shudder. Perhaps he was enjoying some of it, I couldn't tell, couldn't read him anymore. There was too much simple sadness swirling around in me to be certain of anything. Each thrust, each touch was devastating.

A face hovered behind him, watching.

"I want to see," the voice said, "This is too good. I have to see his face." A hungry familiar face looked down at me and I didn't need the Force to see his pleasure.

Broken images swam in and out of my vision, my leg muscles ached as they were pushed against my chest and there was the constant filling pressure as he ground deeper and deeper. My head thrashed from side to side, my hands flailed about until they were tied together with the red sash and held back behind my head -- as if I wasn't helpless enough, imprisoned enough.

When my body betrayed me into an orgasm it was if I'd cut out my own heart and thrown it away. Nothing would ever hurt as much again.

I must have passed out or fallen into a drugged sleep. The next time I woke my mind was clear and I remembered everything. I remembered what had been done to me -- and by whom.

I was lying on my back on the bed and I rolled over in a rush, pushed my head over the bed and vomited, tried to turn myself inside out as if I wanted to empty myself through my mouth. Nauseous, I turned back and sat up and saw him. He was sitting in a chair by the window, stiff, motionless, not looking at me, but staring out at the stars.

All the pain, the words, the touches, the sounds, the wretched, hateful betrayal rolled through my head and the fury welled up like some exploding sore. I think I made some sort of noise then and the Force exploded out of me, grabbed anything that would move, flung it across the room toward him. The air was full of missiles, small things, large things, I didn't care. He put up his hands at first, deflected them away but then he stopped and let them strike him, making no sound, turning away to hunch in the chair. Then I launched myself, threw myself across the room at him, punched and kicked, tried to hurt him, snarling like an animal.

He didn't flinch. He turned to me finally and I saw the anguish, the start of madness in the wide, staring eyes. He held onto me as I struck at him, taking the blows until I wore myself out and collapsed against him. Sobbing for breath, cursing him, finally crying his name over and over again.

His voice was a dry whisper, barely human. "I have gained an intimate understanding of pain.You will need to do better than that. Xanatos will probably be pleased to teach you."

I looked up at him then, clutching his clothing into fists, raging. "Why! Why did you ... how could you ...Why!"

He looked away, still holding me, though I felt like I was in the hands of a stranger. "Does it matter? Is there any reason that would be acceptable?"

I realised then that there had to be. The Universe couldn't turn itself upside down like that without a reason. The most decent, caring and noble man I'd ever known couldn't become a monster who had raped me for his pleasure. If I believed that, then nothing was real, existence was only chaos. Then a name, linked to a face looking down at me, clicked.

Xanatos.

"He made you do it, didn't he? Xanatos. What did he do -- threaten to kill me?"

Qui-Gon shook his head tiredly. "Death is too easy. I needed to give you time, the chance to get away but he wouldn't let me wait. The price for that time was really too high."

I started shivering and he looked down at me suddenly, where I was hunched down on the floor beside him. He reached inside his tunic and pulled out a knife.

"Reason will not work here, Obi-Wan. Just life and death. Survival has become an over-rated concept." He took my hand and pressed the handle of the knife into it, leant down, rested his chest against the point. "I managed to steal one of the eating knives, sharpened it enough for its purpose. If you press in -- right here -- you will be doing me a great service."

It was one of those frozen moments, as I watched him leaning into the blade, the tiny sharp tip cutting into his skin and I knew that if I waited long enough he would push himself forward and it would go into his heart. I arched back and tossed the knife across the room, stood and dragged him to his feet.

"That won't change anything. All it will do is let him win. You'll have to do better than that."

He looked down at me and though our link was gone he was projecting through the Force with such power that I felt all of it. His barriers dropped, the hard-held walls that he'd built up around his mind fell and I was flooded with all the pain and self-loathing, with all the affection and love he held for me in his reserved and reticent soul.

I'd never felt anything like it -- it was heart breaking, awe-inspiring, humbling. There was shame for what he'd done but worse than that, there was the fear of losing my trust and respect. That was the wound that Xanatos had made, even deeper than the torture of Qui-Gon's flesh laid bare in memory. His own rape was bad enough but to be forced to repeat it on me --

It came out then, haltingly, as he sat back down and curled into his misery in the chair. How he had refused again and again until the list of punishments against me grew so foul that he couldn't refuse any longer. He'd watched Xanatos sharpen the knives that would castrate me as the first part of his inducement and recognised the insane sincerity.

