Chapter 65: Dimming the Stars (Part 2)

Skywalker returns two weeks later, perhaps even more miserable than before, with a tint of fear to his presence.

Go Go Go...

Siri slowly sits up on her couch, pausing her lazing, head tilted in curiosity. Well now, it wasn't often the Force directly prodded her like this. It wants her to speak to Skywalker. She considers it for a moment, and dwells for a few hours on how best to approach it. She decides to go the careful route first and waits for Kenobi. Since apparently the Jedi are cracking down on her parole. From what she recalls him saying last time he was in, he ought to be back sooner rather than later from his current mission.

It takes another two boring days, in which, the Force keeps prodding at her...

Aid.

Go.

Save.

Save what? Save who?

She feels a surge of very real anger from him at one point, and an irritated response from Jinn. An argument, but again, she learns nothing further. Kenobi returns later that day near nightfall, and she raps on the wall between them when he finally makes his way inside. "Kenobi, get in here, we need to talk."

There is a pause, then a very loud sigh. "Can it wait until tomorrow Siri? The mission and council meeting were exhausting."

"Whats up with Supernova?" she demands through the wall.

She feels his exasperation. "I don't know, and yes, I can feel it too from here. I've heard the comments already about him needing to meditate on his anxieties in passing. I'll check on him in the morning."

Siri scowls as she feels him move away from the wall, settling in for another night.

The Force keeps pressing, and it makes for shitty sleep to wake up every so often to a 'Go'. She ignores it, though she is a bit baffled. She is a Sith, saving someone really isn't her thing. Unless of course it involves killing someone in order to do so. That she could readily do. And wouldn't that be nice, to be asked something by the Force very much in her skillset. Tee hee.

The morning comes after a night of drawing the Dark around herself to block out the Force interrupting her beauty sleep. She can faintly hear Kenobi and Jinzler in the next apartment, starting their day. Shower, meditation, then they leave for the dining hall. It takes an annoying long time for Kenobi to return, but she did sense him in Jinn's vauge direction, so she doesn't complain when he walks into her apartment.

"Good morning, Siri."

"Kenobi," she drawled.

He sighed softly. "It was kind of you to inquire about Anakin, but Qui-Gon tells me its nightmares giving him anxieties and that he'll deal with it."

That was... vague and unhelpful. "...is the Force prodding you about it?"

He slow blinks. "...to speak with Anakin?"

"Yes."

"I mean... I felt a nudge?" he said slowly, "He did look rather stressed, I could go and give him an ear to speak to."

A nudge was all he felt? She feels like she's getting prodded by a stick.

"How have you been?" he asked, "We haven't really spoken in quite some time."

"I'm bored out of my mind," she said flatly.

"Yes, well, considering just how much you are holding back about yourself and your capabilities, the Council is being rightly cautious," he answered in an annoyingly reasonable tone, "And that you broke your parole, again. You're fortunate they decided not to mention it to the Senate, or you could have found yourself here longer."

Most likely because they don't want to have to admit publicly that they can't actually contain her outside of a Force Suppressant Cell unless she plays along. Wouldn't be good for the Jedi image.

Siri makes a face. "You're welcome."

He sighs once more. "I'm glad that you were worried for us, but, I do lean towards Master Fay's thoughts that Sidious may not have come for us if you hadn't been there. But of course, I acknowledge that it is not a guarantee."

"Even if so," she growled out, "How do you think facing the Sith Apprentice there on Korriban would have gone for you?"

She'd mention the Teretatek, but she is pretty sure the old Sith ghost bastards had sent it after her and not them.

"I don't know," admits Kenobi, "To be frank, I wasn't exactly convinced prior to Sidious appearing that Grant Omega was being taken seriously by the Confederacy, since Arbor had made no further appearances."

Siri groans. "That woman is going to be a nightmare at some point, mark my words."

"Oh, on this, I wholly agree," said Obi-Wan, grimacing, "That creature needs to be in prison for the rest of her life."

Siri grins toothily. "Why Kenobi, no chance for redemption with that one?"

He gives her a flat look. "You were there when we rescued Qui-Gon from her years ago. If there was ever anything good in that woman, it died a long, long time ago."

