Expecting the Unexpected: Part Two
By Jemmiah
Authors Note: The Character of Lilith Demodae was created by the author of the same name, and used with her permission as part of the ongoing Jemmiah Chronicles series.
Her son.
She tried to turn the words around in her head, testing them out to see what affect they might have upon her. Her son: her own child lying somewhere nearby in an intensive care incubator pod, being tended to by nurses and medi droids. She tried to picture the scene, wanting desperately to feel something - anything at all. But there was nothing. No emotion or tears of hysteria: no jubilation or euphoria.
Just…nothing.
She should feel something. It wasn't normal to feel such overwhelming emptiness at what was, under any circumstances, a momentous occasion. Jemmiah sighed, picking at a stray loose fibre from her bed covering, wondering why life was never content just to let well alone. Four hours ago she had been content with her existence: not exactly happy, yet slowly but surely beginning to look forward to making new plans for the future. There had been no room in her plans for a child.
There still wasn't.
"What do I have to do in life to get a break?" She asked as Lilith entered the room armed with a huge bouquet of Corellian white lilies, struggling to get through the open door without damaging the extensive display of foliage. "This morning I woke up in my nice warm bed, wrapped in my comfortable sheets, and you know what I thought?"
"Errr…" Lilith glanced around her in search of a surface big enough to put the basket of flowers, settling finally for the floor next to Jemmiah's bed. "…No. What did you think?"
"I thought that at long last I felt free of the past. Maybe for the first time in my life." Jemmiah looked down at her fingers and started to chip away at her non-existent nail polish. "Do you know how good that felt to me? No death threats, being able to finally do what I want without worrying about hurting anyone else, just to have a chance to be myself for once and not hide behind some manufactured image dreamed up by the swoop race committee. Or," she added in a softer voice, "one of my own creation. Should have known it wouldn't last."
Lilith walked over to the door in the room, closing it gently behind her. The medical suite was comfortable and private: better than most could expect to receive. It seemed that on Corellia, just as on the Capital, money certainly talked. Jemmiah had been quick to flash the credits around when the medics had finally arrived at her house: anything to insure her privacy. The scene that awaited the hospital team might have been comical in other circumstances, with a baby being born in a bath to a mother who hadn't even known she was expecting, but Jemmiah hadn't found much to laugh about. Once the child had been born, the necessary business of pushing and shoving all taken care of, Lilith could only have described Jemmiah's reaction to the birth as one of utter indifference.
"It's been a long day." Lilith smiled resolutely. "And you must be pretty tired. Not to mention shocked."
Jemmiah shrugged. "Someone, somewhere, is having a laugh at me. I don't know who it is but I don't think I like them very much. Just because I dared to be happy! Because I had the temerity to feel good about myself! And now look at me…"
"I don't see that much wrong." Lilith strode over to the chair near to Jemmiah's bed and pulled it out, accidentally scraping the legs against the floor. "All I see is a bewildered young lady who has just become a mother for the first time."
Jemmiah's expression instantly soured. "Yeah, I must thank fate for that one. Really landed me in the schlent, big-time! What the kriff am I supposed to do with a baby?"
"Look after it?" Lilith suggested casually.
"I don't know that I want to."
Lilith's muddy green eyes focused intently upon Jemmiah. She could see the conflict…the confusion written on her face; could understand the war of common sense against sentiment raging within her. It was easy to recognise the fear that emanated from her as if carried through the air by the force, echoing against the stark white hospital walls like a sonar wave. Lilith had long since learned to recognise fear in other people and to exploit it when necessary. This time the only motivation the ex-smuggler had was to try and get Jemmiah to open up enough to talk through her troubles instead of bottling them up inside.
"No use looking to me to tell you what to do." Lilith honestly held up her hand in reaction to Jemmiah's desperate, pleading expression. "I can't tell you what's best for you. The only thing I can do is help you talk about it so that you can come to your own conclusions."
"But you must have an opinion…" Jemmiah began desperately.
"My opinions are worth nothing at the end of the day. Yeah, like all people I have my own feelings about things. But how relevant are they in this case? You're the only one who can know what is right and what is wrong for you and the baby. However," Lilith bent over to offer her fellow Corellian a quick kiss on the cheek, "I'm here to listen. If you want to talk you just go right ahead."
