Isme Plene was seven the first time it happened, and she didn't think much about it. She was reading a story on a datapad in the classroom, caught up in the tale, when suddenly, her eyes screwed up tight, almost by themselves. A second later she opened them again. She thought it was strange, but by the time she'd finished the story, she'd already forgotten about it.
Then it happened again the next week.
After that, every so often, she'd suddenly find herself with her eyes scrunched up. It was no big deal- it only happened once a day or so, once it had settled down- and it didn't stop her exploring the city or the plains, or studying far off worlds, or racing on speeder bikes with her friends, so, as she grew, she didn't worry about it.
When she was twelve, Luke Skywalker came to Naboo.
She spied him from across the street, wondering what had brought him to her neighbourhood. She'd seen him on the holonet meeting with the Queen, of course, and she'd heard he'd spent some time in the lake country doing who knew what. She didn't know much about the famed Jedi Master, but she felt in her gut that she had to meet him, so she hurried over the road, ducking between the traffic, trying to catch him before he stopped haggling with the street vendor. She stopped a few strides short of him, slightly shy of making the approach.
He looked up at her as he finished haggling, smiling gently, his blue eyes piercing. "Hello," he said.
"Uh… hello!" she said, flustered. "Uh, Mister, I mean, Master! Jedi Master Skywalker. I'm Isme." Master Skywalker grinned at her, his eyes mischievous. "What can I do for you, Isme?"
"Um, it's silly…" she said, blushing. "I just felt like I needed to meet you. I don't even know why…"
He looked at her curiously.
"Hmm," he said. "Has anything like that happened to you before?"
"Like what?" Isme asked, puzzled. "Meeting someone famous? I mean, one time I saw the Queen when there was a parade that went past my house."
"No," said Master Skywalker. "Like a feeling that you had to do something, and it turned out well. Or one that you definitely shouldn't have done something, and you were right."
Isme thought for a moment. "There was that one time when I was younger. Mama wanted me to go to the market, but it felt like a really bad thing, so I went to the other market instead. And later, I saw on the holonet that somebody got shot in the first market." Master Skywalker nodded.
"Isme," he said, "I think that you're Force sensitive. Can you take me to meet your parents?"
By the end of the day, the Jedi Master had put her through a few tests, had a long conversation with her parents- who seemed a bit overwhelmed with the whole thing- and given Isme an offer to study at his Jedi Academy on Yavin 4.
"Are you sure you want to do this, Isme?" her Papa asked. "It's going to be a lot of hard work. You can still stay here if you want."
"I want to do it!" she told him, excited. "I'm gonna be a Jedi."
"Alright," Papa said, tears appearing in his eyes. "We'll miss you, you know. You better come back to visit, sweetie."
"I will," she said. "We do get to leave after we started, right?"
"Of course," said Master Skywalker, standing peacefully at the side of the room. "Your family and friends can visit you on Yavin 4, too, if you prefer. But in any case, I have a little more business here, so you've still got about three days before we leave." He smiled reassuringly. "Yavin 4's a jungle world, so make sure you pack for warm weather."
"I'll be ready!" she said. Then she added, "What are you doing on Naboo, anyway?"
"Just looking into some history," he said. "Maybe I'll tell you about it someday." She thought he seemed a little sad, so she decided she'd ask him about it another time. If he was going to be her new teacher, she didn't want to start off by making him sad.
Three days later, true to his word, Master Skywalker knocked on her door. She scrunched her eyes quickly, then opened it. "Master Skywalker!" she shouted. "You came!"
"Of course, Isme," he answered. "And if I'm going to be teaching you, you can call me Master Luke. Are you ready?"
"Yep! Everything's through here, Master Sky… I mean, Master Luke. I'll just get my parents, then I can say goodbye…"
Yavin 4 was nothing like she'd imagined it'd be, but that was ok, because it was even better. After they'd flown there in the shuttle, and stepped out into the leafy jungle, with trees that were different than any Isa had ever seen on Naboo, Luke had introduced her to the other students, and shown her to a room of her very own. It was twice as big as her room on Naboo, too. She guessed they had a lot of room out here. Luke explained that her lessons would start the next day, and that she'd sometimes train with him, and sometimes with some of the Jedi he'd recently knighted, from what was the first class of students he'd taken. There were some Padawans- that was what a trainee Jedi was called- who'd been learning for a few years, too, but this was only the second full class he was taking, and she'd found him just in time to join it. The other students were a mix of ages, and she was the youngest, though not by long- there was a thirteen year old boy, and a girl who was just a little older than him. Altogether there was about ten of them in the class. The oldest student would be twenty, and Isa hoped that wouldn't be too weird. Luke seemed to know what he was doing, though. She supposed if the old student felt too awkward, they could always go and train with the other older Padawans.
