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marcusagrippa · 5 months

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hey hi hello!! stupid old men in a desert fic was promised and i shall deliver. there is no concrete plan there's just two and a half chapters of sad Vibes so far. cw for suicide refs and suchlike because - well, i mean, who on tatooine doesn't want to kill themselves? no cannibalism (yet) sorry :[

spiracle: chapter 1/? (3924 words)

↓↓↓

He is here.

Maul knows from experience that the Force can be a fickle mistress, but there’s no question in it this time, no room for error. He would know that signature anywhere - the steady, pulsing stream of consciousness spreading lazily through the desert night like a drop of ink in water. Broken and ragged and distant though it may be, the Jedi’s presence is unmistakable. So it hasn’t all been for nothing.

He lets out a low growl as he presses forward through the shifting sands, the particles already starting to clog the joints of his prosthetics. The path ahead of him is lit only by the faint light of Tatooine’s moons - Maul is almost upset to have missed the suns-set. Force knows it’s likely the only beautiful thing about this damned dustball. The end of his cane digs into the ground as he feels the air beginning to cool around him, and this is one of the few times in his life he wishes he’d had the foresight to wear something that covered his chest.

Too much fabric inhibits his movement in combat. There’s nothing more to it than that, of course. And Maul is certainly planning on fighting tonight.

The Zabrak starts to struggle a little as he clambers doggedly up a shifting dune, servos whining in protest as the mechanisms of his legs start to seize up. Damned Death Watch craftsmanship - you’d think that Mandalorians would be at least half-decent working with metal, but no, these legs have to struggle at the slightest inconvenience. Maybe they were good, once upon a time, but… he’s getting old, and so are his cybernetics.

A decidedly unflattering scowl creases Maul’s features cresting the dune, but all that melts away into a small, evil smile the second he senses it.

It. It. Not a ‘him’, not ‘Kenobi’, it, the pulsing Force-presence growing steadily stronger as Maul squints out over the wastes, lightsaber cane clutched in one hand. His fingers tighten around the hilt. A fire, closer than he’d dared dream it could be.

It.

Tired limbs infused with a new rage-born strength, Maul practically races down the dune, already fumbling to extract his lightsaber from the cane disguise. That smile grows wider even as his breathing grows heavier - look, and there’s a silhouette there, too, he’s right there, he can see him, not just in his mind’s eye but in the flesh -

The sand clouds around his heels settle in his wake, the desert returning to tranquillity once more as Maul’s chaos passes it by.

Closer now, almost there - he slows his approach from an almost mad sprint into a crouch, as stealthy as he can manage with his prosthetics squeaking. The noise rings loudly in his ears, amplified a million times by the otherwise silence, but right now Maul doesn’t care for the specifics. What he cares about is the fact that Kenobi is there, right there, barely a hundred metres away from him, out in the wastes, alone and his for the taking. A sitting duck.

His finger itches on the ignition switch of his saber as he stalks closer. It may have been a few years since Mandalore, but Maul’s about ninety percent certain he still knows how to make an entrance. As soon as he’s in earshot of the fire and the blobby vaguely-Kenobi-like shape slumped in front of it - the Force presence is still weak, why is it still weak? He must have gone soft in his old age - Maul clears his throat dramatically.

“Keno-”

His voice dissolves into a hacking cough and he doubles over, nearly toppling forwards before catching himself with his cane. This, it goes without saying, was not his ideal entrance. Force-dammit. He can’t be showing weakness, not in their first meeting after all these years! His eyes stream as he hacks his guts up, blood spattering the sands below him. Perhaps all those years on Lotho Minor had lasting effects even the witches’ magicks couldn’t counteract.

He straightens up after he’s somewhat recovered, looking towards the fire expectantly. He’s expecting the figure to have stood, drawn his lightsaber, shied away, even moved… but nothing. One of Maul’s eyebrows raises without his permission, and he takes a few steps closer, into the light of the fire.

“Kenobi…?” he says hesitantly, peering at the - ah. Right.

What he had assumed was the Jedi sitting slumped forwards on a log is not, in fact, that. Instead, Maul comes face-to-face with a pack strapped to the back of a slumbering eopie. The eopie has a harness attached to it, but the end isn’t tethered to anything.