When nothing was forthcoming except silence it suddenly struck Lilith that Jemmiah didn't even know where to start. So traumatic had been the events of that afternoon, so overwhelming, that there seemed little room for anything other than stupefaction. Giving Jemmiah's shoulder an affectionate squeeze, Lilith took pity on the girl and tried to start the ball rolling.
"So," she said, weighing her words carefully, "you don't know who the child's father is?"
Jemmiah met Lilith's matter-of-fact conversation opener with a bitter snort.
"Done nothing but ponder that one since I got here." She closed her eyes, breathing in the relaxing thornwood scent filtering in through the air: something the medi-droid had insisted upon given Jemmiah's unhappy state on first arriving at the hospital centre. "Maths was never my strong point. I've been calculating this and subtracting that…makes my brain hurt to think about it. Tell you the truth it just seems…"
"What?" Lilith prompted; glad Jemmiah was in a mood to talk.
"…Unbelievable. I've had so many tests over the years from different doctors. They all concluded I was sterile, so frankly the idea of keeping little charts and dates and things seemed utterly irrelevant, seeing as how it couldn't happen."
"But it HAS happened." Lilith reminded her.
Jemmiah glared back at her. "Way to speak the obvious! It's hardly something I'm likely to forget is it? Anyhow," she let her irritation subside, knowing that Lilith was trying her best to help her, "The only conclusion I can come to is that I can't be sure: Obi-Wan or Jonas, I don't know which. Either way, I'm the one who has to live with the decision…whatever it happens to be." Her face twisted into an ironic grimace. "Funny, isn't it? There's Jonas who wanted so desperately to be a father. Now that he might be, he's not here to see it. Then there's Obi-Wan…"
Lilith nodded at her to continue. "Yes?"
"You know, he was so badly hurt when we lost Emma. Could be that he has a child after all - and he'll never get to find out the truth."
That made Lilith sit up in her chair and take notice. "A simple blood test would surely resolve matters. You could ask Obi-Wan…"
"Absolutely not." Jemmiah shook her head. "I don't want him knowing. It's only a fifty-fifty chance it's his child anyway. Why put him through that just for him to be told it's not his? I don't want anyone to have a hold on my life again. I don't want Obi-Wan throwing everything away for me in order to live the impossible dream."
Again, Lilith's mind automatically cast itself back to earlier that day, imagining Obi-Wan and Jemmiah setting up home together in the Gleshan family estate. Just as before she had no problem in picturing the scene in her head. Maybe it was too late for Obi-Wan, perhaps he wouldn't or couldn't cast the Jedi order aside - not even for one who had been as important to him as Jemmiah had once been - but surely he would have still felt some interest in the welfare of what might after all be his own child…
"As you wish." Lilith held up her hand once again. "As I say, I'm not judging you or trying to twist you one way or another. But you know, if he IS Obi-Wan's you might find out anyway." She paused, watching Jemmiah's eyes widen incredulously. "They test all children in the Republic at birth for various illnesses and such like. They also check midichlorian counts - and if your baby has a high count then it's a pretty sure bet that…"
She didn't finish her sentence. Then again she hardly needed to. Undecided as Jemmiah was regarding the destiny of her offspring, there was every chance that fate - and the force - might well step in to intervene, sending the child off on a different path altogether. Who was to say that it might not be for the best? With the decision taken out of her hands, might not Jemmiah be secretly relieved?
"Of course, it might still be Obi-Wan's and have a midi count of zero." Lilith reflected, trying to keep all options open. "I guess you have to ask yourself if it matters who the kid's father is. I mean, if you were to give him away…"
Jemmiah stared at the opposite wall, taking solace and comfort in its stark, featureless blank surfaces. So much easier not to think whilst staring at nothing in particular.
"Maybe you should go see the baby." Lilith added hopefully. "Help you make up your mind about him?"
"I don't think so."
"Wouldn't you even want to say goodbye? Even if you decided to give him up?" Lilith crossed one shoe deliberately over the other. "He IS part of you as well, you know. Not just his father."
"They won't let me see him right now, even if I did want to - which I don't." Jemmiah added pointedly, fixing a steely eye on Lilith, warning her to say otherwise. "They told me that they have to detox him. Seems that because of all the medication I've been taking throughout the pregnancy I've turned him into an addict. I even managed to stuff that up!" She raised her head upwards, as if communicating with someone just out of sight. "Gods, what a mess this is!"