Her eye scrunching stayed with her as she began the training, but it still wasn't a problem. Occasionally, it jolted her out of meditation, but it didn't take that long to get back in. She didn't think anyone much had noticed it at all, actually. She kept in touch with her parents, sending them plenty of messages over the holonet, and they visited Yavin a few times to see her, too. Over the months, she got better and better at using the Force, and when she was fourteen, Luke let her build herself a lightsaber. She took to it immediately, picking up the training faster than all except one of her friends, and she hadn't expected to get it faster than Kiri, anyway, because Kiri said she'd practiced fighting a lot even before she came to the Academy. Isme was glad she'd accepted the offer. The class even took the occasional visit to other worlds, on one mission or another closely supervised by one of the Knights, or Luke himself sometimes, and as she grew, she knew she'd be ready to take the trials to become a Knight not that long after she became an adult, scrunching eyes or no.
When she was seventeen, her right arm shot out without her telling it to, and she punched a wall. She frowned. It felt like when she screwed up her eyes, but she couldn't be punching things when she didn't want to. She decided to ignore it for now, and see if it happened again.
Later that evening, during her meditation session, her shoulders shot up to her ears, destroying her concentration completely. She breathed deeply and tried to refocus on the Force, but in the back of her mind, she started to worry. Something was definitely happening here.
Over the next few weeks, the number of strange movements gradually increased. Thankfully, no one had noticed yet, but she thought that probably wouldn't last. Isme didn't know what was happening to her. She hid in her room, trying to meditate on it, but the Force had no answers for her yet. She didn't think her friends would know, either, though, and if she didn't talk to them quite as much as usual, well, she had a lot on her mind.
Then, one day about a month after it had started, she was practising with her lightsaber with Kiri and Dima, with Luke watching from the side, giving them advice, when suddenly, her arm shot out, and her lightsaber carved a gash into the wall. She dropped the hilt, startled, and the blade turned off as the contact broke. Luke reached out, and the lightsaber shot into his waiting hand. He frowned.
"Isme? What was that?"
"I don't know! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" Isme cried. Her eyes scrunched up, and opened, and then she hummed slightly.
"Breathe," said the Jedi Master, and his calm presence in the Force soothed her panic slightly, though Kiri and Dima were looking at her with wary eyes. "What do you mean, you didn't mean to?"
"It's just been happening," Isme explained, more slowly this time. "This last month… I keep moving in ways that I don't mean to. It feels like that eye scrunching thing I do. I was hoping it would go away if I ignored it..." Now that she said it out loud, her plan did sound sort of silly.
"Isme," said Luke. "Go to the medical centre, and find out what it is."
"Right away, Master…" she conceded. "Um… what about my lightsaber?"
"I'll keep it for you until you find out what's happening," said Luke, and Isme's heart sank slightly. He seemed to sense this, and added, "If we can find any way of making sure this isn't going to happen again, you'll get it back." She nodded at him sadly. Kiri and Dima were now looking at her with pity, and she tried not to look back at them as she left for medical. She'd been afraid of what it would turn out to be, she realised, and that was why she hadn't been there before. Fear is the path to the dark side, she remembered Luke telling them, and avoid that fate, she had to overcome it. She steeled herself, scrunching her eyes again, and strode towards the medical centre, trying to act confident.
Oorden Fliss, the elderly medical examiner, listened carefully to Isme's symptoms as she described them, making notes on a datapad.
"Is it just motor movements, or have you been making any noises?"
"I don't think so," she explained. "Wait… I hummed without meaning to just earlier today." She decided not to mention that it had been right after she'd attacked a wall with her lightsaber. The examiner nodded, like things were making sense.
"I'd like to have the droid give you a blood test, but aside from that, I have a good idea what this probably is," he said.
"Alright," Isme said. "Do the blood test." She found herself wiggling the fingers on her right hand as the droid took the blood from her left arm- sitting still for the blood test was harder than she'd anticipated it would be. Before long, though, the droid was finished, and Oorden told her to come back in half an hour for the results. She decided to go for a walk in the jungle to clear her head.
