A/N: In which Sabé plays with Obi-Wan's lightsaber. In a strictly professional capacity, of course.
Chapter 8: That Which is Impossible
For our own heart
always exceeds us
as theirs did.
- Rilke, Second Elegy
It always made Obi-Wan feel old when his master – more than two decades his senior – managed to pull off something so outrageous, something almost juvenile, that it wasn't within the reaches of his own imagination to even consider it, much less make it work. He had the notion that most council members had trouble with Qui-Gon for the very same reason. They did not realize how old and set in their ways they had become until Qui-Gon Jinn swept through the hall, long hair billowing behind him, all risk and flash and brilliant intuition. Troublemaker, like the dervishes that shared his name.
And for the same reason Obi-Wan loved Qui-Gon, though he would never admit it openly. His mentor retained the ability to surprise, to adapt to situations, whereas Obi-Wan had long noticed a tendency in himself to stick to regulations, to close in face of surprises.
It was early afternoon and Obi-Wan was in the engine room, making it ready for the new parts of the hyperdrive. The place was more spotless than he had remembered it, every part humming in some incomprehensible mechanical synchrony. He thought he detected the force signature of the Queen, and smiled at the thought of her here in full make up and battle regalia, flipping her screwdriver, and tapping at the controls with seasoned expertise, totally focused.
He caught himself wondering if he might see her again, and felt Qui-Gon's words come back to him, this time with a force wholly unforeseen. They are not our people, Obi-Wan.
He had found an agreeable girl to speak to, Obi-Wan told himself; a companion in a place far from home. Duty was returning with flow of the force; changes instituting themselves, inevitable. Best to put it from his mind, and focus. His life was not one for lasting attachments, and perhaps neither was hers. Yet even as he plied himself with this series of short, bracing lectures he could not keep from feeling that sense of loss brought to him by the resolution.
"And have you all behaved yourselves when I was gone?" said Padmé, a shade or two darker than they last saw her, breezing through the door of the throne room. Her eyes sparkled with mischief and she moved with the reckless, excited grace of a young girl harboring a great secret.
But before she could get another word out, the ship made a high hum like the sound of a thousand stinging bees, and then spewed itself out of the sand with a violent heave. Sabé grabbed at the side of a chair, and grasped Padmé's arm with her other hand.
Ric Olié's gravelly tones came over the loud speakers, "Emergency take-off, we're flying low to pick up the remaining passengers. Please everyone sit down and buckle in."
They all ignored the last part of the instructions, but headed toward the windows to get a glimpse outside.
"There they are," cried Rabé.
The desert sands, yellow at morning and blood-red in the sunset, was at early afternoon a blinding white. Though the smoky heat and the stabbing light on the portside window, Sabé made out two brighter blades of light locked in an intricate dance, flashing one against the other.
The shadowy figures that wielded the blades came into view, one whose robes were like the sand dunes and the other its dark counterpart. They were coming very close now that Sabé could hear above the deep bone-shaking roar of the ignition thrusters the sound of their blades, a sustained, wide-banded hum from the green one that adjusted the range and pitch as its wielder whirled and spun and ducked. But the other, the red, its sound furled and flickered like a spitting fire, and though the blade shone steady the energy of it came and wavered, and surged on in blasts of undisciplined passions. It was a dark blade, the second. Sabé shuddered at the sound, beating tattoos of it on her mind. And from the looks of the one who wielded it – it was not meant to be a clean blade.
And then the green light vanished, snatched from the desert by the starship. The thrusters engaged to a full atmospheric burn and Sabé heard the squeaky clicks of the space adaptors as they adjusted for the angle of ascent.
The blip of the red blade was left far behind in the desert, at once buried in the air and the distance between them. The shield generator fluttered to life as they cleared the atmosphere and fell into the soundless void that was space. Sabé did not think she would ever get used to the startling change of it, moving from earth to greatest freedom, the peace of the black dusted with stars.
