Drowsily, Qui-Gon shifted on the narrow pallet, trying to find some position to lie in which would not make his whole body ache. Why is it, he wondered, as the engine's tremble throbbed through his stiff chest, That living hurts so much more than dying? He'd had enough near misses in his time to judge the difference.
The engine whined and the slow judder of re-entry pulsed through the floor, through the pitifully thin mattress, and shook the cage of his ribs like an imprisoned rancor. He sighed, muffling the desire to cough, and abandoned rest for yet another night.
In the opposite bunk Obi-Wan slept on, face to the wall, mouth and hands hard despite slumber, and a line etched deep between his brows. Miserable, even in sleep.
It had become rare for Qui-Gon to see his apprentice. At first, in pain, alone in the hospital, he had told himself that Obi-Wan had things to do, and that, perhaps, he might be one of those people who could not bear infirmaries. He had told himself the boy was so intense, so demanding, it was more peaceful without him. But still he had not been able to help himself feeling a little abandoned, a little betrayed.
He sat up and considered the boy's face in the twilight dimness of the cabin. So closed. Unreachable. Guilt twisted him, and an old fear. What have I done now? What can I do to make it right?
He edged forward, stretching out a hand, yearning to touch and give comfort. More immediate, more meaningful than words, a kind gesture had always meant the world to him. But Obi-Wan's character was very different from his. A thirteen year old boy could easily interpret a caress as an invasion, or worse, a threat.
Hesitating, he drew back to the edge of his bed, the gesture aborted. But that felt as if he had been gagged. So many wrong paths, and any one of them could lead to ...what happened to Xan.
The ship yawed, flying now on atmospherics. There couldn't be much time before they landed at the refugee compound, and then the time for speech would have passed. Cabin lights began a slow climb from night to a yellow dawn, and Obi-Wan murmured something broken into his pillow.
Making a familiar decision, which got no easier with time, Qui-Gon decided to take the risk of being himself. I want him to show me who he really is. Perhaps I should ask him to accept me the same way.
Laying a hand on Obi-Wan's head, he stroked the spiky hair, "Padawan?"
Obi-Wan stirred, opened puzzled grey eyes that widened as he registered his master's presence crouched beside him, the touch. His look of shock was an accusation. And now I've frightened him Qui-Gon thought regretfully, but he didn't move away - he couldn't, not while the boy looked so confused, so lost.
"M-master?"
Obi-Wan's voice and force presence were filigreed with emotions, but Qui-Gon was pleased to find hope among them. Smiling, he patted the boy's head once more before drawing his hand back, splaying it on the bed to help him balance. "You looked so miserable, Padawan. I think you should tell me what I've done."
Obi-Wan scrambled into a sitting position, wedging his back into the angle of the walls and pulling his knees in tight. Like Ibhis, Qui-Gon thought, with a catch of sorrow in his throat, But Obi-Wan's nightmares over the past months have been real.
"I..." Obi-Wan pulled at his sheet, watching the change in texture as he tightened and released it, "I'm not sure I know what you mean, Master."
"I've barely seen you since I came out of the Bacta. You've been avoiding me, haven't you?"
Still Obi-Wan's downcast eyes studied the linen, head bent as if in shame. "I was very busy - helping with the food distributions, arranging this trip to find your lost girl. I...haven't had time."
Sometimes Qui-Gon wondered why he bothered. Some times it was clear to him that Obi-Wan had no desire to come to know him at all. "Don't lie to me, Padawan," he said, irritated.
Shields came down swift as blast-doors around the boy's feelings. He pushed himself further into the corner, huddling like a victim of abuse. A muscle at his jaw ticked as he bit down hard, and fear knocked Qui-Gon back against the wall - cold against his bare shoulder. "Obi-Wan? Did something happen to you while I was in the hospital?"
Silence. The hard line of Obi-Wan's mouth thinned, trembling as he stared at the sheet.
There is no passion, there is serenity. Qui-Gon breathed out anxiety and anger, centred himself, made a conscious effort to be confident. The Force is my ally. I can deal with this. "Padawan?"