"He wanted me to keep refusing, to give him some excuse. He's become addicted to the pain he can inflict. And if that didn't work, there were so many other inducements." Qui-Gon's voice shook with quiet revulsion. "He pointed out that being castrated would be no problem for a rim worlds mining colony whore. That you'd be dead or mad in six months anyhow."

I took him into my arms then, held him, felt him resist and try and pull away. I was stronger than him in that moment and I refused to let him go. "I'd like to kick him," I muttered against the cloth of his tunic, "and when he gets up kick him again and then pull him apart and jump on the bits. Especially his testicles.."

A tentative hand stroked the back of my head and I sensed an unthawing, a reaching out. "Vicious, but understandable. I myself favour ejection from the airlock without a suit."

We could have stayed there all day holding and being held, if my legs hadn't started giving out again. The weakness was becoming a pest.

I looked up at him at last into his eyes. "Ask it. Just once."

His eyes dropped, he bit his lips until they bled and I felt him begin to quiver. "Forgive me."

I put one hand to his face, then the other, and held him, forced him to look at me. "I forgive you."

He leaned into my hands, pushed forward further and placed his mouth on my forehead and I moved up, putting my lips to his in a kiss of absolution. I realised he was crying quietly, and the tears ran down into his mouth and into mine so that I tasted both his blood and his grief.

He half-carried me back to the bed again, but I wouldn't let him go when he tried to retreat. "Stay here, right here. We need to talk." I ignored his response and pushed back the sleeve of his tunic. The skin was whole but I could see the faint trace of web-like scars. "Did he whip you then? Where?"

"Oh, everywhere he could reach I believe. I spent a day in bacta suspension and another day being healed." He held still as I peeled back the tunic, curious, wanting to understand. I could almost feel the hot touch of the whip on his skin and, drawn by some strange fascination, I ran my hands over his chest, fingertips touching the occasional bump of skin. He was tense, as stiff as steel, the muscles locked but he allowed the exploration. I suspected that he would have let me do anything at that moment. Intimacy, even forced, has a way of releasing inhibitions.

He was sitting on the very edge of the bed and I moved behind him, turned him with a touch and a word so that his back was to me, and lowered the tunic to his hips. The back was worse and I wondered if any amount of healing would remove that mosaic of branding that Xanatos had made with his whip. I wanted to wave my hand and have it vanish, bring back the smooth, untouched expanse of skin I remembered from days past.

I sensed him quiver as I touched his back and saw something move. Though he tried to hide it I realised Qui-Gon was aroused. He shifted uneasily as he explained it.

"In order to ensure my performance with you, he forced me to take two caps of Phenerol."

Gods! "Two caps!" I'd done a little experimentation as a teen and knew that just one cap of Phenerol would excite a rock. With two he had to be almost blind with need. "And you still managed to resist? I'm very impressed."

"There are some benefits to being a Jedi Master, including a fairly high degree of body control. However, I am not exactly myself."

Not exactly himself. I realised then what a special man my Master was. Tortured, raped, manipulated and at least partly turned to the Dark -- I could sense that in him as close as we were -- still he'd fought for me to the last moment. Then offered his death to me as payment for wrongs committed. I moved forward, wrapped my legs around him and pressed myself to his back. Here, at least, was something I could do willingly.

He tried half-heartedly to push me away. "Obi-Wan, this isn't a good idea, I think I should ..."

I slid my hands under his arms and took his throbbing penis in both hands. Whatever he'd been thinking of saying ended in a whuff of breath drawn in through suddenly clamped teeth.

With my stomach and chest pressed to his back, my face resting on his shoulder, my legs wrapped over his, I gently stroked the length of his cock, one hand holding it at the root, the other moving up and down its hot length. His teeth began to chatter and he moaned, pushing his hips forward, helpless in my grasp.

I understood then what it was that Xanatos wanted but could never have. Qui-Gon could only give control of himself to someone he trusted, to someone he loved. As I ran a finger nail along the underside of his penis and felt him shiver, heard the moan swell up again from his stomach and out through his open mouth, I felt the final inner knots of my pain vanish. I also felt, to my own surprise, my own body reacting. So much for all those secret little fantasies being just fantasies.

