Darth Maul saw his legs fall next to him, blood slowly seeping from where Kenobi's lightsaber hadn't quite cauterized the flesh. He still felt the phantom pain where his legs should be attached to his body.
He yelled with rage. How dare the padawan defeat him! He would crawl back with his teeth and half his saberstaff and carve Kenobi to pieces.
The Force whispered a warning. Maul tried to twist so he'd land on his feet, but his feet were no longer with him and he didn't have the leverage to twist himself. His head cracked on something hard, and everything went black.
Maul woke up with a jerk. He was on his ship, uninjured, and in one piece. So was his saberstaff.
He opened the nearest datapad. It was the same day he'd already lived through.
Which meant the fight, getting his legs cut off, had been a ... vision? The Force had warned him of underestimating the padawan. Yes, that must be it.
The day itself continued exactly as it had in Maul's vision, the Jedi and the Queen's retinue turning up in the palace hangar, the Jedi engaging him when he appeared and the others scrambling away. Jinn even said the same lines.
Every swing of the saber, every step, every block was identical to the vision. Maul was once more at the top of his world, doing what he had spent over two decades training for.
The ray shields closed, then opened, leaving Jinn as Maul's prey and Kenobi to watch. Jinn fell exactly like he first had. Maul drank in the surprise on his face and Kenobi's scream.
Kenobi launched himself at Maul the moment the ray shield came down. Maul brought his saberstaff up to block, spun around to strike with the other end, and disengaged. Kenobi was a fearsome opponent, very clearly Jinn's apprentice – and the apprentice had surpassed the master.
Nonetheless, Maul soon had his lightsaber at the bottom of the shaft and its owner hanging from a protrusion just far enough down Maul couldn't reach him. In the vision, he'd been stumped, and Kenobi had leapt up and taken him by surprise.
This time he would be more proactive. Maul reached out with the Force and lifted Kenobi to where he could decapitate him.
Then Kenobi surprised him by pushing off the air and landing behind him. Maul knew where this was going, instinctively brought the functioning half of his saberstaff to block, but Kenobi didn't have a lightsaber, only the Force.
Maul flew over the edge by the power of Kenobi's Force push. He careened over the gaping abyss, searching for a protrusion to catch his weight.
He hit the other edge neck-first. Everything went black.
Maul woke up with a jerk. Again, he was on his ship, uninjured. Again, it was the day he'd fought the Jedi on.
What sort of vision came twice? The first time, Maul had thought it an uncommonly vivid vision. Now, he wasn't sure.
Visions, by nature, were fickle and ever-changing. They did have patterns to them, though, and one such pattern was that if the vision featured branching options, it would show the options simultaneously, not run through all the chaff preceding the turning point before showing the outcome of one choice, then starting all the way from the beginning of the day before getting to the outcome of another choice. No. This was not a vision.
What else could it be, though? Maul paced the length of the Scimitar.
Sidious had hinted at knowing the deep mysteries of the Dark Side. It was possible this was one of them – this day, the day the Sith revealed themselves, was certainly important enough Sidious would want it executed perfectly.
Despite this knowledge, Maul's performance was abysmal. He didn't even manage to defeat Jinn before Kenobi stabbed him through the hearts.
“Well done, padawan,” Jinn said with an unreasonable amount of surprise on his face considering Kenobi's skill.
“The apprentice has long surpassed the master,” Maul hissed on his last breath before he sank into the dark.
The pattern continued: Maul woke up in his ship, fought the Jedi, died, and woke up again. He could kill Jinn without issue as long as he wasn't distracted – practice did make perfect – but Kenobi would always end him.
This called for a change of plans. Maul recalled Jinn and Kenobi had been escorting the Queen and her retinue. Perhaps he should wait for them to start making their way up, then throw one of them out a window into some battle droids while he took care of the other one?
He lay in wait in his usual spot but only observed. The Jedi and the Naboo conferred for a moment, then split into two groups, each with one Jedi. Kenobi went with a woman in the Queen's garb, which meant that one of the handmaidens Jinn was accompanying must be the real Queen.
Maul decided to start with Jinn. He crawled through the ventilation shaft to overtake the group, the Force leading him true, and waited.
“It's this way-” one of the Queen's security men said as he opened the door.
Maul lifted his hood off his head and lit his lightsaber. Jinn didn't deserve this, but Maul had always loved a bit of showmanship.
“Anakin, stay back!” Jinn barked while pushing some child he'd found somewhere behind him.