"Don't call me that!" Like a new star the boy had compressed his feelings to the point where they exploded. Qui-Gon found himself burnt in the radiation of anger. "It's obvious you hate me. You want rid of me, well that's OK, I can cope fine without you."
Somehow, unaware, he had inflicted this doubt and damage on the boy. A small part of him felt vindicated See. You really aren't fit to be a Master. But he ignored it, focusing on the present need. "Obi-Wan, what makes you think I hate you?"
Surprised, the boy looked up - a quick stab of accusation from eyes like pitted steel. "Do you know you called me Xan? And when I..." his voice shook, he looked away quickly, scowling, "When I thought you were dying, you expected to see him. You wished I was him. You were disappointed it was me." A long hiss of intaken breath. Qui-Gon waited, because he knew there was more.
"And you killed him! If he was your enemy, what does that make me?"
Qui-Gon found himself rubbing the flattened bridge of his nose - a gesture he thought he'd long grown out of. He swallowed, Xanatos. and the grief stopped his mouth for a moment - a great weight he had to lift before he could speak.
"Obi... Xan was my Padawan for ten years. How do you sum that up in words? "If I was wounded he comforted me. If I was unconscious it was his hand that drew me out of the dark. It was his worried face I saw when I woke..."
Fingers tangled in the unbound mass of his hair. He found himself pulling it hard, and stopped only with an effort. "It takes a great deal more than betrayal and a few moments of enmity to wipe out memories like those."
He nerved himself to look up. When had he broken the gaze and retreated? No matter....
Cupping Obi-Wan's chin he lifted the boy's face. Some of the taut anger had left Obi-Wan's frame, and his eyes were fluid with thought - changeable as water.
Dena's advice came back to the Master in her clipped tones; "The kid doesn't do subtle." It might well prove the most useful thing anyone had ever told him about his new apprentice. He steeled himself to follow it - to say in plain language what Pepi would have understood just from a smile.
"Obi-Wan, you reminded me of Xan only because he once cared for me. I was grateful for your presence and your strength."
Obi-Wan gaped, speechless, but his shielding thinned, wavering like a curtain in the breeze. He accepted the reassuring squeeze of his shoulder with a bitter blend of hope and shame.
Shame? I praise him and he feels ashamed? Qui-Gon tried again; "It was a great help to be able to leave things in your hands while I was recovering. I've been alone too long."
"But," Obi-Wan edged out of his hunched position, dangled his legs off the bed. Watching it, Qui-Gon blinked once, resting his head on the wall in relief Finally.
"But you were disappointed it wasn't Xanatos. You were sad because it was only me."
Qui-Gon felt suddenly old, ill-equipped to deal with another teenager. "No, Padawan. I was not sad to see you. It was just that I remembered..." He unfocused as the full rush of morning grief broke over him. Not fighting it, he waited in patience until he could speak again. "I remembered that he was dead."
Obi-Wan was looking at him like a droid confronted with a logic puzzle - as if what he had said couldn't possibly make sense. "But you..."
The door slid open. Dek surged across the threshold and balked. The orange of his pleased excitement flashed into an eye-hurting pattern of v's that spelled disapproval. "You're not even dressed yet!"
Qui-Gon smiled, stood up, and embraced the new moment. Some progress had been made with Obi-Wan. There was more work to do there, but now was obviously not the time. No point in being annoyed with Dek. The whole Nimgoni family must be at breaking point with emotion this morning.
He found his comb and began to tug some order into his hair, back aching as he raised his arms. "Are you waiting in the airlock? We'll meet you there as soon as the ship touches down."
Dek's lilac and tangerine combination was bizarre and somewhat humorous against the sterile corridors of the ship. Looking at him, Qui-Gon felt a surge of protectiveness. Life tries so hard, and is so much greater than we think. Is it really wrong to give it a little help now and then?
"You promise?"
"We'll be there."
As Dek slithered away, Obi-Wan grabbed an armful of clothes, pausing by the fresher door to say, "Master, isn't this a bit of a waste of time?"
