A Shift in the Force: Chapter Sixty-Four: Home Is A Person
AN: Its been awhile since you guys have heard from me, sorry! School was a bitch!
To the person who brought up Sabé showing Sola the holocrons: Sabé is more about keeping the holocrons from the Jedi and the Sith at this point. Sola might be Force-sensitive, but she doesn't have much of an interest in the Force, so telling her about them won't really change anything.
In other news: Book 2 was currently being split into 2-3 parts because it was supposed to end at the start of the Clone Wars, however, ASITF is going in a very different direction than it was when I began so its very likely that the Clone Wars will never come to fruition, which also means that ASITF will be ending in 20 or so chapters :). So now we are actually on book 3.
Darth Sidious could say many things about his prowess in the Dark Side. He had felt it when Sabé Amidala had Fallen and risen again as Darth Carina. He had felt it when she hadn't quite returned to the light but was simply not quite so cast in the darkness. And he had felt that pulse of power when the Sith Holocrons of Malachor and Korriban had been taken from their planets (that they remained out of his grasp and angered him to no end). Effectively hiding a holocron like that took power and skill, and clearly the one who had taken it -and Sidious could wager a guess as to who that was- probably had no idea of the range of its power or how to effectively shield it.
He'd sent his aging apprentice, Darth Tyrannus after it, but he had failed; evidently Sidious was going to need a new apprentice, and quickly. If only Talik Shala wasn't sidestepping him at every turn, keeping Anakin from visiting him as much as possible. It was by design, he was certain.
It would be simple work to create an accident for the Twi'lek healer to have and remain above reproach.
But as it was, at least he had a way to track the holocron thief, and that knowledge…it was priceless and perhaps it would give him a reason to advance his plans.
Ryloth was a very dry planet, but occasionally there were rain spells, running thick and heavy. Sabé watched the rain pelt the viewport.
"So, what's it like being back on Ryloth?" Sola asked her, coming up behind her to take the pilot's seat, sitting beside Sabé, who had her legs crossed and a holocron in her hands, pyramidal and glowing an ominous red, held loosely, her eyes fixed outside, dazed and unfocused. "Sabé?"
Sabé hummed faintly to let she know she was listening, but Sola could tell she wasn't really focused on her. She let her eyes rove over her older sister. Sabé had exchanged her light jacket for a full-length duster coat, which was odd, because it wasn't really that cold, if cold at all…and Sola had no idea where she'd even found the thing in the first place.
"Sabé?" she asked again gently and Sabé jolted suddenly, whirling around, startled, only to relax at the sight of Sola. "Are you all right?"
That made Sabé's lips twitch into a brief smile. "All right? Setting the bar real low, aren't we, Sola?"
"Well, we have to start somewhere," Sola replied without even blinking. "What's wrong? You seem kind of out of it."
Sabé tightened the coat around herself, shuddering. "I'm pretty sure this holocron is cursed."
Sola arched an eyebrow, but all Sabé did was close her eyes and breathe in and out deeply. "I feel the darkness, twisting, shifting, changing…it feels so oppressive now…it feels like I've done something to cause it."
Her fingers twisted and swayed, like she was running her fingers through something that Sola couldn't see.
"Sabé…you're not a bad person, you know that, right?" Sola asked her sister cautiously and Sabé opened her golden eyes. They were beautiful, deep and soulful; Sola hadn't realized how much Sabé felt, how much she saw. Had she ever asked what it felt like to rip herself apart to become a Sith? Had she ever asked her what it felt like to come back to find that her community had turned its back on her? Sola should've.
"Bad is kind of relative in our line of work," Sabé snorted, cradling the holocron again. It had an intricate triangular design, with metal pyramids at the tips, one of which twisted open as she stared out into the rain, her head tilting slightly. "But I can see clearly…something is about to happen..." She shook her head in annoyance. "But if the Force told me everything, then there'd be nothing to discover, would there?"
"I suppose not," Sola said, even though she didn't quite understand the Force. "Maybe you should go get some sleep, Sabé? You look tired."