They crossed blades twice before Jinn overcommitted – Maul tucked away the knowledge that the child distracted him – and Maul cut off his hand and then ran his saber right through Jinn's torso. Jinn's corpse clattered to the floor. The detached hand still clung to the lightsaber.
“No!” the child screamed. His distress hit Maul in the face in the Force. “How could you!”
“Very easily,” Maul said, then decapitated both of the handmaidens. The leftmost one had been the Queen, based on the security forces' reaction.
“Padmé!” the child screeched, also turning to the Queen's corpse. Fire-hot hatred flashed through him, rattling the chandeliers and portraits on the wall.
The child was untrained but extremely powerful. Maul could see what the Jedi saw in him. Alas, he was not interested in potential competition for his Master's affection, so he cut down the unarmed child as well. Then he had to kill the security forces as well, since they were intent on exacting vengeance on their Queen's killer. It only took him half a minute or so; a blaster was no match for a lightsaber.
Now he was free to hunt down Kenobi. The decoy's route was easy to track as well, even if they didn't have a fusion reactor of a Force presence trudging behind them.
Maul smoothed his robes and prepared for the door opening. Unlike Jinn, Kenobi definitely deserved his full attention.
“Kenobi,” he purred as the door opened. He lifted his saberstaff in front of him and lit it. “Shall we dance?”
“Go, I'll handle this,” Kenobi said. Nonetheless, he gulped; he must've felt his Master's death in the Force, and it did not take a genius to guess who was responsible.
Maul struck the first blow, a wide slash at Kenobi's head. Kenobi ducked, slashed against Maul's saberstaff, blocked Maul's next strike as Maul spun to deliver it.
Kenobi's eyes were the same color as his lightsaber. His grief dripped off him into the Force.
A slightly imbalanced block of Kenobi's gave Maul the opportunity to kick him. He took it and hit Kenobi in the face, breaking his nose. It was a shame that he'd had to ruin such a pretty face, but orders were orders, and the Jedi had brought this on themselves, anyway. The revenge of the Sith was what Maul had been made for.
Distracted by the blood streaming down his face, Kenobi didn't notice the next strike until it was too late. He screamed as Maul cut off his sword arm at the bicep.
Finally Maul could vanquish this foe. He raised his saberstaff and aimed.
Kenobi's lightsaber rose from where Kenobi had dropped it and buried itself in Maul's chest. Maul's legs faltered and he fell over Kenobi, saberstaff carving a chunk out of Kenobi's right leg.
Kenobi laughed, a horrible, wet sound. He kept laughing, the sound leaking from him as surely as the pain.
Maul rolled to his side from where he was dying in a pool of Kenobi's blood and lit one half of his saberstaff. It was hard to see – everything was fading to black – but he still saw enough to swing at Kenobi's neck.
Kenobi didn't even try to dodge. His head rolled off his shoulders as the darkness took Maul.
Perhaps going after Jinn first had been a mistake. Kenobi was young and skilled, and Maul would need every advantage possible against him. Jinn had long since passed his prime and could be easily tired. Maul resolved to make it out alive this time and be less of an embarrassment to Sidious.
The Jedi divided the Queen's retinue the same way as they had the previous time. Unsurprising, but it made Maul's next task easier.
He trailed Kenobi's group for two storeys before taking the servants' corridors past them. He quickly fixed his robes and waited.
Kenobi halted in his shock. “Go,” he told the false Queen. “I'll handle this.”
The Naboo scampered off straight towards a droid patrol. No matter. Maul's universe contained only Kenobi.
Maul threw himself at Kenobi, slashing at his feet and parrying the counterstrike to the head. He gave himself to the Force, rapid-paced attack-counterattack pairs as he swung his saberstaff around him and against Kenobi's lightsaber. Red and blue sparked, their clashes lighting up the shaded stretch of corridor they were fighting in.
It was a perfect rhythm. Maul knew how Kenobi would move, knew what was a feint and what needed parrying, knew Kenobi like the back of his hands, and Kenobi was good. Maul could keep this up forever.
Then one of Kenobi's feints turned real and Maul had a blue lightsaber sticking out of his chest. He stared at it.
“That's the end of you, Sith,” Kenobi said smugly. He extinguished his lightsaber.
“No,” Maul croaked. This wasn't supposed to end like this! He was Darth Maul, Dark Lord of the Sith, apprentice to Darth Sidious himself!
Kenobi had let his guard down. Maul pulled him to himself with the Force, plunging his own lightsaber through Kenobi's chest in turn.
They fell to the ground, Kenobi atop Maul. Maul felt his face and lips fall against his own. Somehow, this was important, but it was getting hard to think in the encroaching dark.
