Starrunner
In what would have been the year 17 BBY, Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine is found slumped over his desk, dead to rights and emitting a foul odor. The coroners declare the body victim to a heart attack and the smell a result of a lack of a timely embalming—a bit of bowels humor, the head coroner says with a nervous laugh when interviewed by the Galactic Enquirer.
Nobody in the galaxy is fooled by this.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, recovering in the Temple from a field injury after the most outrageous stunt by the Skywalker-Kenobi team yet, does Mace Windu a personal favor: he takes up the investigation that the Senate is pushing for the Jedi to conduct. Accompanying him as a result of Anakin's continued failure to get the Temple bureaucrats to give him some leave already is a Masterless Padawan named Lana Ruhr, twenty standard years of age, whose strange visions from the Unifying Force are recorded personally by Master Yoda and who may be the only person in the galaxy capable of actually seeing what happened to Palpatine.
In the meanwhile, the rest of the galaxy is going to kark. There's still a civil war raging, after all.
"In the dream, Masters, I heard these words: There will be a reckoning. After that, I woke up."
Lana Ruhr dips her head, and her Padawan braid, long and storied, bobs with it. It is far longer than her Padawan haircut—a standard she had adopted by choice despite the allowances made for senior Padawans nearing their preparation for the Trials. The length of the braid, Obi-Wan Kenobi thinks as he watches with the serenity expected in all Council sessions, is the only thing that demarcates her as being different from any other Jedi. One must look twice at Lana Ruhr to think anything other than Jedi—move along.
It is precisely that presentation of normalcy that is so curious. I will admit to being a stickler for order and orthodoxy, Obi-Wan thinks with not a little irony, observing the picture-perfect show of respect and its corresponding feeling in the Force. But rare is the Padawan that takes so seriously the admonishment that a Jedi must have no self.
He's done his research, besides. There is far more to the young woman than she is letting on to the Council—there'd have to be for her to be assigned by Mace and Master Yoda to work with him on the Senate's latest, most odious request, but aside from that, there's the fact that even outside the Order, it's uncommon to find anyone so steeped in the Unifying Force.
Yes, he has noticed Yoda's purposefully unsubtle glances in his direction, thank you very much.
"Thank you for your account, Padawan Ruhr," Mace says, nodding at her. "You are dismissed."
Lana hesitates for the barest of moments. "Thank you, Masters," she says, the only breach in decorum, but it is accompanied by a precise, forty-five-degree bow—on Ja'ru, it would be about five degrees short of an overt insult, but in fine Coruscanti liberal tradition, Lana is signaling that she is willing to cooperate further. A very deliberate choice, if rather unneeded. Nobody in the room misses it. She leaves without further comment, braid bobbing all the way.
It occurs to Obi-Wan that Anakin only ever either looks others in the eye or (if they are authoritarian figures) will not meet their gaze at all—and that he often expresses his distaste for the cloistered nature of the Council chambers. More frequently when Obi-Wan is on-planet to attend sessions. Come to think of it, he'd only really started voicing that when Obi-Wan had been given the rank of Master—
"See now, you do," Yoda says, watching him with ancient, amused eyes; briefly Obi-Wan feels abashed, a stubborn youngling once more, searching for a rock in the gardens well past firstlesson. Mercifully, Yoda lets the distraction pass. "Suffered much, Padawan Ruhr has. Brought her close to the Force, it did."
Mace nods, fingers steepled. "We have on record that her crechemaster frequently observed her experience nightmares; she was tested for any potential illnesses at age seven, when she reported a recurring experience akin to sleep paralysis, and among other things, the healers noted her strong affinity for the Unifying Force. Not unlike yourself, Obi-Wan. The trouble is that when Knight Keera was reunited with the Force, Padawan Ruhr's nightmares became nightly, specific occurrences like the one she related to us, rather than the sporadic, vague images we are more used to dealing with."
"Believe that her visions are related to the matter of the Chancellor's death, I do," Yoda says quietly. The Force rings with the words, a resounding truth echoing in all their ears, and Obi-Wan, familiar as he is with visions, blinks. That kind of positive feedback is—unusual. Mace looks a tad disconcerted—he sees shatterpoints, true, but the man works on facts and verifiable evidence. Not a bad thing to have when running the logistics of a war, really.