Pause.
"Just like my new bath - that's a real mess too! Did you see the state of it?!? How the kriff do I get that cleaned up?"
"Don't change the subject." Lilith grinned back at her, feeling more certain in her heart that Jemmiah was beginning to come round, albeit very slowly, to the notion of motherhood. "Don't worry about him. He looks a right little fighter to me! I guess it explains a lot of things though."
Jemmiah squinted at Lilith. "What does?"
"Your baby being a junkie. He was to darned spaced-out to kick! No wonder you never guessed he was there!"
There. Lilith had brought it into the air: the sorest point of all. If only she had known that she could have children! How different things might have been with Jonas…how wonderful their last few weeks together might have been! Fate, it seemed, spun on the edge of a credit. Who was to say Jonas would have died at all? Perhaps they might have been that seemingly impossible, clichéd thing: one happy family. Her, Jonas and…
"He was so hurt, Lil." Jemmiah compressed her eyelids tightly together, forming an impenetrable barrier against the welling tears. "Jonas was so terribly hurt. We had a wonderful time together. I thought he was perfect," she found herself almost laughing at her silly girlish fantasies, "because I could trust him. I could tell him things and he would never judge me. I could talk about stuff I would never have told Obi-Wan…he made me feel as light as a feather. I felt giddy being with him… he made me laugh." Jemmiah's shoulders dropped visibly, remembering the frost that had all too swiftly grown between them. "But it all went wrong, as it always does."
Lilith didn't know whether she should be listening to something so obviously personal or not, especially when the wounds were clearly still visibly open. But if it gave her friend some comfort and ease to tell her story then who was she to deny her that chance?
"What happened?" She ventured tentatively.
Jemmiah swallowed. "He started talking about children. I don't know where he got the idea from; I certainly never mentioned it. I think his mother had been hassling him, you know? Doing the 'when-am-I-ever-going-to-be-a-grandmother' bit? At first Jonas didn't even want children. I asked him point blank, long before we were married and he told me quite firmly that he didn't care one way or the other. To be perfectly honest he didn't seem terribly keen," Jemmiah's smile spoke of barely concealed hurt and confusion, "and that suited me right down to the ground. I knew I couldn't have children. Obi-Wan wanted children and Jonas didn't. It made sense to choose Jonas over Obi-Wan, especially when we had so much in common, but the child issue was the important one. And because I knew I couldn't ever give Obi-Wan what he wanted I made my life with a man who didn't care who or what I was, where I came from or what I did…who loved me just for myself."
"But then he changed his mind?" Lilith guessed, the corners of her mouth turning down sympathetically.
"Became obsessive about it." Replied Jemmiah, rubbing impotently at her face. "I've never seen anyone converted so quick in all my life. Suddenly it went from just the two of us in our happy life together to always talking about there being a third 'little person'…or a fourth. Left me shocked, Lil. I don't mind admitting it." Jemmiah's voice wavered fractionally, and Lilith responded by stretching out a reassuring hand and placing it squarely on Jemmy's shoulder. "Because I hadn't told Jonas I couldn't have kids. I know, I know…I should have! But at the time I didn't see the need. He was so adamant that he didn't want any kids! How the hell was I supposed to know he'd change his mind?"
Lilith responded with a groan of despair on behalf of her friend. It was not a situation she would have liked to find herself in. Jonas Suul had been a pleasant and, generally speaking fair-minded individual: unswervingly loyal to his friends and brave to a fault. But Lilith also knew that there were facets of Jonas' personality that had proven less than impressive. He had been impatient, impulsive and unshakeably stubborn. She could well imagine that once the notion of fatherhood had implanted itself in Suul's mind that it might have become a matter of some personal obsession.
"And you told him the truth." She finished, watching as Jemmiah nodded numbly into the palm of her hands, reliving the whole ghastly affair once again.
