Chapter Three
Something Like A Surrender
Nameless.
It seemed an odd concept, really; she who had been so proud to be who she was. Now she was nameless - or, at least, she felt nameless.
In the back of her mind - forefront, side, whenever she thought of it, which was always - the mere concept disgusted her. She prided herself (pride…she had had a lot of that, hadn't she?) on her strength and fortuity. Fifteen years ago, she would have been disgusted with herself at the mere thought of being this…weak. It seemed almost impossible that she, of all people, would be reduced to this.
She still was disgusted.
Now, however…it seemed much more possible: the world was bleak and blurry; she saw nothing and cared even less.
Hm…that was a little too melodramatic, even for her. Or whoever she was at this point. No, the world did still filter in through her senses, no matter what she wanted to think…or believe, for that matter.
"…Bib Fortuna has contracted the bounty hunter, my lord, but Bidlo Kwerve has supposedly made correspondence with the contact…"
She liked listening to the reports, strangely enough. Perhaps it was some long-forgotten instinct to always know what enemies were saying or even just sheer want for a connection with the old world - her old world - but Jabba didn't mind. She was, after all, his honored guest for however long she wished.
Seeing as she did not ask for anything nor even talk most days, considering her new, nameless state, Jabba seemed to even welcome her presence.
"…there are rumors that Phantom has left for Coruscant…"
Perhaps it was even some edge of her senses - ones that were dull and stagnant with no use - that told her to wait and listen, for something important was coming.
"…there are also rumors that Kitster Banai, a majordomo for a Mos Espa estate, identified Phantom as…"
She didn't trust her senses, usually, but now she did not care if she blindly followed them.
She did not care for much at all.
"These are only rumors, my - my l - lord, but Banai seems to have identified Phantom as Luke Skywalker…the son of the Jedi Knight…"
Something important, indeed.
And something almost like a smile cracked across Ahsoka Tano's face.
The Skysitter lived up to its name, Leia decided.
The restaurant sat atop one of the tallest skyscrapers on Coruscant and the ceilings of the dining rooms, to exacerbate the fact, were made of transparisteel to give a beautiful view of the night sky. Well, overhead traffic, really, but little to no traffic above you on Coruscant indicated how important you were. The air was surprisingly fresh and clean for the city planet and the transparent domes over the lightpost-studded gardens that ringed the restaurant made the air almost as sweet and fragrant as the grounds of the Aldera Royal Palace.
Leia leaned against the trunk of a tree with pretty silver leaves, looking out over the varied flora of the gardens. When she had been a young girl, she and her aunt Tia used to play a game where every time Leia could correctly identify a plant she had gotten a sweet. Of course, Tia was the most paranoid woman in the entire galaxy and was determined that Leia be able to identify any plant in case of a poisoning, but Leia had enjoyed the time - and the sweets - nonetheless.
It was nice to see something familiar on this strange planet, even if was just the plants in a restaurant garden, especially after the near-disaster the opening ceremony had been.
Senator Engle Arris of Alderaan was an affable man that had been hand-picked by the Alderaanian royal family after Bail stepped down as senator. Leia had enjoyed making small talk with him and his aide until they had arrived in Alderaan's repulsorpod, wherein Leia's nerves had gotten the best of her and her tongue. The Supreme Chancellor had first made the most ostentatious speech while wearing one of the most ostentatious dresses Leia's eyes ever had the misfortune to land upon. The speech, while being very beautifully delivered, had been about the purity of the position and the academic glory of the apprenticeship; several candidates looked quite obviously shifty and Leia's respect for the Chancellor had risen up a few more notches.
Then came the introductions, where Senator Arris had quietly filled Leia in on the gossip of each candidate until Leia's turn, where the entire procedure had taken a bewildering turn after her image was projected up. Senator Arris had remained stark white and tight-lipped the rest of the ceremony, but Leia had caught snatches of intrigued comments aimed her way from the pods near them.
