To Change the Galaxy

Chapter 3: Communication

The terribly awkward comm call from Padmé, and Obi-Wan's bafflingly abrupt departure bothered me the rest of the night and into the next morning. I tried to ignore it in favor of focusing on my patients, but didn't quite succeed in banishing it from my thoughts entirely.

So, it was with some relief that I saw Padmé sitting in the employee breakroom when I went on my lunch.

"So you were being serious about dropping off the recipe," I said as I approached her.

She gave me a tight smile and stood up, her enormous skirt briefly catching on her stomach before smoothing out again. "Not entirely. Can we go someplace private? I don't have much time before everyone will start to wonder where I am."

I blinked at her. Padmé didn't typically try and give her security detail the slip.

"Uh, sure," I said slowly. "We can hole up in that supply closet on the second floor again or we can try and commandeer an exam room. It's up to—"

"Exam room," Padmé interrupted, striding past me and out of the break room.

For a moment, I just stared after her. "Well, okay then."

A few minutes later, we entered one of the empty exam rooms. Practically the entire clinic was eating lunch, so it wasn't too hard to find one and I didn't feel too guilty for it either.

"So, what's going on here?" I asked, once the door slid shut and the privacy shield was activated.

Padmé, who had been pacing since we entered the room, whirled to a stop in front of me. "I need you to check on the twins."

I snapped into action, hurriedly booting up the med-droid.

"Did something happen last night?" I demanded as I entered the procedure codes into the wall panel and the droid started its boot-up sequence. "Did you feel pain or—Padmé, if something worries you, you have to forget the whole secrecy thing and talk to someone about it. To be perfectly honest, I'm pretty sure most people suspect you're pregnant anyway—it's kinda hard to hide twins. So, you should have just let me know it was important and—"

"It's probably nothing, actually." Padmé started pacing again. "I'm only doing this to put Anakin at ease. I really don't think it's anything. If I did, I would have told you last night."

My heart rate slowed. "Oh." I entered in the last procedure code and then put the process on pause. "Sorry. I didn't mean to jump to conclusions. So is Anakin just freaking out about being a father, then? Is that what this is about?"

Padmé huffed out a small laugh. "He took the news a lot better than I thought he would, actually. He was very sweet about it. I honestly think he's excited to be a father. But he's afraid something will go wrong with the pregnancy. I tried to tell him that you were keeping a close eye on everything and that women rarely die in childbirth on Coruscant but it didn't seem to help."

"So you offered to have another exam, to try and put his mind at ease?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Well, you really should be having them more regularly anyway," I said as Padmé frowned at me. I ignored her and said, "If you want to lie down, we'll get started."

"Do you think you can do an abbreviated version?" Padmé asked as she sat on the exam chair. "I really don't have much time."

I rolled my eyes again and got started without another word.

"Okay," I said, once the exam finished. "Well, it looks like everything's progressing the way it should. You and the twins seem to be in tip-top condition. So you can let Anakin know that it's going well. You may want to mention that twins typically come a little early but it's usually nothing to worry about. You have any other questions or anything?"

"No." Padmé gave me a warm smile as she stood back up. "Thank you, Sabé. I truly do appreciate you taking the time to do this."

I smiled back. "Of course. That's what I'm here for. Although," I joked as I lowered the privacy shield and the door slid open, "I'll admit that I'm a little disappointed that I didn't actually get that recipe from you."

Padmé laughed as we walked down the hall together. "Well, I'd hate for you to be disappointed." She reached into one of her deep pockets and, with a flourish, produced a sheet of flimsy.

"Is that the recipe?" I asked in disbelief, glancing between Padmé and the sheet.

"The crusade for the croissant recipe was a success," Padmé announced smugly as I grabbed the flimsy.

It had all of the instructions written on it in Padmé's neat penmanship. "You are the absolute best."

Padmé grinned. "Why, thank you. I do have to go, though. I have a meeting with the delegation of—well," she interrupted herself, "I have work to do, at any rate. But thank you again, Sabé. We'll have to talk later."

"See you, Padmé!" I waved as she left the clinic.

The second half of my day went much better than the first half, although I spent every free minute I had trying to scarf down some food to make up for missing lunch. However, with one of last night's mysteries solved in a positively ordinary way, concentrating on my patients was a lot easier, despite my hunger.

The rest of my work day passed quickly and I arrived home in a much better mood than I'd been in when I'd left for work that morning.

