Star Wars work in progress You Became to Me

[polgarawolf]

Seventy-third part of a WIP
Title: You Became to Me (as suggested by avari_maethor)
*Pairing: Mainly Anakin/Obi-Wan w/ some mention of Padmé
Rating: See previous one!
Disclaimer: See previous ones!
Summary: See previous ones!
*Author’s Note: 1) Again, please see most of the previous notes!
2) The final scene in this chapter wouldn't all fit! It continues immediately in the next chapter!


Aracaelia, Ruaighne, and Adrastia Organa (Celly, Rouge, and Tia), Bail’s much younger half-sisters, present themselves to Anakin and Obi-Wan bright and early the next morning, the young girls solemn in black mourning gowns that emphasize Tia’s Organa blood (her dark eyes and black hair - but for the ringlets - very like Bail’s and her father’s), make Celly’s dark brown loose curls seem lighter than they truly are (and her blue-green eyes seem even bluer than they are), and make Rouge’s tightly corkscrewed cinnamon-red curls seem even more shockingly bright than they are, greatly emphasizing her resemblance to her green-eyed, lightly cinnamon-haired mother. Surprisingly enough, that formidable woman - Alessya Retrac Organa, a very gifted surgeon and medical teacher less than half a dozen years older than her only surviving second-son (“second” being the preferred designation of children of second marriages on Alderaan) and the eldest living sibling of Sheltay Retrac’s mother, Ysleena (who chose to retain her family name in order to preserve the diminishing line, even as Sheltay has) - has set aside enough time from her busy schedule at the medical facility attached to the University of Alderaan in order to accompany her children to the breakfast table. She smiles warmly at the two Jedi as she ushers the preteen girls (not quite thirteen, just over eleven, and almost nine years of age, respectively) up to the table, green eyes vivid against her light caramel-colored skin despite the dark circles beneath them. “Good morning, Masters. I hope you had a peaceful night?”

“Relatively so, yes, Milady Alessya,” Obi-Wan replies, voice and manner just as warmly politely, before Anakin can volunteer any unnecessary information.

“Good. I trust my sister’s daughter and second-son’s sister have extended their thanks for your aid in convincing Bail to rest?”

“Sheltay and Alaina and Raymus extended their thanks on the behalf of the family, yes.”

The kindly but carefully blank expression yields to genuine warmth then, the laugh lines around Alessya’s eyes and mouth deepening as her polite smile relaxes and widens into a more natural expression. “I’m glad to hear that. I would have liked to be on hand when you arrived, Masters, but unfortunately there was a particularly difficult surgery yesterday and my shift ended up running several hours longer than I’d expected because of it. I’ve taken the liberty of recording a message for you, on the line reserved for your suite. The girls, though, are wondering if they might share your breakfast table.”

Anakin is nodding and grinning a warm welcome at the girls (with whom he actually has made friends over the course of his previous visits to Alderaan and the Royal Palace, despite his previously somewhat warily aloof relationship with their older half-brother) even before she can finish framing the question, and so Obi-Wan inclines his head in agreement, assuring her, “They are quite welcome, Milady.” Then, forehead creasing slightly as the probable importance of her eminently practical (if shockingly black, rather than the normal pristine white or any of the pale shades of green-blue usually adopted by healers on Alderaan) garb of tunic and pants (rather than a gown of any sort) finally sinks in, instantly prompting a cascade of worrisome thoughts to occur to him, he asks, “Will you be working again today?”

Her prompt response instantly smooths away the threatening frown, though. “Yes, Master Kenobi. If there are any questions regarding arrangements, though, I’ve given Sheltay the right to speak for me.”

“Ah. Thank you, Milady.”

“Thank you, Masters. My second-son was in a terrible way, before you arrived, and we were at a loss as to how to help him. Bail means a great deal to all of us and it was not easy to see him like that,” is Alessya’s quiet but heartfelt reply. Then, with a sigh, she adds, “As much as we all love him, though, we know that he has been wasted on politics. Bail was born with a great gift and we all know that he should have been trained as a Jedi, Masters. I cannot thank you enough for allowing him this chance, Masters.”

“He’s more than earned it, Milady,” Anakin replies, gazing at her so earnestly that her smile returns, even brighter than before. “We wouldn’t have chosen him as our Padawan if he weren’t sure that he deserves it.”

“I know you wouldn’t, Master Skywalker. But I’m aware of the fact that the two of you are essentially single-handedly responsible for the changes within your Order that are going to allow people like Bail the chance to receive training for their gifts. Such changes are long overdue, in my estimation, but I never thought to see their like in my lifetime. Thank you.” She smiles at them for a few long (and, to Obi-Wan, uncomfortable) moments, then, all but beaming her approval and thankful happiness, before finally, with a sigh, adding, “I would love to stay and speak with you about these changes, Masters, but I’m afraid that I have a teaching group that will be waiting on me and the practical demonstrations they’re supposed to be observing this morning if I don’t leave soon. Thank you for allowing the girls to share your breakfast table. Please, don’t worry yourselves about them. Their auntie Sheltay will be coming to claim them for a visit to see young Winter fairly soon.”

“We’ll watch out for her, then,” Anakin promises, “won’t we, girls?”

“Yes, Master Anakin,” the girls instantly chorus, most of their solemnity fading in the presence of his warmth.

“Ah. Good. Until later, then, Master Kenobi, Master Skywalker.” Nodding at them briskly in turn, Alessya flashes another warm smile and then turns around and briskly strides back towards the door, her long cinnamon curls tamed in a long braid that bounces in time with her business-like steps.

Anakin waits until she has vanished through the doorway of the small family dining room off of the kitchens that he and Obi-Wan had decided to use to take their meal in, in case any of the rest of Bail’s family might want to speak to them that morning, and then turns to the girls with a brilliant smile. “So. Have you girls been keeping up your practicing, then?”