"He said I'd misled him. Made out I was some kind of incurable deceiver…that I was most likely hiding all manner of things from him." Jemmiah whispered, wearing the tormented look of a child compelled to watch a scary holo through the safety barrier of their splayed fingers. "He became distrustful of everything I did…became jealous. Started questioning my past instead of just accepting it like he used to. And then one day things came to a miserable head…and I left him. I just couldn't take it anymore, Lil. I loved him…I wanted it to work between us. At that moment I'd have given everything I owned to have had back the Jonas I'd first married, but I knew I was deluding myself. We spent one last night together but I could see he wasn't going to be content to let it rest. There was no passion left, only humiliation. So I went back to Coruscant for Rela and Simeon's wedding." Jemmiah slowly lowered her hands, letting them hover momentarily before her. "And then…he sent me a note."
"He?" Lilith asked.
"Obi-Wan."
Lilith nodded, instantly the pieces falling into place.
"He asked me to visit him. Wanted to talk to me…see how I was. Somehow he always knows when I'm unhappy, Lilith. Even half way across the galaxy he can tell when I'm happy or sad. So," Jemmiah gulped back her feelings of guilt, "I went to see him. I told him that I'd left Jonas…and then I rather foolishly started crying."
"Let me guess." Lilith added with a raised eyebrow. "He offered you more than just a shoulder to cry on, yes?"
Jemmiah, despite everything she had been through that day, still had the decency to offer Lilith a guilty blush by way of reply.
"Actually, it was a week's worth of crying on his shoulder." Jemmy grinned at the memory, revelling in the joy of being close to someone again after being kept so long in the cold by Jonas. "Anakin being away and all…it would have been foolish not to have used the time together in a convivial way. I think Obi-Wan missed me, and I certainly needed him."
"It's called taking advantage of an emotional and upset woman!" Lilith huffed, not sure if she should praise Obi-Wan's nerve and persistence or castigate his lack of scruples. Then again, it seemed the young man had made his move only when he was certain that Jonas was no longer in the picture. Could she condemn him for that?
"Oh, believe me Lilith…I knew what I was doing." Jemmiah admitted, similarly torn between basking in the warmth and happiness she'd experienced with Obi-Wan that week, and the possible consequences lying in a hospital crib somewhere in the nearby intensive care unit. "We both did: but we knew it couldn't last. It wasn't like we deluding ourselves. That was why, on the day of Anakin's return to the temple, Obi-Wan advised me to try and sort things out with Jonas if I could."
"After the way Jonas treated you?" Lilith frowned, idly picking one of the white lilies from the basket and rolling the stem between her fingers.
"Jonas wanted me back." Jemmiah shrugged. "I think the separation had forced him to think exactly what he wanted in life. In the end he decided that what he wanted was me, children or no children. He was genuinely contrite for his behaviour: he knew things would never be the same between us and he hated that. We were just about falling in love with each other again when…when he was killed." She smiled sadly at her friend, suddenly glad that she had someone there to talk to. "Kind of typical of my luck, eh?"
Lilith chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip.
"And this is the man whose child you are prepare to give up?" She asked cautiously, not wishing to sound as if she were in any way pressuring her friend to decide one way or the other. "A man who, by your own admission wanted a child with you so badly that it wrecked your marriage, and who you were just about falling in love with all over again when he was taken from you? Are you sure," she continued with building confidence, "that you want to hand his baby over to any old person?"
"It wouldn't be to any old person." Jemmiah responded tartly. "I'd make sure it was a good home…"
"Pah! No way of telling. You get genuine people and not so nice people, just like in all walks of life. How are you going to tell them apart?" Lilith countered, determined to make Jemmiah consider the consequences of all her possible actions. "You could give him to a couple who might spoil him and look after him…give him all the best things in life. Or," she added gravely, "he could end up with the scum of the galaxy. Look at your own life and you'll remember only too well what can happen to a child whose life takes a spiral turn due to the whims and machinations of less than wholesome individuals. Not the sort of thing you'd want for your son, surely? Or Jonas - or Obi-Wan's son."
"I don't know…" Jemmiah felt the desperation rise once more within her. "I just don't know what to do. I'll be a useless mother, Lilith. I'm not cut out for it! He'd maybe better off with someone else for all the good I'd be. Yes: I might screw things up by passing him to a potentially bad set of parents. But have you thought how much worse it might be if he stays with me? I'm not maternal in the slightest…when you held him up after he was born I felt only disbelief! Tell me that's normal, Lil! How can I look after a child that I don't love?"