I shrugged my cloak off, and hung it and my bag up on the cloak rack before walking over to the sofa. Then, like I did every day after work, I began the stretches and exercises that helped keep my bad leg as good as it was.

I was about halfway through them when my comm link started to beep.

I briefly considered just letting it go and comming whoever it was back later, sometime after I finished my exercises. But basically all of my friends were really busy people with fairly unpredictable schedules. So, instead, I rolled my eyes, grumbled under my breath, and then hauled myself off the sofa to limp over to the cloak rack, so I could dig through my bag.

"Reccen," I answered, once I'd found my comm.

"Sabé, this is Obi-Wan."

My eyebrows shot up. "Oh! Uh, hi Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan didn't really comm me very often and he definitely didn't comm me only a day after we saw each other. Usually he only commed me back in response to my messages and to let me know he was alive or on planet. Why in the stars would be comming me now?

Unless… unless he was going to explain whatever weirdness had happened the night before?

"Do you have a moment to talk?" Obi-Wan sounded as though he were at his most distant. I could almost see him staring at the comm with a look of polite yet removed interest.

My stomach curled in on itself. Apparently, I'd been wrong about him calling to explain the weirdness. It seemed that whatever was going on with me and Obi-Wan hadn't straightened itself out on its own yet. He still sounded more like a Jedi Master than my friend.

"Um, sure," I answered, trying not to sound too disappointed. "Of course."

I slowly hobbled my way back towards the sofa. I didn't like to use my cane in the apartment, so it was still leaning against the caf table. I used the furniture and walls for support instead.

"While I understand why you might not want to accept what Anakin is saying as the truth, you know better than anyone why it most likely is," Obi-Wan said, sounding very calm and very reasonable as I sat back down on the sofa. "Even if his dreams do not turn out to be accurate this time, it would still be wise to take precautionary measures."

Dreams? What dreams? And what precautionary measures?

"Obi-Wan," I frowned, "I don't—"

"I know you don't think it's anything to be concerned about," Obi-Wan interrupted smoothly, misinterpreting what I was going to say for possibly the first time ever. "However, Anakin is quite convinced that these dreams are prophetic. Given what happened with his mother—" Shock jolted through me even as Obi-Wan continued, "—I trust his instincts completely. Sabé, you may not want to hear it, but I truly believe he's correct and that he is foreseeing the future in these dreams."

I stared at the comm blankly, my mind whirling with confusion. Anakin was having prophetic dreams again? Since when? And about what? And why wouldn't I want to hear it? I definitely wanted to hear it! Any chance we had to stop something horrible from happening was a chance we had to take! Obviously! And Anakin's dreams were proven to be accurate—we had all learned that the hard way with Anakin's mother. So why did Obi-Wan think I wouldn't believe him? And—

Obi-Wan, though, was apparently not done confusing me yet.

Before I could decide what question to ask first, he continued. "I know your preferred method of handling prophetic dreams tends to be a bit more 'wait and see' but surely you can understand why it might be wise to try to be more proactive, in this instance? We're not asking you to hire private bodyguards—" Bodyguards? They wanted me to hire bodyguards? "Or anything like that, but if you would consent to perhaps moving back to Naboo and spending more of your free time with Eirtaé or Rabé, I truly believe we might be able to prevent your death."

And, with that, my brain just stopped.

"My death? " I spluttered. "What in the—I don't even—My death? Death, Obi-Wan? Me? Death? I don't—this doesn't even—what are you—why—I—I—What?"

That was about as much coherency as I could manage at the moment. I stared at the comm link, my mind whirling frantically as I tried to make some sort of sense of what Obi-Wan was saying.

There was a moment of silence.

Then Obi-Wan said, "Anakin said that he had spoken to you about his dreams."

"No, he did not!" I exclaimed. "I think I would remember if he had told me I was in danger of dying again!"

"I don't—" He paused. "He said he had spoken to you about them and that you weren't taking them seriously," Obi-Wan repeated himself, as if saying it again would somehow make it true.

"He didn't and I would have, if he had! I take prophetic dreams very seriously!" But this was getting away from the point, which was that I was, once again, apparently in danger of dying. "So what was his dream? What do I have to avoid? How am I in danger?"

Obi-Wan was quiet on the other end of the line.

"Obi-Wan!" I snapped. "If I might die, I think I deserve to know!"