It turned out that walking meditation was pretty useful, and she realised she hadn't tried it since the problem had begun. Because she was already in motion, she managed to ignore two thrown arms and a shoulder shrug without getting jolted out of her calm, peaceful mindset, and the trees provided a more serene atmosphere than her room, from which she would have been able to hear the noise from the other Padawan's quarters, as well as the mess hall on the floor below. By the time she made it back for her results, she was feeling a lot more relaxed.
"What's the verdict, Oorden?" she asked, focussing on acceptance of whatever the results might be.
"Your blood is fine," he said, "so I consulted some of my texts on neurological matters, which, luckily for you, I have specialist training in, and I think it's most likely that you've got a tic disorder."
"What's a tic disorder?"
"It's a rare condition characterised by involuntary motor and/or vocal tics, which are exactly what it sounds like you've been experiencing," he clarified. "It means that your body will occasionally move or make noises or even whole words or phrases without you wanting it to. Most people can suppress the tics for a while, but it's reported that this makes it harder to control them after you finish suppressing them. Since you've only been experiencing it for a month, except for your eye scrunching, right now I can only diagnose you with transient tic disorder, but if you still have it after a year, then with both the motor and the vocal tics I'll be able to diagnose you with Tourette's Syndrome."
"Alright," Isme said, breathing deeply. "Tourette's Syndrome. I can deal with this."
"I'll have a datapad sent to your quarters with some more information on it," Oorden promised. "There's no cure, but if it does last, there are medicines and therapies which might help."
"Thank you," she told him, smiling. "I appreciate it. How will this interact with my Jedi training?"
"I'm… not sure," he admitted. "You're still as Force sensitive as you've ever been, so there's plenty that you should still be able to do. I tell you what, I'll consult with Master Skywalker for you."
"Thanks," she said again. It didn't sound like she'd be getting her lightsaber back any time soon. Would Luke even let her carry on as a Jedi?
Well, the Force wouldn't have brought her here all those years ago if she wasn't supposed to be a Jedi. It would be a difficult path, but things were going to work out. She could feel it.
By the evening, the datapad had been sent to her room, so after she'd finished dinner, she settled down to read it, ticcing with her shoulders and arms as she went. It was pretty interesting and informative, actually. Tourette's Syndrome had been named for some guy named Tourette who lived on the planet Croissant, who'd been the first one in the galaxy to properly study the disorder. In addition to Tourette's and the transient tic disorder Oorden had mentioned, there were also variants which only had motor tics, or only had vocal tics. Apparently, about ten percent of the people diagnosed with Tourette's swore in their vocal tics, and Isme really hoped she wouldn't become one of those, but she supposed that if she did, she would learn to live with that too. There was, as Oorden had said, no cure, and most medicines and therapies for it only helped in some of the cases. Nobody knew what caused it, but the main theory was that it was some sort of misfire in the basal ganglia, which was part of the brain that had to do with movement. After a while, Isme found that reading about Tourette's was actually making her own tics worse, though, so she put the datapad down for the time being, and, after being distracted from meditating several times by violent shoulder movements, decided to go to sleep.
In the morning, Luke came to her door.
"Isme?" he called. "I wanted to talk to you about the medical results."
She quickly put on a set of robes, then called back, "Come in, Master." He did so, and sat down on the chair opposite her bed, looking at her kindly.
"Oorden tells me you have a tic disorder," he said.
"That's right," Isme agreed, and her arm shot out again.
"Tell me about it," he instructed. "You're a good Padawan, Isme, and if I can do anything about it at all, you're still going to be a Jedi."
She began explaining.
As the next few months went by, she worked with Luke to find ways to compensate for her tics. They weren't getting any better- in fact, they were only getting more frequent. The vocal tics had progressed from occasional humming to a full range of squeaking, croaking, yelling, and the occasional nonsense word, and the motor tics now included such fun activities as banging her head on whatever was behind her, or punching herself in the head. It felt like she hadn't been able to be still for weeks. She'd quickly learnt not to hold anything spillable for very long, too, after the second time that she'd barely avoided spilling caf down her front. Still, they were working on the walking meditation, and Isme found she could maintain a pretty good focus while walking even with the constant extra motion. Luke still hadn't returned her lightsaber, but Isme had come up with several ideas that she thought might help her use it without accidentally cutting something with it. They'd agreed between them that she probably shouldn't learn to pilot an X-Wing, though, despite at least a couple of the other older Padawans learning that skill.