"Well, then," Obi-Wan says, sighing. Why do I sense we've taken on another pathetic life-form, Master? "I suppose I shall arrange a time to meet with her and hammer out the details of our assignment."
They will be going into the den of vipers that is the Senate, after all, and it's his duty as a Jedi to ensure that his comrades are prepared.
"Obi-Wan," Mace says, drawing his attention. Gratitude is reflected in both Mace's tired eyes and his Force signature, and Obi-Wan does not wonder when Mace's brows lined themselves with worry and foreboding. The war has changed them all, even Yoda, and its demands have forced the Order to bend in ways that it would not have dreamed of two decades ago, not even for Qui-Gon, one of its most beloved mavericks. Mace dips his head lightly, and the gesture means far more than the casual observer would ever know. "Thank you."
He never did have patience for politicians, and the war dragging itself on has stretched what little tolerance existed very thin. He would have been very hard-pressed to both conduct the investigation into the Chancellor's death and to run the war, all the while deeply troubled by the compromises they've all been forced to make, and the Force knows it. Obi-Wan stands and draws his cloak about himself as he bows. He ignores the threads of fate spiraling into infinity before his eyes, weaving and re-weaving themselves, breaking and snapping in places that had always been tightly-woven and immutable. For the moment. "May the Force be with you, Mace, Master Yoda."
"And with you also," Yoda says, his presence brushing against Obi-Wan's in the Force like a hand over his forehead; it is a wordless and ancient benediction, one he teaches every youngling the significance of.
Follow the Force's leading and trust its guidance. It is your closest friend, and it will never fail you.
Even Jedi have sentiment, though to outsiders it seems a strange and foreign thing. Touched by Yoda's concern, Obi-Wan bows once more and departs the Council chambers, determinedly not leaning on his right foot to take the weight off the left.
The doors shut. Mace sighs, looking wearily at Yoda.
"Shifting, the Force is," Yoda tells his former Padawan, keeping the amusement at Obi-Wan's stubbornness out of his voice. "At the center of it, Obi-Wan Kenobi is."
"As ever. Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't our Chosen One," Mace mutters, finally retrieving his datapad from the compartment in his seat. "Not even Skywalker gets himself entangled in as many things as Kenobi has. Then again, they get into things together, these days…"
Yoda snorts and does not share what the Force has led him to see: Obi-Wan Kenobi is only a man, but he is the Force's man. If he is not among its most beloved sacrifices, Yoda will eat his own gimer stick.
"My apologies for the unconventional location, but I'm a little held up," comes Obi-Wan Kenobi's cultured, carefully neutral voice, accompanied by a baby's happy screech. Lana stares at her comlink. It blinks unassumingly in the midday light, the green dot flashing in a thoroughly distracting fashion. Where has she seen a green light like that before…? "I requested that one of the Temple pilots bring you here—if you could head down to the hangar bay at your earliest convenience, Padawan Ruhr?"
She's talking to him—Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Negotiator, among other things. It's… strange. Lana shrugs, realizes he has no way of seeing it, and speaks. "Of course, Master Kenobi. I'll depart before 1300 hours. May the Force be with you," she adds, hearing another baby—undoubtedly a Skywalker twin—give a wordless yell of unfettered joy in the background. She feels it in the Force and wishes she could be surprised in the least.
She's not. Knight Skywalker's children send periodic blasts of infantile feeling and excitement washing over Coruscant periodically, and no amount of shielding can really block their prodigious talent for projection out. Other Jedi might be annoyed by it, but the fact that they're alive is a miracle of the Force, and Lana can't really complain.
"My thanks. I'll need it," Obi-Wan mutters, a touch of warm sarcasm she probably wasn't supposed to hear lacing his words. "No, Luke, don't touch your mother's tea set—"
The line goes dead. Carefully, Lana exhales. She will not laugh. She is a Jedi. Jedi practice serenity at all times.
