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Anyone on that planet will tell you how they grieved at Padmé Amidala’s funeral. Some know the truth. Few will admit it. She did not die in childbirth, but she knew that to protect her children that the whole galaxy had to believe that she died.
Upon her internment, she fled, hid in the outer rims and lived out of reach, in great heartbreak, out of reach of her family, her children, out of reach of him sensing her. She lived a long life, some say even had more children and went on to help others in need, but never fulfilled, always a void, sad.
Strong rumors even spread that she made a few daring visits to her young daughter on Alderaan (fuzzy accounts exist that she visited her son on Tatooine) but that it became much too dangerous, and she had said a final goodbye to Leia at such a young age that the child would probably just hold the memory as images, nothing certain, an impression of her beauty, her heart, her longing, her pain.
“What does it matter if my grandmother had more children? They would not be strong with the Force unless she had met another Jedi as strong with the Force as my grandfather.” Ben mused.
“Wouldn’t it matter to you that you have more family out there? This stranger pushed. “Perhaps they aren’t strong with the Force, but perhaps there are more ways to be powerful in this galaxy. Perhaps they would have stories from your grandmother about your grandfather.”
She hadn’t decided if it was wise or not to hint at these stories passed down amongst her people from the descendants of the Amidalas, but it was too late to take back what she had just implied. And her intention was to remain silent no matter what his next words were because she felt like that she had just revealed the location of Padme’s descendants although she didn’t even know where that was.
She questioned herself on why she felt the need to share all this with him, only knowing him for these few months, but she also knew the answer to the questions that she posed to herself about why she felt so compelled to share details with just him.
The rain had started to come down, she could tell it was one of those rare storms, soon the pressure would increase in the atmosphere, intensifying gravity, and send down the heavier, rain infused with metallic particles, but she was determined to confront him. The moments after her release of regret, her conscious regained dominance and her anger surfaced. She marched to his quarters and didn’t find him there. She closed her eyes and sensed his presence; she whispered a spell to detect its location.
In the cave past the meadow she found him pacing. Instinct led her hand to her waist even though she knew their lightsabers were with Master Luke.
“What were you doing out there?” She interrupted his brooding.
“What about you? A witch! Infiltrating the Force with your spells.” She clenched her teeth together; her hand without a saber grasped its absence tightly.
“It’s not witchcraft. You have no understanding. All your talk about evolving the Jedi, changing the order, drawing on the diverse powers of this galaxy, this universe to strengthen the Force, and you’re questioning that I draw on unconventional resources to enhance the Force?”
He retreated into the cave as the air pressure became denser. She, using a spell remained outside, cornering him in his retreat, the metallic rain beading off of the shield she conjured around her. The pressure of the atmosphere pushed him down to the stone floor. Angry as she was, she felt sympathy as he struggled with the the pressure. She entered the cave and altered the pressure. She smiled, acknowledging how she could set the spell and relinquish her control as opposed to the Force where she had to keep energy focused on what she made it control. At least for now that was the limit of her control with the Force.
“Thoughts on my abilities, now?” She stood over him as he regained composure. He looked up at her; his pupils dilated, eyebrows raised and she sensed the pulse of his heartbeat so strong it felt as if it was directly pressed against her own. Her gaze penetrated through his as she took a deep breath, elongating her posture, entrenched in the moment of this immense control, the power she felt over him, a power she had never felt over anyone. And then it became a weakness as he Force-pushed her and her arrogant stare back. Her spell broke and so had the rains. The pressure of the atmosphere had returned to a state acceptable for their species. The remnants of the metallic downpour streamed into the cave pooling around her as she sat prone on the ground.
“Your complacency with those obscure spells is your weakness.” He stood over her now, but only momentarily as his statement returned her anger to her and she hopped up from the ground. Insults about her heritage were unnecessary, but she was prepared to return them.
“Your aspirations to be your grandfather is yours.” Saberless, she tried to pierce him with these words; they locked in a stare but both shared the fear of what any attempts to control the other with the Force or what hand-to-hand combat might lead them to. He was no longer the lanky awkward adolescent for which she felt a silly girlhood crush for; he was a young man, body built and cut by intense training, and she was surprised at her lack of power to resist being drawn to him, into him....
She sat upright next to him, drenched by perspiration that streamed down her bare chest, awakened from a vision of the metallic rain, a disturbance, masked figures. She focused on making her breath short deep gasps into slow breaths. She glanced back down over her shoulder at him, certain he would have felt such a tremor in the Force, but he lay vulnerable in his stripped slumber, cloaked only in such comfort she glimpsed for a moment the innocent boy emerging from the loneliness and isolation of his time in training. Such comfort his peace gave her that she lay back down on his pale, bare chest and slept until uninterrupted by the late rising of the eastern suns cutting through the redwoods and into their shelter. Impulse requited.
