Lord Darth Yoda - Nara's kind of remembering wrong - remember she's like 5 or something, she's not remembering everything perfectly (and she doesn't understand the context of what is going on).

A/N - Really wanted to spend all day writing today, but I have a massive headache - makes things hard to write! (And no its not from New Year's Eve celebrations...just sick). Anyway, we are catching up to where I am in the story so I have to get writing!

Anyways, Happy New Year and please enjoy the next chapter.

Chapter 47: Mothers, Part Two

The memory ended and the two Padawans both returned to full awareness of themselves. She watched as Sascha brushed a tear away from his eye, "That was…the saddest thing I've ever seen, ever felt. I...just…excuse me for a moment." He broke down, crying into the sleeve of his robe. Despite the pain that remembering her mother…remembering that moment caused her, she felt better after sharing the memory with someone important to her. She gently patted Sascha's shoulder as he regained his composure.

He wiped away tears from his eyes, which were now raw and very red, "Sorry…but you know me, Nara…I'm a jumbled ball of emotions at the best of times."

"It's okay, it's one of the things I like about you."

"Thanks…I think."

"Can I…Can I ask you to do what my mom did to me in the first memory? Pet my back lekku? It's something that…calms me down and makes me feel at peace. I could…use that feeling of peace right now."

Sascha blushed, "I'm not sure it would be appropriate to…touch your lekku."

She rolled her eyes, "Sascha, for the love of the Force, I'm GIVING YOU PERMISSION. Besides, it's not really a sexual thing, I wouldn't ask you to do anything like that, because I know you'd probably spontaneously combust if you did. Just do this for me. Let me feel at peace."

"I'm not your mother, Nara," Sascha warned.

"I know that. You are Sascha Whitestar, my best friend."

Not waiting for him to raise another objection, she turned so that her back was to him and shifted her shoulders so that her back lekku faced him. Slowly, hesitantly, he placed his hand on her posterior lekku. She tensed slightly, reacting to the touch. Her lekku were sensitive to touch, but as she had said, not really connected to…pleasure in that sense, still it wasn't exactly a body part that got touched very often. She supposed the human equivalent of what they were doing would be like getting your hair brushed. Still, it was nice to have a boy touch her like that, even if that boy happened to be Sascha Whitestar, the shyest, most proper Jedi boy in the galaxy.

Sascha started moving his hand up and down her lekku, rubbing it softly. She closed her eyes and relaxed. Her breathing slowed and a low moan escaped her lips. After he got a feel for her lekku, he started petting it harder. That relaxed her even further. Then he found the rhythm of how her mom used to pet her lekku.

Suddenly she was two years old again and in the arms of her mother. She was transported to Shilli, back to her house, where everything was simple, and perfect. She didn't know about the Force yet. She didn't have anything that caused her pain, and she most certainly had never heard of war or a planet called Ubrora. In the arms of her mother, there was peace. She let her mind drift along at peace, letting go of all her worries.

Long minutes later when her consciousness fully returned to her, she found that she had curled herself tightly against Sascha, who was looking down at her with barely concealed amusement. She sat up with a jolt, knowing that her head-tails were probably bright with embarrassment, "Uh, what happened?"

Sascha laughed lightly, "As soon as I started brushing your lekku like your mom used to…you basically just fell into me. I kept brushing your lekku for a bit and let you curl up against me. You kind of…went away, it's like the lights were on but no one was home."

She scooted a safe distance away from her friend and back against the frame of her bed, "Sorry if I scared you…that's never happened to me before."

Sascha waved away her apology, "It wasn't scary it was…nice to be able to give you that sense of calm. I almost wanted to keep petting your lekku, but my arm got tired," he joked. He paused, "I understand now why you wanted me to do that for you. I could feel the purity of the calm you were able to tap into."

"Thanks for doing it."

"I would say anytime…buuuut, I think if I were to do that in front of Master Brynar she'd never let us be alone together again."

"I don't think we should make a habit out of it either," she said honestly, feeling slightly embarrassed that she had let her defences down so completely.