She puts her head in her hands and laughs, a tinge of hysteria leaking into the sound of it. Lana Ruhr, ostensibly twenty standard years of age, an average Padawan with a dead Master, is investigating the probable murder-confirmed death of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi.
No big deal, really. She'd only gone and modeled her professional demeanor on his example. He's only the reason that the Healers even considered the idea that she wasn't, in fact, mentally ill when she'd notified them about the unusual depth of her visions—he was the only thing that prevented her from being a Cassandra, from being a teller of prophecies that nobody believed. He's only—
Only a man.
A very important man.
But just a man. A Jedi. An older and respected coworker.
Yes. Nothing to get worked up over. No different from working alongside, oh, say, Knight Lucian, or perhaps Master Mar-Suu. And she will not panic, as panic is unbecoming of a Jedi.
Especially when Sheev Palpatine is dead. She's scoured the news reports five, six, seven times, and she still can't really believe it.
"Well, Master," she says to her empty apartment when she's done, curling her hands in a robe she knows is too large for her. It's useful to conceal her size, anyways. When the motion fails to bring her the concentration required to reach for the Force, she curls a hand around her braid and tugs gently. It's enough, and she lets out a shaky breath as she opens herself to its quiet eddies, bit by bit. "I suppose my visions really did have the purpose you always believed they did."
She imagines Risse Keera's amused mien, purple lips pulled back in a way that had always inadvertently displayed her too-sharp teeth to any who happened to observe her. It centers her a little more, and she breathes out again, just to make sure. When she is calm, and no migraine seems oncoming, Lana stands and waves the blinds shut. She'll have to make sure she has all her things—it's been years since she left the Temple, even just to see the planet itself. There's been too much to do inside.
Lana sighs and slips her personal datapad into a nondescript cloth carrier bag.
Now the Force has seen fit to guide her into the orbit of those who have walked more difficult and visible paths, and she'd like to be prepared to fulfill whatever task it has for her in that.
Safely ensconced in one of the many Temple taxicabs after having narrowly dodged Master Che and a group of Master Nu's Archivist junkies, Lana breathes out and hopes the pilot doesn't hear it. Not hard—she's already focused on the deranged free-for-all that is Coruscant's major airways.
"This is worse than it was when I was around," remarks the man next to her, leaning back in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest, and Lana is distinctly reminded of Master Windu's habit of holding himself like a statue. The difference: Qui-Gon Jinn has what one might consider the opposite of bald—luxurious, flowing, long hair—and he is also glowing blue, of all things. She's relatively certain that Master Windu doesn't do that, but she's been wrong before. Notably about which Archivists Master Nu favored… "Goodness, what is that being doing?"
It looks like an attempt to do a wheelbarrow corkscrew maneuver into the next lane to avoid that angry Rodian, Master Jinn, Lana thinks, long since resigned to the tyranny of ghosts over her personal time.
"My. They have names for that?"
Lana half-smiles. She adjusts her bag so it rests in her lap, glad for the continued presence of her datapad in its holder. Knight Skywalker convinced Master Muln to teach the younglings as if it were so, Master Jinn.
"I see." If Qui-Gon looks pleased at this, well, nobody really has the right to tell a dead man what he ought to be amused by, now do they?
What brings you here, Master Jinn? she asks after a moment. She has never before been visited by Qui-Gon Jinn, though she has certainly seen the man about the Temple, most often attending to the various plants scattered about the upper levels and watching the Kenobi-Skywalker team in the Healers' Wing. He does nothing without purpose—even if that purpose isn't apparent.
That she knows this from other sources means little. Past, present, and future: all of these things are nebulous, and she has long since stopped worrying over where she gets her information from. Only how to explain it to others who wouldn't understand, and the ghosts have always known her. Qui-Gon smiles at her, austere in his warmth. Funny how some people are more touchable in death. "Merely paying a long-awaited visit."
He says nothing else, and she needs nothing else. Lana nods. It's a mercy of the Force, she thinks, that she's never personally spoken to Obi-Wan Kenobi before this assignment.
It's a mercy of the Force, she thinks, that Qui-Gon is wise enough to attempt it while Obi-Wan has Skycrawlers underfoot.