It farts in its sleep. How quaint.

“Oh, Obi-Wan. You’ve aged terribly,” Maul mutters, scowling, as he jabs the eopie with his cane. The beast snorts, but doesn’t wake.

Mistaking the great Jedi General for this… creature? Perhaps he’s losing his vision as well as his mind. The thought brings Maul little comfort.

But no - the faint trickle of Force energy is still there, humming in the background. It’s the strongest Maul’s felt since landing on this hellhole, but it’s still exactly that: faint. Broken. He could attribute it to distance when he was further away, but now, at what he presumes must be the Jedi’s own camp, it still feels broken. Shattered.

What has happened to the old man? What has he done?

The campfire is still burning, casting an orange glow over the sands and reflecting off of the few still-shiny parts of Maul’s prosthetics. If the fire is still going strong, he cannot be far - perhaps he’s just taking a piss. Maul sniffs, taking another look at the unconscious beast, and sits down in the sand to wait as he takes in the sorry state of affairs that is Kenobi’s camp. He’s waited decades for his revenge; he can serve to wait a little longer.

It’s pathetic, really, what the Jedi’s life seems to have come to. The camp is in disarray: old Republic ration tins strewn haphazardly all over the place, a bundle of rags shaped into something that vaguely resembles a bed, a dented kettle half-buried in the sand near the fire. The Jedi’s stench is drenching the place like a particularly unpalatable perfume - that disgusting, lingering feeling of kindness and weakness that Maul simply cannot abide.

That confirms it, then. He was here. He should return. And when he does, Maul will strike him down like he deserves. Besides, he’s always liked a dramatic reveal - just the thought of emerging like a wraith from the shadows to surprise the old man, catch him entirely off-guard rather than storm up to him like a man possessed, makes Maul’s face crack into a twisted, thin-lipped smile.

So he waits.

And waits.

The sands shift. The moons rise. And Kenobi does not return.

Maul is mildly offended by this. Surely the old Jedi has sensed him by now? Does he not think him worthy of a duel? He had been expecting his quarry to be ready to attack him the moment he set foot on the planet. But… judging by the state of his camp, by the weak pulse of Force where he had assumed there would be the same steady-flowing, roaring waterfall that was present during the Clone Wars…

Something is wrong.

Maul scowls as he gets back to his feet, cracking his back and wincing as the fire burns lower and lower. He’s going to be pissed if something has broken Kenobi before he has even had the chance to. Ah, well - he’s alive, at least, the presence confirms that - so if worst comes to worst, Maul can at least watch him suffer. The taste of second-hand revenge is not so sweet, but it is miles less bitter than no revenge at all.

His eyes close for a brief moment and he reaches out with his senses, probing the frayed edges of the Jedi’s psyche. He’s not far, of course - not far at all, barely more than a hundred feet or so away from the embers of the fire - but that’s all he can make out from this distance. The Jedi’s spirit is weak. It will bring me great pleasure to see it decay into nothing more than the ghost of rot.

With a huff and a muttered curse, Maul snatches his cane from the sand and stalks off into the Tatooine night. Again. The eopie snorts as he passes by, and he has to resist the urge to decapitate it.

All in good time.

---

The moonslight is faint, and the wind is starting to pick up, but as Maul crests yet another dune neither dimness nor background noise can disguise the distinctive silhouette and choked-back wails of a man sobbing.

The sight fills Maul with more glee than it really has any right to. Oh, this is going to be easy. It may not be as fun as torturing those tears out of him would be otherwise, but the sound of the Jedi crying is the sweetest melody in the galaxy to Maul’s ears. He stands atop the dune and looks down, wreathed in darkness, tattoos faded with age and wear made brilliant yet again by the weak splashes of moonslight that grace his skin, before grinning to himself and half-walking, half-skidding down the slope to reach him.

Maul is behind him. The Jedi doesn’t turn.

He’s definitely weeping, Maul can tell that for certain. Hooded figure slumped forwards onto his knees, shoulders shaking, muffled little whimpers coming from his mouth. How pathetic. The Force ebbs and flows around him weakly, the once-great waterfall of his presence reduced to a trickle.