She had devoted a portion of her strength controlling her impulse to use some of the forbidden arts of her culture. She wanted to learn the ways of the Jedi, pure, unaided by ancient spells and powers. Training was getting more difficult as was her ability to keep this skill set repressed. She was proud as she excelled past those with whom she had begun training, even after her injury, and often detached from the moment wondering how much farther she could excel if she had allowed herself to use those powers. The distraction was so disabling but it set a great contrast to those moments that she could clear that from her head and allow the Force to flow throughout her, she felt more powerful than any spell ever made her. She worked on forgetting her past, the traditions, her mother’s teachings to keep her mind consistently clear. She made a deal with herself to stay away from the archives just until she could have complete control of thoughts of her culture, then she promised herself she would return to her research.
Ben and she had found other places to meet. He saw the acceleration of her control of the Force and on hiatus from their research, they would test each other in their secret meetings. He had a such a surge of the Force that she wanted to match; it seemed more powerful sometimes that he could not control it. She began to imagine that she could match his power if she returned to her culture’s craft, that ability would help her equal the surge of the Force in him. And soon, the memory of being intimidated by him became distant and implausible.
In their training with Master Luke, she and Ben were paired up to spar. She feared that Master Luke would sense her use of that craft but more feared losing a match to Ben. She exploited his confidence and lack of control over the immense Force flowing through him. She held back on using any of her familial arts for half the spar; he had seemed to be holding back; he feared any similarities in their methods could reveal their secret training, and then he became unpredictable. Luke cautioned Ben on the the feelings he sensed, confused about the fear he sensed Ben was trying hard to conceal. She decided to provoke him, to push him to reveal that fear because it would give her an advantage.
In spending time together, she could push taunting him. He revealed good humor and patience with her contrary to the rumors she had heard about him reacting strongly to any attempts to reveal his vulnerability. She had seen glimpses of it in his training with Luke who knew the potential Jedi inside of Ben, pushing him harder, testing his temper.
Suddenly in sync, the flow of the Force released any control that she felt, including drawing forth her craft, the act of defeating Ben no longer required her conscious thought. He seemed to move in increasingly slower movements, she could see the molecules vibrate with each of her moves, her saber leaving trails with each movement. Then she felt a shattering in the Force, and Ben no longer moved in slow movements but in erratic, fierce pulses. The swings of their sabers left intertwining glowing trails in the air as they no longer sparred but fought. As they charged for each other and locked sabers, their master held them in place forcing them to stare at each other, to fix on the expression of the other, to silence the growls of their attempts to use mind tricks against each other. Their muscles began to burn frozen in this stance and Master Luke shut off their sabers and took possession of them and pushed them away from each other, both falling to the ground. He looked back and forth between them, finding a moment of weakness as the adrenaline drained away.
As she felt her thoughts slip from her control, she felt Ben panic at her slip then felt his anger at her use of her culture’s spells and those thoughts became clear to Luke. “Much more training do you both require.” He turned and walked away. Vulnerability on display brought a surge of relief and she began to cry; there was no need to expend any more energy on these secrets. She wiped her tears and stood up and looked across at Ben. She knew that anything between them had to end, had to be let go in the flood of regret between them.
Her chin rested on the force field and her shoulders dropped as she sighed; she turned the pages of the ancient manuscript protected beneath. Her touch separated by millimeters of field -- so close to feeling the delicate pages that held so much power -- a power granted by its rarity, ability to survive a purge to hide the positive accomplishments of a man many planets urged its people to see as a demon, to be feared not revered. She pressed more for her face into the field to get closer, her fingers pressing hard onto the page an incomplete, interrupted caress of the page. She rested her head on her arm on the field, an exhaustion from the late hour and from the realization that what had been constantly challenged and denied to her in this place but shared with her as a child back home, ideas and points of view vehemently rejected lay in truth, millimeters from her touch. Jedi were willingly following lies about the Sith, perpetuated by the galaxy. A myth glorifying, denying, hiding the other points of view, pushing an incomplete picture of the truth.
The medical droid gave her clearance to start her Jedi hand-to-hand training again…with the younglings. There was no contact in the sessions just technique drills. Everything was muscle memory, but the muscles on the left were so contracted and stiff.
After 3 months of this humiliation, she was cleared for one-on-one training with a Jedi guard. Then after that was able to rejoin her age group, not at the level she had been, but at least she wasn’t the tallest one in the room. Impatient about returning to where she left off, she pushed her training; every move was exaggerated exertion, every punch harder, every kick stronger, every saber spar pushing the limits. Hesitancy disappeared from thought, which released the flow of the Force.