Born with enough Force-sensitivity each to be considered borderline acceptable by the Jedi Order (but for the youngest, Tia, whose higher midi-chlorian count had put her safely across the cutoff line), Bail’s half-sisters had, like Bail, been kept from the Temple for political reasons, not only because their elder half-brother had, by then, been declared the heir apparent of the Alderaanian throne and had neither any children of his own nor any siblings left alive to possibly succeed him, should anything happen to him, but also because their mother, Alessya, had not wanted her girls to grow up in a Temple where they would be expected primarily to become warriors. In the wake of the Naboo incident, as the Separatist movement gained in momentum, the threat of war had been becoming less like a fabled monster in the closet, used only to frighten possible applicants to the Galactic Republic and fickle voters, and more and more a realistically probable future state of affairs, and their mother simply had not wanted her daughters to have to deal with that reality as Jedi expected to fight for and make themselves utterly expended for the current Galactic government. Since there had been talk, by then, of Bail eventually marrying one of the Antilles girls, though, Alessya had, in a rather unorthodox move possible only on a world like Alderaan, hired as the girls’ primary nanny and teacher an extremely elderly and essentially retired Alderaanian Jedi Healer who had been working with the younglings at the Alderaanian chapterhouse before she reached the age of two hundred and had been given the option of an honorable retirement. Former Jedi Master Kylea Santeri’s mother had been the daughter of a Retrac, and had happily agreed to the employment for five years before the advent of the war had seen her return to the Alderaanian chapterhouse, her duty to the Jedi and her healing skills such that she had felt the need to make herself available to the Jedi assigned to Alderaan for recovery and rehabilitation after taking grievous wounds in battle.

Obi-Wan’s friendship with Bail had, by that point in time, been so firmly established that he and Anakin had both met all three girls on several occasions, so when Tia had begun to have psychometric reactions to random objects both adverse enough and strong enough to affect her empathically and telepathically gifted sisters, Bail had instantly asked Obi-Wan for help. After discussing the subject with Anakin and seeing the seriousness of the situation for himself (which, by then, had been quite serious, with the health of all three girls suffering to the point where they had been sedated and placed in a room deemed psychometrically “clean” enough of any lingering distressing memories to be considered safe for Tia and, thus, for her sisters, too), Obi-Wan had opted for a rather unorthodox but highly effective solution of first teaching the girls how to shield themselves in a manner that essentially deliberately cut them off from the Force entirely (a highly specialized and unsurprisingly not often used variant on meditative control involving learning how to make one’s midi-chlorians go dormant - a trick generally used, in the past, only as a last-ditch method to allow Jedi to hide themselves from enemies able to seek out individuals with a much higher than average midi-chlorian count. Given that the trick is effective only against other Force-sensitive, not extensively trained sentient beings and/or Force-sensitive animals or objects and cannot fool something as simple as a blood-test, even the Jedi normally don’t bother to learn it, anymore. Obi-Wan, however, had come across it in his research into the Sith, and, intrigued, had taken the time to master it, just in case he or Anakin ever had need of such knowledge) and second of teaching them to focus and control the highest area of their Force-sensitivity (telepathy for Celly, empathy for Rouge, and psychometry for Tia), so that they would be able to consciously limit their amount of both active and passive openness to the Force and so, hopefully, keep themselves from experiencing such problems again without having to resort to shutting themselves off from the Force altogether.

That much control over a specific proclivity for a Force-talent usually isn’t taught outside of the Order, but Alderaan has always been fairly closely allied with the Jedi Order and the girls had been in honest need of a higher level of control over their Force-sensitivity, and so Obi-Wan and Anakin had arrived quite easily at the decision to teach them, taking two weeks of downtime to visit Alderaan and work with the girls on the basics of such control, preparing highly detailed recordings of further lessons in control, and meeting with the still quite spry for her age Master Kylea to secure her promise to set a watch over the girls to make absolutely sure that they would continue with those lessons after Anakin and Obi-Wan had gone away again. Since Obi-Wan’s increasing duties as first a General and then a High General has increasingly limited his amount of free time, Anakin has also made a conscious effort to keep in touch with the girls, comming them and Master Kylea to check and double-check on their progress, give them outlet for their frustrations when the training became difficult, and give advice and encouragement whenever time and circumstances both allowed for the checkups. Thus, the three girls have, over the course of the war, become quite used to hearing questions and warnings about keeping up with their lessons from Anakin.

The two youngest girls therefore share a somewhat longsuffering glance before finally, rolling her eyes, Celly declares over their heads, “We can show you later, if you want. But we’re worried about Bail, Master Anakin. Nobody’s let us see him since he got back, and we know he’s been sick because of the way everyone’s been so careful to keep us away from him. We also know that it’s not just a sickness, because Tia and I had to band together to help shield Rogue from the - the darkness,” Celly’s bravado falters slightly then, her matter of fact attitude momentarily failing her at the thought of the miasma that’s been surrounding her half-brother, “around him. And we’ve all had nightmares since he got back, and they were all from outside of us. Did you really help him? We all had the same nightmare last night. It wasn’t like the others, but it was definitely from outside our minds.”

Obi-Wan and Anakin share a startled look at that, Obi-Wan’s right eyebrow raising questioningly and Anakin’s mouth pressing together into an unhappy thin line in answer. You think maybe now the Grand Masters will take my dream seriously? They can’t have picked up that dream from me, not with the shields we put up around ourselves yesterday afternoon. It can only have come from one place: the boy himself. And that means that he damn well does need rescuing, just like I tried to tell the Grand Masters! You think they’ll take the warning seriously, now that four of us have heard him asking for help?

Disturbed by bitterness of the question, Obi-Wan deliberately skirts the issue by pointing out, I think we need to make Alessya aware of the fact that her little girls need to be admitted to the local Jedi chapterhouse for proper teaching, Anakin.

Well. That too. But Obi-Wan -

One issue at a time, Anakin. The girls are here with us now.

Obi-Wan has the distinct impression of the mental equivalent of a both an elaborate rolling of eyes in combination with a long-suffering sigh, but Anakin just turns to Celly and explains, “There’s someone very strong in the Force who’s trapped somewhere - we think on Coruscant, somewhere in the maze of bolt holes and training rooms and storage facilities that the Sith Lord Sidious made his own - trying to get our attention. I received a sort of sending from him last night. I think the dream the three of you had last night was probably a result of the ripples in the Force that the sending caused. Were you dreaming of a dark, dank, and probably underground place with dripping water and someone tied to a chair?”

The three girls nod automatic agreement.

“Then you were dreaming that because you caught the edge of the sending,” Anakin reassures them. “It wasn’t anything to do with our Padawan.”

“Well, that’s good to know, I suppose. But what about Bail?”

“Bail will be alright, Celly. I promise. There was a . . . slight complication, because your big brother is a natural empath and he doesn’t have any conscious knowledge of shields. He got stuck in a feedback loop filled with a lot of really nasty emotions. You all know what a feedback loop is, right?” Anakin asks, looking at them expectantly.

Dutifully, all three chorus, “Yes, Master Anakin.”

Then, with a frown, the youngest, Tia, asks, “But Master Ani, why hadn’t you and Bendu Obi-Wan taught Bail how to shield, if his empathy is so strong?”