Cold, again. Yes we have a long way to go before we understand each other. "In what way, Padawan, would you define reuniting a war torn family as 'a waste of time'?"
"I thought we'd be going after the Nexus by now. That's the big thing here, isn't it? I mean - alright - we found the girl for them because that was the price of borrowing their speeder. But why are we using Jedi resources to fly the whole family over there? Temple pilot, Jedi time, Temple fuel. The Council's not going to be happy."
"They gave me a ship. I shall use it as I see fit." As he lifted both hands above his head to tie his hair back his left arm shuddered and the abused muscles of his chest cramped painfully. Almost as painful as hearing the Council's wisdom from the mouth of a child.
"But..."
Qui-Gon brought the disappointment under control. His Padawan was barely out of the Temple. He had not had time to grow used to the famous Jinn heresies. I should be pleased he feels confident enough to question me.
However admirable the boy's persistence, half way to the fresher was not the time for it. He interrupted the objection. "Obi-Wan, we'll talk about this later. Get dressed, we have an appointment to keep."
"Yes, Master Jinn," The aid worker smiled at him wearily, "It's all been arranged. I've sent someone to fetch the little girl. She'll be here any moment." He was a Mon Calamari and his huge eyes were misty with wistful happiness. "It's a good thing you've done. I just wish..."
"That I could do the same for them all?"
"Yes."
"So do I."
That was a regret he'd had to learn to live with. He stepped back, letting Im and her family press closer to the wire fence of the refugee enclosure. The ships ramp made a convenient place to perch, waiting.
Obi-Wan was already there, polishing a landing strut - managing to look busy, but in reality registering a silent protest at the need to be here at all.
Qui-Gon stretched out his legs, relaxed, and watched the boy's scowling industry with curiosity. "This doesn't help you? We've both seen so much death recently. Doesn't the prospect of restoring a life make it seem worthwhile?"
Obi-Wan bit his lip, and his master could almost see him weighing that idea up, finding something in it, but not enough to overpower his objections.
"The point is that you're a Jedi Master." Obi-Wan began, his mouth relaxing as he was allowed to talk, "In the time it's taken you to rescue one unimportant little girl, you could have been ending a war and saving the lives of millions. Doesn't that make it selfish of you, choosing to save her, just because it made you feel better?"
Yoda, you'd be proud. He's more your Padawan than I ever was. "Obi-Wan, what is the purpose of strength?"
"To protect the weak."
"What is the duty of a Jedi?"
"To serve the people of the Republic."
"As a Jedi Master I have both the power and the duty to serve Im's family. Why then should I say no when they ask me for help?"
"Because you could be serving better by using your strength to do something more important."
So after all, it wasn't a failure of compassion on the boy's part, but of world view. He's a Unifying Force Jedi. He can't see anything smaller than a planet. "So I guess what we're disagreeing about is the importance of an individual."
Obi-Wan seemed surprised that he was being listened to, and oddly elated, as if he felt a breakthrough of some sort had been made, though Qui-Gon couldn't imagine why. He was having deja vu from the conversation about Ibhis.
"It's simple maths, isn't it?" Obi-Wan asked eagerly, "You harbour your strength so you can save the largest number of lives. Sometimes that means turning away from people who need help, and if that's so then we have to do it. Anything else is self-indulgent."
Qui-Gon found himself smiling, wondering whether Obi-Wan had intended to insult him, or had just done it by accident. "Mathematics? So if you had the choice between saving three innocent bystanders, or the Supreme Chancellor, you'd let the Chancellor die?"
"Erm," Obi-Wan had been striding, sure of himself, now he went to his knees to think. "No. Because the Supreme Chancellor has power over thousands of star systems. His death would cause massive disruption."
"In this case the individual is more important than the many?"
Obi-Wan had been to too many logic classes to miss the fact that he was being manoeuvred into a corner. "Um," he said, "I suppose to be sure you'd have to measure the repercussions caused by his death and see if they outweighed those caused by the deaths of the other people."
He didn't let go of his opinion easily. Qui-Gon was pleased by that. "I hope you're taking into account repercussions in the future, also."