Sabé opened her mouth and Sola honestly didn't know if she was going to acquiesce or refute when there was a quiet and cautious "Mom?"
Sabé twisted, softening at the sight of Caleb standing at that doorway, exhaustion in the soft lines of his face, his hair rumpled from attempting to sleep. She stood in an instant, leaving the holocron on the seat, only for Arthree -who had been parked studiously beside her, so silent that Sola hadn't even noticed the droid- to pick it up in a grabber claw and tuck it inside his wiring, the usual hiding place for the holocron, it seemed.
"Darling, what's wrong? Was it another nightmare?" Sabé's hands cupped his cheeks gently as she knelt down in front of him.
Caleb nodded in exhaustion. He'd looked particularly tired when they'd shown up in Tann, but it seemed that his nightmares -or visions, Sola couldn't be sure which- had grown more pronounced in the night.
She lifted him up into her arms, unresistingly. "You know, when I was your age I had terrible nightmares," she hummed as she carried him back to the room he had claimed, nestling him into the covers that he had vacated before lying down beside him when he tugged insistently on her sleeve. "The Force was practically pouring into my brain, that's why you shouldn't live in a Temple built on top of a Sith shrine…you remember me telling you that?"
Caleb nodded against her shoulder, nodding.
"Don't be stupid enough to try cutting yourself off from the Force, leave that to little ten-year-old Sabé Amidala who didn't know any better."
Caleb made a sound like a stifled laugh and Sabé felt something warm pulsing around her heart, something she couldn't quite explain, like when Talik would turn around her eyes glowing with her accomplishment 'Master, did you see that? I did it!'
"I am a terrible Jedi," Sabé decided out loud with a sigh.
Caleb leaned back with a scowl that he couldn't quite pull off with how tired he was. "You were a great Jedi," he denied vehemently with the petulance that only a child could possess. "You were our favorite teacher!" He and Ahsoka and everyone else in their Initiate year adored Sabé when she came to teach. She wasn't stiff or uptight, saying things had to be a certain way. Sabé was open and understanding, she inspired them to question everything, including her. She was warm and listened to them, when it felt like their usual instructors were just monotonous, Sabé would pull a story out of nowhere and have them all laughing in seconds.
"A great teacher and a great Jedi don't necessarily go hand in hand," Sabé replied mildly. "You've listened to me for the past two weeks, you know my beliefs don't go along with theirs…and now its time for you to sleep."
Caleb wanted to force himself to stay up, to keep questioning and asking -he still didn't completely understand it, why she was so against the Jedi, why she couldn't be a good Jedi; she'd been a great Jedi before!- but he could already feel his eyes sliding shut against his wishes.
"Goodnight, darling," Sabé murmured, pressing a kiss to his brow before he finally fell into a blissful sleep.
Slave trade was a nasty business and Sabé had known her fair share of slaves, some who'd escaped or bought their way to freedom, others who hadn't. She tended to distance herself from slavery as much as possible, if she could, but here she was with Cham and Ises, trying to figure out the pattern with the child kidnappings on Ryloth.
There was always a pattern, always.
"These weren't children from powerful families, were they?" she asked suddenly, going over the information on the five children that had been taken.
Ises and Cham shared a look, a dark and unreadable look. Sabé didn't like it.
"You remember the other tribes I was talking about?" Cham asked. "The ones that were coming together to convey our wish to cede from the Republic? They were all children of those leaders."
"Then it's not random," Sabé cupped her chin thoughtfully, "its strategic. Somehow Senator Taa found out about your plan and is trying to keep it from coming to fruition. No one wants to come forward and agree to cede when their child is being held captive."
Ises frowned. "So, you don't think that the children will be sold into slavery?"
"I really doubt it, heirs are worth a lot," Sabé explained with a shake of her head. "Slavers tend to focus in on kids that no one will miss; lower class, runaways, living on the edge of towns. No one goes through the effort of kidnapping heirs to tribe chiefs unless they know they're going to get paid big for it."