“We’d put shields up around him before, little one, but we didn’t know how strong his empathy was. It’s . . . not really empathy, not quite. I’m not sure what the right word for it would be, really. It combines empathy and telepathy and a bit of psychometry, too, I think.” Noticing the looks of increasing puzzlement on the faces of the three girls, Anakin cuts his explanation short, silently adding, along the link, I really wish we knew for sure exactly what we’re dealing with, though, with Bail. It really isn’t just quite like empathy or even a mix of empathy and telepathy. I think he was receiving from that damned knife, too. The longer I think about it, the more I start to wonder if this sensitivity of his might be a warning sign for some kind of new talent altogether or maybe some special skill that combines several other Force-talents that the Order’s forgotten about because of the apparent steady decrease in Force-sensitivity caused by the increasing amount of taint on the Force. Odds are it’s just some quirky sensitivity that Bail’s developed just because he’s so strong in the Force and has been around Jedi so much but has lived without any training of his own. But as popular and persuasive as Bail was, as a politician, I’m starting to wonder if maybe he hasn’t been doing some version of this - tuning into and then reflecting back certain emotions that put people into specific kinds of feedback loops, of sorts, that can win them over to his side, in an argument - off and on all his life. I know is has to be unconscious, but if he’s been doing this all along . . . I don’t know, Obi-Wan. Does that count as mind-tampering, or not? What would you call that, if all you’re doing is receiving and then projecting a being’s own emotions back at that person? Receiving nothing back but a mix of strong curiosity and helpless confusion similar to his own feelings on the subject, Anakin shrugs slightly and then turns his attention back towards the waiting girls. “Anyway, whatever it is, he hadn’t been complaining of any bleed-through or overflow from outside of himself, so we thought he would be alright until we could really start on his training some. If we’d been with him or if he’d stayed at the Temple, I’m sure things never would’ve gotten this bad. But he isolated himself to come back here, and that only made things worse. He didn’t have anyone or anything to distract him, and so he got trapped in the feedback loop. We shocked him out of him, though, and rebuilt him some shields strong enough to keep him safe while he sleeps. As soon as Bail wakes up, I promise you that we’ll teach him how to shield properly, so nothing like this can ever happen again. Okay?”

The girls share one of those brief but almost tangible significant looks that first convinced Anakin and Obi-Wan (just over seven years ago) that all three girls were in possession of higher than average Force-sensitivity, and then Rogue replies for them all with a lowering of her brows and a quiet warning, “If you’re both positive he’ll be okay and that it won’t happen again, then we guess it’ll probably be okay. We know you couldn’t start his training right off. You had to go take care of that nasty General Grievous, and then the Naberries wanted you on Naboo for Lady Padmé Amidala’s funeral, because they’re like us, and they consider you both to be honorary members of their family. But could you please, please, be more careful with Bail, from now on, Masters? Please. We only have the one big brother, you know.”

The immediate flare of guilt along the bond triggers a flash of blood-red rage that leaves Anakin lightheaded, flatfooted with surprise and badly shaken, shaking violently, teeth chattering with aftershock, blinking dumbly (dizzily, vision blurred around the edges) at the faces of three young girls, gazing at him with a sort of horrified fright. Only the presence of Obi-Wan’s hands, clamped down on his shoulders hard enough to cause the bones to grate together, are keeping Anakin in his seat, and he has no clear memory of what might have been said or done in the silence surrounding Rouge’s response to his question.

He is trembling on the border of panicking when Tia’s look of shock fades into a worried frown, the little girl demanding, “Master Ani, are you alright? You look like you’re about to be sick! Did something touch you in the Force? Is it the boy who sent the dream we sensed?”

Faintly, Anakin tries to frame a reply that won’t reveal to them what just happened and will reassure him that they really didn’t feel any of the murderous flare of anger that just scorched itself across his senses. “No, no. But you didn’t - you didn’t feel that?”

Frowning, the girls share another look, Celly finally volunteering, “Well, there might have been something. Maybe. But whatever it was, if it really was anything at all, it didn’t last long enough to even register on our shields. We’ve still got all of our extra shields up, Master Anakin. We didn’t know if it was really safe or not to let them down, and we’ve been shielding pretty much everything out since the morning after Bail came home, so it’s gotten to be second-nature to keep them all up, pretty much. We figured it’d be better to be safe than sorry. Did we miss something important? Was somebody trying to contact us?”

Obi-Wan! Was I - did I - ? What the frack just happened?!

I’m not sure, Anakin. But that wasn’t normal, whatever it was. You’ve never been able to suppress your anger like that. And I can’t believe you would get that furious at Rouge over something that trivial. I think our Padawan might be having a rather nasty nightmare.

Coincidence!?

You have a better explanation, I suppose?

No, no, of course not! It’s just . . . is there even such a thing as a coincidence, with us?

Probably not. But it doesn’t mean that Bail’s subconscious is conspiring with his half sisters, Anakin. It just means that the Force, for whatever reason, decided that would be a good time to allow a brief breach in your shields.

The Force needs to work on its kriffing timing, then! What if they’d felt it? Kark, Obi-Wan! If they hadn’t had their shields still up -

But they did. And they’re fine, Anakin, other than the fact that they’re looking to you for an explanation that you’re currently not giving them.

But -

Anakin. You remember what you said to me, about buts?

A visibly blushing Anakin Skywalker is such a rare sight that the three sisters already looking at him anxiously promptly go slack-jawed, gaping openly in shock. Obi-Wan, for once, is left such a clear victor of one of their verbal matches that he rather feels like gaping himself and might have done so, too, if not for the sudden blinding flash of paralyzing fear, blitzing its way across his senses so rapidly that he barely has time to register it before it is gone again.

He returns to the here and now to find that, this time, Tia has not just anxiously leaned forward in her seat but actually slid out of her chair entirely, rushing around the table to Obi-Wan’s side. Her small hands are grasping at his left arm, shaking him as if in an attempt to rouse him from some kind of fit, when the alien emotion passes. “Master Kenobi! Master Kenobi, are you alright?” she cries out, voice shrill with fright. “Master Ani, do something!”

“That’s alright, child. I am not hurt. You can let go, now.”

“But Master Kenobi - !”

