A/N: Obi-Wan discovers a new feeling. ;)


Chapter Ten: Still and Still Moving

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation...

-T.S. Eliot "East Coker"

Sabé arrived back at her quarters at the 500 Republica with a singing lightness in her veins, which – as it turned out – was completely opposite of the atmosphere therein. While the other handmaidens zoomed to and fro packing supplies, Captain Panaka came up to Sabé and questioned her about her training – no suspicions even though Sabé knew her clothes smelled of the frying oil and her hands, hidden behind her back, were covered with the residues of grease. Panaka must have been very distracted.

"Well, I hope Duel has taught you well," Panaka huffed, and Sabé had the impression that he trod on many of his words, stuffed them back inside before they found a way out, "We are going back to Naboo, on the Queen's orders. There's nothing left to be done here."

Looking at his face, Sabé forbade herself from asking questions, but merely nodded. There would be plenty of time to drag out the details in the evening.

Panaka gazed back at her, "You'll need your blasters ready," he said, "and a suit of blaster armor; wear it next to the skin. It'll be hot and uncomfortable but I'm happier with you in it."

"Yes, Captain," Sabé said.

He made a motion to go, then turned back to her again, his dark eyes holding hers steady, "I don't know what it would look like back home, when we get there."

"We will manage," Sabé said, "we have Padmé with us."

"Shiraya protect us," said Panaka, "that girl will get us all killed, herself included."

"Keep faith, Captain. It'll turn out all right."

He raised an eyebrow, "I'd be much happier if it was Saché telling me that."

Sabé smiled at him.

"Having a decoy was one of my more creative ideas, Sabé," Captain Panaka said, looking suddenly more than his forty years, "and as the Corellian said, I am not known for my spontaneity. Normalcy is much safer. Always safer."

"Sir?"

"Don't go proving me right by getting yourself hurt, do you hear? Duck if they shoot at you. First pull Padmé down with you. Then shoot back."

"I will try make you proud, captain," Sabé said.

Until then she had not thought Panaka capable of fatigue, of uncertainty, and it was painful to think him mired in self-doubt. She was surprised by this vulnerability that seemed at once to give this two-dimensional, predictable, even boringman a sudden and complete reality. At that moment she wanted to make him take back that tired look and be restored to his usual, unflappable self.

"Really Captain, even Dengar Duel was impressed with me."

He clapped her lightly on the shoulder, and left.


After some hours on the ship, when the wildness and the force of Padmé's mind battered excessively on Sabé's ears, she had put on ear plugs to listen to the holonet, hoping that using her hearing in its normal capacity would disable that sensitivity to the imperceptible. Then Padmé surfaced from her deliberation, and it felt as if a great rumbling noise in the background had gone silent, leaving one's ears ringing oddly in its wake.

They had no choice but to go for help from the Gungans, Padmé said. The pilot was made aware of their destination. Going into Gungan territory also meant that Sabé would, once again, assume the Queen's battle regalia and walk high-headed through hostile swamps draped in scarlet and black.

Sabé expected fear, but as once before when she faced Nute Gunray in the Palace and saw the arrogance slicked like a layer of oil over his central greed, she still did not feel fear, only a sense of change, as of the ground falling out a little from under her. For what evil there was in Gunray was understandable, it could be catalogued, like creatures in Obi-Wan's collections. It could be rendered unfearful.

Avoiding sleep again, Sabé went to her usual retreat. The engine room, dimly lit by the sensor lights, was a warm cocoon of sound and structure. There was a safety in it, in the middle of wires and pillars, each of which had its own purpose, its own function, its role. Everything fit here, Sabé thought; nothing wasted.

Too bad that the same could not be said of life.

She had not closed her eyes for long in meditation when the noise, as of a deep purring, reached her. For a long, uncertain moment she was at a loss, having never heard any machine make that particular sound, and was looking around to see if this could be a precursor to their radiator boards failing when the tusk cat appeared from behind the next, unlit door.

Sabé froze.

Full-sized Naboovian tusk cats were roughly the size of landspeeders, so she reckoned that the newcomer, who stood a little shorter than her where she sat and was no longer than she was tall must be a very young one of its species. It had seen her, and cautiously padded up to her. There was a raised welt in the upper corner of its eye, red on fur the color of the Tatooine desert at sunset. The great tusks that defined the species were still somewhat recognizable as incisors on this creature, and were only as long as Sabé's index finger, but already they shone in the light of the engine room.