"Sorry?"
"One of the 'nobodies' we're weighing in the scale here may have a child who grows up to..." he shrugged, enjoying the debate, "Discover the cure for the Deathseed plague. Or, thirty generations down the line, perhaps the Chancellor's descendants have plunged the whole Galaxy into never ending war? What then?"
Obi-Wan looked at him - that lightsabre pure glance that said 'You are totally mad, Master'. It was nice to see the boy back on form. "How are we going to know that?
The gates of the compound had opened and now Tli came slithering out on the arm of the Mon Calamari. Instantly, his briefly fostered family became an amorphous blob of interlocked limbs, hugging for dear life. He looked away, not wanting to intrude. "That's my point, Obi-Wan."
"What?"
"To quote Master Yoda 'Always in motion the future is.' We can't tell the purposes the Force has in this or that individual. We can't tell what good or evil we are doing or averting in the future. We can only do the good we are given to do now."
He sighed, Finish with the specific. "In Im's case, I had the choice - at that moment - between doing good and doing nothing. What use would I be if I chose to do nothing?"
The Nimgoni family had broken apart and now approached. They were ultraviolet with happiness, and to his human eyes looked sombre in black. The child was holding Eryn's hand. For the first time since Qui-Gon had known her, Eryn no longer looked dangerous, even though she was crying.
"Thankyou." Im was close enough to touch. She lifted two tentacles and gently pressed the final sucker of one to his cheek and the other to the hand of his Padawan. To his credit, Obi-Wan produced a brilliant grin.
"There's no need to thank us. We helped each other, as all life does." Self indulgent it might be, but he allowed himself a moment of standing in the sunlight of their happiness, reminding himself just why exactly he endured this life. Then he sighed and smiled. "Do you need transport back to the Capital?"
"No," Im turned in a spiral of limbs, "Tli has made friends here, and we have nothing we can't leave behind."
"Like that awful 'speeder!" Obi-Wan interrupted. His vehemence brought a faint giggle from Eryn, and a simultaneous outbreak of rose pink on Dek and his mother.
"No more body snatching for us." For a moment Qui-Gon thought that Dek was going to come up too, and there would be more speeches and more thanks. But thankfully Im chose that moment to glide away and he saw a chance to leave cleanly, without fuss.
"Come then, Obi-Wan." Standing, he bowed deeply to his adopted family - now no longer his responsibility. "May the Force be with you."
"Goodbye!"
The sight of joyously waving tentacles was cut off as the ship's ramp raised behind them. A good memory to take home from the mission.
The switch from planetary atmospherics to cabin pressure shortened his breath and made him cough painfully. It was a three day journey back to Coruscant. If he spent most of that time in a healing trance he should be fully fit again by the time they landed.
"Master?" Obi-Wan looked relieved now they'd finally set off. There was a brightness about his presence that he had not had since... Since Telos, when Qui-Gon had accepted him back as Padawan.
"What is it, Obi-Wan?"
"Are we going after the Nexus now?"
The snort of laughter hurt him too. Oh to be that young and that zealous again! "No, we are not going after the Nexus."
His padawan's look of disappointment was eloquent, and strange from a boy so rule-bound. Qui-Gon propped an elbow against the wall and leaned comfortably. "Firstly because we have no idea where to look for it. It was operating through hyperspace, so it may be physically located on any planet in the Galaxy. I was not able to narrow the search down."
More disappointment, intense enough to deserve a mild rebuke. "I was distracted at the time, trying not to die."
The flinch of shame was apology enough. The boy's voice was subdued as he asked "So what are we going to do?"
"For now? Go back to Coruscant, report on our mission, await further orders."
"And do nothing? Master, this is important. Really important."
When the Force told young Kenobi something he forgot his place, his probation, his shame, and followed it. That Qui-Gon admired, greatly. "I know. That's why the Council must be told about it at once. It may be that they are already acting against it."
Small chance.