Maul takes a few steps forward. The Jedi doesn’t turn.

Peering over his shoulder, Maul can just about see that he’s… clutching something in his hands. His shaking hands. The thing he’s clutching is a dull box, dented and dust-covered, not unusual in any way - except Kenobi is holding it like it’s a child, his touch light and almost reverential in its gentleness even through the sobs that wrack his body.

Maul takes a final step forward - close enough to touch the Jedi’s shoulder, to stab him, to end this all. The Jedi doesn’t turn, but his sobs cease abruptly.

“...hello, Maul,” a voice says from the figure’s hood. Maul blinks.

The voice is hoarse and scratchy, thick with tears, with the resigned tones of a man on his deathbed. The strident, cocksure voice he knew during the war has all but disappeared. The voice is Coruscanti, but other than that…

This may as well be a stranger. Another old, forgotten soul in a galaxy full of them.

“Kenobi,” Maul spits with all the venom he can muster - which, to his surprise (and annoyance), isn’t much venom at all. He must be getting soft in his old age. He shifts his stance almost imperceptibly, hand tightening on his cane. “Cease your wailing. It’s unbecoming of you.”

“It is, is it?” the voice says forlornly as the owner drops the box back to the ground with a thud. He does not turn to face Maul, nor does he stand. He simply waits. “My apologies. I don’t have much dignity left these days. I wasn’t aware my… ‘wailing’ would offend you so.”

Maul ignores the comment and lets out a low growl. His thumb brushes against the ignition switch of his saber. “Don’t tell me someone’s finally knocked the fight out of you, old man.”

Not before I’ve had the chance, at least.

“I’m afraid that happened a long time ago.” The figure sighs, and pulls his hood back. Faint shards of moonslight illuminate an unkempt mane of greying locks, lank and unwashed. “You’re here to kill me, then, are you?”

“No, I’m here for a nice cup of h’kak bean tea and a gossip. Of course I’m here to kill you, you old fool.”

“I’d appreciate it if you stopped calling me old. We’re the same age, as I recall.”

“Yes, well, I’m not the one who’s gone greyer than a Kaminoan stormcloud, withering away out here all these years.” Maul scowls and jabs his cane into the figure’s back, eliciting a very satisfying yelp. “Stand up and face me, Kenobi, you coward. Don’t hide behind those pathetic tears.”

The figure sighs again, and somehow the sound is even more pitiful than the first time. “If you’re hoping for a duel, you won’t get one.”

“I don’t need a duel. I need you to face me like a man.”

“Why? You don’t strike me as someone who’s averse to a bit of backstabbing.”

“Just face me, you insolent wretch.”

“As my Lord commands,” the figure says drily. He shifts in his position, carefully moving the old box to the side, and begins to get to his feet. Begins being the key word there.

The process probably takes about thirty seconds in total, the silence punctuated by the occasional sniffle or pained groan from the figure. Maul’s anger is slowly starting to turn into confusion, and then disbelief. This is what’s become of him? A haunted, doddering old man with grey hair and back pain? The cane almost slips out of his grasp as he gapes at the man formerly known as Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the galaxy’s most feared and respected warriors, struggling to stand on his own two feet.

He manages to steady himself and finally - finally! - faces Maul, and the former Sith Lord visibly winces as he catches sight of the Jedi’s visage. Weathered almost beyond recognition, wrinkles gouged deep into his skin, tears still clinging to his cheeks, all eyebags and gaunt features and hollow, blank gaze.

“Have I got something on my face?” the husk wearing the skin of Kenobi asks, rubbing his beard. “You’re staring.”

“You look terrible,” Maul says bluntly. A smile graces the Jedi’s cracked lips, a smile devoid of humour, dignity, or hope.

“Thank you. I try. Now, are you going to kill me or am I going to have to do it myself? You did show up at the worst possible time, you know. You’re actually prolonging my lifespan by being here.”

Maul’s eyebrows raise. “...pardon?”

“Well, I was planning on killing myself before you showed up,” Kenobi says mildly. “You’re disrupting my schedule. I would appreciate it if you hurried things along a little.”