"You might grow to love him!" Lilith stuck her chin forward belligerently. "And besides, everyone dislikes new-born babies. I mean, they're much more appealing when they're washed off and don't have the umbilical cord attached…and that mottled splodgy purple effect has disappeared. And often they start out with big puffy lips like a snapper fish because of the way they were compressed on coming out…"
"Enough!" Jemmiah silenced Lilith with a raised finger, feeling slightly nauseous at the memory. "You're making my eyes water all over again. I don't ever want to go through that in the future."
"If you keep him you wouldn't have to." Lilith pointed out reasonably.
"I wouldn't have to whether I kept him or not." Jemmiah rejoined, almost enjoying the battle of wits. Talking with Lilith had helped to lift her spirits but had done little to help her come to any conclusions as to what she should do: if anything she felt even more confused than before. Perhaps she should make some enquiries as to how the baby fared? Just because she didn't feel anything for him didn't mean she should be cold or angry with him…
Maybe she was too scared to see him. Perhaps deep down she was afraid that she might somehow become attached…
I'm not ready.Jemmiah thought furiously, knowing that the nurses in the hospital had been surprised by her lack of interest in her new-born child. I'm not ready to see him…I'm not ready to be a mother. I can barely look after myself let alone a baby! What use will I be to him, all on my own? I don't know the first thing about babies! I've never changed one before…never fed one. All the time that Evla worked in the temple crèche I went out of my way not to have anything to do with them. They smell, they scream, they keep you awake...that's about the sum-total of my knowledge on the subject. How would I go about learning what to do when there's nobody out there to tell me how it's done?
Somehow Lilith had managed to read her mind again.
"You think that motherhood is a natural thing that just happens automatically?" She asked Jemmiah, amused by the perplexed little nod that answered her. "It's ten percent instinct and ninety percent learning as you go. There's no such thing as a perfect mother. It's a skill that you acquire with the passage of time. The 'perfect' mother is a fallacy - something cooked up by other people. Kriff, if you only had an idea," Lilith rolled her eyes to the heavens, "at how I struggled to start with! MICK seemed better with my firstborn than I was! But," she added in reflection, "I managed. I slowly picked it up and have never looked back since."
Jemmiah seemed to instinctively draw into herself once again. Everyone else seemed so utterly competent with their children. All the people she had known who'd gone on to reproduce, from Tawaline Zabrik to Verity Filbers, seemed to be the utter picture of ease and contentment, leaving Jemmiah to wonder exactly what the secret was. The idea that the ability to nurture was not necessarily inbuilt had never so much as crossed her mind before: Tawaline in particular had made it look so ridiculously easy that in the end Jemmiah couldn't help but feel relief that Emma had not lived long enough to suffer her pathetic attempt to be a mother…
"You've got Jake." Jemmy pointed out, sadness tingeing her words. "Who have I got to help me?"
"Your son." Lilith countered instantly. "You'll learn from each other. If you decide to keep him, of course. Better than being alone in that empty house of yours, surely?"
"It'll be a lovely house when it's all done." Jemmiah huffed, folding her arms.
"House - yes. But a home? That's a different matter." Lilith answered, copying the gesture. "And it takes more than one lonely person to make it that. You're my friend, Jemmy. I say these things because I know that you'll listen to me, even if you ultimately reject what I say, which is your right. So," the ex-smuggler pulled the chair closer still to the bed, "I'm going to ask you a question. And I expect you to give an honest answer, okay?!"
Jemmiah blinked, surprised at Lilith's stern voice. "If I can."
"Very well. If someone with magical powers," The older woman eyed Jemmiah with interest, "walked up to you and granted you anything you wanted - anything at all - what would it be?"
It was an unexpected question; one that had evidently taken Jemmiah aback judging by her perplexed expression. Propped up by three large white pillows, chestnut hair cascading over the shoulders of her satin gown, the younger woman wasn't certain she knew to where the enquiry tended. And how was she to answer? What could she possibly say?
"I dunno." She sighed, uncertain of what to think. "There's so much I could change…so much I might dare to alter if I thought that things could turn out better. But when you change one thing," Jemmy nervously wetted her lips, "you risk losing something else, don't you?"
"How do you mean?"
Jemmiah subconsciously pulled the blanket up towards her as if seeking security from its close proximity.