The tusk cat studiously avoided touching Sabé where she sat still as if she were a part of the floor, but arched its back and bent its head to stare into her face with that fixity and stillness of purpose that only wild creatures seem to possess. Its eyes were a warm brown-gold, large and liquid, the shape of almonds curving up in the corners. Suddenly Sabé was reminded of Saché, who looked at her with the same archness. Despite the feeling that her heart had stopped beating, Sabé smiled.

The great cat tossed its head as Sabé's breath parted the small hairs on its forelocks, and then abruptly bent its shapely, delicate head to her hand and nosed her palm affectionately. Its grace was feline, but the affection was canine. Sabé followed the cat's lead and stroked its ears, under its chin, and then was directed to scratch - vigorously - behind its shoulder blades. The tusk cat purred, making every hair on Sabé's arms stand on end, as if they sensed danger in their own right.

"I think she likes you," said someone, and the tusk cat growled as Sabé's hand stilled in her short, dusky fur. The tall figure of Qui-Gon Jinn stepped out from behind the low-ceilinged doorway - he had to duck - and came to stand before Sabé. He cocked his head to the side and was watching with a smile as Sabé scratched behind the cat's ears again.

"Did you... bring her onboard, Master Jinn?" Sabé asked.

He grinned, nodding, "I did."

"Where in Shiraya's name did you find her - on Coruscant?"

"Indeed," said Jinn, propping a shoulder languidly on the side of the control panel, utterly relaxed, as if he hadn't noticed that he was in the room with Naboo's fiercest hunter.

His eyes were green, but toward the dark iris they turned a steely gray. Jinn was watching the purring cat with undisguised affection. At the corners of his eyes laughter lines radiated out, as children might draw lines of light coming from the sun.

Sabé was struck by how unreserved Obi-Wan's master was. Even the way he walked, the way he occupied space, had a supple but relaxed quality to it. Where Obi-Wan was controlled, contained, polished, his master was like another great cat, lounging with fluid grace. Jinn did not seem the type of man who found the greater part of wisdom in restraint. There was an exuberance about him, a spontaneity, that overflowed into his immediate vicinity even when he was just standing there, smiling at a girl petting a cat.

Sabé liked him immediately. His ordinary openness allowed others to leave off their gestures and their affectations, and speak in honest.

"And who might you be?" Asked Qui-Gon Jinn, turning his eyes now to Sabé.

But before she could speak, he smiled again, with great delight.

"Oh, I see. You're the ghost, are you not?" He laughed, "Our own little ghost in the machine. You who are Queen and yet not Queen; the good Captain Panaka's secret."

"How did you know?" Sabé asked.

But Jinn merely smiled, then inclined his head toward the still-purring tusk cat, who had decided Sabé's lap was a good place as any to rest her large, squarish head, and moved only every so often so Sabé could get at the other ear, or under her chin.

"I thought," Jinn said, "that Chancellor Valorum wouldn't do justice to a soon-to-be full-grown Naboovian tusk cat. He certainly needs nothing other than his new-found influence to impress his fellows. And his menagerie on Coruscant could do with one fewer inmate."

He turned his eagle's eyes to Sabé, this time with a muted hint of fire, "she was getting too large, too unwieldy for the assistants that kept his zoo. And I couldn't bear to see a beauty like her trammeled and beaten."

Jinn took a step closer, crouched down beside the tusk cat and reached out with a steady hand to stroke her belly. The cat narrowed hers eyes to slits, and growled with an undercurrent of warning in the back of its throat. Jinn gently removed his hand, and sat back.

"You see, she only tolerates me because she knows I mean her no harm. But these creatures are proud. Some might domesticate them and turn them into beasts of burden, but they remember that they had carried the Kings and Queens of Naboo upon their backs, once upon a time. So they do not yield their favor to any riff-raff from space that might come along."

His eyes twinkled.

Sabé laughed, "You mean that the cat, too, has mistaken me for a queen of Naboo?"

Jinn looked at her closely, affectionately, as if they had known each other for a long time. Then he smiled that same smile, generous and yet enigmatic.

"I think she knows what she sees, little ghost."

He stood with the smooth and energetic movement of a man many years his junior, and pointed to the antechamber he emerged from.

"I've made up a sort of cot for her in there," he said, "and it would be best for us to let her out when we disembark, on the edge of Gungan territory, or she will be hungrier than is comfortable."

"I can program the door to open when we land," Sabé said, "some of the droid ports can be rearranged and she will be able to get out."

"Very well," Jinn said, "then as for you, little ghost, I did not know you were even here. Likewise, the good Captain does not need to know that a tusk cat had even set foot on this ship."

"Very well, Master Jinn," said Sabé.

He nodded. "Force be with you, little ghost."


