Title: ABH: The Pit (1/1)
Author: Darth Diebin darthdiebin@hotmail.com
Rating: Oh, PG/PG-13 I dunno really. No smut. Clean, pure, fluff.
Summery: Spawned from the same plot bunny as BJ's 'Study Breaks' . . . only
she was a lot more timely in completing hers. I just kinda never got around
to it.
Plot: Need not apply. There is really no point to this--but hey. It's here,
maybe someone will get a laugh out of it.
Disclaimer: You may OWN him George, but I haven't seen you do anything
worthy with him yet. Sheesh. Oh well, I'll fight you for him someday, but
not today.
Dedicated: To anyone who has EVER sat up late trying to translate funky
grammar.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"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.
~~~~~~