A/N:
And another chapter! Yay!
Days passed with only brief reports from Anakin and Obi-Wan. The news from Naboo was promising, the Senator safe and happy, Anakin fulfilling his duties as he had been ordered. However, the news from Kamino was distinctly distressing. A Clone army, supposedly created on the orders of the Jedi Council, by a Jedi and using a bounty hunter's genetic blueprint? No, as Obi-Wan often said, Katria had a very bad feeling about this.
Unfortunately, the information from Kamino was far from the only thing Katria had a very bad feeling about.
Close as she was to Obi-Wan, some might say unusually close even for a Jedi, Katria was indirectly connected to Anakin. It was from the Padawan that Katria's bad feeling was coming. It wasn't necessarily bad, more akin to a very weird residual feeling. Nothing as clear as Obi-Wan, who she could sometimes feel as closely as if the emotions were her own, this was like feeling it underwater and from a long distance. Murky and indistinct.
Katria found herself confiding in Yoda the way she would have done had Obi-Wan asked her to do it. As he usually tended to when he knew Katria was pushing herself too far on her own, needing the guidance from her former Master.
The wisest Jedi looked at her compassionately, making her wonder again why he had chosen her as a Padawan when she was so damaged. But, perhaps it was because she was a little broken that he had chosen her; compassion was the Jedi's greatest weakness after all.
"Meditate with me," Yoda requested, waving a small hand towards the other seat in his private meditation chamber.
Modestly speaking, meditation was her forte - her blessing as well as her curse - so she had no qualms about obeying her former Master's request. Closing her eyes, she reached out with the Force, becoming one with it the way Yoda had thought her all those years ago.
No sooner had she reached into the Force than she was assaulted with wave upon wave of emotion. This was no mere Force Vision, this was reality; intolerable pain, grief and suffering, building and building with a rage that scared her.
She knew this feeling, knew their origin. The Force signature was Anakin's. The pain and suffering was Anakin's. That dear, sweet boy that she'd watched Obi-Wan raise and tutor. That boy she loved as the only younger brother she had ever known.
A tear rolled unbidden down her cheek, Katria freezing within the safe grip of the Force. Obi-Wan. Automatically, on instinct, the mereist flicker of thought, she reached out for him, for his familiar shining presence in the Force. Her beacon even in the darkest of nights.
Then everything went black.
.
A burnt orange planet under a burnt orange sky. Inhospitable and imposing. And within a chamber, Obi-Wan was suspended in a shielded cell. A white haired man dressed in black talked at him, trying to persuade Obi-Wan to join him. As if he ever would. Dooku, Obi-Wan called him. Count Dooku, former Jedi, former Master of Qui-Gon Jinn and leader of the Separatists. A man who had betrayed their very code.
Katria wanted to reach out, to comfort a clearly hurting Obi-Wan, but it was useless. She was a mere observer in this charade. A stabbing pain filled every sense, she dimly saw Obi-Wan flinch before she was roughly jolted to another place.
Katria awoke in the familiar surroundings of the Medical Wing. If she were capable of hate, she might hate this wing more than any other. Yet, the most she could muster was a vague sense of irritation at waking up here again. The merest sliver of light sent daggers into her brain, but Katria doggedly persevered. Regrettably, this was all too common an occurrence to even be worth mentioning. She had lost count of how many times she had awoken here, countless Visions taking too much of her and sending her to the care of Master Che and her colleagues.
Obi-Wan would be furious when he found out; the last thing Katria had ever wanted was to cause him more pain and concern than he was already feeling. Count Dooku was more than enough to deal with, even without assassin bounty hunters and Separatist plots.
The irony was, as concerned as Obi-Wan undoubtedly was for her, Katria was for him. At least she was not trapped in the clutches of the Separatists. At least she was safe in the Jedi Temple.
For now at least.
Pushing herself out of bed, Katria forced her legs to hold her weight. This was no time to rest from exertion; she had far more important things to do than sleep. The Jedi Healers put up no more than a token protest as she struggled past them, as distracted as Katria herself was.
If she hadn't already suspected otherwise, that alone would have been a signal that something much bigger was happening in the Jedi Temple.
Around her, Katria could see her fellow Jedi readying for travel, faces set in grim determination. She heard the word Geonosis mentioned in hushed whispers, the name triggering a flash of the burnt orange planet Katria had seen in the Vision. It was true that she could have stopped any of her fellow Jedi and demanded answers she knew she wouldn't get, yet she stubbornly walked on, bound for the one place she knew that she would get answers.
.
Katria's eyebrows met in a frown as she entered her former Master's quarters. Much like a large portion of the Jedi Knights and Masters, Master Yoda was also readying himself for travel. Like her, Yoda rarely left Coruscant; something truly important had to be drawing him from the safety of their Temple.
"Good it is to see you up again, Master Katria," Yoda announced, not even pausing in his preparations. "Hear did you, about Obi-Wan?"
"No Master," Katria murmured, fighting back the memories of her Vision. "I saw it. He's alive, but I fear not for long. Dooku has him." "Yes," Yoda agreed eventually. "Leading a team to rescue him, Master Windu is."
Katria crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. It was what Obi-Wan called her stubborn look. "And where are you going, Master?"
The diminutive Jedi gave her one of his famous enigmatic looks. "You will see."
Katria wished that were true, she wished she could accompany her Master where he went, but it was impossible. Now more than ever, Katria knew her place. If Obi-Wan was in danger then there was only one place for her.
.
Master Windu raised an eyebrow as Katria entered the Hangar. It was chaos, Jedi filing into transports, taking them on their way to Obi-Wan's aid.
"You should be in the Medical Wing," Windu said, otherwise unsurprised at her presence.
Katria inclined her head, conceding his point. Technically, yes, she should be. And yet. "I'm coming with you." It was no request, just a simple statement of fact. Either Master Windu allowed it or she bullied her way onto another ship; she would end up on Geonosis regardless.
A flicker of something undefinable passed through Master Windu's eyes. "You know there will be a battle," he said bluntly, tone full of unspoken implication.
Katria smiled sharply, a hint of bitterness briefly burning in her heart. "As you know I'm more stable around Obi-Wan."
Windu stared at her for a long moment, suspicious and assessing. He nodded once, stepping aside to let her enter the transport.
Katria took her seat among a few of the more experienced Jedi, breathing evenly to calm the rising tension in her mind. For better or worse, this was a turning point. The Jedi were marching to war, and Katria was in the middle of it.