Cham glanced out of the darkened room out into the light, where Hera could be seen playing with some toys with another small twi'lek child. He didn't want to think about Hera being next on that list; he'd be keeping a close eye on his daughter.
"The group Rachi was tracking were heading east, so its likely they were heading in the direction of the capitol," Sabé theorized, more to herself than to anyone else. "I could head out there, investigate, probably get a lead if not actually find the kids…"
Ises crossed her arms. "You'll need some back up," she said in a tone that brooked no argument.
Sabé snorted. "I've managed fine on my own before, I really don't think this'll be any different."
But Ises met her eyes evenly and after a few long moments, Sabé conceded the point.
"I guess it wouldn't hurt to have backup," she nearly grumbled and Ises gave her a shimmering smile that had Cham stifling his amusement. "Hell of a woman you married, Cham."
"Oh, I know."
Ises' lekku flushed a darker green before she twisted on her heel to join Sabé in heading back to Sola Amidala's ship. Ises hung back as Sabé had a quiet but terse conversation with Rachi Sitra who, it seemed, was hellbent on joining them.
"That's what I came to Ryloth to do!" Rachi insisted.
"You're injured, Rachi," Sabé fired back. She was younger and shorter but Sabé had always had a way about her, an aura of power and curiosity that made some quail at the sight of her. Rachi didn't quail, but she didn't look comfortable either. "You can hardly put any weight on your leg." That made Rachi growl. "Let me handle this, you just need to focus on recovering."
Rachi scrutinized her with intense eyes. "Anyone ever tell you you're too soft-hearted, Amidala?"
"Usually people tell me I'm too harsh," Sabé said without inflection, staring rather blankly at Rachi, until the lavender-skinned Twi'lek laughed, but then Sabé's lips on twitched, her head twisting suddenly towards a sound that Ises couldn't hear, further into the ship.
Sabé took off and Ises jogged to catch up with her, briefly getting lost to which automatic door she'd gone through when she heard voices and sobbing.
"Its okay, you're okay, its just a bad dream," Sabé was humming softly, lying down beside the boy in one of the bunks, Caleb, stroking her fingers through his hair in a soothing manner, rubbing his back. Ises could see his shoulders shaking, but his words were muffled into her chest. "It wasn't real, I'm still here, and so are you, we're both fine."
Sabé kissed the top of his head before humming a soft tune to calm him, sending soft waves of calm through the Force, waiting for him to relax. When he pulled back, his cheeks were wet and Sabé wiped at them with her thumb. "Take a deep breath," she said gently and Caleb complied. "Good, take another one."
It was interesting to see Sabé in a more maternal role when Ises had once seen her take a slaver's head out with no problem and hardly any effort.
"Feeling better?" He nodded his head into her chest. "Good. Its okay to be scared of nightmares, mine still scare me."
"They do?" the mumbled question was just barely audible.
"'Course they do, darling, but that doesn't stop me." She rubbed the fingers of her metal hand into his hair. "You have to keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other, 'else you'll never get where you need to go…now, are you going to be okay on your own with Aunt Sola and Rachi for a few days without me?"
Ises could see Caleb's grip on her shirt tighten as she sat up, pulling him with her. His eyes, that pretty teal of his, were rimmed with red, the skin under his eyes seeming to be almost rubbed raw.
"I'm just going to help Cham and Ises with this one job," Sabé told him seriously, "then Sola is going to magnetically seal her ship to ours so we can get it to space port for repairs…then we're going to drop off Rachi at the Bespin Conclave -we might switch around those two, who knows-, then it'll just be you and me, kid…and we'll talk about all those things you've been prying about, okay?"
Caleb huffed. "I could come with! I could be helpful!"
"I know you could, but now isn't the time to test out your skills, darling," Sabé said simply, shutting him down, setting him on the ground and kneeling in front of him. "It's the kind of thing I'd do on a Shadow mission, the kind that the Jedi Order wouldn't want an official record of…do you understand?"
Caleb chewed on his lip. "You're -you're gonna come back, right?"