When the Queen stepped out of the starship with Padmé and the other handmaidens in tow, it was to be greeted by the warm, dewy air of the Naboo forests. Her small company was last to exit, and the two Jedi who stood to follow were watching her closely as she descended. The queen's face never gave itself to much expression, but she nodded briefly at Qui-Gon, who after disembarking had sensed the brief shape of some predator in the dense, soupy fog that made up the forest floor, inclined his head in her direction with a small smile. Even in times of war, or rather, especially in times of war, when the large motions of history were guided to destruction, to death, did these small favors of fortune shine so much the brighter.

Whoever enjoyed hiking through the foggy and dense undergrowth of the great forests of Naboo, thought Sabé, never had to do it with a ten-pound hairpiece. It had been sometime since she wore it last, as Padmé had been in her own seat at the Senate and even most of today, but the weight of it was giving her a headache.

There were many things that Sabé felt herself unequal to, living in the world, and forcing a Gungan peace treaty was one of them. She had little idea about the mechanics of it, the give and take of interest, the shifts of power and prestige that so closely underscored the negotiations. More than anything she wished that she had a delicate ear and a tongue of silver that was required for these things, as Obi-Wan did. There was a sick feeling in her stomach, a fear of failure she had rarely felt before in her role as Decoy. She told Padmé about her misgivings while they were still on ship.

"I know," Padmé said, and Sabé felt as if she could hear the thoughts howling across the young Queen's mind yet again, "I know this is not what you signed up for. And the Jedi are strictly forbidden from assisting us in these matters, even if they happen to agree with us."

Then she grinned, and despite the tension in the room it cut across like a bright ray in the gloom. It reminded Sabé of Qui-Gon, actually.

"Don't you worry," said Queen Amidala, "if you do what you can, I'm sure we'll think of something."

And so when Padmé cut before Sabé and stepped fearlessly up to face Boss Nass, speaking clearly in her voice of her true identity, of truce and friendship, Sabé was content to watch. The relief was monumental, like being restored to her own skin.

Even though she might remain hopeless at politics, she sensed Padmé's joy in it, her swift command of its language, her deftness in its many meanings. For a moment it was as if she stood inside Padmé's mind, and found that the gale winds that swept there were not so unlike the great, shifting dunes of her own imagination.


Padmé, Boss Nass, the Jedi and Captain Panaka were all in deep discussion, circled tightly on the edge of a clearing. Rabé had set up a temporary clinic for any one, human or Gungan, needing medical attention and for once Eirtaé stayed to help her. Sabé had little stomach for wounds and for blood. Bandages and the smell of antiseptic had always called up memories of those days in the hospital, filled to overflowing, with the sound of coughing and retching all around her.

Her own illness had been a world of dreams. Like the few survivors who emerged from the brain fever, Sabé had lost much of her past, even her own name. Perhaps it was not so far off the mark that Qui-Gon Jinn had called her a ghost. She did not remember any details of her life before her seventh birthday. Her parents could have been anyone. The vague love she felt, thinking of them now, could merely be a feeling for ghosts. But Sabé could not help but believe that she had been loved, in her youth, for there were times when she had found a quiet tenderness and generosity in her own heart that would no have been possible otherwise. The marks of love, which could not be seen or felt, still could not be erased by illness.

Sabé left Rabé and Eirtaé to their business, and went to search for something that she could do. She had to, on more than a few occasions, step around to avoid the great lumbering kaadu that were being herded across the floor of the swamp to the shouted commands of the foot soldiers.

Following the buzzing, crackling sound of electricity Sabé found what looked like the engineering corps of the Gungan army. There were only about ten of them, and by their looks, all male. She approached the one who was working on one of the enormous shield generators, and was studiously ignored for a minute straight before her third, growingly irate "excuse me" brought him to take of his goggles and fix his bright amber eyes at her.

Gungans were, to Sabé, only theoretical beings before now. The part of the world in which she lived was nowhere near theed or the great swamps in Southern Naboo. But from what she had seen of Jar Jar Binks she had expected that Gungans would be friendly; overly loquacious at times, too. But they were fierce creatures, and warlike: Boss Nass with his great size, and now this Gungan who was glowering at her was also a great deal larger (wider) thank Jar Jar binks and wore less good humor on his face.

"What," the Gungan said, "what doin yousa wanna?"

"I wanted to help," said Sabé, trying to channel Padmé when she stood up to Boss Nass earlier this afternoon, "I've some experience with machines and wanted to see if you needed an extra hand."

"Yousa wanna help?" The look was quite clearly one of deep skepticism. The Gungan looked her over, from head to toe, then smirked, "yousa gonna mess up nice clothes, girl, yousa help."

