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A Shift in the Force: Chapter Twenty: Reconciliation of Sisters

AN: It seems people are excited about Sabé being on the Council of First Knowledge, and so am I, I hadn't originally intended on her being on it, but, being who I am, I did some research into that Council and fell in love.

In other news, I am determined to get A Shift in the Force's review count up to 100 before my obsession with this fic fails…so, if you're very lucky, there might be another chapter after this one, but I make no promises.

Also: Book Two might end up being longer than I had originally anticipated because of the sheer amount of things that I want to happen in it (seriously, I've written down a whole page of plot points in my fanfic notebook and its bloody fabulous), but it'll all be good, I promise.


The sun was high in the sky as Padmé and Sabé lazed around on the blanket spread over the grass.

"Now you have to tell me about growing up in the Temple," Padmé pressed, the wine in her glass swirling precariously as she leaned forward eagerly.

"Oh, I don't know," Sabé gave an exaggerated sigh and Padmé gave her shoulder a shove.

"Sabé!" she complained.

"All right, all right," Sabé acquiesced with a laugh. "When I came to the Temple, I was just a baby so I spent a lot of time in the crèche, but once we were old enough, we were all placed in Initiate Clans…you can think of them as groups of children –boys and girls– that room together until they are either chosen to be Padawans or sent off to one of the Jedi Service Corps if they aren't." Sabé grimaced, remembering when Obi-Wan had been sent off for Bandomeer with the AgriCorps.

"Not everyone gets to be a Padawan?" Padmé asked her. "Like with how the Council didn't want Anakin to be trained?"

"The Council's very particular about the training of younglings," Sabé said, rolling her eyes. "It's one of the reasons I disagree so much with them. If you have enough midi-chlorians to be considered for Jedi training, then you should be trained as a Jedi, regardless of the age you are when you're admitted…but the Council believes once you reach a certain age you can no longer be trained, and if you reach thirteen and haven't gained a master, they ship you off –and you don't get to go back to your family, either, you go to one of the Service Corps, which is basically like saying 'Sorry, you're not good enough to be a Jedi, but since you've learned all this, we're going to put you where we can keep an eye on you'…though there are a few that actually choose the Jedi Service Corps, so…" Sabé scratched her cheek thoughtfully.

There were a lot of exceptional Force-sensitives among the Jedi Service Corps who could have been great if they hadn't been denied the opportunity.

"Aayla and Kit and I were in the same clan, that's how we became friends," Sabé explained, bringing Padmé back to what she'd been talking about before she'd been distracted, before chuckling. "Aayla and him were pretty much inseparable and I was painfully shy."

"You were?" Padmé's eyes widened. She couldn't believe that with how Sabé was nowadays. She was fierce and fearless, even if it meant going against the Council's beliefs (and Padmé got the feeling that she did that an awful lot). "Why?"

"When you're part of a prophecy and have more midi-chlorians than the grandmaster, people start to talk," Sabé said dryly. "And then they watch you…I became very self-conscious. Everyone expected me to be exceptional, so I became ordinary."

Padmé's eyes softened. She remembered a datamessage that Anakin had sent some time back. 'Master tries, but he doesn't really get it, and Master Sabé does! She says I shouldn't let what others say bother me, people are always going to say things, but I'm not as good as her at it…'

"Of course, Master Yoda saw through me without much trouble…just when the Council was about to come to a decision about retesting my blood for midi-chlorians, too," Sabé lamented. "It would have been nice to see the looks on their faces when the numbers came back the same."

A small laugh escaped Padmé's lips at that.

"So Aayla and Kit pulled me out of my shell bit by bit…you should have seen me when I first met Obi-Wan…that was embarrassing."

"Why? What happened?" Padmé asked, trying to imagine the somewhat-stiff Jedi as a child, but it didn't quite come out right.

Sabé smiled sheepishly, running a hand through her braids. "Well, um, I kind of crashed into him with an armful of datapads. He helped me pick them up and didn't say anything about my red face…by the stars, it was embarrassing!"

"Sounds like something he'd do," Padmé giggled, "not mentioning your red face, I mean."