A startled laugh escaped Sabé's lips. "Kid, if I can survive Falling and coming back from that, I can survive taking some measly slavers down, I promise."
She linked her finger with his; a promise.
Ises smiled fondly as the boy threw his arms around Sabé one last time, Sabé dropping another kiss into his hair, before she stepped back out of the room, the automatic door shutting behind her.
"What?" she asked cautiously, taking note of the look on Ises' face.
"Oh, nothing," Ises said airily with a wave of her hand. "I just never realized how great of a mom you were."
Sabé rolled her eyes. "Caleb is an easy person to love," she said, eyes drifting off, remembering the vision she'd had so long ago, of a man with coppery skin, a green mask covering his eyes as he reached out in front of him, the Force roaring through him with as much power as Sabé. Sabé had been younger when she'd had that vision, after she'd taken on Talik as a Padawan. Sabé never regretted taking on Talik, though, the Force had willed them together for a reason, just like it had willed her and Caleb together.
She couldn't help but sigh. It had been so long since she'd seen Talik, and, honestly, Sabé missed the fiery Twi'lek more than some would care to admit, but she'd raised Talik for years, she was her daughter…Talik who had tried so hard to convince her to come back to the Temple. Back to the Temple that was filling with distrust and disdain that had always been aimed at Sabé.
Sabé knew very little about prophecies, but she didn't like the doubt and being put up on a pedestal for years upon. years. She didn't like having to shield who she was for years upon years. She didn't like knowing that Yoda hadn't been meant to be her actual master, that Depa Billaba had been. She didn't like acting like nothing affected her because being emotional was evidence of her shortcomings as a Jedi. She didn't like being on a planet that was so filled with the Dark Side she was practically drowning in it and having no one else notice.
Sabé was just so tired of it all, and being away from the Temple, away from the Jedi, finally being allowed to find her own path, that was where she had truly blossomed. Sabé wasn't meant to be confined, she was meant to go as far as she wished, as she dared.
But is that the only way? The words echoed in her mind too clearly to have been her own, and Sabé had to think on that one. A guiding force can come from many directions. Turning a blind eye to the Jedi will not keep you from being unaffected.
Sabé really hated having cryptic conversations with an intangible force, so she shoved it out of her mind, following Ises onto a Blurrg without a glance back.
Terrible nightmares were nothing new to Caleb, not anymore. He'd had them every so often at the Temple, but they seemed to have been amplified since the Force had coaxed him into that ship and subsequently crash-landed him into Sabé Amidala's life.
At first, they weren't so bad as they were…strange and confusing, but lately they'd taken a turn for the worse. All Caleb had dreamed about was a blaze of fire, consuming everything in sight, Sabé stepping between him and the blaze, throwing him through the Force before an explosion sent her flying. It was a terrifying sort of dream.
Maybe he should've begged Sabé harder, but she had that look in her eye, like when she censored her stories to keep them from being too ghastly or gory.
He scrubbed viciously at his face, scrubbing away the sweat and tears, just in time for the automatic door to slide open.
Sola Amidala looked smaller without the Mandalorian armor, with just a blaster strapped to her thigh. "Come on, kiddo," she said, "I'm gonna make you some hot chocolate."
Caleb had never heard of hot chocolate before, so he followed her with interest into the galley, brightly illuminated despite the lateness of the hour. He blinked in the harsh light, looking around in interest; he hadn't really been to the galley before, he'd mostly been sleeping.
"My sister," Sola told him when he sat down and she began mixing ingredients together, "is a very complicated woman."
Caleb looked up suddenly.
"I didn't actually meet her until I was ten, a little after she'd lost her arm, and I absolutely hated her," Sola told him conversationally. "She was this refined, proper Jedi who had never been a part of my life, and I didn't want her to be…it was only a few years ago that we actually worked through our issues."
"She doesn't seem refined," Caleb muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.