My body's needs could wait for another time. I worked him harder and harder, stroking the skin back from the tip of the penis, running a finger of the top, exploring him as he thrust into my hand. It didn't take long, as fired up as he was; within minutes he spasmed back against me and came, filling my hands with hot white fluid.

As he climaxed I reached out with the Force, felt his love and need for me and joined with him, opening myself, letting him into my spirit with an even greater ease than he'd earlier entered my body. I felt him hesitate in wonder, then there was the sense of a deep connection and I filled him with the strength of my love and led him back into the Light.

All the darkness vanished and there was a deep humming vibration as we linked. Much stronger, much deeper than it had been. I knew every part of him then and he was in me as never before. I didn't know what this new joining was but I accepted it without hesitation.

When the world returned to normality I was cradled in his arms, head against his chest, my mind filled with the steady beat of his heart.

"Do you know what you did?" he asked me, and I smiled against his skin.

"Made an honest man out of you?"

I sensed his mouth sliding into a grin. "Well, yes, but aside from that. You initiated a soulbond."

I arched back, stared up at him with eyebrows up. "I did?"

"You did. Although it was fairly mutual. Of course, it is against every tenet of the Order."

I sighed. "Goodness. Did we break a rule?" I had a thought as I spoke and reached around behind his neck. "Excuse me for a moment. This has been bothering me." I worked the hair tie off awkwardly, the tip of my tongue sticking out between my teeth, then pulled his hair loose and ruffled it. "That's better." When I looked back into his clear eyes he was smiling. It was wonderful. And before I could say another thing he pushed me backwards, cupped my head in both hands and kissed me.

It was all about love, that kiss. I'd kissed and been kissed by some few girls but that kiss was on another level of wonderful. His mouth covered mine, his tongue tasted me -- and I felt everything, his pleasure, my pleasure, his pleasure in my pleasure, my pleasure in his -- back and forth, building up, rolling over us both, reaching some critical level and gushing out through every pore of my skin. Some small sane part of my brain recognised that if I didn't learn to regulate this soulbond thing I'd go mad with pleasure each time we touched.

He whispered against my mouth. "You do realise that we both either survive this or we both die. That's how a soulbond works."

"Hmm. Then we'd both better survive."

Lying beside me with my head resting in the crook of his arm, he began to think. I could almost sense the wheels turning in that cunning Jedi brain. "If we could convince him that one of us was dead, it would allow that one to move freely, perhaps even take over the bridge of this ship."

"And how," I asked reasonably, "without being dead, of course, does one of us manage that?"

"Deep Trance."

I considered everything I knew of the Deep Trance. "I seem to recall being taught that a Deep Trance was never be undertaken without at least two top level Healers in attendance, and a couple of Masters thrown in as well."

"Yesss," he said slowly, twining my braid around one finger. "However, we have neither Healers or a couple of spare Masters with us at the moment. So I would needs do without."

I opened my mouth to complain, then shut it again. I certainly couldn't go into a Trance deep enough to convince someone like Xanatos that I was dead. It would require going down to at least two heartbeats a minute, perhaps one. I'd never gone that deep. Yet the risk was enormous. Such a Trance could only be maintained for ten or fifteen minutes at most before the brain started dying from lack of oxygen. And when the brain started to fade, a lone Jedi would be too weak to pull out the Trance.

I had a sudden thought. "Are we being watched?"

"We were," Qui-Gon said, pointing up to a small black circle on the wall. "but it is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Has been for some time. Xanatos left me alone because he thought his work was done and neither of us would recover. But he will be back soon and we have to have a plan going by then. If you can think of an alternative ..."

That was the problem, I couldn't. Two unarmed men against a starship crew and a Dark Jedi -- we didn't have a chance. I took a deep unhappy breath.

"How do I kill you, then?"

Qui-Gon reached out an arm and the knife I'd thrown away flew into his hand.

I shook my head, disbelieving. "Oh no. You can't be serious!"

He moved away slightly and pointed to a spot in his left shoulder below the shoulder blade. "If you push it in right there, it will miss all the major organs. It will look bad but not be fatal."

"That's very close to your heart. If I miss or if it shifts ... "

"Then I die and so do you. And if we do nothing we will also die, though probably a great deal slower, from the inside out." I sensed that stain inside him that he thought of then, the mark that Xanatos had left, that I suspected would never completely fade. "I will not let him torment you the way he did me," he said with total conviction. "I will kill you myself first and follow you to death. It would at least be a clean death and we would be one with the Force."