Sabé spared her a glare.

"How did you lose your arm?" Padmé couldn't help but ask. It had never seemed right to ask, especially back when Padmé was younger, when the fair skin around where the durasteel ended and flesh began had been red and raw.

"That was a few years later when I was off investigating the source of some mild poison that had been introduced to the Initiates…I'd sent Aayla and Kit off to get a sample of the poison to the Temple so that they could come up with an antidote, I was meant to follow them, but I…I got distracted," Sabé admitted.

"By what?" Padmé asked, enraptured.

"I sensed something…something Dark, and—"

"The Dark Side clouds everything," Padmé finished for her and Sabé blinked a few times staring at her. "Talik might have mentioned it once, you know, once she'd stolen the datapad from Anakin."

"Well, she has picked up a few things from me," Sabé admitted judgingly, cupping her chin in her hand. "But yes, it does…and followed its trail to the one we now know as Darth Maul."

Padmé's mouth went dry. "You mean the Sith on Naboo that killed Master Jinn?"

"The very same," Sabé replied gravely, "he called me by my birth name, a name that only Master Plo Koon knew amongst the Jedi, as he was the one that brought me to the Temple in the first place…so it was a bit unnerving to hear it from someone I'd never met."

"Which was why you came back, to make sure that we were safe," Padmé surmised.

"Partly," Sabé conceded, leaning back until her back was resting against the blanket and her eyes were focused upwards to the impossibly blue sky. "Partly because Master Yoda was concerned about how someone entrenched in the Dark Side could know something about me that is never spoken of."

Sabé lifted her hand up, admiring the silver sheen of the durasteel as she drew her fingers inwards to her palm and then out once more. She had gotten used to how the artificial hand felt over the years and it was almost the same as having a hand of flesh, but Sabé did regret having it in the stead of a real one.

"Anyways, we dueled, and he was far better than I was…so I lost my arm." She gave a careless shrug that had Padmé staring. She couldn't have imagined herself being so unperturbed about an amputation, but this was Sabé she was talking about.

"I never did find it," Sabé lamented with a sigh, "maybe if I'd had time during the Battle for Theed I could've questioned him about it, but oh well."

Padmé giggled and Sabé's eyes twinkled as she spared her a small smile.

They settled into a calm silence, merely watching the clouds lazily move across the sky. Sabé supposed that if she had grown up on Naboo, she would have to the lake retreat quite often with the rest of the family…Sabé had attempted to imagine it once when she and Obi-Wan had been stationed there to oversee the safety of Governor Naberrie and his family (which was to say her father and her family), but it had never come out quite right.

Besides, what would she have been if she wasn't a Jedi? A house-wife like Sola?

Sabé grimaced at the thought. She had never had much of an interest in marriage, but she couldn't fault her sister for finding it preferable; the culture of Naboo had always been a bit enthusiastic about children, which was why it had struck Sabé's mother, Jobal, so hard when she thought she wouldn't be able to have any.

Perhaps she would have gone into politics like Padmé had…but ultimately Sabé found that the life of a Jedi was far more preferable. And she would bear Sola's anger at her for her supposed abandonment of her family for the sake of the place where she had found a home.

"You can tell them I'm here," Sabé told her sister finally, turning to look at her, "I wouldn't mind seeing them."

And Padmé's wide smile made her look away and wonder if that was the best course of action.


"Do you think Master Sabé's ever been in love?"

It was a remarkably odd conversation that Obi-Wan had walked into as he and Aayla came across Talik and Anakin fiddling with their lightsabers and a few training ones that were heavier to handle –in order to get them used to the prospect of perhaps having to fight with a lightsaber other than their own, which was distinct possibility– and Obi-Wan wasn't quite sure what to make of the knowing smirk on Aayla's lips.

"I never really thought about it," Talik admitted, her hands pausing over weighted durasteel. "Master's pretty private about that kind of stuff…but it wouldn't surprise me, Master never agreed about the Order's view on no attachment."

Anakin hummed in agreement. "Well, 'can't fault her for that, it's a stupid rule."