"I'd like to have had my parents around, like most normal families." She finally answered. "If you could wave a wand or cast a spell, of course that's what I'd like. My mother…I'd have liked to have her here now so I could ask her advice. My brother…I'd like to think we'd have got on better as we grew older. I mean, all kids argue with siblings, don't they? I've often thought it a pity we never got the chance to find out if we'd be close friends. My father…I have hardly any memories of him at all. Maybe a chance to have got to know him?"
"But then there's Qui-Gon and Evla." Lilith pointed out gently. "And Obi-Wan. If you'd lived your life the way you just described, you'd never have met any of them."
"That's what I mean about losing something else." Jemmiah answered simply. "I lost one family and gained another of sorts. Maybe not a conventional family, but they were there for me all the same."
Deep down, Lilith smiled a triumphant smile.
"So," she frowned, "what you are in fact telling me is that - one way or another - all you want is your family about you. You want to be loved by everyone: your real parents, your guardians, your brother, your…" She hesitated, unsure how to describe Obi-Wan, "…friends. That's about the size of it, isn't it? And you said yourself on numerous occasions that you regard Rela as your sister, which makes you an auntie to her child when it's born. Don't you want her to be an auntie to yours? It seems to me that the force has deigned you to be this little boy's mama. So what if you don't know who his papa is? After all," Lilith left the most pertinent remark to the end, "he needs a family just as much as you do."
She'd been manoeuvred! Skilfully manipulated by someone with much experience at reading a situation: Jemmiah could see it clearly now. After all, it took an arch-manipulator to spot another at work! She'd played her hand well but revealed in the process her own opinions, not that it came as any surprise to Jemmiah to know what side of the fence she had her feet planted. With three much-loved young children herself how could Lilith think otherwise? But Jemmiah didn't mind that Lilith was taking a stance contrary to her own instincts. Right then and there she needed someone to look at all the options, helping her past her own natural prejudice against young children.
"I don't know if I can, Lilith." Jemmiah answered at length, wondering how much she should say. "I'm scared of the idea…"
"Only natural."
"You see, children are so…vulnerable. Breakable. Helpless, even. Seeing them in the crèche at the temple brought home how pathetic they are. And I mean pathetic in its literal sense, not in an insulting way." She added hastily on seeing Lilith on the verge of objecting. "I look back on when I was a ten year old and all I can see is a skinny, ugly child. But back then I didn't think of myself as a kid! I'd grown up so fast on Nargotria - because I had to. I used to look at the initiates and think how lucky they were to have their time as children. I was jealous of them. They were so…innocent. They were sheltered and cosseted by carers who tended to them like they were delicate flowers in a glasshouse. I felt like a weed amongst them, you know? Some alien spore that had blown into their midst and had been left to germinate out of some kind of morbid curiosity…"
"Now that's just silly." Lilith grinned, flashing white teeth at her friend.
"Maybe, but it's how I felt. I used to think of them tucked up in their bunks at night, with the crèche carers close at hand should anything be wrong. Then I used to think of myself on Nargotria, lying on my own bed waiting for the next pervert to try and get into my room. I almost hated them for their soft existence. But most of all because they reminded me of how fragile children are. I don't want to be the ruin of some kid's life, Lil! The responsibility is too much."
"You could always give him to Jonas' mother." Lilith remarked absently, almost calculatedly so.
Jemmiah bristled, and flung back the covers once more.
"I said I didn't want to ruin his life! I'll be damned if I'll give him to that kriffin' control-freak!" She glowered at Lilith. "Besides which he might be absolutely nothing to do with Jonas. I can't hand him over under false pretences. Anyway, fat chance he'd have of a normal life with her…"
"Sounds like you are beginning to care." Lilith stood up, straightening the seam in her elegant dress as she did so. "But hey, it's none of my business! I'm gonna go and change out of this outfit and into something a little more…well, me! I'll be back later on, though."
Jemmiah gave her a look that implored her not to leave her on her own, and in that instant Lilith felt heart-brokenly sorry for her. It wasn't going to be a pleasant stay in the hospital, tossing and turning, desperately trying to come to some sort of decision. She'd still be sore and uncomfortable from the birth and there would be nobody nearby that she trusted that she could easily talk to. Spider was on Coruscant, celebrating her own recent engagement. Rela - if she hadn't already beaten Jemmiah to it - would very soon be in the infirmary with her own bundle of joy to tend. And Obi-Wan…well, if Jemmiah had her way he would never find out the truth. Or at least the possibility of it.
