Covalent Bonds

Chapter 37

"Bant, you've known me longer than anyone." Obi-Wan and Anakin lolled on Bant's overstuffed sofa.

Bant curled her fingers around her mug of Hoi-Broth. Its steam hung heavy in the humid atmosphere of her quarters. "That has been my honor and my privilege."

Obi-Wan waved a hand in front of his face. He hadn't had a problem with allergies since his midichlorian count burgeoned, but then he hadn't been around Hoi-Broth since then.

"So I can confide in you something I'm having trouble dealing with." Anakin flung an arm around Obi-Wan's shoulders, but Obi-Wan leaned forward, out of the embrace. A few things had arisen in his thoughts since his nap earlier. They seemed minor, but giving Bant an in to his unusual medical condition might stir her empathic Healer nature and give her an outlet for her feelings. Right now she seemed caught in a loop of gloom.

"Do you really want to? I know I told Luminara that I was all right, but it's something that comes and goes. Right now I can't promise to be a good listener." Bant's orange skin tones shaded with more gray than Obi-Wan was used to seeing her display. His heart ached for her. When she leaped up suddenly and asked for them all to visit the Room of a Thousand Fountains with her, he agreed without a backwards glance at Anakin. Anakin followed them and primed himself to sit quietly for a spate of reminiscing from the two friends. He had learned much of Obi-Wan's past that way, though his attention drifted eventually in these sessions.

The Room of a Thousand Fountains' air was at least half as humid as in Bant's quarters. The murmuring splashes of water ought to have been more soothing than they were in this hail-and-farewell meeting with Bant, troubling Obi-Wan on a deep level. Odd bursts of despair colored both her mantle and her aura an unsettling indigo for minutes at a time.

"I don't want to see you except at the Room of a Thousand Fountains," Bant said again as Anakin and Obi-Wan settled on the sward beside her while she spread herself next to them as if underwater, her pleated blue skirt ringing her like a reef. "Big, important mission tomorrow?"

This is the Bant that I know. "Yes. We'll be gone less than one week if plans fall out as they should." Obi-Wan began to relax.

Bant grabbed Anakin's braid, dragging him into the conversation. Anakin pulled back automatically. "What -- "

"Bant, let go, please!" Obi-Wan disentangled the hair. "Why did you do that?"

Anakin scuttled out of reach. Ow.

"Don't endanger our Chosen One, Obi-Wan. He's still naught but a Padawan, don't hurt him." The sliminess of bacta makes me sick now.

It's worse than I thought; she's disconnected from Jedi reality. "He's my Padawan and he goes where I do. I need him." Bant's rippling colors steadied to a solid sheet of taupe with a stripe of yellow flowing down the top of her head, disappearing beneath her lace collar. The stripe effect he'd not seen before on her. He couldn't imagine its meaning.

Anakin was indignant. "Master Bant, I know what I'm getting into. I'm prepared." If I were a Knight already, she wouldn't lack confidence in me. When will it happen, when ...

Bant's unfocused gaze frightened Obi-Wan. "Tell me what's wrong," he said. He turned to Anakin. "Please -- "

"I'm going." Anakin bowed deeply to Bant. As immersed in herself as she was, she returned the bow from her cross-legged position as her fingers strained apart the sheer skirt's pleats and then crimped them back up again. Anakin headed for home.

"Well."

"A deep subject."

"Ha."

"'Ha' back at you." Bant's lower lip feelers quivered. "Obi-Wan, I'm sinking fast. There are some things I can't forget."

"We'll meditate together -- "

"Meditation doesn't solve everything. Qui-Gon died before he could teach you that."

"A moving meditation, then." Anakin's preferred method. "Come on, Bant." She offered her hands and he pulled her up to stand beside him. She had lost weight. "Dance with me." He began the Dance of the Seventy Violet Veils that Qui-Gon had taught him at nineteen after Qui-Gon's solo mission to Askaj. Thank you for instructing me, Master. It's graceful even without the tomoun scarves to do it correctly. He placed both arms around her slim shoulders after guiding her hands to grasp his waist. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, turning slowly in a circle. As she allowed him to lead her, Bant's cheek pressed against his chest and a torrent of words cascaded.

"Obi-Wan, it's terrible, I was unprepared for this, nothing Master Tahl or Kit taught me helps. I've kept count and sixty-two Jedi and four hundred twelve clones have died before my eyes."

And she can't blink. "Oh, Bant."

"I tried everything I knew and it didn't stop them from dying, not one of them."

"It was their time -- "

"No, it was my time to save them and I couldn't, I couldn't -- "

"You've saved others. Aayla and Shaak Ti after Hypori and so many others, Bant. Focus on them instead." She's shedding veils like Regork loses his scales. Is it good or bad for her? Good, in this case, Obi-Wan decided. He found a rhythm in the splashes of the nearest fountain and started to hum a song in the correct tempo that had nothing to do with the Askajian dance and everything to do with how he felt about his friend. The words played in his head as he tried to stay on key, rumbling the song in his chest so that the statoliths in her head would pick up the vibrations and soothe her. " ... Hmmmhm ... my whole life has changed ... and everybody tells me that I am not the same ... since I met you ... hmhm ... to tell my troubles to ... hmhm ... all I need is you ... " Drat. I've forgotten most of the words. Oh, here, the most important part. "Since I met you, uh, erm, hmhm, I'm a happy man."

Bant revolved with Obi-Wan for a few more turns, then stopped. "But Obi-Wan, what about your news?" I'm out of the abyss. For a while.