“Tia. I believe Anakin and I may have just experienced separate warnings signs of your brother experiencing a rather nasty nightmare. We have him thoroughly shielded; yet, even so, he is our Padawan, and so there is a bond between him and us, despite the shields. The emotions we are receiving are very brief, but they are powerful, and there is no doubt that they are originating from beyond the bond Anakin and I share. We need to go check on your brother and see what we can do to help stop the nightmares,” Obi-Wan explains, being careful to share enough of what’s happening to keep the girl from protesting again but not to explain so much that she or her sisters fall into a panic about their half-brother’s safety. Then, silently, he adds, for Anakin’s benefit alone, And see who, or what, may have disturbed him. He shouldn’t be stirring this soon, not after the Force suggestions we gave him, and the shields we put up around him should have been more than enough to keep him pinioned safely within himself for awhile, for a change.

Anakin nods agreement before turning back to the girls, adding, “Can you girls do us a favor while we go and check on your brother?”

A quick sharing of frightened (Tia) and worried but curious (Rouge) and anxious but determined glances, and then Rouge declares, firmly, “We’ll be alright while you go see to Bail. Don’t worry about us. Aunt Sheltay will be here soon.”

“Aunt Sheltay is already heading this way,” Obi-Wan quietly corrects her, noticing the distinctive feel of Sheltay Retrac moving towards them, likely less than a room away from them, more than close enough for him to feel the small ripples spreading out around her through the Force, like the wake of a moving ship rippling its way out across (relatively) still water. “The fact is, children, that the three of you are very strong in the Force, and there have been changes in the Jedi Order that would allow you all to be fully trained to control and use all of your talents, if you want, even though you haven’t had the kind of teaching that you would have in the Temple or one of its chapterhouses. Alderaan has a high concentration of Force-sensitive and Force-strong individuals in many of its oldest families, including both of yours. Anakin and I were planning on speaking to your aunts Sheltay and Alaina about seeing to it, sometime soon, that everyone on Alderaan understands the changes that have been made within the Jedi Order so that, when the chapterhouse outside Aldera starts arranging some testing sessions, for Force-sensitivity and suitability for training as Jedi Bendu, everyone will understand that they should go in for testing - including the three of you and most of your immediate family.”

“Oh! We can do that! Master Kenobi, we can get Aunt Sheltay to ask Aunt Alaina and contact the Maeramund chapterhouse about it, so that it’ll all be coordinated and everything!” Tia instantly volunteers, nearly bouncing in place with excitement.

The look Celly gives them is almost as excited as her littlest sister’s, but there’s a hint of thoughtfulness lingering at the back of her eyes, too, as she adds, “Our brother’s been doing his best, lately, to make it look like the chapterhouse here on Alderaan doesn’t have any real Jedi in it anymore, because he’s been so worried about what was going on in the Senate and the way the Supreme Chancellor kept gathering more and more power, but we all know that’s not really true. There’s still a lot of older Jedi and a whole bunch of younglings there, along with some of the Jedi who’ve been hurt so badly fighting in the war that they can’t really fight anymore, at least not until they finish healing and adjusting to their new prostheses. I think it’s operating more like a sanctuary for the wounded and a school for the young than a chapterhouse of the Temple, right now, but it’s still a functioning Jedi enclave. There are enough Jedi there to work with Aunt Alaina, to set up planet-wide testing. The changes in the Jedi Order and the General Recall’s been all over the HoloNet, Masters, but the Grand Masters gave the Jedi here permission to stay until after everything was settled here, since Bail can’t be Crown Prince of Alderaan and a Jedi Bendu Padawan too. It shouldn’t be too hard to do. Is that what you were doing on Naboo, when you stayed behind but sent Bail on back to Coruscant? Helping Queen Apailana and her Jedi advisors organize planet-wide testing of their own, so they can establish a new chapterhouse?”

Looking at Celly’s earnest face, Obi-Wan is reminded, for a moment, of Padmé Amidala, on that ship fleeing from Naboo, so incredibly young and yet already so intelligent, so strong, and so painfully conscious of and devoted to what she perceived as her duty. Fleetingly, it occurs to Obi-Wan that, given their determination that members of the New Jedi Bendu Order will work and live side by side with the non-Force-sensitive citizens of the New Alliance of the Republic, Celly’s earnestness might eventually be put to good use in a political role of some sort or a career in law. Before he has the time to try to turn his attention to the thought, though, Sheltay arrives, leaning in around the open doorway to unobtrusively check and see who the occupants of the room are before she enters. Distracted, he replies with, “In a way, little one, though there were other reasons for remaining, most of them based on the closer ties Anakin and I have with the Naberrie family. It would be well, though, if planet-wide testing could be arranged, hopefully to begin about a month and a half from now, as the General Recall should have ended and there should be Jedi back in the chapterhouse here by then. Thank you.” Then, rising from his chair, he calls out, “Milady Sheltay! You have fortuitous timing, as usual.”

“Master Kenobi.” Sheltay - dressed in a sleeveless black version of the tunic and pants combo that her eldest sister had been wearing when they so briefly spoke to her, earlier - nods her head in polite acceptance of the compliment, but doesn’t bother to hide the curious little half-frown creasing her forehead. “My sister asked me to collect the girls after breakfast, but it doesn’t particularly look as if anyone has eaten hardly anything,” she notes, tilting her head questioningly to the side.

Before Obi-Wan or Anakin can reply, Rouge tells her, “Bail’s upset about something and he’s leaking through his shields, so the Masters were going to go check on him. They’ve given us a task to work on while they’re busy, though!” she adds, her tone brightening quite a bit at the second pronouncement. “Can you sit with us a while, Auntie? We can talk it out over breakfast. You don’t have to eat anything if you’re not hungry.”

Sheltay flicks an eyebrow up in consideration before shrugging and favoring her niece with a warm smile. “I should be happy to join you, younglings. I might even have a sweet roll and jam, if there are enough to go around. But will you excuse me for a moment, first? There’s something I wish to ask the Masters.”

There’s a chorus of small grumblings and eye rolls, but the girls seem to realize that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to really try to protest, and so Obi-Wan and Anakin are able to accompany Sheltay to the doorway. Anakin, typically, gets straight to the point, casting a rather pointed glance up towards Bail’s rooms and then asking her, “Well? Can we help you with something, Lady Sheltay?”

“I don’t believe so, Master Skywalker. But it may help you to know that if Bail’s rest is disturbed, it may be because Raymus and Breha’s sister returned to the Palace early this morning and checked on him before anyone could inform her that the two of you had seen him settled yesterday. Shashai Metonae is . . . a formidable woman, Masters, but she often forgets that there are others of us here who loved Breha and who care about Bail just as much as she does,” Sheltay replies, not bothering to hide or downplay the seriousness of the warning.