Cabin lights flicked on, with it came Olié's voice, much more relaxed than before.
"All aboard, Your Royal Highness, calibrating for the jump into hyperspace. We should arrive in Coruscant in about eight hours, or 1400 galactic time in their part of the world."
As they prepared for sleep, and Padmé regaled the handmaidens with the things she had seen while they stewed in the ship. The sand and heat every where, she said, and the type and color of riffraff that was cultivated on Tatooine would find their homes in probably no other parts of the civilized inner core worlds. Sabé had found the planet dangerous, bleak, but also exciting, full of hidden revelations. But it was neither the time nor place for her to share that.
Mostly Padmé talked about Anakin – not straight on, except to briefly describe what he looked like, but he found ways of seeping in, usually what he had said, and parts of what he had done – in a way to suggest the boy's persona had impressed itself deeply on Padmé's mind. Her brilliant mind had ever found the things in the world that were hypocritical and ridiculous, had now found something almost of equal brilliance and hardness, a companion.
Rabé and Eirtaé listened and offered interjections, especially at the pod race, while Sabé listened without comment, her mind already on the next part of their plan, on the meeting with Senator Palpatine – at the flight deck, the last open area, the last area of danger, the last place that she would have to be someone other than herself. They would get help then, from the Senate, and there would no longer be any need for the Jedi. Padmé would be parted from her young friend and Sabé would be parted from – well. Such was the way of things in the world; everything passed, everything moved on.
Yet somehow, for some reason or another she could not rest that evening, an even when the cabin lights dimmed and the girls settled down to their respective pallets Sabé could only watch as the milky-silver light of distant stars passed through the royal quarters, illumined the dark shapes motionless in sleep.
She finally dozed after shifting her ears to the smooth-running chord that was the new hyperdrive, and only to be woken by the other song, this song of the red blade, the feeling hissing and spitting, the touch of the tone like the sensation of a never-ending fall, at the center of it – if she could describe sounds like colors – in the center was a great, bubbling darkness. The tattoo of its irregular beat pounded in her sleeping ears and she sat straight up an hour into the prescribed six-hour rest.
She drew out of the sleeping bag, and gathering the handmaiden's flame hood about her shoulders, padded barefoot out of the Royal Quarters. The strange, thawing buzz of the red saber still strummed its counter melody against all her internal rhythms. She walked to the kitchen, and was in the process of making herself a cup of tea before she took note of the figure sitting in the shadows.
A pair of eyes gleamed in the darkness.
"Your Royal Highness," said Obi-Wan Kenobi, pushing back his hood.
Sabé's heart rate must have jumped to some unhealthy number, given the extent of her start. She closed her eyes briefly to compose herself, then blinked owlishly.
"Good evening to you as well, Jedi Kenobi."
"What disturbs your rest at his hour? " he asked drawing back the hood from his features and rising, slowly, surfacing from the dark corner of the dining area into her level, her little spot of light. She sensed that his mood was not at its usual jovial, twinkling pitch – there it was in the slow way he moved, in the drawn look under his eyes.
"I might ask the same of you," she said, keeping her voice even.
"I was…meditating," he said, with half a smile.
"In the kitchen?"
He flashed her an unreadable look, glanced down, "the guest quarters are a little crowded at the moment."
"Of course, with the addition to our crew."
"Yes," he said.
She glanced at him surreptitiously, noting the novel way in which his brows contracted, then smoothed out, as if fighting a particularly disagreeable thought. He would have a fierce frown when he's older, she thought. Each emotion, when they did fit over his face, engaged it so totally, radiated from it even, as a prism spills the thousand colors upon a screen. Such was the infectiousness of his laughing face, and now was the gloomy pall of his darker moods. She fought against the weight of his thoughts, over spilling.
"Would you like some tea?" she asked, and when he looked up at her as if surprised she was still there.
"Yes, tea," she replied, enunciating perhaps what was more than perfectly necessary.