Speaking of the other Padawans, she'd explained to them what was going on, and they'd mostly accepted it with good grace, though she still occasionally heard whispers like, "Didn't she accidentally destroy a wall?" There were still a couple of people who seemed to pity her. She supposed she could be considered sort of pitiful, stuck as she was in this constant state of restlessness, but that didn't mean she actually wanted their pity. Kiri and Dima were talking to her plenty, though, and keeping her up to date on what the other Padawans she knew were doing. She was grateful for it, even though they would both probably pass the trials before her now.
Four months after she'd first been to medical, Oorden agreed to let her try some medication. He warned her that it might make her dizzy or light headed, and that it might dry out her mouth or eyes, amongst a selection of other possible side effects, but, he said, she'd be starting on a low dose, so she might not experience any side effects at all. Bacta wouldn't work for this, he said, because it wouldn't recognise there was anything wrong to fix- the misfiring chemicals in her brain were all ones that were supposed to be there in some measure, and it generally didn't work for changing a person's neurological wiring from the one they were born with. He told her there was a possibility of replacing part of her brain with a mechanical setup, but that that would carry a high risk of changing her entire personality or causing some sort of more serious brain damage, so it wouldn't be worth doing except in the most extreme cases, which hers wasn't. She agreed to try the medication, but said she was going to stop it if it made her feel worse than the Tourette's did, or if the dizziness made her feel cut off from the Force.
It actually went surprisingly well- the only side effects she really experienced were occasional dizziness on standing up, a headache or two, and a general feeling of dryness -which actually didn't feel too bad, living on a humid jungle world as she was. And her tics were much better. They were still there, of course, but she felt like she'd be able to conceal them from someone who didn't know she had them, at least for a bit. She found she could keep them fairly under control now, expending the energy by wiggling her fingers or toes, singing, or making various subtle movements that weren't that noticeable, such as her old friend, the eye scrunching. Of course, the longer she went without allowing herself to make the larger movements, the twitchier she ended up being in the evenings, but things were looking up. She even tried the old sitting meditation, and managed it for a whole half an hour before she had to take a tic break, letting her breathing pattern satisfy the disorder while she was meditating.
Fortunately, too, even at the worst, she'd never used the Force in a tic. She imagined that could go pretty wrong, if she'd been Force grabbing or pushing objects without meaning to, but the Force seemed to know when she was making a conscious effort to do something, and only responded to that. It was while thinking about that that she made her breakthrough.
Eight months after the first medical, resigned to the fact she'd probably be stuck with this for life, Isme realised that properly. She mentioned it to Luke, and he looked at her, a little like he'd looked at her all those years ago when they'd first met, and said, "Hmm."
"What if… what if I tried using the Force to stop me ticcing?" she asked, her right foot wiggling inside her shoe.
"There is no try, Isme," he reminded her, smiling.
"I mean," she said, "I'm going to do it." And the feeling in her gut told her she was on the right path.
That evening, she performed the first experiment. She went out to the jungle, and told herself that she was going to go all the way around the usual beginner's training route without ticcing once. She reached out to the Force, and thought of steadiness, stillness, perfect muscle control. She thought about peace in the body, and the mind and the body working in harmony. She concentrated on those thoughts, letting the Force fill her, and set off.
At the end of the circuit, which took about an hour to complete, she realised she hadn't even wiggled. She hadn't made so much as a hum, either. And she'd placed every step perfectly for every obstacle.
Her mouth dropped open, and she broke her concentration.
Straight away, the tics came back with a vengeance.
Her arm flew out, then into her head. Her leg snapped up and she kicked herself in the rear. She squeaked loudly, startling a few birds in the canopy nearby. Her eyes screwed up and opened about ten times in a row. The tics were as bad as they'd ever been.
But while she'd been concentrating, it had worked.
Her heart soared.
Ticcing all the way, she went to her quarters and attempted to calm down again. It took about three hours before she'd returned to her usual medicated level of tics, and then, grinning, she went to report her success to Luke.
"That's wonderful, Isme," he agreed. "Let me watch you next time, and I'll think about returning your lightsaber."
"Really? Oh, wow!" Isme exclaimed. "I mean, thank you, Master Luke."
"Don't thank me yet," he admonished her. "I still need to observe you. But I have a good feeling about this."
"Me too," she said.
