It happens that afternoon

It happens that afternoon. I get a message on my comm unit to come to the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Master Yoda is waiting for me. I can't imagine why it took him so long to do this.

He leads me with his small steps to a secluded place. We sit behind the leaves. I lean back against the trunk of a tree.

"Sorry I am about your loss," he says softly.

I shut my eyes.

"To talk about it would you like?" he asks.

I shake my head against the tree.

"To talk at all would you like?"

I shake my head.

"Ever?"

I can't tell whether he is teasing or not. I open one eye and look at his kind face. "I don't know."

He smiles sorrowfully. I bite my lip to stop myself from crying.

"Any questions do you have for me?"

"Who'll take me?" I burst out.

He studies me for a moment. "A brave padawan you are."

"No, I'm not." I shut my eyes again. If I'm going to get one of his rare compliments, I should at least deserve it.

"Akite."

His tone is uncharacteristically sharp, so I look at him again.

"Their padawans many masters have lost. When heal they do, look for another they will. Patience you must have." He smiles again. "A good padawan you will be."

He never, ever gives compliments for fun. He always means them, a hundred times over.

I sigh. He's wrong. I'll never be a good Jedi until I can let go of the dead. And I can't. I can't let Oreti go. But I can't tell Master Yoda this.

"Until then, to help the younglings would you like?"

I shrug.

"Keep you busy they will, and wonderful younglings are."

"When?" I ask dully.

"Mmm… afternoons until you a master finds."

It will end lonely, endless afternoons. I nod.

"Good. Tell the caretakers I will.


I go to the crèche immediately. There's no point lying in my bed and finding that stupid shatterpoint in the sink again. I am a Jedi. I cannot cling to the dead.

I decide to go to the four-year-olds. When I was four, I had just come here. I didn't realize that I had left my mother forever. I definitely didn't realize that I would lose my next parent, too. I had also just met Dorn, Zefel, Fang, and Jiimo but didn't really know them yet. Dorn and Zefel, who are dead. Fang, who –

Okay, I won't pretend I'm not jealous of Fang. He is helping his master in the infirmary now. His master. He has a master, he wasn't at Geonosis, and he always manages to stay serene, as a Jedi should. Okay, so he cried with me, but anyone who knows him knows what I mean. Crying made him better, not worse.

I gather all my courage and walk into the room where the four-year-olds were playing. There are about twenty, all different species. The moment I enter, a tall humanoid woman stands and carefully crosses about five feet of toys and younglings.

"Akite Chairu?" she asks.

I don't think Yoda could have contacted all the caretakers between the time I spoke to him and now. He must have assumed I would agree.

Despite the fact that Jedi aren't supposed to assume things.

"Yes," I say to the woman.

She turns around and shouts across the room, "This is Akite Chairu! Be nice to her!" She adds in a low voice to me, "You should have chosen an older age group. These younglings steal your sanity."

They all look up at me and say, "Hi," in their high voices. Some attempt my name. One says, "Hi, Maser Chairu."

I barely keep myself from laughing. The woman shakes her head and picks her way across the room. "I'm not a master!" I protest. "I'm thirteen years old, and I'm a padawan."

"But you got a lightsaver," one little Twi'lek says, pointing.

"Yeah, but even padawans have lightsabers," I tell him.

But they find it impressive. I hear it all over the room: "She has a lightsaber. Look, she has a lightsaber." And all sorts of versions of the word lightsaber.

One brave human boy calls up to me, "Who's your master?"

I feel as if my heart has stopped. I look around the room. There are three adults, and they all look up at me in a way that says they won't help me.

What do you tell a four-year-old?

I rub my nose and kneel down. "I don't have one right now," I explain.

"But all pad'ans have masters," says the little boy.

"Well, you see, I had one but he left me." My eyes burn. I don't know if I can do this. "He got very, very badly hurt – more than you can imagine – and to get better, he had to join the Force." It's the best I can do. They might have heard about joining the Force from their teachers. I sniff and, as surreptitiously as I can, wipe my eyes.

"When will he come back from the Force?" a girl asks.

"He can't," I tell her seriously. I have a group of younglings sitting around me now. "Once you join the Force, you're part of it forever."

"Why?" she asks.

"Well, that's just the way it works," I tell her. "If we never did that, we'd – we'd –" I think of something that a certain master would not appreciate. "We'd all look like Master Yoda!"

They laugh. A male caretaker catches my eye across the room and nods.


Fang and his master, Asyi Sual, are at dinner before me. I put on a cross-eyed expression for them.

"The four-year-olds… steal… your… sanity."

They laugh, happy to see me acting normal.


Review? Please? I'd give you a puppy-dog look, but I don't think that would work over the internet too well.