Obi-Wan has to exert quite a bit of will to keep himself from grimacing. He does, indeed, recall Shashai Antilles Metonae, the eldest of the Antilles children by a dozen years. About a year and a half younger than Bail, with a daughter about to turn eighteen and twin fifteen-year-old sons, Shashai is a surprisingly tiny woman with the caramel-colored skin of her mother, the deceptively placid, warm chocolate eyes of her father, and hair the color of lafta spice - a color that is not exactly red but rather an earthy shade of mixed tones, with a rich dark nut brown dominating cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg highlights, so that certain kinds of bright, direct light might make it seem a dark, spicy cinnamon color while other lights might make it appear a fairly unremarkable shade of brown - Shashai is the only one of the three living Antilles children with any Force-sensitivity to speak of, and unfortunately almost all of that Force-talent tends towards the clairvoyant end of the spectrum. Irregularly able to sense past events in some way focused around inanimate objects or places and constantly plagued by troublesomely vague and jumbled dreams of the past (mostly the far distant past) and, occasionally, the near future, the lady has long been completely convinced that Alderaan, and not some mysterious and unknown planet lost in the mists and fog of time, was the actual birthplace of what would become the Jedi Order. And she has not been shy about sharing this opinion with either the Jedi residents of the chapterhouse on the Maeramund River, outside Aldera, or with her brother-by-marriage Bail’s friends from the Coruscanti Temple. Obi-Wan, for one, while intrigued by the notion that there may have very well been an enclave of at least some sort of Force-centered organization close enough in nature to the Jedi Order and with members strong enough in the Force to have left an enough of an indelible impression on the planet for someone as sensitive as Shashai to be able to pick up on it, thousands of years after the fact, has never possessed enough free time to be able to devote any of his attention to the mystery, and his utter inability to convey that lack of time (not lack of interest, but actual lack of opportunity to act on what is, for him, a very real interest) to the rather persistent lady in question has led to more than a little frustration over the years.

Perhaps more importantly, though, if Shashai visited Bail and she was experiencing one of her more psychometrically open spells, she might very well have accidentally done something to disturb either the shields they’d placed around Bail or the Force-suggestion ensuring that Bail could actually get some deep, restful, peaceful slumber - a possibility that Anakin also seems to have realized, judging by the slight grimace he has not bothered to restrain and slightly huffy sigh. “If possible, could you contact Milady Alaina about seeing to it that no one - and I do mean no one - is allowed into Bail’s rooms or to disturb his rest in any way from now on until he actually gets up again and starts moving around under his own steam? Please?”

Nodding, Sheltay promises, “I will see what I can do about that, Master Skywalker, yes. I hope that whatever it is will not prove to be too serious,” she adds, not bothering to hide her worry. “Bail had been pushing himself very hard, even before news of the tragedy broke, and he would likely be in need of rest by now even if it weren’t for what had happened.”

“Thank you, Sheltay. We will keep that in mind,” Obi-Wan promises, remembering his first impression of Bail’s (obviously suffering) health when he’d first seen him again, after his and Anakin’s precipitous return to Coruscant, and the man’s unfortunately undeniable tendency to work himself half to death, pursuing tasks and schemes and various functions and plans that, while important, might have been safely divvied up among trusted, like-minded individuals, if only Bail weren’t so stubbornly determined to see to so many of the details himself.

“Thank you, Masters. I’ll go see to the young ones then, now. They are doubtlessly growing impatient with us,” Sheltay notes, smiling fondly in the direction of the girls, before bowing her head to them in turn, politely giving them their opening to turn their attention away from her and the girls to their Padawan.

Grimly silent, they return her nods and then turn to slip out the open door, heading back towards their Padawan’s rooms.

*********

First is the darkness and the peace that comes with having been fed a Force-compulsion so strong that thinking and feeling became quite impossible. He floats there, in the comforting darkness, quiet and content simply to rest, simply to be, without struggling, for an unknowable stretch of time.

Then, quite suddenly, there is pain. Unfocused, yes, but near at hand. And strong. Force, strong! Like the touch of too much sun on skin already reddened and burned by overexposure to the elements. Somehow, it worms it way past the compulsion, seeping within the darkness, no matter how hard he tries to turn away from it, burrow away within the darkness and shunt it aside somehow, pushing uncomfortably into all of the newly raw and broken open places in his mind and heart and, worse, his psyche, his soul, throbbing in a way that clearly promises nothing but more and even more pain to come.

And then, nothing but pain. Fiery agony burrowing under his skin, into his veins, flames dancing with insouciant merriness along his already badly stretch and scraped nerves and blazing a way into his bruised and bleeding and fragile mind. Pain of fear, pain of anger, pain of shame, pain of actual physical suffering, pain of mental and emotional and physical agony converging in the kind of deadly trio of effects that so often accompany actual deliberate torture, unmistakable and unbearable, and it continues long past the moment when he begins to think and then to be sure that either his heart will explode or his sanity will shatter or else that both things will happen at once. He screams, then, or at least he thinks he does. He is completely lost in it, trapped, with no way out, the darkness an enemy now where before it had been a sanctuary, no way to escape it, not even through death (even if he could choose that exit), for the pain is such that it will not release him, not even to death.

Despair is beginning to threaten to swallow him whole, along with the pain, when, just as suddenly as the pain had first come to him, it is just as suddenly gone away. It leaves him aching, though, feeling as if he’s has all of his skin sandblasted away and his nerves stripped of all their protective coating, like insulated cables deliberately stripped of their casings all the way down to the metal of their actual wires. Shielding gone, nothing left but him, stripped bare and flayed raw and broken open and aching with the pain of the over-sensitized -

- and into that, without warning, comes the dream. Or vision. Hallucination. Whatever it is. It feels real, absolutely and utterly, completely real, frightfully real. A dream. But realer than many things he has experienced while waking.

“Bail? Athrys? Come on, focus! Focus, chaos take it! Your anama-chara has need of you and I’m the only one close enough to being free with enough strength left to be able to reach you right now. So do me a favor and just focus some now, okay?”