"It may be that they will send another team - we are not the only Jedi in the Galaxy. Or it may be that the Force is not telling me anything about the Nexus at the moment because the time to act has not yet arrived." He regarded the boy fondly, "Be assured I am alert to the Force's will in this. If a way is found, if the moment is presented to me, I will seize it. We will act. But for now we must exercise patience, and wait."
"Oh." Obi-Wan's emotions drifted into complex anxiety, as if he was nerving himself up to risking something, to taking, or making some kind of test. "Then we have some free time?"
"Yes. Why don't you go up to the cockpit? I'm sure the pilot would be happy to let you work on your flying skills."
"Actually, I was hoping you'd teach me the meditation you promised."
He should have expected this and been ready. But why wouldn't the boy leave well alone? In a flash of savage intensity, the image from his dream recurred. The sensation of grabbing the boy's hair, the faint resistance of bone as he pulled the blade of his sabre through the body; he could feel it. He could smell acid and despair. No! He took a step backwards, animal panic tight in his throat, and saw the look of hurt. "I...can't."
Obi-Wan clenched his fists, walked forward, closing the distance, pressuring him. "Then teach me some lightsabre drills...Anything!"
Look what happened to the last boy I taught! He retreated again, gripped by a terror he knew he should fight, but didn't know how. If Xan's fate was his fault, how could he teach another? Don't turn me into your executioner too, Obi-Wan.
Now Obi-Wan was standing, looking betrayed, and he didn't know what to say. Proof, if proof was needed, of how useless he was as a Master. "Obi-Wan, I..." let the boy hear both meanings if he could, because certainly Qui-Gon was in no fit state to explain. "I have a lot of healing to do."
He forestalled the protest with a raised hand, struggled to make his voice level and calm. "I want you to do some of the exercises the Council outlined for you. Leave me to heal. I need to begin now."
Qui-Gon stepped off the ship, onto the landing platform, and took a deep breath. Below him the towers of Coruscant rose like crystal giants, reflecting the dawn sky. Early sunshine flashed from the lines of hurrying aircars and, across a few miles of silver walkway, he could see the spires of the Jedi temple, reaching out for him.
Obi-Wan came up beside him, silent as he had been for days. The boy's restraint had been welcome, but now Qui-Gon felt it was time for it to end. He looked down at the clouded face and smiled. "You're not pleased to be home?"
They had achieved an uneasy peace over the voyage by not talking. Young Kenobi looked surprised that he would risk it now. "It wouldn't be so bad," he said grudgingly, "If we could come home in triumph, just once."
His probationary status was obviously on his mind. Not for the first time, Qui-Gon had to suppress annoyance at the Council's uncanny ability to make everything worse.
The Master turned his face into the breeze, let it push at him playfully - the only wild thing left on this planet. "Padawan, so far every mission we have undertaken has been a triumph."
He began walking, summoning a retractable bridge, trying to stay among the clouds, where the great din of Coruscant's Living Force was reduced to far-off thunder; bearable.
"Even Melida/Daan?" Obi-Wan asked quietly. When Qui-Gon glanced down he could only see the top of the bent head, sandy hair reddish in the dawn.
"Yes." Brave of the boy to venture that question. It showed that Obi-Wan also was coming to terms with his past. "Certainly our methods on that occasion were unorthodox. But we not only met the mission objective of rescuing Knight Tahl, but brought peace to the world also."
He paused. The meditations of the past three days had left him feeling light of heart and body. Not whole - not quite - but close. As if for the first time, he noticed the spill of gold across the sky, the thrum of wind and wild tang of sunlight. This was a good moment. "Perhaps you're right. I can see the Council disapproving of such conspicuous over achievement. It's so untidy."
He caught the small flash of a smile on Kenobi's face just before it was swallowed in gloom. "I guess I'm going to be in trouble anyway."
Qui-Gon stopped on the walkway, feeling it swing deliciously high among the reflective canyons. The air whispered to him that he could fly; if he would only step out over the gulf. Liar! he thought, amused. But it was a fine feeling.
"You are not in trouble, Obi-Wan. I am having problems. You are not. I am going to come in for," he grimaced, "A great deal of useful advice. But you need not worry. You are doing well."