"..."

Suicide? Maul makes a choked gagging sound in the back of his throat. The cane finally slips from his fingers, landing with a soft thump in the sand as he stares dumbly at Obi-Wan, who just smiles placidly back at him. No, not Obi-Wan - not the General, the Jedi, the war hero. Whatever this thing is, it's not the warrior that Maul knew. He manages to mask his surprise with another snarl, though, before this - this husk can comment on it.

I should be happy about this. The fool has lost himself entirely. I should take pleasure in it, watching him so hopeless, so destitute. But all Maul feels is a gnawing, biting, crawling sense of dread clawing its way up from the pit of his stomach. He cannot fight this ghost. He cannot give him what he wants.

Obi-Wan sighs wearily and gets down on his knees in front of Maul. How is he so - so calm like this? When he's facing his doom - looking his death in the eye? What happened to him to break him so entirely?

"Well?" he prompts. "Strike me down. I haven't got all day."

Pathetic.

"Look what has become of you," Maul murmurs, stooping to pick up his cane and using the tip to tilt Kenobi's chin up. The fool doesn't resist - Maul's stomach twists with a pang of something unfamiliar. Could that be… pity? No. Impossible. "How did they break you, Obi-Wan? What… happened to you?"

The Jedi raises his eyes to meet Maul's, half-lidded with exhaustion, piercing blue dulled to a weak grey. "Nothing that wasn't my fault," he says quietly. His weak - weak, broken, weak - Force presence spikes with something Maul has never felt coming from the Jedi before. Grief. Fear. Darkness.

This is not what Maul wanted. This is not what Maul wanted at all.

With a growl, he pushes Kenobi roughly away from himself, leaving him lying prone in the dust. The foolish, broken thing does not even make an effort to get back to his feet. He simply… deflates, eyes blank and devoid of the familiar cunning intelligence Maul has grown to expect, tracking his movements almost lazily as the former Sith stalks towards the discarded box. He can feel echoes as he approaches it, ripples in the Force that concentrate into two separate infinitesimal points, ripe with memories that linger like fat storm clouds around them.

“This,” Maul hisses, snatching up the box and shaking it. It gives a satisfying rattle. “What is it? Why is it so important to you?”

Obi-Wan does not deign to grace the former Sith with a response. His eyes have suddenly turned from exhausted and uncaring to hollow and haunted and staring, gaze locked onto the box with the precision of a sniper. His fingers dig into the soft sand as he mumbles something incoherent under his breath, makes a sound like a dying bantha, and still does not get up.

Maul scowls. "Weak," he snarls, and tears the box open. The hinges aren't quite rusted shut - not enough moisture on this force-damned planet for that, he supposes - but there's a definite age to it, sand clogging the mechanism, and he struggles for a few seconds before it clicks open -

And Maul is suddenly hit with a wave of the Dark Side so strong it makes him damn near drop the thing.

The two lightsabers nestled inside the box, wrapped neatly in clean cloth in stark contrast to the perpetually dusty landscape around him, both stink of festering hatred and unimaginable, inconsolable grief. Maul’s hands start to tremble as he looks down on them, blood-and-bile eyes widening. Even second-hand, the pain that lives within these weapons is just… more. More than the former Sith has ever seen before, even among those artefacts his old Master used to keep scattered around the LiMerge building whilst he was being trained. Maul baulks at the memory - failure, you are a failure, he cast you aside like you were nothing because you are nothing - and reaches out a hand to touch one of the sabers.

“Don’t,” Obi-Wan’s hoarse, broken voice calls from behind him, tone gone from resigned depression to almost desperation - Maul jolts at the sudden tone change. He whirls around to face him, face stony. It doesn’t matter if he’s suicidal or… whatever. The Jedi cannot tell him what to do. Still, he feels a twinge of what might be compassion in his chest, which he immediately forces down and tries to disguise with aggression instead.