"I have to go, kid." Lilith instantly felt herself slipping from Samla Jivinan back into her Lilith Demodae persona as she often did when she needed somebody to sit up and pay attention to what she was saying. "I have my own children to look after: if MICK and NAN haven't managed to burn the house down whilst I've been away, that is. And I have the biggest kid of them all to look after in the shape of my husband!" Jemmiah stared down at her bed covers once more, feeling utterly abandoned, and Lilith winced at the knowledge she was walking out and leaving her on her own.
No, not quite on her own.
"Get some rest." Lilith instructed Jemmiah firmly, pointing directly at her. "You'll feel refreshed. I'll be back later on to see how you're feeling. But if you'll take my advice," the tall woman tried to hook her fingers into the side of her waistband only to recollect she was wearing a dress, "you'll go and visit your baby. At least see if they will let you this time. Don't let them give you any excuses about him being as high as a sand falcon: he's your son until you decide otherwise. Who knows," she walked over to the bed and patted her friend on the arm, "it may help you to reach a conclusion."
With a final squeeze upon Jemmiah's hand Lilith picked up her coat, slung it indelicately over one shoulder and then with a single backward glance teetered unsteadily away on her high heels, willing for just that one moment to give anything in trade for a comfortable pair of spacer's boots and a low-slung holster…
Lilith was right, Jemmiah thought to herself later that evening. The baby did look a lot less splodgy and purple than before. Although she personally still thought him pretty repulsive.
She'd found herself going to visit him more out of obstinacy than anything else. Maybe she had been slightly curious too, but mostly it had been because the medi-droids had told her she couldn't see him…that he was still too unwell and she too tired to be up and about. All fine and well, but there wasn't any way for the droid to know what Jemmiah's reaction would be when told she couldn't do something.
It had learned too late that backing down was the safest option, especially as she'd shut the wretched tin-plated idiot off at the neck! It had either been that or a kick in the restraining bolt, and Jemmiah hadn't been so sure that would work…
She looked into the tiny ventilated crib at the sleeping infant and wondered, just as Rela and Spider would no doubt wonder, how the miserable little critter could have been inside her all that time without her knowing. He didn't look a particularly small child, and the doctors hadn't thought him premature. His nails were perfectly formed, they said, which was a sure sign that he had gone full term. He weighed in at a healthy eight pounds exactly, and yet apart from a superficial amount of bulging in the middle Jemmiah had hardly shown any signs at all that she was carrying him. Except that now in retrospect she could tell that some of the give-away clues had been there: merely being misinterpreted by a series of specialists who had all been under the false impression she couldn't conceive. Why then, with this certain knowledge, would they even suspect that she might be pregnant?
"I'll still have words to say to An-Paj." Jemmiah glowed with satisfaction, picturing the shock on the man's face when she told him of the baby. "I guess he had to be wrong about something at some point in his illustrious Jedi career. I'm sort of glad in a way that it's me that gets to show him!"
The baby squirmed slightly, its eyes tightly closed against the light of the incubator.
"Too bright for you, huh?" Jemmiah pulled a sympathetic face. "I'm afraid there's not much I can do about that. Not that there's much I can do about anything these days, it seems. Look at you - nothing I can do about you now that you're here, except decide what the hell I'm going to do with you. I mean, I could give you away…"
It would be the sensible thing to do. But when had she ever done anything sensible or easy in her life? If there was a difficult way of doing something then that was the route Jemmiah would invariably take. Besides, how many times had she told Evla that she disapproved of the Jedi taking children away from their natural parents, bound to serve the force and no other? How often had she railed against the severing of the parent-child bond? She didn't like children especially because they reminded her of her own worthless childhood, something that on the whole she thought she'd be better off forgetting. Yet deep in her own heart she'd felt for the parents of the children who'd handed their precious offspring up to the Jedi, knowing that they would never see them again.
"I don't know how people can do that." She had once said to Evla Sovalla. "Give up something or someone they love. I don't even like babies and I would never do something like that."
Evla's words instantly came floating back into her mind. "Because it's in the best interests of the child at the end of the day."