"Master Kenobi," Lana says with a hasty bow, quickly moving into the interior of Padme's apartment with just the right amount of polite observation and taking up a position by the wall. He quirks a brow at her choice of the corner next to the kitchen, but he doesn't have time to wrangle a giggling Luke back into his grip and pay further attention to her when he hears a voice from the doorway.
"Padawan," says Qui-Gon Jinn, a blue glow in the afternoon light. The door slides shut behind him.
What, Obi-Wan's mind says flatly.
Lana coughs, having somehow shimmied her way into the kitchen in the space between… that and Luke perching on Obi-Wan's shoulders, eyeing Qui-Gon curiously. "If you have need of me, Master Kenobi, I'll… be in here. I hear one of the children."
"Her name is Leia," Obi-Wan says absently, still staring at his errant Master. "She will most likely be attempting to open the fridge."
"Noted," Lana calls back, and the kitchen door shuts behind her.
Qui-Gon strides over to Obi-Wan, nearly reaching for the space where his Padawan braid used to be before remembering himself. Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and looks at Luke with a small, impossibly fond smile. "I sense you've picked up another pathetic lifeform, Padawan mine."
"Master," Obi-Wan manages, horrified.
"Hello, Princess," Lana says, abandoning Jedi decorum to slide down and sit crosslegged on the kitchen tile. She's going to be in here a while, what with Obi-Wan's brief moment of utter incomprehension in the other room. Leia, all of two years old and already sporting dark curls and darker eyes framed by what can only be the Senator's lashes, looks at her from the top of the refrigerator. Lana shrugs. "I'm a Jedi apprentice. Master Kenobi is… experiencing a revelation, at the moment."
Leia digests this. "Oh-bi?" she asks, tilting her head. She shifts, shirt and trousers twisting impossibly to aid her in achieving her new position; to Lana's quiet amazement, she manages to drape herself over the fridge's edge while balancing on her belly. Kids.
"Yes. You can sense his visitor in the Force, can't you? Big, strong, tall, warm?"
Leia nods. "Oh-bi-wa-un."
Stated as incontrovertible fact. Leia is unconsciously projecting happiness at the thought, and self-satisfaction at being right.
"Not quite, Princess," Lana tells her, amused. Princess is a fitting appellation for the authority with which Leia speaks, luckily. "Close enough, though."
Leia frowns at that, but it isn't enough of an offense for her to stop fiddling with the lock on the fridge that has Knight Skywalker's signature all over it. Babyproofing with the Force—how did he even think to do that?
"Oh-bi?" Leia asks again, after some time has passed.
Lana blinks, having been determinedly ignoring the… disquiet… emanating from the Force in the other room. It's so many levels of not her fight that she's not going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. No, that's a job for… Knight Skywalker, probably. (Kark. She wants to, though. The man hasn't been planetside for longer than a day or three in two years.) "I'm not sure what you're asking. He's in the other room, and your brother is with him…"
"Out," Leia says, abandoning the lock and sitting up. Apparently, this is more important.
"What does the Force say?" Lana asks instead of immediate acquiescence. She raises a brow when Leia pouts. "I know you can understand me. Think of it as practice. You're strong, but even the strongest have to develop control."
Leia's eyes narrow in concentration; Lana focuses herself on the unseen and quietly watches Leia's clumsy grasp for Obi-Wan's presence in the Force. A child's mind is a marvelous thing, and Leia, like Luke, broadcasts Light—even though Obi-Wan's shields are a bastion of neutrality, he jolts in surprise and discomfort leaks through. Leia seems to be trying to send him a semblance of calm, though her happiness at trying and succeeding at something new betrays her.
"Leia?" Obi-Wan's voice comes from the other room after a distinct pause.
"Oh-bi," she calls back, clambering down the fridge with what Lana is certain is Force-provided grace.
With nothing really in the way of direction, Lana follows her into the living room; Qui-Gon is gone, and Luke has attached himself to Obi-Wan's side and is amusing himself by playing with the chrono on Obi-Wan's wrist. Leia barrels into Obi-Wan's knees and grins in triumph when he sighs and picks her up, gently depositing her on his other side; she coos, a fuzzy image of Knight Skywalker floating in the Force between her and a grinning Luke. Safety.