“Don’t what?! Why in the galaxy are you keeping Sith artefacts with you?! Don’t you know what they can do to you, what they can do to any Jedi in such close contact with the Dark Side? Oh, Force above, it’s a wonder you haven’t -”

He stops short, then, because the Jedi appears to have started crying again. Kenobi lets out a series of gulping sobs as he reaches one shaking hand towards the box, aged body still lying crumpled in the sand. “Please,” he rasps out between ragged breaths. “Don’t - don’t touch them. Don’t touch them, they’re not Sith artefacts - they’re mine -”

The old man dissolves into incoherent mumbles and muffled crying again, curling into a pitiful little ball of greying hair and frayed edges as his presence in the Force pulses with pain. Maul stares at him in disbelief - he seems to have been doing a lot of that when it comes to Obi-Wan, lately - and slowly withdraws his hand from the box. He sets it down gently on the sand in front of him and shuts the lid.

There is something seriously, seriously wrong with this Jedi.

For years, the only thing that has sustained Maul has been Obi-Wan Kenobi. He has breathed for him, bled for him, spent decades of sleepless nights half-mad as he imagined ripping the Jedi limb from limb, bathing in the scarlet of his spilled lifeblood. He has wanted nothing more than to get his revenge on the man that destroyed any semblance of a chance that Maul might have had in the first place - make him hurt as he has hurt, make him feel every last drop of pain that Maul has ever felt.

But staring at the shaking, sobbing bundle of robes and skin and bones, Maul finds that his rage has deserted him for the first time since he can remember. He cannot break what is already broken. He cannot hurt what has already been ruined beyond repair. There is no retribution for him to deliver to such a hopeless, lost soul.

He finds the mirror of his own madness in the shake of the Jedi’s shoulders, the hushed mumblings that come from behind his hood, the way his fingers dig like scrabbling claws into the sand. The Jedi has disappeared - this is all that is left. Maul’s mission, his only mission, his reason to be… has been left unfulfilled. Washed away by the husk’s choked sobs.

Maul leans heavily on his cane, just watching Kenobi silently for a few more seconds. Behind the fog of his confusion, however, something begins to formulate.

The Jedi has disappeared. I am incomplete. There will be no justice until I am the one to break Kenobi’s stride, until I am the one to finally douse that fire in him. I shall just have to… rekindle it.

I will be his saviour, nurse him back to life, liberate him from his chains - and then I will grind him into dust beneath the heel of my boot. As is my right.

Maul bends down, picks up the box. The mere sight of the thing makes his stomach lurch, but he dares not risk touching the contents again. He slides it into his pack, then strides over to where Obi-Wan lies drowning in his own sorrow, clearly in the middle of some kind of… episode? Disgusting.

“Come, Jedi. Enough of that.”

He grips Kenobi’s forearms with his gloved hands and hoists him to his feet. After a few seconds of awkward, weak swaying and ragdoll-like limbs, it becomes abundantly clear that the Jedi is not going to be able to walk on his own. With a weary, resigned sigh - oh, I’m already regretting this - he picks Kenobi up as easily as if he were a child, putting him over his shoulder a little haphazardly. This brings forth a pained grunt that Maul takes far too much satisfaction in, and Kenobi starts pummeling his chest weakly with clenched fists.

“Cease your whining. You need to eat. You’re skin and bones as it is,” Maul chastises, voice dripping with false cheerfulness as he starts to haul the Jedi up the dunes. His skin is cold against Maul’s back - far too cold to be healthy. Maul hopes to all hope that the meagre fire at the camp has not gone completely out yet.

“And sleep. You look like you haven’t slept in the past three years.”

Kenobi manages to get out a weak ‘I haven’t’, before his body goes limp, leaving Maul with the long and arduous task of heaving an unconscious, unwashed, slightly smelly nemesis back towards his salvation - and, eventually, his doom.

#jase writes #obimaul #what if i pinned you. huh. what then.#*incredibly traumatised war veteran* i can fuck him up more :3 #sw #maul #twin suns #obi-wan kenobi #ao3. scares me sometimes so its going on here instead #also btw i've been thinking about that post about kyber crystals A Lot and i can't remember what it said exactly but #thinking about how they can absorb the emotions and memories of the wielder and sobbing quietly to myself #dragging myself kicking and screaming out of my year long writer's block

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