The face is familiar. It looks vaguely like Anakin Skywalker - something like an oval, if not for the strong line of jaw. Fairly full lips. Not as full as Anakin’s, but then, few have quite so generous mouths as that. Sandy hair, bleached yellow by the sun on top, on the outermost layer. But only the barest hint of a dimple in a chin a little too pointed to really look like Anakin’s, and with eyes easily as dark as a clone trooper’s under the arches of surprisingly (dramatically) dark eyebrows. Still, the build is similar to that of Anakin’s - granted, an Anakin Skywalker who has not yet seen more than a year of warfare, yet. An Anakin not yet bulking at the shoulder with a hardened warrior’s muscles. An Anakin still closer to slender wiriness than the solidity of muscle earned during three years plus worth of battle. This is a dancer’s build rather than a warrior’s. And he is reminded, quite suddenly, almost painfully of Obi-Wan Kenobi, when he had first been earning the trust and friendship of a young Bendu Padawan practically dwarfed to child-sized in the shadow of his larger-than-life Master, Qui-Gon Jinn. The memory is unexpected enough to make him gasp, and the involuntary jerking motion brings its own surprise in an almost echoing absence of pain, so startling that he nearly gives in to the irrational urge to pinch himself, just to be sure that his body has not simply gone numb to the sensation.

“Bail? Look, seriously, could you please just focus on me for a minute? Please? Worry about whatever it is later, alright? This is important. He’s really hurting and he needs you. Point of fact, we’re all getting kind of close to being ten percent instead of one hundred percent, as our favorite boys in white would put it, but he’s been trapped in the darkness for so long without any real contact with the outside world that it’s starting to eat him alive. Seriously, Bail. Okay? He’s starting to break and there’s not a whole lot we can do for him anymore because he can’t seem to sense us anymore, no matter how hard we try to get through to him. You really need to find him. Soon. Okay? Baby brother managed to reach Athair Skywalker not too long ago, but that kind of search won’t do your anama-chara a whole lot of good if no one actually bothers to open the box he’s locked away in. You know?”

Anama-chara. Athair. Athrys. His brain fuzzily recognizes the Alderaanian words for completion-of-the-soul, father, and beloved/respected master/teacher. He is so surprised to hear them that it takes him a while to realize that the young man is waiting for a response. And his mind is, by then, so muzzy with surprise and incomprehension that, in the end, what he finally asks is a rather unimaginative, “What the blazes are you even talking about? Who are you?”

The stripling looks so entirely disgusted for a moment that Bail could almost believe that the boy’s label of “father” for Anakin is meant to be taken literally . . . if not for the fact that he is quite positive that the twins are the only children that Obi-Wan and Anakin will ever have who are going to be children of their flesh. (Well. Children genetically of their flesh, anyway, though he understands that the reality of just what the twins actually are is a bit more complicated than that.) “Oh, for pity’s sake! You are Athair Skywalker and Athair Kenobi’s Padawan, aren’t you? I haven’t overshot the blasted mark and somehow managed to catch you somewhere before freeing us ever even became a possibility, have I?”

Bail just looks at the young man, too confused now to even begin to know what to say or how he might try to answer that question. Instead, unable to think of anything else to do, he finally asks, “Are you trapped somewhere?”

“Am I - ? Well. You could certainly put it that way.” The teen snorts, apparently grimly amused by the whole situation. Out of the blue, he then adds, “This isn’t really what I look like now, you know. This is what I’m supposed to look like, according to what I was able to pick up from the good doctors before that piece of snot Sith stopped letting anyone else but him get close enough to us for anybody to be able to pick up anything useful from the surface of their minds. Baby brother was probably closer to looking right than I do, since he’s . . . erhm, less confined than the rest of us are. They’ve actually let him use his eyes and such to sense some things.”

Able to tell that the young man is expecting a response of some kind but unable to gather up enough of his wits to think of anything worth saying, Bail finally just asks, “Baby brother?”

The question elicits a shrug. “Sorry. No names. He’s younger than I am, even though his body’s older. That bitch Zan Arbor forced his growth, to see how far she could push it before it started to impact other things, health-wise, too much,” is the unabashedly bitter response.

Stunned, all he can do is ask, “Jenna Zan Arbor?”

The stripling looks at him as if he’s sprouted a second (gibbering and not very bright, for that matter) head. Scornfully, he retorts, “Of course Jenna Zan Arbor! The other two aren’t old enough yet to be capable of that kind of ‘delicate’ procedure, even if they show signs of being smarter, in some ways, than their bitch mother. Granta Omega may’ve taken after his mother, Yura, and his grandfather, Crion, instead of his father, but that doesn’t mean the man’s genes were entirely bad. Xanatos was very careful about that, you know. The child was meant to be a peace-offering, to get his father to stop trying to take him back from the Jedi Temple. Or at least he was until that strìosach Qui-Gon Jinn - who, Force be my witness, I will see brought to justice and rightfully recognized as kàil’strìosaim, as he more than deserves for what he’s done to both of the unfortunate ones he took on at his Padawan learners! - decided to abandon him first to Crion and then to Telos, making the offering entirely superfluous.”

Gaping dumbly at the young man’s dark scowl, stunned by the obvious vitriol sparked by the thought of Qui-Gon Jinn and unable to fathom what the digression about Granta Omega and Xanatos could possibly have to do with Jenna Zan Arbor in any case, Bail finally exclaims a confused, “I beg your pardon? That’s Bendu Kenobi’s former Master you’re talking about!”

The young man responds with a distinctly unhappy snarl the shows off his very straight, very white teeth to great advantage. “Don’t. Remind. Me.”

Bail finds himself in the unhappy position, then, of being able to do little more than blink dumbly at the young man, and finds himself wondering if perhaps something is keeping him from being able to think as clearly as he usually can. Finally, though, after several heartbeats of strained silence, he gives up trying to think of anything cleverer to say, and simply say, “Alright. But if you’re trying to warn me about something, young one, I’m afraid you’re going to have to be a great deal clearer than you have been so far. You might start by trying to consider what you might have said if you had, ah, ‘overshot the blasted mark,’ alright?”

The teen looks at him for a moment as if he suspects that Bail is having one over on him, but whatever he sees in Bail’s face must convince him that Bail is speaking nothing but truth, for his sighs, bows his head a moment, and then asks, “You know who your anama-chara is, right? I mean, you know how things were supposed to go, how they were meant to go, with you in the Jedi Order and your parents planning to have another child, if needs must, to bear the title of Crown Prince or Queen of Alderaan?”

“I have my suspicions regarding that second question.”

“Your anama-chara was meant for Athrys Dooku and, though I find it hard to fathom the possibility of that one ever truly teaching anyone, you were meant for Athrys Dooku’s previous student. Athair Skywalker was always meant for Athair Kenobi, though I suppose, in a perfect world, that strìosac Qui-Gon Jinn might have been worthy of teaching him a little as well, as Athair Skywalker has always said the dreams he had when he was still a child on Tatooine indicated. Does this confirm with your suspicions?” the stripling asks, raising an eyebrow questioningly in a manner that somehow, despite the fact that the boy’s really looks nothing at all like Obi-Wan through the face, nevertheless reminds Bail almost eerily of Obi-Wan.