There were snorts of laughter from his compatriots, and while they laughed Sabé put two fingers on his great machine and hummed a few low notes under her breath. Men! She thought, universally the same! And recalled belatedly that had been one of Sister Mabela's perennial sayings.

When they were done joking, Sabé said, "I see you're trying to increase generator power to last in case of prolonged combat. But have you tried this?"

Five incredulous minutes later, they got her an extra apron, and Sabé was happily working away, up to her elbows (sleeves rolled of course) in the main shield generator.


It was getting near full dark when Obi-Wan finished discussing the plans with Qui-Gon, the true Queen of Naboo, and the Gungans. Captain Panaka had already set off with a small contingent of his men on landspeeders to survey the enemy's firepower and the camps under cover of night. They had arranged a at dawn.

When Padmé had stepped forward and revealed herself as the true queen, Obi-Wan looked over at his master to gauge his reaction, a little smug that he had known all along. But the look that he caught from Qui-Gon was one of equal appraisal. So his master had known, as well. And here was Obi-Wan, wanting again to one-up the old man. It was no easy thing, Obi-Wan reflected ruefully.

Looking at Padmé, now, after, he was still startled by her uncanny resemblance to Sabé. It was as if nature, by two entirely different paths, had arrived at the same conclusion of that which was good. But with bare faces exposed, Obi-Wan saw the differences, which though small, spoke of a world of difference inside.

For Sabé to smile, she had to be drawn out, patiently, like a creature from the woods. Whereas Padmé would smile and laugh as one certain of her footing, forthright and pealing.

Now, with the plans drawn, Qui-Gon suggested that Obi-Wan might go and look over the shield generators, which figured largely in the Gungan's defense.

"They're going to be the diversion," Qui-Gon said, "there is no call for them to lose more men than they will already."

In the falling twilight campfires appeared one by one, like incandescent lights winking in and out behind the dense foliage, peering through the great covering firs of the forest floor. The Gungans gathered around and there was talk, and a great deal of laughter and horseplay went on, in anticipation of the battle. Obi-Wan saw the queen and her handmaidens around a large fire in a semicircle. The other half of the circle was completed by the Gungans, with Boss Nass seated firm like a great tree stump in the middle. Some rather elaborate preparation of fish was being served by Nass, who apparently took the role of host seriously and wanted something to impress the Naboovians with. But the figure most familiar to Obi-Wan was missing.

He did not even need to pick up the trail of her force signature, merely followed the sound of the buzzing electric welder as a bee follows the scent of distant flowers on the air, and found Sabé a distance away, in a clearing. She was almost submerged in a force field generator, working hard at something in its underbelly. She held a small, sleek flashlight between her teeth. Her Queen's outfit was obscured by a comically large work apron that covered her almost to her toes.

A feeling rose in him, unfurling slowly as smoke on a windless day, as he watched her small, deft hands move expertly over the large machine, her bare face taut in an expression of utter concentration. The feeling was so novel that he could not name it, nor place another time when he felt that similar ache. It was as if some sleeping part of his being, in repose since the moment of his birth and quiescent throughout all his years of training, had been called awake.

The most familiar component of Obi-Wan's emotional repertoire - the feeling that most often rose out of that gray luminescent soup that was his normal state - was the fierce, crystalline joy when on missions everything became clear, and he knew what it was he had to do. Besides that, there was frustration, as when things went awry from their normal course, such as this debacle with Anakin's training and Qui-Gon's stubbornness.

This ache, however, somewhere near the region of his heart, this was strange. Why indeed should the sight of Sabé, Decoy to the Queen of Naboo, make him feel as if someone had pressed hard on an old bruise somewhere in the middle of his chest? Why did his lungs feel at once empty, and yet too full?

Obi-Wan saw that a few of the Gungan engineers had gathered behind Sabé to watch her work, as he did. Some of them were already slurping noisily at their evening meal. He went over to the largest of them - girth was usually a good marker of senority and experience, and the Gungans were no exception - and asked about their progress.

"Desa equipment is old," huffed the Gungan, "but it ganna getin da job done."

Then he nodded in Sabé's direction, "da human girl know her machines."

Then he went back to work, brushing his ear flaps over his shoulder. Obi-Wan walked to Sabé, calling out a greeting. She paused and turned to him, taking hold of her flashlight. Even in the dark he saw here eyes were dazed, as of a dreamer interrupted from her journey in the alpine heights of Almirrra, or of a diver surfacing from deep waters. Then her eyes cleared and she saw him again, and at her smile that same ache came again to him, so familiar and yet unknown.