She understood at long last exactly what Evla had been trying to say. It had taken her all those years before she could finally put herself in the shoes of another. In the old days everything had seemed so black and white…no shades of grey: a thing was either right or it was wrong. The feeling of abandonment she'd experienced on hearing of her mother's death came crawling into the pit of her stomach like a dreaded serpent: coiling and asphyxiating. Would this child one day feel the same way about her? Would he understand why she had given him up? Or would he simply react the same way that she had, and resort to hate?
"I'm a hypocrite, Evla." Jemmiah shrugged, her feet cold against the tiled floor surface. "I told you that I'd never give up any child of mine, and here I am…"
She'd admitted to Lilith how she'd been envious as a child of the way the initiates had been looked after and loved, regarding them piteously as pathetic creatures somehow substandard to herself. The fact that she had been nothing more than a child herself at the time had been totally lost on her: in her own eyes she was an adult with a large and shockingly wide range of life experience the equal to any adult. Now, as a woman in her twenties, Jemmiah stood looking down at the baby - her own baby - and suddenly felt very naive, inexperienced and inadequate. She was a mother, but she'd never felt so much like a child before in her life. How was she expected to cope on her own?
Rela's baby would most likely have been born. Could she ever look her friend's infant in the face knowing that somewhere her own child was being tended to by a complete stranger? How would she even be able to regard herself in the mirror, forever wondering if she had done the right thing or if her child was being looked after? The thought that he might suffer the way she had suffered made her feel incredibly nauseous. Nargotria hadn't been a life: merely an existence. There was no way she wanted this child to go through the living hell of uncertainty she had experienced whilst growing up. Giving him away didn't necessarily guarantee he was going to get a good home…
"Damn you, Lilith." Jemmiah whispered at the incubator cot that held her infant within its bright confines. "Damn you for putting the seed of doubt in my mind. Now what do I do?"
The answer was obvious. Nor did it particularly please Jemmiah.
She looked long and hard at the child, looking at the strands of brownish hair attached to his pink little head. Who would he grow up to resemble? Whose face would he wear? Jonas? Obi-Wan? Maybe her own?
"Looks like we're stuck with each other, for better or worse." Jemmiah remarked dryly, wondering if babies dreamed of anything in particular or just lay back and slept in carefree relaxation. What she wouldn't give to just go to sleep for the next twenty years so the nightmare might disappear from memory. "But I'm setting down some ground rules - so listen up! I don't want any excess crying. I don't want you puking on my clothes. You are not under any circumstances to trash my house or do any of the horrible things I did to Qui-Gon when I was growing up. Got all that?" Jemmiah pushed her face right up to the incubator so that she could show the baby she meant business, but he just lay there on his back, looking strangely mellow and rather tripped out from what she could tell. If this was a sign of the way things were going then this boy was going to be nothing but trouble. Already he didn't listen: simply content to do his own thing.
Yep, she thought wryly, he was definitely her son…
"Do you have a name?" Jemmiah wondered aloud. "No, I suppose that's down to me, isn't it? I think I should call you 'trouble'. You've sure as hell caused me enough already - and I have the feeling that you're going to specialise in causing even more as you grow up. I guess it's up to me to teach you a few things. So," she sat down on the little chair next to the incubator, "we'll start at the beginning with the important stuff, right?"
She reached into her dressing gown pocket, aware of the empty, baleful gaze of the deactivated med-droid not far away on the floor. Stupid droid, trying to come between a determined Corellian and her son! There were things she had to teach the boy: vital things that would serve him well in the coming months which might shape his very life! No brain-rusted mechanic was going to get in her way of her son's education!
"Right!" She held up a rectangular piece of flimsy card against the plexi-glass of the incubator. "Listen up, because it's important. This," she pointed at the flimsy, "is called the Ace of Staves, got that kid? It's part of a group of cards, which forms a neat little game called Sabaac. Now, there are certain rules in Sabaac and my job as your mother is to show you how to break them, okay?"
The infant squirmed slightly in his crib, which Jemmiah took to be some kind of confirmation.
"Good." She nodded approvingly. "Now, let's see if you can master this by the time Lilith comes back, shall we?"
It perhaps wasn't the most usual method of bonding with a child, Jemmiah thought, but after all - she had to start somewhere…