Kaleidoscope
Long before a lot of the younger Jedi – and even some of the older ones could remember, a small office had been prepared and reserved for the Guardian whenever he or she lodged on Yavin IV. It was a cramped room that looked like the hybrid of an apothecary and an archive. Vials filled with bubbling fluids hummed above old-fashioned burners while while datapads and a decrepit looking console balanced precariously on a rickety old table in the middle of the room. Large plasti-glass containers of multi-coloured stones dotted each corner of the room, ancient tomes hung precariously from the overhanging shelves, dusty parchment sinking to the ground even at this very moment.
At this moment, a large tome lay open on the table, and the Guardian of this time, a certain Padmé Naberrie of Naboo, was poring over it, her brow frowning with concentration.
Padmé was half-bent over the tome, her mouth mumbling words while her hands stirred a concoction in a small bowl by her side. She stopped stirring for a moment to turn the page with one hand, and dust flickered to her face. She sneezed absentmindedly, ignoring the fine sheen of powder that had fallen on her skin and clothes. She wore a long, high-necked dark robe that covered her hands and throat, easy to clean and effective for hiding the bruises that appeared on her pale skin every morning.
"I think you should leave, Padmé."
She started violently, her body reacting before her mind registered the voice.
Obi-Wan reached out a hand and froze the spinning bowl inches from his face.
"I would have knocked but the door was open," he said warily.
"Sorry!" Padmé gasped. She went round the table to meet him, closing the tome as she did so.
"No harm done," he said easily, as he lowered the bowl back to the table. He helped her gather the strange mixture of dust and seeds that had fallen out of the bowl when she turned it into a missile.
When they had set everything in order, he took her hands. "How are you feeling?"
Padmé worked her jaw contemplatively. "I can chew solid foods now." Her eyes danced.
He laughed. "Well, everything that counts is in order, then." His laughter died as he turned serious again. "I've made arrangements for you to leave tomorrow."
She took her hands back at once. "You're sending me away?"
"I would have sent you sooner if you had recovered faster."
"I thought the Grandmaster wanted me here?"
Obi-Wan sighed, ran a hand over his hair. "He did but until he gets here…. Padmé, it's not safe for you here."
"Why?" she asked coolly.
He tried to look away. "You know why…"
Her eyes were remorseless. "Because of Vader? Shouldn't you have thought about that that before you decided to make me his bait?"
Obi-Wan winced. "I had nothing to do with that," he said softly.
"Not at first," Padmé retorted. She walked away from him, leaned against the table and folded her arms. "I'm not going anywhere, Obi-Wan. And not just," she continued loudly, overriding his words, "because I don't want to wait one moment longer to give the Grandmaster a piece of my mind. You need me here. How long do you think you can hold him down on your own?"
"I've thought of that," Obi-Wan said at once. "There are alternatives. Chemical sedation through his meals. Raising the force fields. Cruder than yours but serviceable."
"You don't have the power capability to raise those shields any higher. You can barely sustain them as they are now. He'll build a tolerance to any drugs you give him in weeks, maybe even days." One by one, she ticked off his suggestions with hard-nosed efficiency. "For all we know, he's already building one to what I give him."
Obi-Wan remembered the sensation of matter and dimensions, parting and breaking before the Sith. "He's not."
"Well?" Padmé smiled. He had just emphasized the importance for her to remain.
Her smile infuriated the Jedi. "You're not taking this seriously, at all, are you?"
"Taking what serious, Obi-Wan?"
He gave her an incredulous look. "Darth Vader! You're not taking Vader seriously. You know that he wants… that he tried…" As he stumbled for words that had suddenly become difficult to grasp, his face gradually reddened.
"He tried to what? Hire a bounty hunter to find me so he could turn me into his sex slave?" Padmé asked innocently. She laughed at loud as Obi-Wan's face burned. "It is rather flattering from a certain point of view."
He resisted the urge to shake sense into her head. "This is a joke to you."
Padmé smiled. "Obi-Wan, how can I be afraid here? Surrounded as I am by an army of Jedi?"
"And your dreams?" He snapped. "Can an army of Jedi protect you from dreams?"
Padmé rolled her eyes and looked away. "Don't be ridiculous, Obi-Wan. Nobody has that kind of power. You should know that."
"Should I?" He persisted. "What do we Jedi have to teach us? Books? Old writings from people who barely understood their own powers? Everyday we discover new things in ourselves, and in the Force. Alarming things. Even the Grandmaster doesn't know it all."
"Slander," Padmé whispered, her voice mock-shocked. Obi-Wan ignored her.
"I do know one thing. Darth Vader is powerful. He's more powerful than anything I've ever encountered. And for some reason, he wants you."
"For some reason? That's not very flattering."
Obi-Wan made a growl of utter exasperation. Padmé lifted her face and looked him in the eye. Her face was absolutely calm, not trembling with fear as he would have preferred – which was not surprising considering the fact that in quarter century he had known her, he had never seen her face (or any part of her body, for that matter) trembling with fear. At least not fear for herself, anyway.
"We all want things we can't have," she said quietly. "I want not to have been used as Sith bait. I want my Grandmother, my sister and my family back. I'm not likely to get them, am I?" Darkness flickered in her eyes. "I'm not going anywhere, Obi-Wan. Not until I've seen the Grandmaster. And if an army of Jedi can't keep me safe from this Sith, then no-one can." She turned away, picked up her bowl and drifted back to the other side of the table.
Obi-Wan looked at the implacable bend of her head over her tome.
"And your dreams?" he asked desperately. "What about your dreams?"
A veil of dust floated over her dark head as she turned a page.
"Dreams pass in time."
''
"You're very quiet, child," Winama said gently, as she collected the bowl from her granddaughter.
Padmé turned her gaze from the window with a smile. The bright light that flooded the room made Winama's white cloud of hair glow like a holo around a face that was softer, more peaceful than Padmé remembered.
"I'm just tired," Padmé said. "I'm sorry, I came here to help you prepare the meal and I've been-"
"Hush, hush, child!" Winama replied with a laugh, as she pushed Padmé away from the stove and into a chair by her side. "Who won't be, with such a –" Her eyebrows wriggled expressively.
"Winama!" Padmé gasped, not knowing whether to be shocked, outraged or amused. Her grandmother winked broadly.
"I wasn't born old," the woman retorted. "Why, the things your grandfather and I-"
This alarming conversation was fortunately cut short by the arrival of Sola and her children. Padmé smiled gratefully as the graceful, willowy form of her elder sister, flanked at either knee by her little bundles of energy, descended on Padmé in a warm hug.
"So glad you could come and visit," she said softly, kissing Padmé gently on each cheek. Her eyes were wide and brown and her face, which managed to be like Sabé's and Padmé's and Winama's at the same time was every wonderful memory that Padmé ever had. She was enveloped with the light and warmth of her family.
"I missed you so much, Sola," Padmé said softly.
She watched her sister embrace her grandmother and her hand reached for the bowl on the table. Her little nieces started climbing over her. The little one had fine, fair hair like Matol Jankerrie's and it ticked Padmé's nose.
''
She sneezed and the dust on the tomb rose and fell in an angry cloud.
tbc
