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A Shift in the Force: Chapter Forty-Four: The Je'daii Way


"Why is it so important that I not see the shrine?" Sabé asked, keeping her hands smooth against the ground, feeling its texture.

"I've always found that eyes are the things that often lead us astray, they are the true deceivers."

There was something about the experience in his voice that was a dawning realization to Sabé, and she raised her hands from the ground in order to reach out in front of her, her fingers brushing across skin.

She felt blindly until she reached the eye orbits, feeling the scar tissue around the eyes.

"Oh," Sabé realized.

"Yes." She felt his chuckle more than heard it. "I have been blind since a training accident when I was seven."

Sabé retracted her hand. "Sounds difficult."

"It was at the beginning," Nordia Gral agreed. "But you have managed very well with the loss of your arm, have you not?"

Sabé flexed the fingers of her mechno-arm. "Yes, but I replaced it," Sabé pointed out, "you couldn't replace your eyes."

"That is also true," his voice hummed, "yet you still had to learn skills afresh with your artificial limb, it is not a complete replacement."

"No," Sabé had to acquiesce. She remembered how difficult it was for her, sixteen and struggling to return to the way things were, how it had taken listening to Plo Koon before she'd really tried to ease herself back into training.

"The arm is new…you still favor it, but perhaps you are still not used to it?"

Sabé paused, turning her head down in the direction of the hand she couldn't see, but could still feel. She could see it in her mind's eye, the sum of the parts that she'd put together herself.

"I can adapt," Sabé said finally.

"Good, keep that in mind," he said, fingers brushing against her arm, following it down to her wrist as he used it to pull her up to stand.

"Keep that in mind for what?" Sabé asked, keeping her free hand extended out in order to feel anything that might come in her way.

"If you want answers, you will have to journey within," he said, stopping and Sabé's hand felt along the wall…smoothed like an archway.

"What will I find?" the words escaped her before she could stop them.

"Everything," Nordia Gral said, "and nothing."

"That's very helpful," Sabé retorted, just that side of snarky, but her words hung in the air and she could no longer sense his presence.

Her heart thumped painfully in her chest. She hadn't been this uneasy…this afraid since the day Maul had taken her arm.

"I am one with the Force," Sabé murmured to herself, keeping the arm on the wall as she stepped in through the archway, "and the Force is with me."

"I am one with the Force," she repeated, "and the Force is with me."

Sabé had almost forgotten her childhood mantra, the one she'd read from a line in a datapad she'd seen in the Archives, but now it echoed around her in the silence.

Her foot snagged against something and she yelped as she tripped, falling into a larger chamber that the pathway had been leading her into.

"Your conflict is blocking most of your ability to use the Force," Nordia Gral mentioned beside her and Sabé yelped loudly, again, nearly falling onto her back.

"Do you have to do that?" she complained, locking a hand over her eyes in the case that he startled them open; Sabé didn't want to think of what would happen if she did open her eyes.

"I am your guide, so yes." His tone was rather amused. "Pick up what you tripped over."

Sabé wrinkled her nose, spanning her hands over the ground until the fingertips came in contact with something smooth.

She frowned as she took the object, leaning against the wall as her fingers probed over it…it was oval in shape with a design carved onto the front, like a growing plant.

"A mask of a Temple Guard?" Sabé asked in surprise.

The Temple Guards wore them at all times. Sabé didn't think she'd ever seen one without one, even when they weren't on duty.

"Indeed. You are not the first Jedi to come here, lost and in need of knowledge."

Sabé twitched at being called a Jedi, but her attention was still fixed over the mask.

"What were you?" Nordia Gral inquired suddenly. "To the Jedi, what were you?"

Sabé frowned. "I don't understand," she said.

"You were with the Jedi for almost as long as you were alive." His voice echoed loudly in the silence. "I'm asking what you were."

"I…I was a Jedi Shadow trained as a Jedi Guardian."

"And why was that?" Nordia Gral asked.

Sabé's lips drew down, her fingers tracing the curving design. "My master was both a Jedi Guardian and a Jedi Consular at different points in his life…it made it easier when I was younger, I guess."

