Jedi Apprentice AU, some spoilers.
If you are seeking happy endings and fluff, turn away now.
No betas, therefore the errors are all mine.
See chapter one for disclaimers.
Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, in the most spectacular fashion and with most tragic of consequences. The master and apprentice had gone to New Apsolon to rescue a fellow Jedi Master who had disappeared several days earlier. It should have been a straight forward search and rescue mission, but it wasn't. First of all, it wasn't even a mission really. Master Jinn had taken it upon himself, against the Council's express wishes, to go in search of the missing Jedi. Why? Because the missing master was Tahl Uvain, Qui-Gon's best friend and, as Obi-Wan would realize far too late, the love of his master's life. So, the master and padawan pair journeyed to New Apsolon to find the woman who held his master's heart and find her they did, but they found her far too late.
That was Obi-Wan's fault.
He had slowed his master down and the delay stole any chance Tahl had of surviving her kidnapping. In the end, Tahl succumbed to her injuries.
She died because of Obi-Wan and both he and his master knew it.
Qui-Gon said nothing the entire trip back to Coruscant. He saved all his attention, all his caring for the body that lay in a stasis capsule in the craft's small hold. Obi-Wan, for his part, attended to piloting the shuttle and staying out of his master's way. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do to ever fix this, to ever make it right. His only consolation was the deep and persistent pain in his side; the physical reminder of his ineptitude.
During their pursuit of Master Uvain and her abductor, the two Jedi were caught in a blaster fight with the terrorist organization known as the Absolutes. Obi-Wan had gotten careless, allowed himself to be distracted and in doing so missed an easily deflectable shot. The blast had struck him on his left side and sent him to the ground curling in upon himself in white hot agony. Qui-Gon continued to deflect blasts protecting them both until finally all of the attackers lay dead. He didn't rush to his apprentice's side. Instead he stared off into the distance in the direction Tahl had been taken asking a single question of his padawan without looking back at him.
"Can you go on?" he asked. The words were simple. The tone was emotionless and yet within it Obi-Wan could read a wealth of pain, fear, and anger. He would not add to his master's pain if he could help it.
"Go on without me," he said. "I will be alright, Master." From where Obi-Wan lay he could see his master's frame tense seemingly torn between staying with him and following after his love. It is a decision he couldn't make, so his apprentice made it for him.
"Go! I will only slow you down. Master Tahl needs you!" he said knowing full well that those words would spur his master into action like no others would. With the briefest of nods, Qui-Gon left him running ahead to save the woman that they could both feel drifting ever closer to becoming one with the Force. There had been so little time... and Obi-Wan's injury had wasted much of it.
Even after his master's hasty departure, he tried to make himself useful. Tahl needed his master, that was certainly true, but he wanted to be there in case his master needed him and he would be no good to anyone laying on the ground clutching at his abdomen. Obi-Wan pushed himself into a sitting position and pulled his hand away from his wound. It was covered in blood... as were his tunics and much of the ground where he had fallen. So much blood. Too much. Somewhere deep in his mind it registered that if he didn't do something he would bleed out completely guaranteeing the return of one dead Jedi to Coruscant if not two. He had to somehow staunch the flow of blood, but the wound was so large, at least two hand spans and he had no medical supplies on him at all.
