Snowhere to Go: Chapter Nine
The ship was still on autopilot when I returned to the cockpit. I allowed it to remain so, but I wondered where my Padawan had wandered off to. On my way back up here, I hadn't heard any more yelling or arguing, and his emotional state seemed surprisingly pleased at the moment. Strange.
"Hello, Master," he announced a few seconds later as he entered and took his place in the pilot's seat.
I watched him curiously as he took back control of the ship and checked several of the gauges. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for his mood. Was he really not going to say anything about the angry confrontation he'd just endured? As well as his fake death?
"Everything all right?" I finally asked him. Our training bond was practically singing. Usually, it hummed with a sort of nervous tension, like a guitar string wound too tight.
"Sure. How's everything with you?"
All right. If that's the way it was going to be. Experience had taught me to let well enough alone, but I'd also learned just how stubborn I could be about such things.
"Fine. Did you enjoy your talk with Dormé?"
My innocent prodding worked, but not in the way I'd expected it to. I imagined Anakin would react negatively to being raked over the coals by the Senator's assistant, but there was something else going on.
"Talk about a handful!"
His response was closer to what I figured he would say, however, the tone was different. Instead of irritation, his voice was reflecting something closer to admiration.
"I've never met a woman like her before. You know how we can be intimidating sometimes? I mean, with the robes and lightsabers and all that?"
I knew what he meant. Being unapproachable was part of a Jedi's character. Most beings stayed out of our way although on the rare occasion, we encountered someone wishing to make a name for themselves by either kidnapping or killing one of us. Didn't usually work out for them, but that never kept some of them from trying.
"Over time, we have required such a reputation, yes," I replied, barely able to get my thought out before he hurried on.
"She reminds of the rancors we have back home."
Did he honestly just compare that young woman to a vicious and carnivorous beast from Tatooine?
"One of the baby ones, of course," he explained. "As a pup, they're small and helpless. Unless you mess with them. If you're brainless enough to do that, they show their true nature and come at you with a full set of razor-sharp teeth. They're born with them, you know. An entire mouthful. Yep, that's what she reminds me of. A small, innocent-looking, cute little puppy, until wham! She's on you and ripping you to shreds. You gotta admire that in a woman."
I was more confused now than before he started speaking. One thing had become clear. It seemed to me that my padawan was now developing a bit of a crush on Padmé's assistant.
"How did things go with you and the senator? I saw the two of you wander off."
That was a good question and one that I didn't know how to answer.
"We shared a drink and talked for a short while," I told him. I wasn't prone to sharing the fine details of my life with my Padawan, especially when it came to more personal matters.
The truth was, I wasn't sure what had happened during that drink we'd shared. Padmé was acting strangely – almost as if she were nervous around me, which she shouldn't be. I mean, she never had acted that way before. What had changed? Was it the admission of what her friend had been up to that worried her? If so, she shouldn't be that embarrassed by it. From what she had told me about Dormé, nothing the young woman did would surprise me.
No. It was something else that I needed to get the bottom of before it began affecting me not only physically but professionally. Anakin required all my attention these days. I didn't need anything else to worry about.
Right now, for example. Was the boy actually whistling? And if I was correct, I believe he was making the ship tilt in rhythm to his unfamiliar tune.
"Will you please stop doing that?"
"What?" he asked innocently. "Do you mean my whistling?"
"Partly, yes. But mainly stop rocking the ship. You know how much I hate to fly." I was already experiencing stabilization issues.
"Oh, that. Sorry," Anakin apologized before leveling out the ship.
Too late. I could feel the beginnings of motion sickness making its way to my stomach and I stood quickly and exited. "I'm going to go rest for a little while," I told him on the way out just before he started whistling again.
I found a comfortable-looking couch in the galley and sprawled across it. At first, I tried to focus on convincing my brain that I wasn't actually being hurtled through space at the speed of light, but my efforts were quickly overtaken by another issue: Padmé.
As soon as I felt better, I was going to go speak with her again and convince her to tell me what was going on in her own head. My life wasn't the same without our friendship being steady and sure. The comparison of this flight and our relationship was too much to meditate on at the moment. I'd think about that later. My main concern right now was to keep my morning meal where it belonged.