I feel better, helping her. That has to be enough. "It's nothing critical. Certainly nothing to affect our mission tomorrow. And I dislike saying this, but Anakin and I need to turn in early. Walk you back home?" She was now a mottled brown and yellow, the color of an ocean floor after a storm has churned up the sand. She hadn't changed color for several minutes.

"Thanks, but no." Stars, make me a youngling, just for tonight. "It's been beyond words to see you again, Obi-Wan. May The Force Be With You."

She's stable enough to leave her. I'll comm Luminara and tell her where she is. "Bant, your friends and your work need you. I need you. May The Force Be With You."

Bant waved absently.

Two days later ...

Closeness and clanking droid steps, dreams and the drip of a timed toxin to slow their metabolisms until the timer sensed the mixture of gases that made up Serenno's atmosphere. A hint of the frigidity of open space, the rumble of a transport's sublight engines as it prepared for landing, an out-of-synchronization squeal per planned "engine trouble." Anakin's friends and enemies long gone swam into Obi-Wan's end of the bond, mingling with Obi-Wan's memories as if everyone attended the Jedi Annual Picnic and Open Temple Tour. Xanatos and Bruck munched on crispics at one end of the scramball field, smiling for once, while Qui-Gon and Tahl sparred, Tahl's bright glance restored. No one spoke. In the distance, Darra and Tru strolled Knight Fee's gardens, Jenna Zan Arbor and Master Yoda trailed fingers and claws through the sprinkling system when it came on unexpectedly, making Obi-Wan laugh in his dream.

When the first of all his senses returned to him, he heard his own measured breaths speed up with the return of full consciousness. Floating above Anakin in their loosely-rolled carpet and protected from Dooku's Force senses by the terentatek strips, he saw by the interior light of his helmet that Anakin remained in deep slumber. Anakin's closed eyes trembled with the movements of dreams. One last dream shimmered its way into Obi-Wan's Sight before he pinched his end of their bond in a mental wake-up call to his Padawan. An old lady with wrinkles from many smiles smiled a last smile for him as she put her worn hands on a youngling's thin shoulders. Obi-Wan recognized them from Anakin's descriptions as Kitster Banai and Jira. Before they faded, they mouthed, "Fight!" Full gravity returned with the transport's arrival on Dooku's estate's landing pad and Obi-Wan fell three decimeters on top of Anakin, a notorious slow awakener. If this is fulfillment of Anakin's dream of my fall, good. It will stop him from further speculation. The Force gave no hint as to the vision's veracity as Obi-Wan undid the seals of his helmet and placed it outside their textured cylinder in the webbing at the narrow end of the crate that would hold their suits. This suit was thin compared to the one that Siri and he had used on the platform and it had easy-off snapseals. He removed one gauntlet and slid a thumbnail under the seal at his waist. Automatically, the suit separated front to back and he rolled to one side, gathering up the suit halves and placed them with the helmet, drawing the end of the carpet together as best he could without the Force. Kitster was in Anakin's pit crew, cheering him on, and Jira was kind to all the street children, Anakin said. We must be cautious. He poked Anakin.

Anakin awoke without his customary snort and quickly shed his helmet and suit. With a nod to Obi-Wan and a shared touch of hands in a brief meditation of readiness, they awaited their unveiling. From the slight wobbling of their container and a sense of floating, they figured that servants shepherded the shipment via anti-gravs into a private chamber. Anakin strained outward to hear any clues as to their progress. He was partially successful when two of Dooku's servants told an obnoxious joke about nerfs and nerfherders' proclivities. Anakin had heard it before. Obi-Wan gave a little spasm at the punchline, but quieted soon enough. Anakin could feel him smiling against his neck. He wanted to bite him for it. Since when am I the mature one, Master? Oh, here we go.

At last. From the Jedi's vaunted noble past, a symbol of the Dark Side's superiority. Technically, the terentateks who had been vanquished enough to be skinned to make this delightful confection represented a failure of the Dark Side's strength. But their hides lasted four thousand years to the present day of the Sith's ascendancy, as represented by himself, Count Dooku. This was a solemn moment, not to be tarnished by self-doubt as to his worthiness to succeed Lord Sidious. Dooku knelt in obeisance to the crate as if it were Sidious reincarnated. He swept back his cloak and undid the first magniseal catch.

Hppshhhhh. Anakin and Obi-Wan had no trouble hearing the catch's release. Five more would follow. They tensed.

Hppshhhhh. Obi-Wan felt that a last minute change was in order. He squirmed rapidly to place himself head-to-toe with Anakin, pulling Anakin's braid with his boot in the process.

Hppshhhhh. Anakin turned his face aside, grimacing. He clenched his lightsaber hilt.

Hppshhhhh. Obi-Wan shrugged his shoulders, tense and relax, tense and relax, loosen the sword arm.

Hppshhhhh. Simultaneously, the two Jedi closed their eyes and counted. Five, four, three, two, one ...

Hppshhhhh. Ahhhhh. My prize. With a grand gesture, Dooku tipped the crate swiftly on its side to give impetus to its disgorgement of the treasure inside that resisted all effects of the Force. As the dull green artifact unrolled towards him, he shunted aside the crate to the wall of his study, under the bay window and next to the out-of-place desk and chair that awaited proper placement of the new bit of furnishing. The heavy-duty duraplast box narrowly missed the stacks of boxed holocards and the astromech droid. The droid had no restraining bolt, all the better to be put to use immediately. Dooku approved of Palo's marketing techniques. He unrolled the carpet's last lengths with flicking motions of his hands, allowing himself a broad smile in his solitude. It's mine!

Anakin and Obi-Wan leapt from the carpet, Obi-Wan's defense up high and Anakin's down low. It was as well that they listened to the Force in this, because Dooku's Jar'Kai offense took them completely by surprise.

TBC

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