Master Luke granted her permission to use the training hall for practice in the early morning. The room took on a new persona when she was in it alone, no droids or assessors in the upper galley looking down on her; it was just her, the space all to herself for her to recapture her ability. Her moves were second nature but the muscles still screamed out from disuse. However, by the end of the first hour, balance had returned, the ability to sustain positions became not quite easy, but natural, places where she was supposed to be. Every time she felt the inadequacy of the recovering parts and the synthetic bone in her thigh, she thought of him and her strikes strengthened. Since his clumsiness put her in the infirmary, not once had he come to see how she was doing, perhaps maybe even apologize.
The next day, she wanted to start practice earlier. A violet mist lingered among the piercing cold scarlet dawn, hovering over the plaza between buildings, trailing behind her as she entered through the viewing galley of training hall. Expecting the silence to preface her practice, a voice below called out.
“This space is occupied. You must leave.” Down below, Ben and a Jedi temple guard were face to face, as she turned to hurry out, she heard their sabers ignite and lock. Stopping and looking down, she expected to see the clumsy moves that had disappointed her perception of him and injured her before leaving, and as she peeked down, Ben and the guard looked back at her. Her eyes grew wide and she backed up, running out of there and back into the violet mist.
Well after her actual granted time before returning for her practice, she returned to the hall. He was still there, alone, standing in the middle of the mat, eyes closed, hands linked behind his back, surprising her as she set up her space.
“I’m so sorry for interrupting this morning.” She called down. If this had been before her injury when she held him on that Skywalker pedestal, she might be afraid that she had made him angry. But since the accident and his failure to even check on her recovery, she wasn’t very fond of him anymore, saddened that the grandson of a warrior so revered in her culture had been such a disappointment.
“Apprentices should not overstep their bounds. You should be aware how unusual it is for you to have been given special permission to use this room and be more cautious when entering before your unprecedented granted time.”
At least an apology or a pale attempt feign regret might could have been attempted, she thought. Whatever his cultural traditions, certainly it was appropriate for a person to do if they had injured another person so grievously. But then, it hadn’t been a comfortable situation when they had interacted before then. He had intruded on her work in the archives, and read her thoughts on the page but not a lot was said between them. And after experiencing the disconnect happening in his body that caused her injury, she thought that perhaps he just didn’t know how to coordinate himself enough to interact with her.
She also wanted to tell him not to forget that he was an apprentice, too. But, although she kept the words from being vocalized, he read her thoughts and glared at her. After slight embarrassment by her sass came irritation; he should remember his place, too; the special privilege everyone knew he had as Master Luke’s nephew, as Darth Vader’s grandson was seen by some as unfair, that every padawan was entitled to just as rigorous a training as he was.
“I know you know that,’ She began after being certain he captured those thoughts. “All of us here have every right to expand our training; we all have a unique descendancy, gifts from our ancestors that deserve attention to enhance our ways with the Force.”
“I am the descendant of the “chosen one.” He responded and stepped towards her.
“The chosen one from a certain point of view.” She vocalized, and stepped towards him. “Now, can I have my given time in this room?” He stared for a moment, and she smirked, carefully examining his face and the dark eyes that had looked on her crafted thoughts with intrigue a few weeks ago, to tell him she wasn’t intimidated, nor impressed by his legacy, but she knew he’d know that was a lie. Her eyes traced over his features and felt his muscles tense. Then she blushed as he read a thought of hers that she didn’t expect and couldn’t stop.
“Go.” She turned away and finished setting up her space. He smirked back at her and turned and walked out. She had to struggle to keep her eyes off of him as he left. Her heart was beating so fast that she didn’t think she could calm down and practice. Covering her eyes with her hands at this last tender thought of his, she treaded upon a fine line between sobbing and laughing from embarrassment and was able to fall upon the latter.
After walking out, he reentered the viewing galley and watched her. He felt immense guilt for injuring her as she struggled with the positions on her left side and tears came to her eyes when her injury did not allow her to complete a sequence. Unable to balance in a routine the hologram deemed simple she threw down her saber then punched the wall and shouted. She looked up to the ceiling and sighed, and he backed against the wall of the viewing gallery.
© Sheila Wright and Squire of the Knights of Ren, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sheila Wright and Squire of the Knights of Ren with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Story excerpt discovered in the databanks of the wrecked ship.
Passed down in her family, on her mother’s side, she had learned many ancient and distant arts: to write on manuscript in longhand was one of them. Years of training had made her manuscripts live despite it being merely ink on flattened and dried pulp of trees or shrubs. Legend had it the more skilled artisans had the power to control minds with the mesmerizingly beautiful design of the words.