Maybe he'd had the right idea with the reactor room, Maul thought when he next woke up in his berth on the Scimitar. He had taken on both Jedi and defeated Jinn repeatedly; Kenobi required some thought, but with suitable manipulation of the battleground, he must be defeatable.
Maul stumbled to his feet. Something distracted him; from prior experience, this meant he'd get neither of the Jedi dead.
He needed something for his mood. He glanced over his meager belongings.
His eyes caught on his datapad. He unlocked it and scrolled through his files. Yes, that would do. He touched his fingers to his lips and left for the palace.
Exactly like before, the Jedi and the Naboo flowed into the hangar bay. This time, the first notes of music started playing over the PA system.
Maul felt his blood come up. As always with this song, he felt like he could fistfight a hovertank and win.
It was time for his appearance. The smoke machine breathed out a suitable backdrop and the doors slid open as the last notes of the intro came out. “The only thing they fear is you,” Doomslayer's lead vocalist growled over the PA system as Maul removed his hood and lit his lightsaber.
“I like your style,” Kenobi said over the complicated electro-jitar riff. His master glared at him. “What do you think about their newest album?”
“Focus, Obi-Wan,” Jinn snapped and jumped at Maul.
Maul blocked his high jab and returned a slash at Jinn's midsection that Jinn could only barely dodge, forcing Kenobi to join the fray. They traded blow for blow as Maul led them through the reactor palace catwalks to the tune of Doomslayer.
He really should've done this earlier. The bombastic music eased his thoughts and made the perfect soundtrack for his destruction of the Jedi.
Jinn went sooner than he expected, with a lightsaber straight through his throat. He'd dodged the strike, but not far enough, so his head was still connected to the rest of his corpse by the spine.
“No!” Kenobi screamed. He threw himself at Maul with a blazing fury. He'd have made a good Sith, not that he'd want to hear it.
Maul executed the same spinning strike he'd used to bring down Jinn the first time. Kenobi blocked it, but it left him off-balance and vulnerable. Maul pressed his advantage until he had Kenobi backed against a wall.
A swipe shorted out Kenobi's lightsaber. It was easy to cut his neck-
Maul found his lightsaber frozen mere centimeters from Kenobi's skin. Was this some Jedi trick?
Kenobi opened his eyes and blinked. His face arranged itself in a snarl. “Where was this mercy not five minutes ago?” he yelled, water leaking from his eyes. “Why me? Why not my Master?”
Maul's stomach dropped. “I have no mercy,” he said as he realized the only thing staying his hand was he himself.
His red blade passed through Kenobi's neck with no threat of retaliation. Regardless, he was rudely yanked to the dark.
“Was I not good enough?” Maul screamed at the ceiling of the Scimitar. “I killed them both! I would have slain the Queen and her retinue had you left me there! What more do you want?”
Sidious must not have been listening, for Maul was left unelectrocuted. He sighed and rolled out of bed. He didn't have to try to know he wouldn't get anywhere killing the Jedi like this.
What was the point in killing the Jedi, anyway, if it wasn't enough? What more could his Master want?
The Force gently nudged him. It rarely spoke to Maul, and he was practiced in ignoring its merciful inclinations at Sidious's behest, but this time he recognized it as the same thing that had embraced him as he lay dying and ripped him out of the day where he'd successfully killed both Jinn and Kenobi.
So this was not Sidious's doing. Maul sat on his bed and buried his face in his hands. “What do you want?” he hissed at the Force.
No reply. Of course.
If fighting the Jedi would get him nowhere, he would simply not fight them. Or perhaps only kill them tomorrow. The trouble was, his Master would kill him if he didn't kill the Jedi, which would bring him back to square one.
With a heavy sigh and roll of his eyes, Maul dug out the bacta and antiseptic wipes. Sidious was mostly too careful of discovery to track him with the Force, which meant there were several technological trackers embedded in Maul, his saberstaff, his datapad, and his ship. Maul knew where they were. He'd left them in, for removing them would mean at minimum electrocution and one of Sidious's more cruel punishments. As he was faking his death, however, he needed them out.
He wiped a scalpel and his skin with the antiseptic wipes, then dug out the trackers with the scalpel, tweezers, and the Force, first from his calf and then from his shoulder. He placed bacta patches on them and bandaged his calf.
The trackers stuffed in his belt, he set out for a swamp on the shortest route from the Scimitar to the Theed palace. At a suitable location, he took out the trackers, dismantled his saberstaff to extract the tracker therein, and made the swamp suck in all three. Sidious should still be able to sense his existence with the Force, but the Force itself had settled over his shoulders like a warm cloak, so perhaps that was already being taken care of.