Obi-Wan smiled slightly softly at the bitterness in his Padawan's voice.

"Besides," Anakin added, "who would she be in love with? Another Jedi?"

"I dunno who else Master really spends time with," Talik responded with a shrug before ticking some Jedi off on her fingers. "There's Aayla, Kit, Obi-Wan—"

"Master with Master Sabé?" Anakin asked, grinning widely. "Master's a stickler for the rules, he'd never!"

"Admit it, they'd be pretty cute together."

Obi-Wan started in surprise, glancing towards Aayla who had stuck her whole fist into her mouth to keep from laughing so he ignored her, moving on light feet until he was behind them before kneeling swiftly.

"Thank you for that, Talik," he said dryly, and both Padawans jolted in startled surprise, reeling away from him as Aayla released her mouth and positively howled with laughter.

"M-Master!"

"Master Obi-Wan! Um –didn't see you there!" Talik flushed a dark mauve, dropping the lightsabers in her hands to clatter to the ground heavily.

"Evidently," Aayla snorted, striding forward with a smirk on her lips. "You two need to work on your Force-sense."

"Yes, Master Aayla," both of them intoned.

"And what Master Sabé feels is up to her," Aayla added, giving them both a significant look.

"So you're saying she has been in love before!" Talik said, her voice triumphant as she jabbed her finger towards the blue-skinned Twi'lek.

Aayla arched an eyebrow. "Like I said, that's her business."

Besides, Aayla would be breaking several promises to Sabé if she told the truth of Sabé's heart. And, Sabé wouldn't appreciate her flat out saying "Talik, yes, your master has been in love before, in fact, she's in love right now, with Master Obi-Wan! Can you believe that?"

Talik pouted. "That's no fun."

"That's what friendship's all about, Talik," Aayla laughed, "keeping each other's darkest secrets."

"Are they really that dark?" Anakin asked with a bit doubt and Obi-Wan chuckled whilst Aayla smiled wryly.

"Depends which of us you ask," she replied with dark eyes glittering.


"So, how is it playing master again?" Kit asked Aayla as she poured him a generous cup of tea before taking a long swig from her own.

"It's all right," Aayla said with a shrug. "Talik's a good kid."

"She is," Kit agreed, "maybe you should consider taking on your own student, Aayla. You're a great teacher."

"I'm sure I could be but…" Aayla had her own misgivings. She raised a hand to her brow where there a pale circular scar, almost hidden by the color of her skin. She still remembered her brush with the Dark Side…how her uncle Pol Secura had fed her glitteryll to make her forget her life with the Jedi, that she even had been a Jedi…how she'd helped the Dark Jedi Volfe Karkko…

There were some things she'd never be able to forgive herself for, and she was determined not to pass on any teachings to a Padawan that would cause the same as what she had experienced.

Kit's fingers were cool as they took the place of hers over the scar she'd received from a sharp jolt of Force-lightning and her skin tingled.

"None of what happened then was your fault," Kit said gently, before moving his hand so he was instead cupping her cheek, a movement that made Aayla feel uncommonly warm.

"I know," she said with a sigh, holding his hand to her cheek, "but I don't want anyone to learn about the Dark Side the way I did."

"Sabé would say that the best way to learn about it would be to experience it firsthand…if only for a moment," Kit remarked, smoothing his thumb across her skin in a soothing manner that Aayla knew was completely wrong; they both knew it was completely wrong, but they were with Sabé on her view on attachments, as they always had been.

"She would," Aayla chuckled in agreement. "But you can't say that my experiences and hers are one and the same."

Kit tilted his head, a head-tress falling over one shoulder. "No, you cannot, but certain similarities cannot be denied."

"Besides, Talik practically half mine," Aayla joked, "you know, since Sabé always foists her off to me when she's gone."

"She trusts you the most," Kit said.

"That's not it and you know it," Aayla snapped, her eyes cold and hard. "Sabé's undercover missions are dangerous, Kit…she knows it and we know it…she hands Talik off to me in the case that she dies on a mission and someone else has to finish her training."