Before the last candidate had even been introduced, Senator Arris had helped her rearrange her veil over her face and then quickly usher her out the door and to his personal speeder, leaving his aide in the dust, where he took her directly to the Skysitter for the candidates' dinner, not even bothering to fill her in on what the rush was about. Senator Arris had, with a pained sort of grimace, explained that she looked rather like the Supreme Chancellor and that people might start crafting rumors that she was related to the Supreme Chancellor. After this explanation, he had promptly kicked her out of the speeder without so much as a by-your-leave, leaving Leia to hastily put her trailing fabrics back in place after the speeder's windy departure.
Now, however, Leia was seeking the comfort of something familiar. In plants.
Just where exactly had her life gone?
Leia was so absorbed in grumbling about just how many treats Aunt Tia should give her for naming all the flowers in the garden that she nearly jumped straight off the skyscraper and to a very messy death in the traffic lanes below when a hand was put on her shoulder.
Leia spun around, making her dress fly everywhere, to face a small woman - even shorter then Leia! - that Leia could not remember from the list of candidates.
"Your Highness," the woman curtsied and dipped her head, "I beg your pardon for frightening you."
Leia almost scowled before she caught herself - she hadn't been scared.
"It's alright," Leia said, once again rearranging her various drapes as she looked at the woman. In the dark; all she could really see was a lilac dress that looked eerily similar in color to the one the Chancellor had been wearing. "I didn't see you there. You are…?"
"Padmé, Your Highness," the woman said with an odd inflection-and-or-accent that Leia vaguely recognized, "a handmaiden of the Supreme Chancellor."
As the woman stepped into the glow of a near lightpost, Leia decided that "maiden" was probably a bad term for the beautiful woman who looked about the same age as her mother. A dark purple gauze was covering her hair in a very modest fashion and she wore no makeup, but Leia still thought "matron" might be more appropriate. The woman's dark skin looked oddly olive in the light and her eyes looked almost black and sunken, like she was recovering from a bad flu. Her skin was smooth over her cheeks and there were dark bags under her eyes, giving her an oddly stretched look. While the woman rang with a sort of timeless beauty, she looked very tired.
To put it mildly. "Walking dead" might be a better term, though.
"Oh." Well, that explained the dress. Now how did Leia respond? 'Oh, you looked far too pretty to be a peasant'? Not that Leia could really say that, seeing as she hadn't been around many so-called peasants in her life. In fact, she hadn't been around many people who weren't her family or her competition before. Should she start a conversation? That seemed a good idea. "Padmé - like the Chancellor?"
"An odd coincidence, Your Highness, I can assure you," Padmé answered with a slight chuckle.
"Yes…I'm Leia," Leia said, awkwardly sticking out her hand for the woman to shake.
Padmé looked vaguely amused and shook her hand with far more grace then Leia herself had ever managed, even with a lifetime of etiquette classes under her belt.
"A pleasure to meet you, Your Highness," Padmé responded, casting her gaze over the busy Coruscanti skyline. "Are you enjoying the view?"
"Hm?" Leia said, having been absentmindedly wondering if those zombie stories Aunt Rouge read her had any merit. "Oh…yes."
Goodness. How was she ever going to be an apprentice if she couldn't even hold a conversation with a handmaiden? Pointed political debates and pointless small talk were so much easier.
"Have you been to Coruscant before?" Padmé asked, her eyes crinkling in such a tender fashion Leia felt very guilty about the zombie comments as Padmé's entire countenance lit up, making her look ten years younger.
"I've come a couple of times with my father," answered Leia, thanking the stars she was finally able to string together a coherent sentence. "Have you been here before? Um…I mean…"
Never mind. Her neurons still weren't firing correctly.
"Before my mistress became the Supreme Chancellor?" Padmé saved Leia's embarrassment. "Only once. I was much more concerned with my home."
"Ah…um. Right, where are you from?" Leia attempted to physically force her blush down.
"Naboo," Padmé said with a positively unreadable expression. "I need not ask where your from, Princess."
Leia was tempted to tell Padmé that no, she was not of Alderaanian lineage considering she was adopted, but decided that information was probably best left untouched - even if she was feeling the irrational need to impress a handmaiden who was much more well-spoken then her.
"Alderaan is a lot different from here," Leia said, because apparently she just excelled in saying the most vapid things she could think of today. She hurried on to say, "The Senate building - everywhere, really - is a lot different without my father here…not that I've been many places in Coruscant."