Siri looks away. She'll give him that one. "...yeah. Honestly, I want to make taking care of her a priority once I'm out of here."

Obi-Wan closes his eyes. "...Siri please do not mention plans of premeditated murder to me, no matter whether the person deserves it or not. A Jedi does not take justice into their own hands.

"Not a Jedi," she sing-songed.

"Fine then, please do not cause an incident that would give the Confederacy a reason to declare open war on the Republic," he said flatly.

"Obi-Wan," she said quietly, "You know that is where things are going regardless. Sidious will have his war."

He folds his arms into his robes. "Perhaps, perhaps not. But we will not give him the public backlash of us instigating it."

She considered him for a moment. "Well, at least the Jedi have learned something. But who starts the war I don't think will matter in the long run."

She stares him straight in the eye. "I don't believe he intends for any of you to be alive by its conclusion. I've warned you before we're almost at the endgame. Its just around the corner Obi-Wan, and I don't believe the Jedi Order has done or changed nearly enough to survive it."

He went quiet for a minute eyes distant. "Perhaps, perhaps not. We'll see. We've taken measures either way."

She raises an eyebrow.

He smiled thinly but didn't respond.

She didn't press further. "Suppose that's it for now. Say hi to Supernova for me."

"I suppose it is," he said, tipping his head and walking out.

The more time that passes, the more restless Siri gets. If Kenobi's talk with Skywalker even happened, it did nothing to quiet the insistence of the Force.

She parks herself frequently in the dinning hall, three times a day for meals. She rarely sees Skywalker alone, and she honestly rarely sees him there at all. Either he's eating at off-hours... or he's not eating at all. The one time she does see him passing close enough to her table...

"You alright Supernova?" she poses cautiously, noting the bags under his eyes.

He doesn't even look at her, just grits out with hostility. "I'm fine."

Bantha shit.

But he's already gone, grabbing his food, and stalking off back to the Jinn/Skywalker apartment, a tut of disapproval in the Force from various Jedi at his sourness bleeding out into the Force. She wars with tracking him down VS getting the Jedi Council on her ass. If Dooku's warning it to be taken seriously, its likely they want her to not interact with Skywalker anymore. She normally wouldn't care, but she has the feeling that she's treading on thin ice, that she has been since Korriban. She revealed a hand she hadn't wanted to reveal until it was time to kill Sidious.

Now both he and the Jedi Council knew about Sith Sorcery. That she was adept in it, even if the Jedi would know less about what that means than Sidious would.

She doesn't want to give them an excuse to go to the courts to challenge her parole, even if she doesn't think they'd want to reveal they can't actually control her. If she did something they might not, but she does feel that there would be consequences one way or another. She dwells on it for a few days, until...

She wakes up.

There is no more insistence from the Force.

Its... quiet.

She goes through her morning in an uneasy silence. Its about lunch time before she prods the Force, because really, the Force had kept pushing and pushing and pushing her to speak to Skywalker, and all of the sudden, it stopped caring? It made no sense to her, there was just a growing sense of sadness of... of...

Too late, too late, too late...

Icy dread filled her, her lips closed tightly. Kriff, she waited to long.., no, no, she refuses to believe that. She stopped believing in fate and destiny and the Will of the Force a long time ago. She will find out whats wrong, and she will deal with it. She waits until dinner and then slips away when she rounds a corner ahead of the guards tailing her, cloaking herself and sending an illusion along. She makes her way steadily through the Jedi Temple, and into the Jinn/Skywalker apartment. The Master was out wherever, Skywalker was sulking in his room. She opens the door, slips in, closes it, shields the room, and unmasks herself.

Skywalker doesn't even react, he merely sits on his bed, staring down at his hands.

"You look like hell froze over Supernova," commented Siri.

He startles briefly, glancing over at her. "What are you doing here?"

She stares at him for a long moment. "What is going on? You've been brooding for ages, and I've been told off for wanting to come and see you, at least until I decided enough what enough and masked my way in."

"They're going to be annoyed if they find you talking to me."

"I don't care. What is the problem?"

He swallowed thickly and looked away. "I've... been having dreams."

Her eyes narrow. "Dreams? Or dreams?"

"Doesn't matter," he answers bitterly, "As my master says, 'dreams pass in time'."