Like what had happened to Aayla; first being apprenticed to Quinlan Vos, and then to Vos' master, Tholme, once the Council had decided that their collective closeness to the Dark Side would prove too dangerous (and her master hadn't even fought to keep her, something that still incensed Aayla).

"Aayla…"

Aayla jerked away from his touch. "I am worried, Kit…what if one day she doesn't come back? What if I have to tell Talik one day that her master isn't coming back?"

Kit squeezed her hand. "Sabé's not completely reckless, Aayla, besides, what are the chances of her leaving Talik on her own without a fight?"

The two laughed, not noticing the young Padawan practicing her Force-hearing in the next room, keeping her presence shadowed even as she blinked furiously, settling into a fitful sleep, having a horrible nightmare about her master screaming in pain and the sudden break of their Master-Padawan bond.

And Talik Shala awoke terrified the next morning.


"Please be civil, Sola, she's your sister," Jobal sighed, noting the frown on her daughter's face as Sola resituated her daughter in her arms.

"I'm well aware of that, thank you very much, Mother," she said stiffly as her husband stirred restlessly beside her.

"Sola," her father warned from the front seat of the speeder, "please. Your sister is only here until next week…"

Sola gave a childish huff, before looking away as her two-year-old daughter Ryoo tugged on the end of her ponytail while her husband, Darred, watching in silent surprise.

He had known about the missing Naberrie sister, of course, there had been many rumors over the years about Governor Ruwee Naberrie's missing child, but it had only been known since a few years ago that she had become a Jedi…yet Darred had never heard of a Jedi going by the name Naberrie, though, there were an awful lot of Jedi and they were hardly in the HoloNews, so he wouldn't really have known.

He knew very little about Sola and Padmé's elder sister, Sabé, other that the basics, of course, that Sabé was the eldest of the three, being four years older than Sola, and she and Sola had never really gotten along. (And if Darred knew that was mostly his wife's fault, he kept his mouth shut)

Ruwee parked the speeder outside the door that was already open, with a smiling Padmé framed in the doorway.

"Mom, Dad, Sola, Darred! Come in!"

Sola laughed as they approached and she could see Padmé holding out her hands eagerly for her niece. "Hand her over, Sola!"

Sola rolled her eyes and handed her daughter over only for Ryoo to eagerly fist her aunt's curly hair.

"Aw! Did you miss me, Ryoo?" Padmé cooed as she rocked the young child in her arms and Ryoo giggled, bobbing her head, though it was difficult to tell if it was actually from her question or whether she liked the movement; knowing Ryoo, it was probably both.

"Is she inside?" Jobal asked Padmé eagerly and Sola's mouth thinned into a line. Of course her mother would ask about Sabé not one minute into their arrival at Varykino.

"Yeah, she's on the veranda," Padmé said nodding back into the house. "But I think Sola should go see her first."

Sola was flummoxed. "Why?"

Padmé gave her a look that made it clear that she thought it was rather obvious, and she wasn't wrong. And Sola knew better than to argue with her baby sister, so she stepped past her until she reached the open balcony.

Sabé was standing close to the balcony's edge, she might have been staring out at the lake if not for the fact that her eyes were closed.

Sola hadn't seen her up close in years, but now she could see that Sabé was a few inches taller and her resemblance to Padmé was even more startling (really, was it any wonder she'd temporarily acted as Padmé's decoy?), even with her hair still gathered in those multitude of braids with a few stray beads thrown in here and there. She was dressed in a simple tunic and trousers, like she preferred, no doubt, but that didn't dull her beauty.

She could have grown up as their sister, but she chose the Jedi over her own family.

Sabé opened her eyes and they were the same brown as Padmé and her mother's.

"I can sense your frustration with me," she said lightly, turning to look on her younger sister and Sola swallowed, stiffening her spine.

"Really? I wasn't aware," she said coolly, and Sabé arched an eyebrow. "Why are you here?"

Emotion clouded Sabé's eyes, but Sola couldn't read them; they were far too complex and disappeared far too fast. "Mandatory meditative leave as order by the High Council."