It's a whole lot bigger, Leia added silently. And a whole lot scarier.
Padmé gave her a sad sort of smile before changing the subject, "Would you like a tour of Coruscant's skyline, Your Highness?"
"I would like that," Leia smiled, relieved. "I think it beats cocktails."
Padmé chuckled with no real humor before she wheeled Leia slowly around the garden, pointing out sights like the surprisingly quiet Jedi Temple, 500 Republica where Leia was staying with Senator Arris, and some cheap but very good diners that the Chancellor apparently loved.
"May I ask, Your Highness, why you decided to apply?" Padmé said suddenly, interrupting her own commentary on the Starlight View which sold the most deliciously fatty ice creams.
Leia, for her part, recovered from the abrupt change as a politician should do.
"I believe that every being deserves the right to be heard, no matter how small the issue is," she said promptly, not looking up from where a crop of black lilies had caught her eye.
"The apprenticeship is a purely academic position," Padmé said, and Leia, looking up, caught a funny look painting her face.
"It is," Leia agreed, "but people perceive it differently. Regardless of academics, the power of voice lies with the apprentice. Others too, of course, but the apprentice is such that it is not just one voice in a million - it's a voice people are willing to listen to. Even if I don't agree with what sides people take on what problems, people have a right to share their troubles and have someone listen."
"Not every problem would be fixed," Padmé pointed out.
"I know," Leia sighed. "That would be a perfect world. But having someone to listen to a million problems and fixing even just one is good enough for me."
A genuine smile broke across Padmé's face as the bell rung to signal dinner.
"I agree."
The Jedi Temple, like all other places where kids spent a majority of their time, developed some unwritten tidbits of information or know-hows.
One such piece of information was the Room of Doom and Gloom.
The Room of Doom and Gloom was a sort of horror story that padawans told initiates but was also a real thing, even if it tended to be embellished. The actual thing was, however, a room.
The Room of Doom and Gloom was a corner chamber down in a section of the Jedi Temple that no one had a real use for. It was far out of the way of something important, like the dojo, the mess hall, the quarters, classrooms, the archives, or even the supply stores. The Room and the surrounding corridors were, however, a nice place for a meditation, so it was left as it was.
It was very relaxing until the discovery of the Room of Doom and Gloom.
None of the padawans could actually tell who discovered it or when, but all everyone knew - and this included the Jedi Knights and Masters, but they purposefully ignored the stories of the Room - was that this corner chamber, outfitted with the highest security locks and other mechanisms no one understood, emitted an awful aura.
So awful, in fact, that no one could even come within a ten foot radius of the place. The Room got its name from the aura that it emitted: hanging low and pervasive like a storm, the tangible disgust and rage that roiled through it on occasion was enough make even the wisest masters quake in their boots. Most of the time, though, it was only a constant ripple of guilty agony and a fierce, nearly pitifully pathetic longing.
"Only" being a relative term, that is.
A few of the more daring padawans and initiates made a game of it, seeing whoever could get the closest to the door of the Room of Doom and Gloom without nearly passing out. A young initiate had managed to get eight feet from the door, which earned him instant respect from his peers.
So had any of those padawans seen Master Obi-Wan Kenobi stride all ten feet up to the door of the Room without missing a single beat and then enter the Room, Obi-Wan would've become the most favorite master within two heartbeats.
But the padawan who was watching from around the corner felt much less respect and instead watched curiously.
When Kitster Banai woke with a sleepy yawn, kissed his still-slumbering wife on the cheek, and then stumbled down the stairs to face the dark morning ahead while remembering the last night - well, early morning - with a bone-deep weariness, he rather should've expected to see what he saw.
"So, you do realize," Luke Skywalker said conversationally, feet propped up on the Alderaanian maple dining room table and helping himself to a carton of what looked suspiciously like Jawa Juice, "that if I go to the Galactic Naval Academy, I'm not going with the last name 'Skywalker', right?"
Damn the dual suns. To Kitster, the day suddenly got a whole lot brighter.
Disclaimer: I do not own any Star Wars material, no copyright infringement intended.