"Yet Jedi Shadows are not either."

"No," Sabé agreed, "they're part of the Jedi Sentinels."

"I think you're lying."

Sabé jerked slightly in surprise. "I'm not," she insisted.

"I believe your facts are sound, but I do not believe that is the reason you chose to become a Jedi Guardian and have thus far shunned identifying as a Jedi Sentinel."

A sigh parted from her lips before she could stop it, holding onto the mask with one hand, the other reaching up to ruffle her short hair.

"There are no great titles for Jedi Sentinels," Sabé said finally, thinking back to before she'd been a Padawan, when she'd been looking over the different classes of Jedi, how the Sentinels had seemed so utterly ordinary in comparison to the Guardians and Consulars. "When I was younger it seemed better to aspire to be something great like Sage or Warrior Master or High Council Master."

"But you don't anymore?" Nordia Gral's curiosity rang in her ears.

"Things changed," Sabé's voice drifted off. "I wanted to be a good Jedi, I wanted to be a great Jedi…but nothing has made me feel more alive than when I'm on my Shadow missions or training my Pad- my old Padawan. I couldn't be a good Jedi and be a good Shadow, I'd come to question too many things…I wasn't the Jedi I should've been, not the one that Yoda wanted me to be."

"Hm, a difficult predicament," he conceded and Sabé kept a grip on the mask as she stood, still outstretching a hand, trying to sense the area around her.

"You called me a Journeyer before…what does that mean?" she asked, feeling a little lighter.

"It's one of the few classes within the Je'daii Order. A youngling may go from Padawan to Journeyer to Ranger and finishing at Master," Nordia Gral explained, and Sabé could hear his footsteps nearby. "Journeyers are those who have successfully trained as Padawans and are ready to complete their Great Journey."

"Great Journey?"

"It's a trip of sorts that was undertaken by all in the Je'daii Order. Padawans that completed their apprenticeship were expected to travel to each of the nine Je'daii Temples on Tython before they could be considered a Je'daii Ranger. Of course," Nordia Gral added suddenly, "not every Journeyer completed their Great Journey…some could fall victim to Tython itself, some could lose themselves, and others even lost their way in the Force."

Sabé swallowed thickly. Losing their way in the Force? Sabé couldn't help but think of her current situation. Was that not how she felt now?

"There was something rather profound that an old friend of mine used to say," he mused. "What was it? Ah! As Je'daii we must accept this, because this is not an existence of absolutes. Life is a challenge, and facing that challenge is what makes the good great."

"They sound very wise," Sabé decided, her lips twisting faintly.

"She was…and she was a great teacher."

It sounded almost like those words were specifically directed at her but Sabé couldn't imagine why.

"It is a Je'daii Ranger's duty to act as a representative of the Je'daii Order, something I think you are very familiar with."

"Oh, yes," Sabé released a snort. She'd been to too many worlds to count as a representative of the Jedi Order as Talik's master.

"But some people do get lost occasionally, Sabé Amidala, do not fear."

Sabé brought the mask rest against her face. "Who said I'm afraid?" she asked archly, her words slightly garbled.

"You do, in all but words."

Sabé paused, an arm reaching out to her side again, smoothing along a doorway, but she didn't step inside.

"I'm afraid…I'm too much like Darth Carina," Sabé sighed, her head bowing slightly. "I'm afraid that Yoda's right and once you let the darkness in it never comes out. I'm afraid of…stagnation."

"Perhaps it is not that you are too much like Darth Carina but instead that Darth Carina was too much you," Nordia Gral suggested. "The Jedi Knight was one who suppressed her emotions, who was always in control, who was careful and cautious. The Sith was one who was raw and exposed, who was reckless and stubborn and foolish…but clever. It is not wrong to seek a balance to both. That is the Je'daii way."

"But not the Jedi."

"You are no Jedi," Nordia Gral said, for the first time acknowledging that fact completely.

"No, I am not." Sabé said, and felt like the weight bearing down on her shoulders since she'd awakened on Naboo had lifted.