That made Sola laugh. "Oh, she isn't, that was just the face she put on when she was a Jedi, because the Order liked to rip her apart when she acted human," Sola's tone was dryer than the desert. "You know she was a really shy kid? And incredibly sensitive, so she picked up quick on Jedi watching her carefully during lessons…what was that thing that she said? 'They expected me to be exceptional, so I became ordinary'? Something like that. When she talks about the Jedi now, she probably talks about how stifling and rigid they are, right?"
Caleb nodded his head, watching as she poured a mixture into two cups, offering one to him. "I'd suggest you stop asking her about going back, Sabé was technically exiled, and her reasons for staying away are pretty personal."
Shame prickled through Caleb as Sola gave him a kind smile. "Her beliefs don't align with the Jedi's and they've caused her a lot of trauma in the past. Sabé has a lot of scars, some that don't even leave physical marks."
"Battles leave scars," Sabé had said, "some you can't even see."
"Why did you even want her to go back in the first place?" Sola asked curiously, sipping her hot chocolate and Caleb decided to do the same. It was surprisingly good.
He considered her. Sola reminded him a lot of Sabé, they spoke with the same gentleness and had the same smile. "I don't know how to explain it…I had a vision."
"What kind of vision?"
That had been months ago, when she had still been in the bacta tank in the Temple. "She called me her Padawan…but now I just see her getting blown up."
Sola hummed thoughtfully. "Perhaps you were at one time meant to be her Padawan, perhaps you still are, or, perhaps you aren't meant to anymore. If there's one thing I've learned about my sister, it's that visions aren't set in stone, they change and shift. Sabé used to have nightmares about Darth Carina, she was so afraid of Falling, but when she did, it was to keep ancient knowledge from the Sith…it wasn't what she thought, is what I'm saying. Sabé's not perfect, but she tries -and don't give me that Yoda shit," she added quickly, "she worked hard to get where she was, but she liked being a Shadow more than she liked being a Jedi, and I think she liked being a mom more than she liked being a Jedi; you and Talik are proof of that."
Caleb started in surprise. "But, I'm not—" he stuttered over his words, making Sola snort.
"Sabé introduces you as her son without thinking about it—"
"That's because it's easier," Caleb insisted.
"Or is it because she doesn't mind playing your mother?" Sola arched an eyebrow. "Believe me, I know all about being a mom, I've got two kids at home waiting for me, so believe me when I say she really doesn't mind saying she's your mom."
Caleb was startled at the prospect and maybe just a bit flustered.
"Who knows, you could always meditate on it, I guess." Sola scratched her head. "Well, Sabé used to do that a lot, at least."
She ruffled his hair like Sabé did, downing the last of her hot chocolate before bidding him goodnight, leaving Caleb to drink. Originally, he'd thought it was selfish of her to leave the Jedi, to leave her half-trained Padawan…but maybe he was the selfish one?
Was it really right of him to ask her to go back to a place that had abandoned her? Caleb didn't have any experiences like Sabé's, he wasn't a former-Shadow who dealt more in lies than anything else, he wasn't the former Padawan of the Grandmaster who could never fully connect with his master.
Caleb missed Ahsoka more than any of the other Initiates, but he was starting to wonder if he even wanted to go back to Coruscant.
"Hey, Miss Sola?" he called and a few moments later Sola poked her head back into the galley. "Do you think home can be a person?"
Sola's smile softened. "It always is, Caleb."
The Force hummed around him, content, like it was happy about the decision he was making, about the path he was choosing to walk. Caleb didn't understand it, but maybe he would get the chance to when Sabé came back.
If Dooku wanted to come out on top, he needed to play his cards just right…that meant cutting off the head of the snake, something he had never before dared to do, but it was tradition, after all, for Sith apprentices to kill their masters, and Dooku had no intention of breaking that tradition.
AN: A lot of interesting introspection with Caleb about Sabé. She is definitely his mom and I love writing their mom-son dynamics. I know people have been missing Talik a lot, but don't worry, next chapter is her time :) and I'm going to update on Christmas for most of my ongoing fics, so that's when the next one will be.
As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!