"Really?"
"Really." The art of being obvious seemed to bring results. He watched Obi-Wan's face change as the boy thought, and braced himself for the nagging which always came next.
Perhaps his Padawan had finally learned to be patient, however, because what he said was "Why are we walking? We could have landed in the hangar."
"I like to breathe some non-recycled air once in a while, Obi-Wan. And it's nice up here, don't you think?"
His thoughts were full of eagles and fire. The urge to fly had become insistent. He realised with sudden intensity that he should have been paying more attention.
"We're wasting Jedi time again?"
Probably a joke, part of Qui-Gon noted, while the rest of him stilled, becoming passive, so the Force could tell him what it wanted him to know. He's got that smug look. "No. Hush a moment."
Thirty metres down two spires rose to rounded domes. Bridge controls were a fleck of blue light on the final story. He reached out pushed them with the Force, and was jumping down to the cobweb thin strand before he remembered that Obi-Wan's fine control was not up to this.
Damn, Jinn, you should have taught him when you had the chance. But there was no time for regret or recrimination. He placed himself firmly on the narrow footbridge and gestured for Kenobi to follow. A flash of exhilaration through the bond, and the boy came plummeting. His foot hit the steel, he overbalanced, flailed above the mile-deep drop to Coruscant's eternal night, eyes and mouth round with shock. And Qui-Gon caught him by the belt, pulled him back.
They looked at each other wordlessly - Obi-Wan's face washed into utter blankness - and couldn't decide what the feeling was.
"I wouldn't have let you fall, Obi-Wan."
"That was fun!"
Fun?!
He made out the balcony of a sky hook, to the right, and below that - at this height still the size of a data chip, the ornamental garden of some princeling. "There, and there!"
"Why?"
"I don't know yet."
By the time they had reached a height equivalent to the Temple's ground level Qui-Gon had pinpointed where the Force wanted him to go; almost straight down, far in the Underworld, but in a district where the tips of the towers were favoured clubs of the Galaxy's elite.
At this elevation lifts would be choked with people, slowly crawling from floor to floor. Air traffic was heavy, and the gaps between buildings were thick with permanent bridges, making it hard to drop far. But urgency told him that falling through Coruscant was still the best way.
Buildings closed in as they fell through fog. Navigation became difficult between the washing lines, the traps set out for passing swoops and birds. Walls grew together as walkways became annexes. The sky shrank into a white cut-out far above as their world narrowed to a windowless hole walled with black mold.
Qui-Gon landed on a square of roof thick with refuse. The air was greasy around him as he stood knee deep in filthy plastic. Further down.
This side of the planet was obviously new to Obi-Wan. He was looking round aghast, his fastidious white tunic turning brown in the acid smog. Qui-Gon followed his apprentice's gaze upwards - black steelcrete, bridges tangled so tightly even sunlight could not find a path through. A well at the world's heart, and that heart is dark.
"Inside," he said, kicking away some of the trash so he could kneel, then digging in the slimy soil until he found what had once been a skylight. There was nothing living in the layer of ooze. This is the truth of Coruscant, he thought, as he plunged his hands into the sterile soil, and as always it filled him with misery.
Inside were spaces far more ancient and forsaken than Nimgoni tombs. As he let the skylight fall into place behind them it was worse than being buried alive.
"Master?" Obi-Wan's voice was full of horrified awe, slightly choked in the stale air. "How long has it been like this?"
"Since before the Temple was built."
"And we haven't done anything?"
So there were after all some matters on which he and the boy thought alike. But now was not the time for a discussion of the Order's creative apathy. "Listen!"
Utter darkness, and the air was clotted, so that sounds fell strange on the ear, but that was the whine and ping of blaster fire.
The two sabres powered up at the same time, washing the shapeless spaces with water-coloured light. They followed the sounds down the rubble and echo of a ruined elevator shaft, into a huge chamber.
Movement - it seemed the wreckage moved, but no, it was people, cringing away from the light, scuttling away from the Jedi as humped and furtive as giant rats. A pile of rags became a young mother, collapsed in drug stupor. Her pallid infants watched Qui-Gon pass by with utter terror. He knew enough of their mythology to know he was a demon to them.
