A/N: Hello hello! I'm back with this short chapter that foretells the end of this episode... Next chapter will be the last until Episode VIII is out, so feast your eyes! :D
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any of its characters. I only own my OCs Cas, Tani and Sehr along with the plot of this story.
11. Memories
Yavin IV was a green planet. A lot like Takodana, although here, there was a strange pulsing in the air, something that meant trouble and maybe something else.
As soon as Cas stepped down the starship's ramp, she breathed in this charged air and felt her skin prickle.
Her mother answered a silent question. "Yavin IV is a planet filled with the Force. Every tree, every animal, every drop of water, is full of it. It can be overwhelming at first. Breathe evenly, and it'll pass." She said that while calling her sabre to her hand, and the silver hilt flew from her belt to her open palm, Cas watching in awe.
Tani Kenobi had not stepped onto this earth for an age, and yet even she could realise the balance in the Force was somehow disturbed. Something was wrong, or had been wrong, and her instincts kicked in.
She lead the group that had followed her here through the maze of trees, cutting a path through the vines with her blue blade that drew scary patterns on her worn-out features.
Behind her, her daughter in everything but blood was following, a blaster clutched in her own hand, still painfully unaware of her own value.
"Careful. There are quicksands nearby," she warned in a growl.
Cas gasped, but Tani did not know if it was at the prospect of being swallowed by the ground or because of her tone. She would have bet on the second option.
To be truthful, both options did not particularly appeal to Cas. First, she would get dirty; second, her mother had now turned into some sort of warrior-mode that was frightful to behold.
Poe caught up with her as she left the Jedi Master stride a little ahead of her. "Are you alright?"
She shook her head. "This planet is weird. My mother is weird. The Universe is weird."
He chuckled lightly and patted her shoulder. "Don't worry, if you get stuck in quicksand, I'll drag you back up."
And suddenly the prospect of being dirty was not so unappealing...
They trekked through the forest for about three hours until they erupted in a huge open space covered in grass that had grown in angry patches here and there over the years. The path that led to the building beyond, that Cas strangely remembered being made of pebbles, was nowhere to be seen.
Tani stepped gingerly into the clearing, her sabre still lit, and the stance she had taken while walking made the soldiers behind her raised their guns and attention to their surroundings.
It made Cas understand something else as soon as she realised that what she had thought was part of the forest was instead the Temple covered in moss that had swallowed its walls.
"It happened here." she said, and her voice carried to her mother who whirled around to face her. She nodded once, and Cas felt tears come up to her eyes, though she refused to cry.
It had happened there. The massacre. Her vision. Kylo Ren.
She had almost died right there.
Her friends, no doubt, had been killed just there, their bodies rotting under their feet right now.
She was going to be sick.
"Commander Dameron, I'll be grateful if you could carry my daughter. She is going to feel faint for a few moments still." She was mildly aware of a pair of arms scooping her off the ground, for she had squeezed her eyes closed to try and forget the thoughts that had invaded her mind.
Indeed she felt more and more faint as the minutes passed. The feeling of stepping onto comrades and childhood friends was ever growing, as was that strange pulsing she had first felt upon their arrival.
It grew stronger as they approched the Temple.
When Poe stepped onto the first stone step of the stairs, Cas gasped audibly, and her eyes flew open, wide with fear and something else.
"We need to leave," she said.
At the same moment, the cocking of guns from inside the Temple made everyone aware of the trap they had just stepped into.
Except perhaps Tani who had expected it since they had arrived.
The Stormtroopers seemed somehow surprised to see the group and mostly their leader, and the Resistance members then knew that their plan had worked.
"Master Tani Kenobi," a masked Trooper said, "you are under arrest on orders of Supreme Leader Snoke. You and your Padawan are to be brought before him for questioning."
"Is that so?" Tani said, and the smirk on her face would have been familiar to anyone who had once met the infamous Obi-Wan Kenobi, her father. Her blue blade shone in the faint darkness of the room they had entered, and she did not lower it.
Behind her, the soldiers, Jessika and Poe - still carrying Cas - had gathered in a circle, their guns and pikes held high, fear absent from their faces.
Cas was feeling that pulse growing still in her heart of hearts, and she let herself slide down from Poe's arm to come and stand next to her mother.
It had never been so easy to reach her mind than at that moment. "What is that power I feel, Ma?"
"It's the Force, my love, this Temple was built around its use. We will be invincible in its walls." She raised her sabre higher, and Cas took it as her cue.
She would not wonder who had fired first, later that day, because it was pointless.
What she'd remember, thought, was the fearsome sight of her mother whirling around with her blade, looking younger than ever, drawing a path of death among the troops gathered to stop them.
What she'd also remember, was that her own aim had never been truer than in these walls. And that not once was she grazed by the bolt of a Trooper.
It was all over in a matter of minutes, and when the satisfying hiss of a sabre being switched off echoed into the empty room, Cas knew they were safe.
Tani's breath evened, and she looked at her daughter, outstretching a hand. "Come, I have somewhere I'd like to show you."
And she followed without a second thought.
Tani's signature in the Force told Cas that the Master was both elated to be back to these walls and destroyed by its magnificence eaten away by time and unuse. She caressed wooden doors that had been gnawed at by whatever creature, sighed at sculptures fallen and broken on the ground, and smiled at the glass dome that somehow still stood strong, although not as clean as it had been.
As they strode through corridors and staircases, Cas' memories started to unfold. She remembered that staircase and the broken stair at the top of it; she realised she had already seen that ugly statue of a unidentified creature everyone called 'Momo'; she laughed when she saw the window sill they all used to jump from when they wanted to avoid punition. It used to give right onto a fountain that was by then dried out.
Cas' hand squeezed her mother's on many occasions, and Tani's signature progressively began to push away the grief, and to give way to fond memories as well.
When they entered the small room that was there again covered in moss, though, Cas' heart stopped beating.
The cot would not have given it away. The mechanics parts, now all rotten, gathered in a box beside the door, would have.
"This was my room," she whispered, and did not need confirmation.
She remembered now. The games, the days she spent, punished, forced to meditate until the Master came to release her. The holobooks about fairytales and Jedis and legends. One of them looked unharmed enough for her to gently scoop it off the broken bookshelf and place it in her satchel.
"We did not have time to take much back then," Tani said, a small smile on her lips. "Take what you want. I have to go...somewhere."
Cas did not need to ask, for she knew. Her daughter's room. She nodded, and Tani left silently, hands clenched into fists.
She salvaged what she could. A book there, a pair of shoes here, even a toy light-sabre, long dead, but that still felt good in her hand. Must have been built for her.
Tani found her about an hour later, sitting on the cot of moss, staring through what was left of the window. Something peaceful emitted from Cas' aura, and her Master-mother was suddenly aware that all Cas had needed all these years, was closure.
Maybe so did she.
"Darling, she ought to go. Our mission is done. The First Order came here to stop us, and was mistaken. Luke should be safe."
Cas stood, smiling, and added a small "And your daughter with him" that made Tani's blue eyes lit up with hope.