"Do you need anything else?" your boss calls out as she climbs up the stairs towards the door. You spare a moment to lift your face from your book, squinting at the clock on the far wall.

"Midnight already?" you respond, tilting your head to one side to try and release the tension building up in your neck. The bones give a loud crack and satisfying pop, and you repeat the gesture on the other side, waiting for your boss to respond.

"You've been buried in that book for the last two hours straight." Your boss is at the top of the stairs now, fiddling with the lock on the door. "Have you got your keys?"

A quick check at your hip reveals your keyring, proof of the two long years you put in working your way up the library hierarchy. You're now a trusted student worker, as opposed to a regular student worker, with access to the library at any hour.

"Yep. Close 'er on up, Captain." You give your boss a wave and return you nose to your book, reaching back absently to twist your hair into a simple knot that keeps it out of your face.

"Don't stay here all night now." You look up to see your boss staring down at you, her face worried. "You've been studying too hard lately. You need a break."

You give a false smile as you lift your fifty pound book, waving it in the air. "That's because I have to translate half of this from ancient Greek to English, French, and Arabic. I've got the English, and am half done with French . . ."

"Just make sure you get some sleep." Your boss is standing outside the door now. "Get out a little. Meet some boys. Do something fun!" You smile again and wave, watching her as she sighs and swings the door shut, leaving you locked up in the Pit.

Ahhh, the Pit. By day, it's an ordinary enough part of the library, the resting place of all of the books too big to fit on shelves or too old to be used often. Since it's in the basement of the library, most students never use it--you'd be surprised if half of them even knew about it. By night, however, the Pit is your home. Your boss is the only other person with a key, making it the ideal place for your late night study sessions.

Rolling your tense shoulder slightly you settle back to your work. It would be so much easier to translate the entire thing to English, and then translate it to French and Arabic from the English--but that would be cheating and your teacher would catch it. The point of this whole damn exercise was to capture the nuance of all of the different languages, watching how words translated into French took on a different meaning from those in Arabic and English.

You heave a tortured sigh, turning the page and shoving your glasses back up your nose with an absent gesture. It had seemed like a good idea to study six different languages back when you were eighteen and convinced you could do anything--but at the time no one had told you how much time you'd spend stuck in a book doing boring, dry translation.

As you struggle through a particuarly nasty sentence--trying to convert a verb never seen in French to a tense only used in Greek--you feel the pain start in your lower back, the small ball of tension uncurling and starting to stretch up along your spine. Hours spent either bent over a book reading or hunched over a keyboard typing have done their evil work on you--and you now suffer from chronic back pains. The pain can build up to be excruciating if not headed off within the first few moments it starts, and you realize dully that you're in for a long, long, /long/, night.

You close your eyes for a moment, swearing softly under your breath. A long time ago you learned the trick for ignoring the pain, so you invoke it now. A few deep breaths, changing your focus, and the pain recedes to a dull throbbing, still very much a part of you but subtle enough to ignore.

Content that you're okay for now--but knowing you'll pay double later--you hunch back over your book and dive headlong back into the world of grammar.

You're yanked rather abruptly out when a hand lands on your lower back, fingers splayed out almost possessivly. Knowing that you're the only person who should be in the Pit, you go dead still for a few moments, fear coursing through your body.

A few moments later, however, adrenaline catches up. You fling yourself sideways, cursing the fact that you decided studies were more important than keeping up with your martial arts training. The chair comes down with you, tangling your feet for a few precious moments, but you kick it in the general direction of your attacker before flinging yourself to your feet, grabbing the first thing your hands fall on (your water bottle) and wielding it like a weapon.

The man's eyes are wide with startlement, the aqua-gray pools taking up so much of his face that he looks like a surprised child. He's got one hand resting on his hip, the other one still extended out in the air. He's dressed rather oddly, a strange brown cloak and something that looks like an off-color gi rounding off the outfit. And the haircut--

It's the hair that makes you blink. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," you exclaim loudly, rolling your eyes. "I'm sorry, I don't believe in divine visitations, no matter /how/ many ABH's a write."

"ABH?" the man responds. "What is that suppos--"

"No!" you exclaim, cutting him off. You level a finger at him, shaking it menacingly. "I deny that you are here."

"You can if it makes you feel better . . ." The Padawan shrugs, the gesture drawing your eyes to his strong shoulders. "However, if I could do what I came here to do, I'd be rather grateful."

"And what exactly did you come here to do?" you ask condescendingly. The man is obviously a hallucination, and therefore no danger, so you approach him slowly, determined to vanquish this obvious sign of your own insanity.

"This," Obi-Wan responds, reaching out a hand to brush against your lower back. Suddenly the pain you'd been holding at bay comes flooding back, overwhelming you all at once. Unprepared, your knees cave and you find yourself bent over your desk, Obi-Wan's hand still touching your back. Your breathing is shallow and harsh as you try to squeeze back the tears--but the pain is gone. Completely and totally gone.

"What did you--" No, that's a foolish question. It's obvious /what/ he did--the question is /why/ did he do it?

"Believe it or not, I did it out of self defense," Obi-Wan responds to your thought, pulling you gently back into your chair and arranging your limp arms so that they are pillowing your head. "You were throwing your pain out into the Force, and giving me such an amazing back-ache that I could hardly stand."