“If by my anama-chara you mean Xanatos of Telos IV,” Bail finally finds the wits enough to reply, though he finds he has difficulty gathering in enough breath to speak the name of Qui-Gon’s first, failed apprentice, “then I must answer yes.”

“Have you ever truly thought there might be another for you? I know for a fact he dreamed of you often, when he still had his body, even though he’d never met you.”

“I never would have even known he’d existed, if it weren’t for Obi-Wan.”

“He finally found you, through watching Athair Kenobi. He’s told all of us all about it, several times. I think he still finds it hard to believe that you’re real. He was so sure you were only a dream, like so many other dreams he’d had, most of them destroyed at the hands of the one who usurped his proper Master’s position.”

Frowning slightly at the young man’s tone, Bail quietly notes, “Obi-Wan would tell you not to be so bitter, child. Grudges, like guilt, breed death and corruption. Master Dooku let Qui-Gon declare for Xanatos. As far as I know, there was never a dispute between them over that.”

“That doesn’t excuse what he did! That - that man,” he practically spits the word out, clearly thoroughly disgusted with Qui-Gon and furious for the sake of both his apprentices, “is just such a damned hypocrite! He preached at everyone and anyone who would listen, the whole of his miserable life, about the importance of obeying the will of the Force and of listening to the voice of the Living Force, and what yet did he do and what does he still do? He spent his life constantly placing the fulfillment of his own will and the cultivation of his hugely excessive pride above obeying or even seeking to know the will of the Force, deafened to the voice of the Living Force in nearly every instance of true import that touched upon his life by the noise of his own yawping, stealing and attempting to steal those who were meant to be apprenticed to other, much more worthy men, and consistently, perpetually hurting the ones he should have been willing to die before harming! Even now, he still refuses to place the will of the Force above his own pride, refusing to admit the extent of his culpability in the calamity that so nearly came to pass!” The teen is practically shouting at the last, obviously offended by and outraged at Qui-Gon’s behavior, his voice full of such righteous rage that Bail finds himself leaning backwards, as though from a bank of threatening storm clouds or a fire threatening to become a firestorm.

Even the nearness of so much anger is enough to make him ache with remembered self-directed rage and pain at his failure, his loss. Not really wanting to suffer through another round of suffering like that, Bail winces away from the teen again and then tries to diffuse the situation by noting, rather plaintively, “Child. Could you perhaps vent your anger in another direction? I have but recently learned of my wife’s passing, and my nerves are still scraped rather raw.”

“Ah, frell. Athrys Bail, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I did miss my mark. I just seem to have undershot it, is all,” the stripling sighs, giving him a look half of pained regret and half of simple frustration. “Baby brother kept telling me I wouldn’t be able to reach back far enough to leave a warning before his own, not without a greater grasp of the time-flows, but I was so sure I’d be able to do it!” He sighs again, pure frustration this time, and rakes a hand through his slightly overlong on top but cut fairly short in the back hair (which somehow, again, reminds Bail of Anakin). “Okay. Look. Athair Skywalker should’ve had a very specific type of dream lately, one that he’s probably been hoping for awhile to never have again. Baby brother isn’t too sure why the idea of things breaking is so powerful in Athair Skywalker’s mind, but when he has prescient dreams about people who are important in his life and who’re in danger of losing their lives, they always break. He and Athair Kenobi don’t know us yet, but we’re going to be important in their lives because we’re, ah, kind of family. Sort of. Well . . . related might be a better word for it, actually. It would take an awful long time to explain, though, and I don’t have that much time to spare at the moment, so you’ll just have to take my word on it for now, okay? Just ask Athair Skywalker if he’s had a dream lately about a boy trapped somewhere underground, shattering. And then tell him that you’ve had a dream like that. Share the whole dream, if you want to. It’s a kind of telepathic sending rather than a dream, technically, but your mind is processing it as a dream because I’m guessing you’re asleep and it’s easier to reach people like this when they’re either sleeping, unconscious, or sunk deep in meditation. Just be sure when you tell him about this that you warn him not to trust the Grand Masters to find us all, alright? Not by themselves, anyway. Athrys Dooku means well, but he’s in love with Qui-Gon and that blinds him to certain realities - something that Athair Kenobi unfortunately isn’t immune to, though his love for Qui-Gon is not and never has been in any way comparable to Athrys Dooku’s, thank the Force!”

Brow furrowed with confusion, Bail simply regards the teen silently for a few moments, not bothering to hide his skepticism. As far as he knows, there’s no way that what the stripling seems to be implying (that he and a brother and some unnamed number of others are related in some way to both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker) could be true . . . unless, perhaps, Shmi Skywalker had a sibling that she never told Anakin about, and that sibling somehow found and wed a relative of Master Kenobi. If that were true, though, then why the mention of Jenna Zan Arbor - one of the most feared scientists (being prodigiously gifted in such divers fields as chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and genetics while also apparently being utterly lacking in anything approaching a normal, functioning conscience) ever to work for the Confederacy of Independent Systems - and forced growth, hinting at some kind of horrible tampering . . . ? His frown deepening as a horrible suspicion starts to form at the back of his mind, Bail abruptly demands, “But Xanatos died on Telos, in that acid pit . . . didn’t he?”

“His body ceased to be the house of his spirit. There is a difference, as you should be quite aware of, by now.”

“If he had dealings with Jenna Zan Arbor first, then I fail to see how this man’s spirit could possibly be of any interest to me.”

The nameless youth stares at him for several moments in stunned silence, his fact frozen in an expression of horrified shock, before he finally breathes, “Spast! What has that strìosach been telling you? I know he is a liar, but great stars! You speak of your anama-chara as if he were a monster! What is wrong with you? He never worked with that Sithspawned trollop!”

“Then why - ?”

The teen cuts him off, though, plainly offended, snapping, “Oh, for stars’ sake! What she’s done to us has nothing to do with him!”

“And I repeat: then why - ?”

“Because his son was a revenge-addled fool who thought volunteering as a test subject would allow her to figure out a way to make him Force-sensitive and Sidious was a sadistic son of a Sith harlot who liked to collect things no being should ever try to lay claim to!”

“Wait a moment. Are you telling me that Granta Omega and Jenna Zan Arbor were somehow connected?” Bail exclaims, stunned.