"There is nothing I would've done differently," she realized, so startled that her eyelids fluttered beneath the mask. "That Holocron was at risk, I had to make sure it was safe after Siri was killed. No Jedi can set foot on Korriban, the Dark Side is so thick there they would've been incapacitated in seconds, maybe even dead in minutes. I did horrible things, yes, but no less as awful as I've done on other Shadow missions…I was not wrong."

"Good," Nordia Gral said kindly. "At last the truth. Your banishment is the cause of your conflict. The Jedi have made you doubt so much over the years and now that doubt has reflected back on you…because they did not believe in you, they did not believe the reasons behind your Fall."

Sabé's heart ached, she was breathless and choking on the emotions she had suppressed for so long.

"Look forward, Sabé Amidala."

Sabé stretched her sense forward, surprised in how clear it felt now, rather than the murkiness it had been before.

"What do you sense?"

Sabé focused. "Three doorways," she noticed, the Force whispering in her ear, and she stepped forward blindly, turning towards the right doorway that she could still sense in her mind.

"And how do you know that is the right one?"

"Because I can sense it is," Sabé said with certainty, the stone crunching under her boots as she walked forward, both blindly and clearly.

"And how can you be sure?" he asked.

"Because," Sabé said, tilting her head back slightly, "in the Force, there is nothing to fear."

She could feel his approval more than anything else as she walked forward, a Guide guideless. The irony wasn't lost on Sabé.

"Maybe you are meant to be a guide towards a different kind of thinking…to the potential that the Jedi can be."

Korinth'Kel's words still rang in Sabé's ear and Sabé took in a deep breath, calm and at peace with the deaths she had caused as Sabé, as Carina, and as every persona in between.

There was a soft hum in her ear that made her pause, thinking of when she was ten, stumbling through ice and snow on Ilum to find a crystal.

Sabé took another step forward; the humming became louder.

Her feet were at the edge of a cavern, a gaping hole lying before her. Sabé could tell because her toes had dipped down and she could feel the free space in front of her.

Sabé extended a hand and focused. It was time to let go of the fears she had held before, to let go of the person she had been before.

It was time to begin anew.

There a was a soft sound, like two crystals clashing against each other in midair before the two gems came to rest against her palm.

Sabé didn't open her eyes to see their color. She didn't need to.


"You probably could've gone back up, I wouldn't have minded."

Talik jumped slightly, twisting violently to see her old master standing there, but she paused to stare.

"Is –is that a quarterstaff?" she asked, staring at thing Sabé was holding in one hand and using as a walking stick.

"It does feel like one," Sabé agreed, smoothing her fingers down the metallic pole. "I found it around the corner. Looks like someone just forgot about it."

It feels like one?

"Where'd you get the Temple Guard mask?" Talik asked curiously.

"I found it," Sabé said, stepping forward carefully and it made Talik uneasy. "What's wrong?"

"Sabé…can you even see?" Sabé would have the worst kind of luck that she could come back to the Light only to find herself blinded.

"Of course I can see," Sabé said reproachfully. "But as someone taught me, the eyes are the true deceivers."

"Someone?" Talik asked, befuddled as her old master came to stand in front of her. "Who?"

"A friend," Sabé said simply, "someone who showed me the truth that I've been trying to deny."

"That sounds…ominous."

Talik's words actually drew a laugh from Sabé's lips, however garbled it was through the mask. "It does, doesn't it?" she agreed.

Talik looked her over, trying to get a sense of her feelings. "You seem better somehow…lighter."

"I feel the same, yet different," Sabé said, flexing the fingers of her mechno-arm before reaching out to cautiously brush against Talik's upper arm, following it up to her shoulder. "I want to talk to you."

"Here?" Talik probed, looking around them.

"Its private," Sabé said blandly, leaning her newly acquired quarterstaff against the wall, tilting her mask up so that Talik could see her face, but she didn't open her eyes.

"Talik, you are the best thing in my life, and I want you to know that," Sabé said sincerely. "I know that recently it hasn't felt that way to you and I'm sorry for that, because you are my family as much as Padmé and Sola are, and I need you to know that."

Talik chewed viciously on the inside of her cheeks, trying to keep her emotions in check as she blinked furiously. She'd always adored her master, but she was never to be one that would outright say what Sabé had just put into words, that she considered Talik as a sister as much as Talik considered Sabé to be the same.