Of all the stupid shit... "That's absurd. There is an entire portion within the Jedi Order, the counselors and seers, that are prone to visions. Regular knights, hell, even padawans and initiates get them. They can be sneaky little things, with hidden meanings and messages, that can be misread by your own desires and fears, but they should never be ignored."

"You've... had them?" asked Anakin, hopeful.

"Once in a long while, but I'm not prone to them, and they're generally not clear for me," she admitted, "That doesn't mean I ignore their importance. Your master is a Living Force fanatic, the Unifying Force is beyond his grasp. And while having such a teacher can help ground you from intense visions, 'dreams pass in time' is a piss poor way to deal with them."

There is a flicker of anger, but it's battled by conflict. His desire to defend his master VS his agreement with her.

"What is the vision?"

"Visions or... or nightmares," he said quietly, "They've been going on for months now."

Ice pours down her spine. "Months?!"

Oh, now it makes plenty of sense. She had been the last resort of the Force since apparently everyone else was being an idiot and doing nothing about its warnings.

"I mean... it wasn't bad at first, I just saw mom doing things... you know, day to day stuff. It was... nice," said Anakin, smiling a little, before it fell away, "But then it started changing slowly. I started smelling smoke, then fire, then burning flesh. There was a shadow following behind my mother, and the people she... belonged to or lived with, back to their house."

"A shadow?" asks Siri warily.

"I don't know, it kept shifting and changing," said Anakin before he grimaced, "That's when I started trying to talk to my master, but... he just kept telling me to let go of my mom, concentrate on the here and now, dreams pass in time. Master Dooku wasn't much help either, he just quotes Yoda and says 'always in motion, the future is'."

"That's true," said Siri, "But when it repetitious like that... the Force can be subtle, Skywalker, but it can also beat you over the head with a club."

"You... you think its a warning then? Something bad is going to happen to mom?" he asked, honestly scared.

"The Force speaks louder to you then it does the rest of us Skywalker," she answered, "If its telling you something, you should listen to it."

He wrings his hands together, and she starts feeling deep fear from him. "This last week... I've been seeing the house burning. I..."

He choked. "I see her burning..."

Too late, too late, too late...

"I'll go."

Anakin startled. "What?"

"I'll go find and protect her until the threat is over."

Anakin stared at her, wide eyed. "You... what? But... but you can't leave the Temple!"

"Watch me," said Siri flatly.

For a moment, Skywalker looked so completely and utterly vulnerable. His voice is gutted and raw and desperate. "Why?"

Siri opened and closed her mouth a few times, not sure how to answer, that Skywalker had become fairly high ranked on the small list of people she liked. Instead, "I will leave tonight, I want you to fill a datapad out with all the information you can. Who owned her, where she lived, what she looked like, all of that. It will take me time to find her, that should shrink that timeframe. Understood?"

Relief pours out of him, he nodes and immediately starts ruffling through his room looking for one.

She smiles as he tosses aside junk and clothes in his search. "Let me know how much of a storm I kick up when I leave when I get back."

He snorts. "Its going to be like watching a podwreck."

He gets a datapad, but doesn't turn it on, glancing at her with worry. "Do you promise you'll keep her safe?"

"I promise."

Too late, too late, too late...

The Force can go kriff itself.

She watches impatiently as he fills out the information and hands her the datapad. She nods once and leaves, cloaking herself and making towards the hanger, timing her entry with another to cover the door opening incase they're tracking that sort of thing nowadays. She directs her illusion, solidifying it for a brief time, and has it take its tray of food back to her apartment. It sets the tray down on the table, and retires to her room. She keeps a loose connection to it incase someone comes in to speak with her, but otherwise she watches the hanger activity, considering when to go that wont be immediately noticed.

Her time comes shortly before the close of the day, a ship prepping to leave with an escort. She slips into another ship, and when they take off, she leaves with them. She wonders if they even bothered to notice they had an extra, they were kind of careless about Temple security if she's honest. Or at least, not careful to the degree a Sith would be. When they leave for hyperspace, she doesn't. She actually had to waste time looking up where the hell Tatooine's coordinates were and groans.

"We'll, at least I'll have time to read the notes he gave me," she mutters to herself, punching them in and entering hyperspace...