"Obi-Wan," she said. There was a small smudge of oil on her cheek. She had secured her voluminous sleeves at her elbows and her hands were stained with the black oil of machines, and also there was a bluish substance on it that Obi-Wan did not recognize.

"Sabé," he said, "what have you found?"

"Genle there has kept all of these in good working order," she replied, indicating the large Gungan that Obi-Wan had been speaking with, "and they are very powerful. The substance that's used to fuel these machines is like nothing I've seen."

She wiped her hands on her apron and looked up with consternation at the deepening blue of the sky and then back at Obi-Wan.

"If there was any weakness to it, it's that the four shield generators all depend on one another - they need the mutually resonating field in order to be effective."

"So if one is taken down, the whole system fails?"

"In a way, yes," Sabé replied, "the remaining three might still be functional but the shield itself will be gone, utterly dissipated."

"So as long as they fire from outside the shield, everyone stays safe," said Obi-Wan, watching the way Sabé's hands rested on the machine affectionately.

"Yes, they will work against all energy blast weapons and the like. But soldiers will be able to come through."

"They will send droids," said Obi-Wan.

"Yes, they will, won't they," said Sabé, "those cheaters. Bending technology to fit their brutish ends. Buying droids by the hundreds to go against these poorly armed Gungans. It's not fair at all. How many droids are worth a mans' life?"

The evening had grown colder and she shivered. Obi-Wan heard her stomach growl, and smiling offered his hand to help her up. He did not know what it meant that he should marvel at the strong grip of her small hands, and how well they fit inside his own.

They were walking back across the encampment when Sabé saw that the clouds had cleared, and the sky was a vast lake scattered with bits of moonlight.

Obi-Wan, walking at her side, was quiet, lost in thought, judging by the small notch that carved itself in between his brows when he was thinking. But he stopped when she did and gazed up with her.

"Where is Coruscant?" Sabé asked.

She felt him smile, and he pointed to a bright light above the tree cover far to their left, "that light there is Coruscant prime, the planet's sun. Sometimes when the sky is dark enough you can see the whole great metal bulk of the planet itself, glinting like an afterthought in orbit."

"When I left the abbey," Sabé said, "I told Sister Mabela that I would return after this was all over."

She looked out into the distance where Couruscant Prime hung amidst the sky, glowing with the same indifferent, dazzling glimmer as all other stars that filled the horizon.

"I remember that she looked at me," Sabé continued, "not skeptical, not approving, just a waiting look. Obi-Wan I've been to the planet that circles that star. Isn't that wonderful?"

"And Tatooine," he said.

"How can I forget?" She said,"the binary sunset. And the white desert spider. You know, before all this I had looked at the sky and only thought, here I am, under the spinning world, the roving clouds, the wandering moon, here I am. But now there is such possibility in every speck, every dust mote, every ray of starlight. I want to know what is out there, Obi-Wan. I want to see worlds made under the light of a different sun."

Obi-Wan looked at her eyes, bright with the light of stars and fires, "why then did you go to the abbey?"

"I wanted - " Sabé began, and caught herself, "after the hospital it was the orphanage, this one and then that one when they consolidated all the children left behind by the virus. There weren't many of us, but enough, and everywhere, we were being moved. I wanted a place where I could be still. I wanted to plant my feet upon solid ground."

"And now," she said, "now I want the air."

Even in the dark he could see the blush spreading over her cheeks.

"Talking nonsense," Sabé muttered, as if to herself, and set out, leaving him behind.

Obi-Wan followed after, a little behind as not to fluster her.

Not nonsense, he thought, remembering how he had felt, heartsick and dejected, when he thought he was assigned to the Agricorps, that his dream of becoming a Jedi knight were gone forever. Such dreams he had then, in the quiet mornings, in his cot. His dreams had stretched out, reached all across the galaxy, into the deepest recesses of the cosmos. He wanted to be everywhere. The dissolution of that dream had been painful as amputation, to have the great limbs of his wonder cut down to size, to be left with the uninspired corners of various star systems. It felt to him like the loss of hearing, or of sight; a loss of some unrecorded organic sense.

Now, having seen the wonders of other worlds, he also saw greed, malice, and great apathy hung in the black between the stars. Now on the eves before battles or in the middle of being hurtled from one conflict to another, there were nights when Obi-Wan could not sleep for fear that the world around him might disappear, that the universe which clamored around him might all fall silent, and the ground give way under him. In the dissolving dark it did not seem so impossible.

Hadn't the poet said, long in ago in a faraway world, that we must be still and still moving?

He knew her mind, Obi-Wan thought. In this moment he knew her as he knew himself.