Impossibly, something far-off and distant pulses with warmth in response.
"Master Kenobi," Lana says with a bow instead of addressing the several gundarks present in the metaphorical room. Or the brace on his leg. Particularly not that, actually. She has the vaguest of suspicions that she's not half as much a partner as she is a minder in the eyes of the Council, in terms of Obi-Wan's health. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"It's a pleasure to make yours as well, Padawan Ruhr. I've heard quite a bit about you," Obi-Wan says smoothly, like he isn't sandwiched between two younglings determined to make his limbs their personal playground. There's a polite smile on his face—warmer than it'd be for an outsider, cooler than it'd be for a friend.
A test. Jedi endure many. Lana sighs, realizing she isn't as anonymous as she'd always wanted to be. "I suppose it is unusual to remain Temple-bound as a Padawan in these times, Master."
"We must do as the Force wills us—but I was speaking more of Feemor. You are his grandpadawan, after all." That smile is charming. Alarmingly so.
Yes, Lana is tempted to say, out of a lack of knowledge on what to do next. The Coruscanti sky is blue, too. "Pardon my asking, but have you heard from him recently, Master?"
"I'm afraid nothing has changed since his last report. Ilum remains frozen, I believe, and behind Separatist space. I haven't spoken personally with him in years—circumstances never seem to allow for it." Obi-Wan gestures to the chair across from the couch. "Please, take a seat. I suspect we may be here for some time."
Lana sits, arranging herself properly as best she can in the cushy seat. A man like Master Kenobi is not one to default on formalities, and she is in Senator Amidala's home—Senator Amidala, who vouches for the Jedi in the Senate despite being viewed with suspicion on both sides of that particular dispute. Lana quite likes the woman, and politeness is hardly rude. The datapad jostles against her, and as Obi-Wan starts talking, she quietly wonders if bringing it was superfluous.
"Senator Amidala," says a young blonde woman in Jedi robes with a Padawan braid, bowing. "Your home is lovely. Thank you for all you do."
Padme blinks. "No, thank you, Padawan," she says automatically, earning her a small but unerringly genuine smile; Lana nods and departs, her small frame quickly disappearing into the turbolift.
"That's Jedi Padawan Lana Ruhr," says Sabe over Padme's comm, sounding far too amused. "Master Kenobi's partner for his latest mission. He had her come here for the briefing, since he didn't want to leave your children unattended."
"I don't think I've ever had a Jedi compliment my home before," Padme muses, making her way into the apartment. Thinking on Obi-Wan's decidedly protective attitude toward Luke and Leia is unproductive, no matter how funny; Ani came home with bruises when he last tried to compare his Master to a mother krayt dragon. You've got the call down pat, he'd said as Luke clutched Obi-Wan's arm adoringly, and Obi-Wan had just given Anakin a witheringly disappointed look, like there was nothing he could've possibly done worse than that. The effect was somewhat mitigated by Luke's happy coos.
Anakin had laughed. That, more than anything else, was what provoked the challenge to a duel.
She's always wondered about those two.
Sabe snorts. "They're Jedi," is all she says, and Padme realizes she must've voiced that out loud. "Signing off, Senator."
"Call me Padme," she reminds Sabe, but to no avail. Sabe has already ended the call.
Padme rolls her eyes.
"Mama!" come two beloved voices, and Padme grins as her children—her children—rush into the living room from the direction of the kitchen, barreling into her legs and speaking quickly in their toddler babble. Padme drops to her knees and gathers them into her arms, kissing Luke and Leia's foreheads in turn, and when she takes a breath their scents feel like home.
She is so, so glad to be alive right now.
"Welcome back," Obi-Wan says, standing in the kitchen doorway, a small, uncertain smile on his face. "They've been waiting."
Padme spares him a smile, too. "Thank you for looking after them, Obi-Wan."
"Oh, it was nothing," he demurs, moving back into the kitchen to finish up whatever he and the twins were doing in there.
Always the Jedi. Satine, Padme reflects, has her work cut out for her.