"Oh," he said, "oh well, then. Yes, please. Tea, I mean. Thank you, Your Royal – "
"Enough," Sabé said, "we are friends now, are we not, Jedi Kenobi?"
"And friends may not observe the rules of correct etiquette, Madam? Shall I call you by your given name, and you call me by mine?"
Now that as almost hostile, Sabé thought, until looking up she saw the wry, apologetic twist of his mouth. They neither of them could dispense with the formalities – he for the way of his life has taken, and she – because she did not, technically exist. She looked down, and poured the boiling water into the two cups.
"You're right, of course," she said, "Your Royal Highness it shall remain."
He sighed. And silence fell over them, it was as if she could sense what he was thinking, and to mention anything else in conversation would seem gross and abrasive.
"It is not the stim tea that you prefer," she said, "it is a brew from Naboo to soothe, not to stimulate. But I think you will like it."
She pushed a mug toward him, the heavy earthenware surface pleasantly warm as the water's heat seeped through. And to her surprise he took it with both hands, the long fingers hard with calluses closing over her knuckles.
He did not look up at her, but said, "It would be my honor to be counted among your friends."
And Sabé's heart went out to him, and he seemed to her suddenly alone, orphaned despite the greatness of his cause, confused, even sometimes capable of bad manners.
She said, "I could not sleep because I could not get the sound of the red blade out of my head."
Obi-Wan's eyes jumped to hers. "What do you mean?"
"Your master wields a green lightsaber. It sings when he uses it, the chords are harmonious – point and counterpoint, all pure tone. The core of it is bright, dazzling. Not so the red blade, though it also has great power, but it strums and beats with darker, unreasoning passions. Its core is darkness."
She looked at him, noting the incredulity in his face, but saying it nonetheless.
"It follows us, the red blade."
"How do you know this?"
"I told you, it's my knack," she tried to explain, but he shook his head, grimness pulling at the corners of his mouth.
"I can't believe that."
A wild sort of plan occurred to her. "Hand me your saber," she said, and when he hesitated, "relax, I won't try to eviscerate you, Jedi Kenobi. Trust me."
He reached into his robes and retrieved the silver cylinder – so innocuous seeming in the light of the kitchen.
"Will you turn it on?"
Electric blue blazed suddenly in the darkness. It shone so brightly to hurt her eyes, and across the way she saw him look uncertainly at her.
"Trust me," she said again. A hum filled the air, as if they between their bodies made a chamber for the sound to echo in. When Sabé listened she could hear the music of the blade, the crystals each a tone, a tower of sound invisible, ringing the air one against the other.
And the tone grew stronger; Sabé felt the clasps of her mind become undone, eroded, all the silences and worries melded, flowed into the rushing stream of which she had found the pulse, in the night's music. For a great and enduring instant she could sense the core of that brilliant blue tone, and she sang to it a note that complemented the core, a strong harmony and felt - though she could say how – she felt the blade sing back.
Obi-Wan felt in his hand his lightsaber of these many years grow warm, almost scalding him, then deadly cool, and heard the voice coming as if out of the desert, a voice of the sand and wind and stars, it seemed, and then the blade flashed a brilliant white, a white core that emerged out of the blue. He had never seen that happen before. As he sat still with the ice-cold handle extended before him, the blade's beam seemed to break into two, a swirl of blinding white, and the sound blending, melding almost into his bones.
Across the river of light Sabé looked young, yet ageless; in that peaceful smile there was a suggestion of eternity. But then her eyes fluttered with the avian agitation of birds in the spring, and the frown of concentration sent little ripples across the façade of her static beauty. "Gods," he whispered, "you've made the crystals glow at their second resonance frequency. That's impossible."
She stopped her song. The lights seemed too trickle back into his field of vision, and Obi-Wan deactivated his blade and clipped it back into his belt.
The Queen looked at him, looking as surprised as he must look. "What I wanted to say was – the red blade is the dark twin. In so many ways it is identical: in the seeming it is the same, but not at the core. At the core it is not like this, but dark, whispering, powerful."