Sola crossed her arms. "They sent you to your home-planet?"

A sheepish smile warmed Sabé's lips. "Well, they aren't entirely aware that I'm here…they didn't quite specify where I was to spend my time, only that it not be on Coruscant."

The younger of the two couldn't help but be surprised. Jedi had always seemed so steadfast to their rules –and Sola was long familiar with the rule that forbade attachment with the Jedi, which had been the explanation as to why she couldn't see her sister when she was younger– but here was Sabé, breaking the biggest one.

"Why did they send you away?" she asked instead, curiosity rearing its ugly head.

"I—" Sabé's gaze flitted back over the lake, her brow creasing. "I was forced to kill an old friend…it affected me deeply so they sent me away."

To gather her wits, no doubt, Sola presumed.

"I'm sorry about your old friend," she said quietly, as gently as she could manage. "I can't imagine what that was like."

"I wouldn't want you to," Sabé said, looking to her suddenly and Sola, who had taken a step forward, took another back. "I know you're still angry with me, Sola, but I need you to understand that I do love you –in a way that the Council doesn't approve of– but the Jedi have my love as well, and my loyalty."

They were finally having the talk they should have years ago and Sola swallowed.

"You could leave," she said, "you could choose us."

Sabé sighed, leaning against the edge of the balcony and she looked so much older in that instant.

"Oh, Sola," she murmured, "what would happen if I left the Order? What would I do? What would be my purpose?"

Sola opened her mouth to speak, but the words died in her throat. Honestly, she had no idea.

"I am good at something that many aren't," Sabé said, her eyes imploring, "I specialize in a field that few have the skill to…I am a Jedi and I always will be."

All that anger that Sola had pent up over the years went out of her in a single loud exhale of breath. She really should have known better, asking Sabé to not be a Jedi was like asked Padmé to not go into politics; useless and impossible.

"I know you don't know me very well and I know you can't understand why I do the things that I do," Sabé gently, walking forward and extending her hand to her sister –the silver-plated hand that had once made Sola recoil in horror–, the hand that she'd lost in service to the Order she was so fond of. "But please understand that I love you, I love my family, whether it's here or on Coruscant."

Sola blinked furiously, raising her own hand, hovering it over her sister's prosthetic for a brief few moments before her hand met Sabé's. "You," she swallowed, "you never said that before, that you love us."

Sabé arched an eyebrow. "I thought it went without saying," she remarked blandly, and for the first time since their very first meeting, Sola laughed, laughed so much that she had to brace her hands to her knees to stay upright.

And when she straightened up, she was wiping tears from her eyes, but Sabé couldn't tell if they were from her laughter or from the conversation.

"Maybe you should've been a bit more upfront," Sola wheezed and Sabé cracked a smile.

"I'll take it under advisement," she promised with eyes that glinted amber in the light.

And suddenly she looked so very much unlike Padmé…more calm and subdued and with an aura mystery around her.

She looked like the Jedi Knight Sabé Amidala and Sola wondered why she had ever thought if she yelled enough at her that she would change her ways. Sabé had just been born special, there was no changing that, all that was left to do was adapt to it.

So Sola threw her arms around Sabé, surprising her –judging how she stiffened before relaxing into the hug–, but then she drew her own arms around her back. Sola buried her face into Sabé's shoulder.

"Is it dangerous? What you do?" she whispered.

"Some days more than others," Sabé said simply and Sola couldn't tell if that was the truth or a lie.

And Sola was proud, at last, to be the sister of Sabé Amidala, Jedi Knight of the Republic.

AN: So, Sabé and Sola finally make up, great, right? Sola's not going to be a very important character in this fic, but you will see her crop up from time to time. She should show up in either book three or four…depending on where I end book three…

Some little tidbits about Aayla's past…I think Quinlan Vos and Obi-Wan were originally the same age, but for the purpose of this fic, he's a little older.

Also: Aayla and Kit had feelings for each other in canon, and I love them so much that I'm going to build it up in this fic…I believe they will be employing Sabé's theory of attachment that doesn't affect their ability to be Jedi.

As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!