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“Would it kill you,” he snaps with a hoarse growl that feels like gravel crawling down his throat, “to eat something?”
They shine at him in the Force with Beloved Brightness that scratches at his eyeballs and his senses alike, with Nothing Wrongness that itches in his sinuses and Humble Strength that makes him reflexively bare his canines at the dousing smile they direct at him: “Hello Master Maul.”
His lungs cough up the sheer abhorrence that his tongue can’t articulate in a rough, hissing response. “Ugh.”
Because of course it’s Kenobi.
Again.
It’s like their laughable farce of a Master intentionally forgets his high-value-slave-material-padawan in the seediest parts of the galaxy for Maul to find.
Maul who’s had no intention whatsoever of even crossing Padawan Kenobi’s path when he’d realized that Tevas had catapulted him back in fucking time. Maul who’d gone off, instead, to find his Master’s Master and rid himself of the Chan-senat-Imper- Sidious before he could become. Maul who’d destroyed an entire mine when he’d realized that he hadn’t been sent back far enough to undo the vile monster.
Maul – who had, in destroying said mine, found miners. Bomb-collared and scared. Scared but not unfamiliar with Dark Force Users. He’d been intrigued and in too deep when he’d finally stumbled on Kenobi – frail, pale, enslaved and just as dirty as the rest of the rats in the mines.
If not for the Bright Belovedness that Force embraced them in, Maul might have overlooked them. Might never have met the eyes of his accursed nemesis – too young by Qyâsik knew how many years to meet him in a fight yet. Kenobi barely even reached his hips.
If Maul had known better, he might have tried to win Kenobi for himself then.
But he hadn’t known better.
Had brought them back to their blinding Temple of Falsehood and Hipocrisy.
Back to the tutelage of the Master who kept forgetting them.
For Maul to find.
In prisons like this one.
Fuck Qui-Gon fucking Jinn with a pitchfork down his throat and a cactus up his--
“What are you doing here, Master Maul?”
“Getting paid,” he hisses in reflex – eyeing the suspiciously resting cellmate of his arch-nuisance. How Kenobi keeps getting themselves into these situations he doesn’t know.
Judging the way the half-pint steps into his line of sight, however, maybe it isn’t as hard a guess as he might have assumed. He crosses his arms.
“Is there a karking reason you’re shielding the fucking Mando?”
Kenobi – kark him – gives him a look that would have shamed akk-pups. “You’re not going to hurt them are you?”
Maul should.
He really should. He knows what this one will do in the future. Kenobi might not know but they’re standing in front of the very asshole whose very simulacra will eviscerate their entire beloved jerk-circle of friends.
Bless Luminara, she’s the only one who’s suspicious of him.
“My contract is to get them back to their people,” he growls finally. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
Which it isn’t. Except, of course, that Kenobi beams a smile at him that rivals the brightness of Tatoo One and Two at High Point. He hates it.
“Excellent,” they sing, as the not-asleep-Mando groans and rolls onto their back and something clinks between them, opening the cell-door without any of Maul’s doing. “We’ll be following you then.”
It is, Maul has to grudgingly admit, the easiest contract he’s had yet.
(line break)
“Not teaching them of your ways, are you?” Yaddle smirks at him from her diminutive stature, not even trying to look up at him rather than following the long, broad line of sight he has of the Republic Senate’s Dome.
Maul growls. Kenobi reeks of the Light. “The Son himself couldn’t turn them,” he spits and, as he steps over the prone bodies of the latest batch of defeated Temple Guards – they’re improving security, a good thing – pretends not to hear her amused chuckle.
He hates Yaddle.
He hates the Temple.
He hates Coruscant.
And he fucking hates Vos trying his best to shadow him.
There’s something wrong with that boy.