I looked at the knife as he put it into my hand and felt a strange serenity. The Force flowed through me as it never had, mingled with the power of Qui-Gon's conviction. My own instincts whispered that it would be all right. Yet even if it went wrong, if he died, he would not be alone and neither would I. We would be somewhere that Xanatos could not go.

He stretched out on the bed and pulled his gown open at the shoulder. I lowered the point and waited, looking down into the blue-grey depths of his eyes. They were unfocused as he sought Xanatos. "He's coming -- will be here in a few minutes." He refocused on my face and took my other hand. "Be strong, and wait for me. I will come for you."

I nodded, wordless, and pushed the knife into him.

Oh, it hurt. His head whipped back and I nearly screamed with the cutting pain of it as the anguish shot through him and along the bond into me. He moaned, I moaned, quivering with the need to control and I let the blade go gently, tasting my own blood where I'd bitten my tongue without realising it. Blood washed up out of the wound, not as much as I'd thought there would be, but enough. I felt him slip down in the Trance like a diver going deep underwater.

I touched his skin near where the knife projected out of him, felt his heart beat slow and slow, felt the movement of his chest stop. I pulled my bloodied hand away, pushed myself to the far end of the bed and watched Qui-Gon's slow slide towards death.

Xanatos' rage erupted into the room as he threw himself through the door.

"No! No, he's mine ... mine to kill ...!"

The black-clad figure ran to where Qui-Gon lay. I say the flicker of movement as his hand went to the knife and surged upwards; I couldn't let him move the blade ... I let the hatred for what he'd done well up and I lashed out, kicked him, threw myself on top of him and we fell onto the floor in a mass of lashing arms and legs.

He was strong, armed and partly armoured and I was naked and nowhere near my best. But I was still getting in some good blows before I was grabbed from behind and pulled away.

I was held by two pairs of very strong hands as he climbed to his feet. His face was white and his pupils pinpricks of fury. He came up in front of me and raised one knee sharply into my groin.

I know I screamed then, doubled over at the agony and didn't see the second knee come up into my face. Lights, more pain, then darkness.

I was shaken awake, not very gently, by a hand holding my hair. "Come on Kenobi, wake up. You're not badly hurt."

The world turned grey and fuzzy as I opened my eyes and I groaned at the sudden sharp slice of pain from my head. The hand let me head go and I focused on Xanatos' face inches from my own.

"I need you to wake up," he said in a fairly conversational tone, "because I can't enjoy hurting you if you aren't awake to feel it. I plan to hurt you a great deal."

My mouth was quite dry, but I managed to collect enough moisture to gather it and spit it into his face. He wiped the blood-tinged spittle off his cheek with his sleeve and shook his head.

"Tasteless. Even when I was fucking him, Qui-Gon never did that. You have no style, Kenobi."

I pulled on the shackles that were holding me against the wall. "Undo these and I'll show you style, you bastard."

He shook his head, sighed, and back away. "Hardly." He turned to a nearby table and picked up a silver rod slightly longer than a standard lightsaber. "How could I show you this, then?"

Stepping back, he put the tube against my back at waist height and pushed it in slightly. I felt the cold metal digging into my back and before I could move he did something and my body convulsed as wave after wave of agony ripped through my nerves like internal lightning. I screamed, out of control, my legs and arms thrashing. After an eternity of pain lasting a few seconds he stopped and I collapsed. I realised, through the ghost of the pain, that my bladder had spasmed as well, emptying itself onto my legs.

"Splendid. I never had the opportunity to test this on Qui-Gon. It's called a neural whip. And that, my young friend, was its third lowest setting. Imagine what it can do on the upper settings?"

I didn't have to imagine for long. He experimented, touched one place at one setting, another slightly stronger. White-hot anguish shot through me with each touch, as if he'd taken hold of each nerve fibre and twisted it. How long could anyone bear such pain before going mad? If Qui-Gon had, I could too. But it hurt -- so -- much ...

He stopped eventually and pressed against my shivering back. When he raised the whip to my face I couldn't help the hiss of fear and he smiled. "You're very responsive. Now, I have a suggestion -- or, more truly, a question. Which would you prefer to be fucked by -- the neural whip set on high, or that very large guard standing over in the corner? Take your time but I'll take silence to mean you want me to continue."

The guard concerned was taller even than Qui-Gon with twice the body bulk. He was standing at the ready position, watching me, smiling slightly as he worked one hand between his legs, bringing his enormous penis forward for my inspection.