"My ally is the Force, I'm just not sure that the Jedi are as well, and I need you to respect that, all right?"

Talik positively deflated, rubbing at her eyes. "I just wanted things to go back to the way they were."

"I know," Sabé said softly, her lips curling in the corners, "but they can't…and for the first time in a long time…I actually feel like me. The Jedi suppressed too much of who I was…and if I did go back, that would have to be my choice."

"I understand," Talik said, her words solemn.

"Good," Sabé said, winding her arms tightly around her old Padawan and embracing her tightly. "That's all I can ask."

"How long are you going to keep your eyes closed?" Talik inquired once they'd parted.

"Until my Force-sight is an asset and not a negligence."

Sabé smiled as she drew the mask down, missing the perturbed expression Talik's face had taken on.


"How is she today?"

"Better," Talik sighed, "much better. Different, but the same. It's kind of difficult to explain."

"I know the feeling," Taria smiled from the holo-projection.

"She's starting to actually use the Force, though," Talik added, trying not to make her relief so visible.

"That's good," Taria responded, bobbing her head in agreement.

"Well, kind of," Talik acquiesced, scratching at one cheek thoughtfully. "She's doing it through Force-sight and she's not opening her eyes until her 'Force-sight is an asset and not a negligence'."

Taria's hum turned to static as her image cupped her chin thoughtfully. "She does have a point. There are many Miraluka in the Order that can't rely on their sight like others, and Master Tahl had to adapt to being without sight after the incident on Melida/Daan."

Tahl was a name that was vaguely familiar to Talik. It was the name of a Jedi who had once been a Lore Keeper in the Archives, a position that she had maintained after her subsequent blinding. She was a friend of Obi-Wan's master, Talik was almost certain, though Obi-Wan didn't bring her up much.

"There's something else."

"About Sabé?" Taria asked.

Talik nodded. "She went to this shrine underwater or hidden somewhere close to the sewers, I guess, but when she came back she showed me two Kyber crystals."

"Oh!" Taria couldn't have sounded more intrigued. "That must mean she's ready for a lightsaber, a new one."

"The crystals…they were an unusual color," Talik pressed. "I've only ever seen her use lightsabers with purple crystals."

"Well, things have changed now, she's changed, it wouldn't be all that strange to expect her to align with a new color."

Talik could find nothing to say to that.

"I'll see if I can find a way to send out some lightsaber pieces to Naboo."

Taria winked before canceling the connection, leaving Talik befuddled.

Send out some lightsaber parts? How? She didn't think the Order would be very receptive to giving an Exile materials to make a new pair of lightsabers.


"I hear you two are off to Chommell."

Obi-Wan thought Taria's tone was far too off-hand when she'd materialized at his side, looping her arm through Obi-Wan's easily and making Anakin stare at her, and then the heavy box in her only free arm, and then back to her again, the bemusement clear.

"News doesn't travel that fast."

Taria winked. "I have my sources," she said with an impossibly wide smile. "How would you feel about a detour on the way back?"

Obi-Wan actually paused and looked down at her as they came to a stop outside the small transport the Jedi were due to take out to the planet.

His eyes narrowed and Taria smiled sweetly.

"You're up to something," he decided and Anakin snorted. He'd been Anakin's master for too long not to recognize someone trying for innocence and failing; he and Talik were rather terrible together.

"Oh, absolutely," Taria agreed. "But Naboo's not completely out of your way, is it, Knight Kenobi?"

His eyebrows arched and Anakin took in a sharp breath.

"According to Talik, Sabé's awake and cognizant and finding herself, you know, normal things you do after you've gone Dark Side and back and then the Order you dedicated your life to basically kicks you to the curb…"

"Laying it on thick, aren't you?" Obi-Wan asked wryly, ignoring the flutter in his stomach.

"Hey, I'm just calling what I see." Taria smirked as she dropped the box into Obi-Wan's arms, making him grunt at the weight. "Drop this off for me, will you?"

"What is it?" Anakin asked curiously.