Sidious would, however, come to investigate the site of his apprentice's apparent demise. Maul turned and left, walking deeper into the swamp.
The sun rose towards its zenith above him as he walked. It was slower going than it would be on reasonable terrain, but the swamp would swallow any footsteps and the Force was telling him to continue.
An hour or so of trudging later, he hit solid ground. This was enough of a relief he only noticed the other lifeform when they collided.
Maul jumped back and summoned his lightsaber to his hand. The other person had a lightsaber as well, for a blade of blue plasma shone through the frondy plantlife they'd collided in. Kenobi.
Jinn lit his lightsaber as well, and Maul felt the intent behind the security forces's aimed blasters. He could've killed the others in moments and had spent over a tenday practicing killing the Jedi now, but-
He turned off his saberstaff and tossed it at Kenobi. “Couldn't you have taken the other route instead?” he sighed. “All that work faking my death, and now there are witnesses to my survival.”
The Jedi and the Naboo shuffled around in the greenery until they had clear sight lines. “You're surrendering?” Kenobi asked in disbelief.
“Yes, I'm surrendering, you half-witted nerf herder,” Maul snapped back. “Why else would I have tossed you my weapon?”
“One never knows, with the Sith,” Jinn said.
Maul rolled his eyes. “I know you'll ask, so I might as well tell you. Darth Sidious is a pale-skinned male human with graying red hair and a large nose. Mid rim accent. He is an excellent actor and obscenely rich, possibly in politics or finance. He organized this invasion for his own personal gain. I do not know his legal name.”
“Why should we believe you?” Jinn asked.
“Do you have any other information on the Sith Master?” Maul raised a brow ridge. “No? That's what I thought.”
“What about the Trade Federation's fortifications in the palace?” the head of the Queen's security asked.
That Maul could also answer. He described the droids' patrol patterns and strengths to the best of his ability, letting them know when his knowledge had gaps in it.
The Naboo were appropriately appreciative of this intel and discussed amongst themselves how this would affect their plans. Maul ignored the chatter.
“Obi-Wan,” Jinn said, “I think you should stay here with our ... prisoner here.”
“But Master, don't you need all the backup you can get?” Kenobi objected.
“And let him betray our position to the Trade Federation?”
It would have been a stupid plan, albeit less stupid than trying to escape a Sith Lord's clutches. Kenobi was nonetheless forced to concede. “If you insist, Master. But what about Anakin? Are you really bringing him into a war zone?”
Jinn dismissed Kenobi's concerns. “Anakin will be safe by my side.” He turned to the Naboo and cleared his throat. “We must make haste if we are to get Nute Gunray to surrender.”
“Of course,” one of the handmaidens said.
The entourage picked up their march. The boy – he must be Anakin – followed Jinn.
“Jinn!” Maul called out. “Go with the decoy Queen or no-one will believe she's real!”
Jinn, who obviously had been planning to go with the real Queen, jerked and would have yelled at Maul had the head of security not interrupted him. They continued walking and soon passed out of range of sight or hearing.
Maul was alone with Kenobi. He wanted to spar with Kenobi, enjoy the eternal play of lightsaber against lightsaber, but no Jedi in their right mind would hand their Sith prisoner a weapon.
“I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi, padawan learner to Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn,” Kenobi said. “Pleased to meet you.”
He held out his hand. Maul shook it. “Maul. I suppose I am now an independent contractor.”
Kenobi snorted. “I suppose that's one way of putting it. Say, what do Sith apprentices do besides Sith apprentice stuff?”
Maul considered what would be covered under Sith apprentice stuff, then decided the answer was blindingly simple. “My master kept me busy, but I did have time to listen to music while in hyperspace.”
“Master Jinn keeps me busy as well,” Kenobi replied, still making polite small talk. “What sort of music do you like?”
“Doomslayer, Krt'atk, Dopa na rocka rocka, Attack Hound...” Maul listed some of his favorite bands.
Kenobi's face lit up. “Have you had time to listen to Doomslayer's latest album? What did you think?”
Maul sat down next to Kenobi. “I only gave it one listen so far, but-”
Kenobi sat down as well. Maul chatted with him aimlessly, talking of first Doomslayer and then the rest of the significant overlap between their tastes in music, spiraling out to music in general and lightsaber combat.
The day was warm and the Force told him of the Trade Federation's defeat. There was still time left in the day, but with Kenobi alive by his side, Maul thought he might see tomorrow.