"Oh Force!" said Obi-Wan, behind him, pausing to look at the white, frightened faces, "There are people here?"
He caught the boy's arm, pulled him away, wanting to protect him from the heartbreak of this.
"But," Obi-Wan looked as if his universe had come unglued, "Aren't you going to do something?"
Qui-Gon glanced at the young woman, fitting, murmuring in a pidgin Basic that sounded hardly sentient. Shook his head, hating what he was about to say, "They don't want our help, Obi. They want us to go away. So we're going to go away."
Beyond the cavern the blaster fire had intensified. Screams were echoing off the walls, dopplered into a constant high pitched wail. A gap in the wall showed a stairwell seared with violent light. Something was giggling in a hyena chuckle of bloodlust that turned his stomach, and was that...?
"I hear a lightsabre."
No wonder he had thought of fire.
They ran together to press themselves on either side of the doorway. Battle-meditation and hyperfocus came more easily than breathing to him now. He waited while Obi-Wan forced himself into the same state.
//You stay here. I'll get behind them and push them towards you.//
//The other Jedi?//
//She is a fine Knight. She will adapt.//
A thought occurred to him. Surely Obi-Wan would know this already, but it wouldn't hurt to remind him. //The screams you hear are echo-location. If you need to hide, remain still and pretend to be a rock.// He couldn't avoid adding humorously, //Remember that rocks don't breathe.//
Silently, he edged around the lip of the door, saw another chamber. The floor seethed with the almost canine shapes of corridor ghouls. In the green sabre light they were every nightmare of the living dead given flesh; their bare, pigmentless skin showing the flex of muscles, the pulse of blood underneath. Blind faces were muzzled, fanged, but obscenely humanoid. Though they went on all fours and their limbs were tipped with talons, still those were hands, capable of wielding a blaster.
What madman gave them weapons?!
Qui-Gon had never seen more than five ghouls in one place before - they had tendencies to cannibalism - but here they were thick as cockroaches, and armed.
Over their crouched backs he could see two other entrances to the chamber. At one the slender figure of a masked Jedi fought alone, deep indigo blade hardly seeming to move as she blocked fire in her elegant, spare style.
Pepi. The sight of her always made him smile. But she was barely holding her own. Even now he could see blood on her sleeve, the awkwardness of her right arm. Against this many ghouls she stood no chance at all. Drawn by the smell of gore, they were closing in on her. They would overwhelm her resistance by sheer mass, and then they would eat.
I will not let that happen. He gathered the Force, took two steps. The instant he moved screams shredded the room again; the ghouls had 'seen' him. Blaster fire salted the air around him as he leapt. A shot blackened the buckle of his belt as he blocked another to the head. There are so many of them!
Landing in a clutch of razor claws he came down just within the third doorway, blocking it. Sentiment told him to rush to Pepi's side, and he quashed it. These predators must not be allowed to run loose on Coruscant with guns. She understood that, so did he.
Hard to block every shot and the pummel of bodies. The ringing yells pierced his head, and it took deep concentration to tune them out and hear only the peace of the Force. As he blocked a blaster bolt to the stomach a pallid arm, sinewed like steel, caught his cloak, pulled him backwards. Kicking out behind him his boot heel crunched in a face.
Too many of them! If he set himself against a wall he believed he might survive this. But Pepi, wounded, would not. And Obi-Wan? The child was already dangerously close to being overrun.
Focus. He sliced through three attackers, pushed five, and saw as many more circling to get behind him. Fangs closed on his calf, and he hammer punched with his free fist, driving it through the base of a doglike skull.
Carnage. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be this, as he drew the dripping hand back, picked up a blaster and fired into the crowd.
A useless thought. He let it go, spared a fraction of a second to glance at his apprentice. Just in time to see Obi-Wan lose his footing on the blood-slick floor and fall.
"No! Obi-Wan!"
The ghouls pounced.
Why not see what else I have written and am interested in.