"Uhh." For a woman who speaks five modern and four dead languages fluently, you're remarkably unelequoent sometimes. "Thanks, I guess."

"It took no effort on my part," Obi-Wan responds, his fingers digging suddenly into your shoulder as he attacks one of the nasty little knots your muscles have tied themselves into.

You squeak in pain, wincing away, and feel the hands recede. "Sorry," the voice says from behind you. "I could work those knots out, but I'm afraid that they're bad enough that there is really no way to do it painlessly."

Great. You've dreamed Obi-Wan Kenobi up, and all he wants to do is give you a painful backrub. No ripping off of clothing, no throwing you to the floor and making passionate love to you--he wants to cause you physical agony for the greater good.

::Oh, hell,:: you think, sinking back to the desk and relaxing. ::I suppose I might as well get some use out of this hallucination. I guess Slutty-Wan was a little too much to ask for.::

"You know, some days I just want to pinch you fools," Obi-Wan says conversationally, and you spin in your chair to glare up at him.

"Excuse me?" you demand sharply.

"Isn't that what you do here to prove that you're not dreaming?" Obi-Wan rolls his eyes, reaching out to give your arm a vicious little pinch. "See? Hurts, doesn't it? I'm real. Deal with it."

You swear at him in French, he thanks you in the same language, even if it is horribly accented. You the proceed to tell him exactly what you think of him in German--he counters in Austrian slang, informing you that he's quite certain his parents weren't really related. You dig into the darkest depths of Arabic, pulling out insults that would get you kicked out of the department--he calmly corrects your grammar before proceeding to mock you in what sounds like Hutteese.

You throw your book at him. He deflects it calmly without lifting a god damned finger.

"Are you quite done?" he asks you as you fume, out of languages and projectiles.

"I suppose," you respond. Curiosity gets the better of you. "Where did you learn all those languages?"

"As the Padawan to one of the order's top negotiators, I was trained in languages extensively--more so when it was found that I had an inclination for them." Obi-Wan shrugs modestly, a slight smile on his face. "I've had to learn a lot of them."

"How many do you speak?" you ask, anger forgotten in a wave of awe for someone who has mastered the profession you dream of excelling in.

"Oh, I'm not sure. Thirty or so." Ignoring your shocked expression, Obi-Wan moves towards you and turns you around in your chair again, urging your forward so that your head rests on arms. "Do you mind if I at least fix the muscles that are doing your body damage? You're still throwing pain into the Force somehow, and I'm getting a headache from it."

"So much for selflessness," you mutter, relaxing obediently. "I knew that whole concept was too good to be true."

"I tried to do it for your own good the first time," Obi-Wan retorts, "but all I got was a barrage of insults that would shock a bounty hunter, and a book tossed at my head."

"It's good for you eg-aaaiieeee!" Your sentence cuts of in a squeal of pain and a string of curses as his fingers ruthlessly pull at the tense muscles in your shoulder. Tears form in your eyes against your will, and the hands soften slightly.

"Why didn't you seek help before?" Obi-Wan asks softly, one hand beginning to rub soothingly along the back and side of your neck as the other hand continues the torture. Teeth clenched, you have to try three times before you can get a response out around the lump in your throat.

"I just got use--ahh! Used to . . . to liv--arrrh--living with it." The pain is only getting worse, and you're afraid you're about to disgrace yourself by bursting into tears.

"Just a few more moments, and I'll be able to use the Force," Obi-Wan murmurs, his free hand still caressing the side of your neck. You wince as you feel the muscle in your right shoulder spasm, and suddenly the pain is gone. Obi-Wan's hand stills on your shoulder, and you feel a strange tingling creep out from his hand down your arm and back.

"Oh--thank you," you say softly, reveling in the feeling of muscles that aren't tense for the first time in weeks.

"I've still got to do the other side," Obi-Wan says wryly. "Don't thank me yet."

You grit your teeth as he begins again, and somehow manage to endure the agony until he once again rests his hand on your shoulder, sending some kind of energy flowing through your body.

His hands return to your shoulder, massaging gently this time as the tense muscles in your neck slowly relax.

"Thank you," you murmur appreciatively, letting the warmth from his hands spread out to your body, calming the aching nerves.

"You're welcome," he responds softly, fingers creeping up to massage your temples. You feel a great weight lifting off of your shoulder as if all the problems in the world have suddenly been solved. Your eyes slip shut, and you barely notice that you've fallen asleep . . .

You awake the next morning when your boss slams the door open, groaning when she sees you sprawled out over the desk. "I told you to go home and have some fun!" she exclaims, shaking her head and going back to her office.

"Fun," you repeat dully, rubbing the side of your face and trying to figure out what happened. You were studying--and then--

You stretch your shoulders, the absence of pain something like physical shock. Eyes wide you stare down at the table in front of you, blinking when you see that your translation was finished in a neat, orderly hand. Lying on top of your book is a scrap of paper reading only, 'Briston Hotel. Room 1457.'

Blinking you pocket the piece of paper, gathering your books up and heading towards the door. "Of all the fucking . . ."

You make a mental note to visit the Briston Hotel. Maybe tonight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back to the ABH Archive!