Darkness cradled the bright pale blue orb of light where she sat in the closed archives building. Her entirety fixed on the almost finished page in front of her, her hand working automatically moving the ancient instrument across the parchment, using other senses than sight to direct it into the ink, the silver nib playing the notes a slow melody with each rhythmic dip.
By the time she sensed his presence, Ben was already in the room. The instrument instinctively lifted off the parchment at her startle. “The archives are closed.” His voice violated the quiet in which she had absorbed herself. She set down the instrument and put her hands in her lap as if in passive resistance. She stared at the nearly complete work in front of her. Then she felt embarrassed, compelled to pull it to her, to throw herself over it to hide it. But upon that thought she felt her muscles slip into his control. His footsteps sounded so loud and heavy as he approached. The only part of her that she could move was her eyes that stared at her art in a futile attempt to move it with the Force then away to avoid seeing his reaction.
She had taken the conclusions of her latest research into Darth Vader and used the sentence structures as the shimmering black lines forming the images on the page. These images framed a box of marbled silver and violet text in which she wrote her findings that led her to her conclusions. She feared embarrassment over her fascination with Darth Vader: fascinated by his fall, the Jedi wanting to learn lessons from his decision to join the dark side, her culture sympathizing with his skeptical perception of authority.
When she had first arrived and became acquainted with her fellow padawans, she had heard rumors of Ben’s fascination with Darth Vader, as well. However,
that was his grandfather, and it didn’t seem unusual. For her, she worried that not being his kin might be seen as inappropriate or an unhealthy interest for a Jedi in training. She was in awe of Master Luke and compelled to observe Ben any chance she got. Here was the kin of Anakin Skywalker, the subject of her youthful study, in her immediacy.
Part of her felt a thrill being this momentary target of his attention, and most of her was terrified of the mortification and discipline to come for breaking the rules. He paced in front of the table, his view unwavering from her expressions on the page.
She closed her eyes feeling the seconds slow and in that moment of her mind she saw the mountains of her home planet, and her vision zoomed in on her grandmother’s home, a gathering; she felt the warmth of a fire and smell of the brew, the way her uncle had prepared it for every reveal, the occasion the young people of her galèa completed their training of their art and revealed their creations on which they had spent years drawing the words. She clenched her eyelids together and the tears spilled this memory over into the present. She drew in the chilled archive air through her nose, opening her eyes wide to use the only muscles that she controlled to gasp since the breath she drank in wasn’t enough to shrink the lump in her throat. Upon the sound of her gasp, he released his grasp.
“Why do you make these writings more intricate and complex than they need to be? The same ideas can be expressed in simple Aurebesh. You would not need to violate the rules to spend your time in here to record such intriguing ideas.” For all the intimidation she had felt since she arrived at training and the intensified apprehension she felt being caught by him violating the rules, her irritation flooded over it. The ignorance of not knowing the significance of the art of her people, the lack of knowledge that the expressions demanded the intricate artwork for the ideas to be captured in the way they demanded and the disappointment that these were the first words ever spoken between them pumped relaxation and confidence through her.
“Simplicity is not best. It often just the easiest.” She stood up to look right into those dark eyes. All her adolescent hormonal attraction to him dissolved and she put on her bag and began gathering her styluses into it. She bit her lip to suppress the urge to throw the remaining inking compound that she had spent days perfecting at him. He glanced at the vial as she thought it.
“You want to throw that on me.” He said and smirked. That irritated her more. She capped the vial with a firm slap of the cap. She captured a deep breath so that she could carefully pick up the parchment and leave. As she reached to cradle the edges of the document to pick it up, he stopped her, not by exerting the force, but by placing his hand on hers. It felt as if their contact compelled her to inhale and through her mind whispers of feelings - chaotic, desperate, calm and fierce - spilled from him. She looked at him and he did not move his eyes to meet hers. He looked for a moment at his hand touching hers then moved it. His sights then caressed each letter, each word, each thought collaged on the page. She wanted to leave, but she wanted her creation. She interrupted him.
“Sir. May I leave?” He looked up at her and stepped back from the table. “Am I in trouble?” Her fear returned. His head shook slightly then more intentionally. She slipped the parchment from under his hand as she turned to hurry out. It was this beauty that halted Ben from leading her from the archives to Master Luke. He saw the method of her note taking, compelled to read it, the ideas she had found about the ambiguity of right and wrong, of light and dark.
© Sheila Wright and Squire of the Knights of Ren, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sheila Wright and Squire of the Knights of Ren with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.