"Lightsaber parts."

Anakin's eyes gleamed. "She's making a new lightsaber? Wait, what's wrong with her old ones?"

"I guess you'll just have to ask her," Taria said simply and Obi-Wan handed the box off to Anakin to put on the transport.

"Did Talik talk about how she is?" he asked quietly.

Taria glanced behind him to where Anakin had disappeared. "Talik says she's…different, but the same, her exact words. Apparently she told Talik that she felt the Jedi suppressed too much of who she was, and I don't think she's wrong."

Obi-Wan blinked. It wasn't like Taria to question the Jedi, that was generally Sabé's job.

"Oh, don't give me that look, Obi-Wan," Taria scoffed. "You had to have noticed that she hasn't been very happy here in a long time. She tried to hide it, but I could tell. She found missions to be a relief, Obi-Wan , not the time spent at the Temple between missions…that means something is seriously wrong. Is it really such a surprise that she doesn't want to come back?"

Sometimes Obi-Wan couldn't help but feel young compared to Taria's wisdom, even though she was a year his junior, Sabé's age.

"I suppose not," he said sadly.

Taria gripped his elbows tightly and grinned. "Give her a kiss for me, would you?"

And then she danced off.

"Master Sabé sure has some strange friends," Anakin's voice remarked behind him.

"She does have a tendency to pick up a rather odd bunch," Obi-Wan agreed and Anakin almost laughed, wondering if he was including himself in that grouping as well.


Arthree tittered nervously, following Sabé around with a grasping arm extended if Sabé ever had the need.

"Does he always do that?" Padmé asked as Sabé toyed with her food, her eyebrow twitching and her eyes closed.

"Arthree has attachment issues."

Arthree gave an offended sort of beep, and Sabé allowed herself a small smirk.

"Don't give me that, you know it's true." Sabé pointed her fork in the astromech's general direction and a hand corrected her a few degrees. "I rebuilt you, I didn't reprogram you, that's something you've had all along, and you know it."

Arthree twisted his domed head around before rolling away in a huff.

"I think he's a bit annoyed," Sola pointed out.

"Well, there's worse things to be," Sabé smiled. "He just worries too much and has incredible recovery time, don't worry, he'll be back before you know it."

"Until then, here."

Sabé cradled her arms automatically around the baby Sola had given her.

Pooja gurgled happily against Sabé's neck, pressing her cheek to Sabé's skin.

"I don't know why she likes you so much," Sola said tiredly, "but can you watch her while I take a nap…I'm speaking figuratively, of course."

Both Nubian-raised sisters laughed as Sabé's expression soured. They'd taken her selective blindness with a purpose –as Talik had coined the term– with very little surprise, but that didn't stop them from trying to make her life difficult by purposefully putting things in her way.

"We're doing this to help you!" Sola had said. "I mean, it'd be pretty sad if a Force-sensitive like you couldn't sense all of this in your way!"

Exasperated didn't even begin to cover how Sabé felt about her sisters turning the villa into a literal minefield, but they weren't entirely wrong, which was probably the more aggravating part about it.

"I'm ignoring you now," Sabé decided, tilting her head back so that her nose was sticking up in the air. "Pooja and I are going to go off and do Force-sensitive things."

"Bye, bye!"

Padmé kissed both her sisters cheeks before leaving to head off to the palace and Sola vanished into her room.

Sabé was left rocking Pooja gently in her arms, listening to the hum of sound that was Talik reading a holo-book to Ryoo, at her request and to keep her from tugging on the end of Talik's lekku.

It was very peaceful out here in Varykino.

"Naboo will be better for you, Pooja," Sabé said out loud. "Coruscant would crush your spirit like it did mine."

Pooja's Force-presence was soft and flowing like a stream and it trickled against Sabé's own.

"But you don't need to worry about that," Sabé assured the child. "One day things will be different."

Of that, she had no doubt, even if she had to drag change kicking and screaming throughout the galaxy.

A new day was dawning.

AN: Obi-Wan and Anakin get to see Sabé next chapter, that'll be interesting, right? I hope you guys are enjoying these rapid updates, because I go back to school on Monday.

As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!