"He was very upset that you weren't taking it seriously," Obi-Wan said very slowly, completing ignoring my questions. "That was why he spoke to me in the first place. I don't understand—unless—" Obi-Wan trailed off again.

When the infuriating man stayed quiet, I said, "Well, at least that makes two of us. Because I think I understand even less than you do!"

"Yes, yes," Obi-Wan murmured, clearly not paying me any attention whatsoever.

I scowled at the comm link, wishing I could scowl at Obi-Wan instead.

"Obi-Wan!" I tried again. "What is going on?"

There was another moment of silence. Then Obi-Wan heaved a huge sigh.

"I'm terribly sorry about all this, Sabé." Obi-Wan sounded more like himself than he had the entire conversation. He also, unless I missed the mark entirely, sounded very sheepish. "I'm afraid I may have misunderstood something and Anakin may have allowed me to jump to some erroneous conclusions."

I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to convince myself that yelling at him would be counterproductive.

"Okay, Obi-Wan," I said, once I got a hold of what little remained of my patience, "That's not actually as helpful as I think you may think it is. Would you care to tell me what, exactly, is going on here?"

There was another pause.

While Obi-Wan said nothing, I took a few deep breaths and tried to remind myself that losing my temper never helped anything. But it didn't calm me down as I much as I had hoped it would. What was going on here?

Finally, Obi-Wan slowly said, "I'm not sure it's my place to say."

My mouth fell open. If it wasn't his place to say, why had he commed me in the first place?

"Excuse me? I'm pretty sure this comm call has made it 'your place to say'! You can't just say 'Oh, Sabé you're going to die—wait, never mind I was wrong!' Like—that's not fair! Also really worrying! Tell me what is going on, Obi-Wan! At least tell me something if you can't tell me all of it!" I demanded, my heart pounding in my ears.

But Obi-Wan just repeated, "It's not my place to say. I am truly, very sorry about this, Sabé. I shouldn't have commed you. I apologize. Have a nice day."

"But—!"

There was a small clicking noise.

He disconnected me. Obi-Wan had just disconnected me!

I gaped at the comm link.

Seriously? Seriously?

My face burned.

What in the stars was that? How could he do that? How could he—

My comm link beeped.

I immediately answered. "Why did you disconnect me? Why would you—"

"This is Anakin," a familiar voice snapped.

Anakin! If Anakin was having dreams, then Anakin could explain!

"Anakin, thank the stars! I just had the weirdest—"

"How could you, Sabé?" Anakin demanded. "How could you say that everything is going to be alright?"

I stared at my comm link. I wanted to take a moment to figure out what in the stars was going on, but that had worked out miserably the last comm conversation.

"You know—" Anakin began.

I interrupted him, before things could get totally out of control again, "What are you talking about, Anakin? I am really confused."

"Padmé and the twins!" Anakin burst. "What else would I be talking about? How could you say that they were going to be alright, Sabé?"

"Um." That had not helped to clear things up at all. "Are you talking about Padmé's exam? Because everything's progressing normally and—"

"But you know what happened last time!" Anakin raged on the other end of the link. "You were the one who encouraged me to do something about it!"

I was not going to have another disastrous comm conversation today. I was not. One was quite enough, thank you very much.

"Okay, you know what?" I said, "You seem to feel very strongly about whatever is going on—"

"Of course I feel strongly about it!" Anakin shouted across the link.

I raised my voice and kept talking, "So we're going to meet in person to discuss this. It'll go better. When are you free to meet?"

"I'm not free to—" Instead of finishing his sentence, Anakin began to curse creatively and vehemently at me in a number of different languages.

I waited for him to finish with as much patience as I could.

But a minute into his tirade, he showed no signs of slowing down. And my patience had already been sorely tried today.

"Okay, right, that's nice," I drawled as loudly as I could. "So, I'll see you later tonight at Padmé's. We'll talk then. Bye, Anakin."

Anakin stopped swearing to growl, "Sabé—!"

But I didn't find out what else he was going to say, because I shamelessly stole Obi-Wan's method of ending a conversation I no longer wanted to participate in and disconnected him.

Expected Update Time: ...um...well... it's definitely going to be before June 6th and it'll probably be before May 8th, but it might also be before April 27th. We'll see. (I got a job in my field, guys! Two jobs, actually, because, apparently, I am out of my mind and also potentially a workaholic! But, basically, that means things are changing and I don't know how yet. Next update I'll have a much better idea of what my life and free-time looks like)