Grimly amused, the teenager replies with the flippant observation of, “If you call sharing parenting rights for two children a connection, then yes.”

Eyes widening in surprise - remembering both Obi-Wan’s straightforward sorrow at the loss of Darra Thel-Tannis (though it had been bound up with a surprising amount of what, to Bail, has always seemed like wholly righteous anger towards the cause of that young Padawan’s death, Ferus Olin) and the confusion of grief and relief he had suffered over the death of Granta Omega, who had not even been thirty, yet, when he met his end, in the aftermath of Darra’s senselessly unnecessary death, on Korriban - Bail finds himself blurting out a rather aghast, “But isn’t Jenna Zan Arbor my age?”

Shrugging with offhanded nonchalance, the nameless teen replies by observing, “About a handful of years older, actually. Not that you could tell it to look at her. She’s surprisingly vain, all things considered, and so far she’s had both the technical know-how and the means to preserve her looks. Some of her little tricks are a bit more obviously illegal and immoral than even the likes of the slavers of the Senex Sector would feel quite comfortable attempting, but she could doubtlessly still make a fortune on the black market by limiting herself to the earliest of the drugs and procedures she perfected. Since she doesn’t particularly like to share, though, and it’s next to impossible to get her to do something she doesn’t want to do, that probably won’t be happening any time soon.”

Swallowing hard against a sudden roil of nausea in his stomach, Bail notes (his voice quite a bit fainter than normal), “That’s more information than I needed or wanted to know.”

The stripling only shrugs ago, though, clearly unimpressed by Bail’s slightly nauseated look. “You asked, Athrys. If you might not want to know the answer to a question, then you probably shouldn’t ask it.”

“I will keep that in mind.”

“Well, while you’re doing that, you also might want to remember that Zan Arbor is a dangerous enemy with a very long list of contacts and supporters, less than half of which are on the list of CIS leaders who’ve proposed to make the end of the war final by volunteering for High Justice. She is obsessed with the Force, has no conscience to speak of, and harbors quite a bit of a grudge against Qui-Gon and Athair Kenobi both, for exposing her rather highly illegal and even more immoral experiments to the media and the greater scientific community. I wouldn’t care if it were just Qui-Gon, but he only survived her particular notion of research because Athair Kenobi rescued him, and she knows it. She also knows that Athair Kenobi cares for that thrice-blast sleemo, and Qui-Gon isn’t exactly the only Force spirit in existence. Anything she might eventually think of to try to get at Qui-Gon so that she could get at Athair Kenobi could far too easily end up being turned against somebody else - several someone else’s, actually, from what I understand, and almost all of them far less deserving of whatever vengeance she might dream up than Qui-Gon - and I’d just as soon not have that on my conscience. Be sure to warn Athair Kenobi to watch out for her, alright? That woman is seriously bad news. Seriously. Thank the Force she wasn’t born Force-sensitive, because I’ve no doubt that she could’ve given Sidious a real run for the money, in a race to see who could’ve inflicted the most damage on the galaxy, if she’d been a Sith. Psychopaths do tend to make the best Sith, in case you haven’t noticed: no pesky consciences or irrational attachments to others to adulterate their perfectly selfish selves.”

“And who exactly am I supposed to say passed this warning along?”

“I told you already, we don’t have names. Just let them see the sending. All of it. Alright? Athair Kenobi won’t be very happy to hear me call Qui-Gon a sleemo and he’s far too loyal to listen to any warning I might attempt to pass on about that hypocrite, but Athair Skywalker isn’t nearly as trusting and he’ll be glad for another confirmation that the person in his dream is real, even if it will make him anxious about getting back to Coruscant as quickly as possible.”

“And I’m just supposed to trust you?”

“You think, what, that I’m some figment of your imagination?”

“You might be a Dark Jedi, like Xanatos was.”

The look the young boy gives him, then, is so dark and flatly forbidding that Bail actually finds himself flinching backwards. “Don’t call him Dark. You don’t understand enough about the taint on the Force that can twist and corrupt those who dwell in constant contact with it and the imbalances within that can drive a being to exclusively embrace that poisonous taint, over the purity of the power that is the Force, to speak of such things, Athrys Bail.”

Stung, Bail finds himself arguing, “I know enough to understand that there is no part of the Force that is evil, in and of itself. I know enough to have argued, for years, that the Dark Side seems more like a state of mind than an actual assortment of Force-talents.”

His voice even more flatly immovable than before, the boy snaps, “Not good enough. You shouldn’t speak of what you don’t understand.”

Beginning to find himself offended, Bail retorts, “And I suppose you wish to tell me what I’m allowed to think about morality and galactic politics, as well, seeing what a novice I am?”

The boy has the good grace to flush, but he still insists, “This isn’t like that! The Force is a lot more complex than just about anyone alive has given it proper credit for and you people don’t know enough about what was done to Xanatos for a proper judgment. Trust me on this. You people don’t know enough about what Qui-Gon did to him to be able to judge.”

“If I were a Dark Jedi looking to cause trouble, I might make just that kind of accusatory claims, hinting at things vague, yet disturbing, and not easily proven one way or the other. I would especially make sure to center my claims around a man who cannot say either yea or nay regarding those asseverations, given that he is long dead.”

“His body perished. It’s - ”

“ - not the same. Yes, yes, I heard you the first time,” Bail interrupts, waving his right hand in a negligently dismissive attitude. “But given that Xanatos has never bothered to try to intervene in the unfolding of current events, as Qui-Gon so manifestly has, and given that I do not believe he ever received enough training or contained enough self-centered rage to survive as a Sith ghost, seeking after other host bodies to possess, I find it rather hard to believe your little hints about the survival of his mind and memories and soul,” he adds, crossing his arms before him in an openly challenging position.

“Hard to interfere with events when you’ve been caught in a Force-trap and locked away in a box!” the nameless teenager all but snarls in reply.

But, “What Force-trap? What box? And how am I to know you aren’t simply making both things up, as a way to foment distrust and trouble? You can’t even give me a name, child!” Bail only points out, throwing up his hands to drive the point home.

“I haven’t got time for this! Contact can only last as long as you’re still in a dream-state and you’re already starting to wake up!”

“Then I’m afraid I won’t have time to try to explain this little interlude to my Masters.”

“Bail - !”

“And I never gave you leave to speak to me so informally. I am still the Crown Prince of Alderaan. You can respect that, as well as my wishes for some solid evidence, or you can leave.”

Again, this scene continues immediately in the next chapter!