"It's Sith," Obi-Wan breathed.
"What's going on?" said a small voice from the shadow of a doorway. Anakin emerged, the coppery light from the kitchen gleaming on his newly washed hair.
"Hi," Sabé said, watching the young boy as he made his way quietly to the table, and quieted her own unruly thoughts, "would you like some tea?"
He made a face, "Yes, thank you. No wait. Not if it's that terrible stuff that Qui-Gon drinks."
Sabé laughed, "No, I will have none of that here, don't you worry. Try this."
She stirred a spoonful of sugar into her own cup of dark tea, and pushed it over to Anakin.
"Hmm," he thought for a moment as he rolled the taste of it on his tongue, "I like it." A smile, bright and guileless as the sun. "Thank you," he said, taking a deeper gulp, "every one's been so nice here. You're very nice too."
Then Anakin cocked his head over to the side, "you look a lot like Padmé." Of course, only through the eyes of a child, Sabé thought.
"Do I?"
He grinned toothily at her, "yes, and that means you're very pretty too. But you are the queen, and I probably shouldn't say that. It's my pleasure to meet you, Queen Amidala. My name is Anakin Skywalker."
"My honor to meet you, Anakin."
He glanced at Obi-Wan, who calmly sipped his tea, and Sabé, then outside, through the small transparisteel window to the stars.
"How far are we now, from Tatooine?"
Sabé pitied him, "some light-years, I think."
"Oh," he said.
"Do you miss your home?" Anakin cast Obi-Wan a surreptitious glance, as if gauging the force of the other's judgment, then shook his head.
But Obi-Wan – whatever his meditation had been, rose to the challenge.
"I think it is perfectly natural to miss your home, Anakin."
The boy looked at him, "Do you miss yours?"
Obi-Wan shook his head, "I don't remember it. I was only a baby when I arrived at the temple."
Anakin's eyes filled with compassion, "I'm sorry. That's terrible for you."
Sabé knew it took a great deal of training for Obi-Wan's eyebrows not to shoot up into his hair.
"Were you an orphan?" Anakin asked.
"No," Obi-Wan said, "I was a younger son, and I passed the midichlorian level for entry into the temple. My birth parents took me there."
"Why would they do that?"
"They wanted me to have a good life," Obi-Wan said, "or at least, a better one."
This Anakin understood. "Like my mom," he said, "she wants the best for me, too."
"You will have friends in the temple, Anakin."
"I know. Qui-Gon says that too. But I would be sad, if I never knew my mom, like you. Will Padmé be there?"
"Uh..."
"No, she can't be," Anakin finished his sentence, "She's not a force-sensitive, like us."
The last glance included Sabé, to her bewilderment.
"I am not force-sensitive, Anakin."
"Maybe not in the same way, but you are something – I can feel it. Otherwise how can you make Obi-Wan's lightsaber turn white?"
"How indeed?" Obi-Wan whispered. Sabé took the chance to refill their cups.
"We were all tested for midichlorians as babes," she said, "and Naboo is a core planet."
The subject was dropped, but two pairs of disbelieving eyes looked at her over the rims of their respective mugs with two equal expressions of skepticism. Sabé bent her head, retreated further back into her hood to hide her confusion.
They bade goodnight soon thereafter, Obi-Wan now with a protective hand over Anakin's back, to guide him back to the guest quarters, and Sabé, with a mouthful of things unsaid, thanks unvoiced. It occurred to her briefly that perhaps Obi-Wan might never know her real name now. That which he called their friendship could be completely lost to history, shorn of all its identifying features, as if it never happened, as if it were another life, another Sabé who lived it. One who did not have impossible hopes.
But walking back to the Queen's quarters, Sabé realized that her fingers still tingled, not from the humming lightsaber, but from where Obi-Wan's fingers had touched her, on the backs of her hands. It was then she realized that though her mind was filled with adages of change and of letting go, her heart had already set itself on dreaming the impossible.