The neural whip would probably kill me but it was preferable to that. I turned my face back to the wall and wished I could reach out to Qui-Gon but the risk of Xanatos sensing it was too great. How long had it been? I didn't think I'd been out for more than a few minutes. Perhaps fifteen minutes in all. So he was either awake and moving, or still unconscious and dying. I had to hang on just a little longer ...

"Now, you've disappointed Elarn, but you've made me very happy." I bit my lip to stop from moaning as he pushed the cold tip of the whip up inside me. The anticipation was almost worse than the pain -- ah no, no it wasn't --

Pain is a warning for the body. When death is imminent the warnings are no longer necessary. I knew, in a disconnected part of myself, that my body jerked and convulsed in the fire radiating up from my rectum but it had become distant and I began to drift away. The room faded to darkness except for a light somewhere up ahead of me, warm and welcoming. I knew it was the Force, immense and beautiful, waiting to accept me into it and I reached out for it and ...

... felt an irresistible strength take hold of my spirit and pull as I was held to life by Qui-Gon's sudden presence.

The room exploded into violence around me. Blaster fire flew and was repelled by a lightsaber held in the hand of a Master. The guard fell and Xanatos swung up his own blade with a scream of defiant fury.

As I came back to life I saw only the latter parts of the fight. Xanatos was wild, slashing and leaping, a black and furious figure that moved with an almost unbelievable speed.

Qui-Gon was immovable, a centre of the Light, deflecting Xanatos' attacks, moving himself between the enraged Dark warrior and my weary body, weaving a pattern of light with his blade that Xanatos couldn't penetrate Yet I could feel how tired Qui-Gon was, especially where the knife had entered him. He was drawing on all his energy to simply stay and hold and finally Xanatos sensed it through his own dark anger.

He drew back to the wall, the red blade up in front of him, and his mouth curled up in triumph. "So you're not dead. But your little trick has cost you. I can wait you out."

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't to see Qui-Gon switch off his lightsaber and toss it away. I saw him look across into Xanatos' surprised eyes and hold his arms out.

"Come and take me then. As you've always wanted to."

I could feel the Dark hunger welling inside Xanatos, the mewling need to touch, to taste, one more time. He took one step forward, then another, the blade hissing in the air before him. He lowered the tip until it was a hair's wide from Qui-Gon's chest -- then swiveled it aside and grabbed Qui-Gon's tunic to bring him close. The laser blade swung behind, singeing the long fall of hair as Xanatos held on with savage need.

"I want you to die with the taste of me in your mouth."

Qui-Gon's soft response rang like a bell through the Force.

"I will live, knowing you lost."

And he slipped the knife from his sleeve and thrust it up into Xanatos' heart.

The red beam swirled as it fell from a suddenly lax hand. As Xanatos shuddered and cried out, Qui-Gon caught him and looked into his dying eyes. I don't know what he was seeking -- perhaps for the child he'd known and loved, the boy he'd trained and lost to the Dark. I believe that in that last moment a little of the Light came back. Enough of the young Xanatos was there at the last to hear Qui-Gon's farewell for the man he could have been, but never was.

His death was a release for both of us. The beginning of healing, the first step on the road home.

Qui-Gon's sudden appearance on the bridge had caught them by surprise. He'd killed or captured six of them, located his lightsaber in Xanatos' quarters then headed off for my cell. He confirmed it had all taken only fifteen minutes, even though it had seemed like hours to me.

There was so much to do, so much to talk about, that in the end we did and said very little. The wound I'd inflicted with the knife was deep but it hadn't damaged anything beyond muscle. He'd managed to do some rapid self-Healing, enough to stem the internal bleeding, and had slapped a temporary bandage over it which I replaced with something more substantial. The rest could wait until we got back to proper care.

After locking the crew and droids safely away, we put the ship on auto pilot for Coruscant and went back to bed. As we lay together, drifting off to sleep, I was lulled by the sound of Qui-Gon's heartbeat and the image given to me by the Force of the days ahead. Many days, many nights, some danger, some pain, laughter and tears and all the other threads that combine to form the tapestry of lives shared.

I could thank Xanatos for that, at least. He'd understood something of what each of us was to the other, I think, and hated not being a part of that. So he'd tried to destroy it and ended up only making it stronger. The Force does, indeed, work in the strangest ways.

Finis