Luke asked her to use the course that the most experienced Padawans were training on. This was what Kiri and Dima used for exercise, and what she'd been using before the tics got too bad. She looked at it, and quashed the fear that was trying to creep in. She shook herself out, letting herself tic in a few small ways, then reached for the Force, letting the thoughts of steadiness, peace and harmony wash over her in the same way as before, and set off running.
Isme felt like she was flying around the course. Luke followed her, matching her pace, surefooted and confident in his own skills, but Isme was sure that of the other Padawans, not even Kiri would be able to keep up with her. She certainly hadn't done this well herself before the Tourette's had developed. She leapt up over walls, landing gracefully on the balls of her feet and rolling, and knew instinctively where to avoid standing because of hazardous terrain or a spot of that one plant that gave you a rash. The Force was with her, in her every movement. She felt alive.
This time, at the end of the course, she managed to hold her concentration, and, once her breathing had calmed down from the exertion, she was truly still, for the first time in nine months.
"Well done, Isme," said Luke. "I think you're ready for your lightsaber."
"Give it me in a few hours," she suggested. "You haven't seen what happens right after, yet."
"Hmm?" he said. Isme let go of her concentration on the Force, and the tics returned, just like the first time.
"Ah," Luke added, nodding. "I see."
She did get her lightsaber back, the next morning. It came in a holster that was specially secured with a fastening, and that made it incredibly hard to draw the weapon or to hit the activation button by accident, which Isme was glad for. She'd missed her lightsaber, but she did also enjoy having all her limbs. Smiling, blinking repetitively, and wiggling her left toes, she clipped the holster to her belt, and took herself to breakfast.
"You've got your lightsaber back!" said Kiri, grinning. "Wow, Isme. Have they finally cured you?"
"I thought you'd never get it back," Dima admitted. The Twi'lek twitched his lekku slightly. Isme screwed up her eyes and hummed. "Guess you're not cured, then," Dima added. "How'd you get it back?"
"Come to the practice room with me after breakfast, and I'll show you," Isme told them.
"We'll be there," Kiri promised. "Right, Dima?"
"Well, I couldn't miss Isme finally managing not to put any furniture at risk," he allowed. "I'll come."
Once they got to the practice room, Isme positioned herself in the centre of the mats, her foot tapping restlessly. Kiri and Dima waited at the edge of the room. She couldn't blame them- they hadn't seen what she'd accomplished yet, and as far as they knew, this could get pretty dangerous. She let her arm shoot out, clenched her stomach, scrunched her eyes, wiggled her ears, and then breathed in deeply and reached out into the Force, just like before.
She was completely still.
She held the still position for about a minute, then reached carefully to open her lightsaber's holster. She undid the button fastening, pulled out the weapon, and, steadily, clicked the button. The blade extended with a whoosh, and she began to go through one of the longer sets of forms.
The forms came to her easily- it seemed that just like riding a speeder bike, you never forgot how to do it. Joyful, she moved precisely and smoothly through the patterns, her lightsaber singing in the air. She was born to do this, she knew. Finally, she reached the end of the pattern, reholstered the lightsaber securely, and bowed.
Her friends' mouths hung open, astounded.
"Wow, Isme!" said Kiri, recovering. "You didn't tic at all…"
"How does it feel?" asked Dima.
"Wonderful," Isme told them. She maintained the concentration, and the three walked back to her room. Once there, Isme set the whole holster on the table, well out of reach. "Now this happens," she said, and stopped concentrating. She immediately hit herself in the head, hummed loudly, then jumped in the air.
"Oh…" said Kiri.
"I see what you've done," said Dima. "You're putting off having any tics somehow, but as soon as you stop pushing them away, they're all coming back at once."
"Sort of," Isme clarified, between the tics, which were happening every few seconds. "I use the Force to concentrate on steadiness and peace- hmm! And then, as long as I'm concentrating, beep, I'm steady and peaceful. I came up with it myself. Hmm!"
"How long can you do it for?" asked Kiri.
"I haven't tested that yet, hmmmm!" Isme admitted. She punched the table. "The best was about an hour and a half. Beep! I did the whole obstacle course that you're both training on."
"That's really impressive," said Kiri. "It's a pretty tough course."
"I know, right?" said Isme, grinning. Then she kicked the chair that Kiri was sitting on. "Sorry…" she said, sheepish.
"It's alright," said Kiri, and she was grinning too.