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Dooku had left, melting into the shadowy corridors of the Geonosian cave-complex, somewhere between five minutes and a full hour ago. Time was difficult to mark so deep in the rock with only the infernal spinning of the containment field to suggest that any time had passed at all.
Obi-Wan breathed as the braces slowed his rotation to a standstill, paused, and then began spinning him in the other direction like the slow tension and release in a string. Containment fields were quite uniquely Geonosian although there were whispers of imminent commercialisation in the braces. He hoped the whispers were wrong. They rarely were.
Closing his eyes against the flickering blue field, he reflected on his prospects. His message to Coruscant – if Anakin had received and retransmitted it – should have given the Jedi Council enough of an idea of the circumstances for an infiltration and rescue to be attempted, but did he get to mention the droid armies before he was cut off? He felt his brow furrow as he struggled to recall the message. It had been thought-through enough to know what he had intended to say, but the oncoming ambush had kept him distracted enough not to note what had been said.
The spinning slowed, paused, reversed and resumed. He felt the back of his throat brace against the change and opened his eyes. Wouldn’t do to become nauseous this early.
A droid army was the kind of thing that could spook the Senate into accelerating the Military Creation Act through the system. Was that what he wanted? No, that would be war. What other response was there? For himself, a small rescue team would suffice or, if things were looking really dire, he could attempt his own escape. Perhaps he would be left on Geonosis – one small sacrifice to prevent a major incursion.
Obi-Wan was under no illusion: there were entire legions of moving metal beneath the humming plates of the containment field. Enough droids to massacre any Jedi too conspicuous. Did the Council know? Would they send in forces that would raise the army from the depths? Would they take the safe option: a couple of well-trained infiltrators familiar with insectoid architecture?
His captivity was the smallest of the two issues at hand and the larger, the droid army, was one best solved with patience and thorough thinking. No matter how dangerous the foundries would become with time, time was what was needed to ensure true success in decommissioning them. Time would save the operation but it could condemn him. Malicious finality permeated the walls. An ultimatum had lain in Dooku’s offer. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s death had been scheduled.
The Force was blurry through the field, snagging painfully on the braces. It could tell him little of oncoming events. The only future he found imprinted upon him was the whispering future-familiarity of the containment field itself. Nevertheless, he had a bad feeling.
Force, just this once, allow this feeling to be wrong.
...
Apparently, among a hive of Geonosians, the most popular form of entertainment is gladiatorial beast-fighting. At least, Obi-Wan was pretty sure it was beasts he would face; he could feel their hunger-driven fervour from within the caging walls of the arena. He was growing less sure that he would be fighting. Surely Dooku would want a show?
His braces had been replaced by thin cuffs and heavy chains. He had considered making a break for freedom while they were being exchanged, but the containment field had still been surrounding him, making everything fuzzier than his memories of the way in. Now, squinting as he was marched out of the shadow cast by the amphitheatre onto the dusty ground, things were becoming clearer. Sharply clear. He was being blinded by it all, too much to properly register, forcing him to squint even in the Force.
The dust hadn’t got into his boots but it was in his hair, down his collar, under the cuffs, softly biting friction making the fabric of his clothes simultaneously too smooth and too rough. The sunlight illuminated even his closed eyelids, burning the small dot of the sun into his retinas. So many people, so many little gatherings of the Force all focused on him, demanding his attention in return and one, so much darker than the others, so much colder than the omnipresent warmth of Geonosis, standing on a balcony above the rest and watching, hawk-like.
His antecedent.
Hawk-eyes – though, he had distantly noted in the dim light of his cell, not hawk-yellow – watched as Obi-Wan was chained to a pillar near the centre of the arena. One of four pillars. Let the others remain empty, he prayed.
The question of whether or not he would be beast-fighter or beast-prey was still being debated in his mind. The chains could probably be overcome with some ingenuity once the force of the beasts were upon him to lever. Currently, their purpose was most likely to prevent him from attacking the nearest bug and dashing to the not-yet closed door. It was a flimsy measure but nonetheless present.
He would wait.
He would wait and if it came time to fight, he would.
Closing his eyes, he breathed. Anakin would manage without him, should things take a turn. Obi-Wan knew the pain of losing a master after a decade of being together; he knew the bleeding, torn edges of a bond ripped apart by death, he knew how it hurt. But Anakin had always been stronger than him. He hated the idea of subjecting him to it, but Anakin would survive the loss. That made it easier. This ending, however jarring it felt among the glitter-sharp Force, would be okay as long as Anakin made it through intact.
That message was a rotten goodbye. If he was to die here he would have liked to leave some words of comfort. ‘I’m proud of you,’ or ‘I’m sorry.’
Was he really so certain that no one would rescue him that he pondered his dying words? Perhaps.
Obi-Wan didn’t consider himself a pessimist, but he was hyper-aware of the growing sense of scale in this arena. Something was building – grand and disproportionate and deadly. The droid army warranted this, but not so soon. The ticking time bomb here was himself. His life was the only thing to be gained by acting so soon, but the cost was too much. He found it hard to face and instead faced the softer potential of being the only casualty. The cost of this was not worth his life; he knew this intimately.
Tragedy was underfoot and he itched.
As terrible certainty swelled within him, he found himself praying to the Force that no other Jedi had stepped on Geonosis. He would die alone and it would be best. The cost, the cost, the cost. Growing imminent. Building.
He pushed his skull back into the rock pillar, feeling the grit pull his hair. It was all too much.
Truth came burning and branded itself onto him: today was a turning point and the deaths of too many would be the fulcrum.
In agreement, the crowd roared. The clamour raised to acknowledge the arrival – he opened his eyes with sore resignation – of Anakin and the Senator. Bound and chained as he was, they walked, bringing with them ready mourning. The pillars would not remain unused. He would live.
Now, the stage was set and the script finalised. All that remained was the performance rendered in immovable fate. Today would be a tragedy, Obi-Wan knew. This was the price and he the lowly prize.