"Do you want to talk about those memories, Nara?" prodded Sascha gently.

"Yeah." She relaxed her legs and let them slide out in front of her, "so as you might expect, being taken away from my parents and actually remembering it messed me up pretty good. I spent a long time in therapy when I was a youngling at the Temple. I would seem to recover, then there would be something else that set me off, like losing in a game or having someone make a joke at my expense. Then I'd end up in therapy again."

"I've been in therapy," said Sascha, "It's a difficult experience."

She nodded, "I don't remember many specifics anymore, but I remember this one nightmare that I kept having, about me fighting that Jedi in the brown cloak that you saw that took me away from my family. I could never see his or her face, but the situation was always the same, the Jedi in the brown cloak takes me away from my family, and I try to stop him. I never could, and I guess that's the nightmare part of it. It doesn't matter if I used the Force, if I was a fully-fledged Padawan… nothing seemed to matter. I couldn't beat him or her, they were implacable."

"That's...I don't even know what to say Nara. It sounds like a terrible thing to have had to go through. But maybe that is what made you so easily able to help me deal with my problem. Maybe that's why we were paired together, because you could empathize to so extent with what I was going through."

That thought had never occurred to Nara Nalto, but thinking it through, it made a certain amount of sense. "You think that there was some big plan to have us end up together," she said. Nara put her hands on hips in a decidedly exaggerated gesture, "Is this your way of saying that we were meant to be together Sascha Whitestar?"

Sascha laughed, a genuine, surprised laugh, the first one she could remember him uttering since…well, since things had gone to hell today. "Well," he drawled, "We do happen to know many Jedi Masters, and some of them can see the future, it seems possible that they put us together for a reason. That reason being…we complement each other."

She tried to force a smile but failed utterly, "I wonder if maybe the Masters should have done that earlier, so that I wouldn't have been such a lonely youngling." Sascha cocked his head in confusion and she sighed, reliving her unhappy days at the Jedi Temple as a young girl. "I was never close with my clan, the way you are with yours. The other younglings at the Temple, because they barely remember their parents at all could easily adopt a new family in their clan. But I knew that I had a family that cared about me, loved me and that didn't want to see me go. That made me different from everyone else. I also knew that if my family could be taken away from me, then my friends could be too. So…why make friends? Heck, Jedi even warn against attachments…I took it a bit too literally though."

She smiled shakily at him, "I think my clanmates tried to make friends with me, and I didn't hate them or anything, but I just stayed aloof, I kept everyone at a distance. Eventually they stopped trying to get through to me." She cast her eyes downward, feeling rather silly. She could remember all the conversations that she'd had with different Jedi Masters about the importance of having relationships, friendships, but they had never been able to make her see the point. She had only been able to focus on what she thought she knew, that everyone who cared about her would eventually be taken away from her. Stoicism had come to her at an early age. The only person who made her see how valuable friendship could be had been Sascha.

"I figured that because I was taken away from my family, I owed them to be the best Jedi I could be. I had to devote myself totally and utterly to being a Jedi that my family could be proud of, so that they could say that they lost a child, but the galaxy gained a hero. So I studied hard, looked up obscure Force techniques in my spare time and tried to make myself into the best Jedi that I could be. But there was never time for friends. Or for happiness."

"Until you met me at the tournament," Sascha said, smiling shyly, "And we became friends."

"Well, I did know who you were before the tournament."

Sascha recoiled, surprised, "Really? I barely knew who you were. I only knew your reputation."

Nara let her voice drip with sarcasm, "More than anything, I wanted to be a Padawan, it was the only thing that I ever wanted. Did you really think I wouldn't put in the time to research my opponents, my competition? It's not like I had friends to distract me."

Her friend nervously tugged at his collar, "I, uh…thought that you wouldn't bother with someone that you were obviously more talented than."

"I had detailed notes on everyone in the tournament. I didn't think very much of you," she said honestly, feeling her lekku heat up, flaring brighter in embarrassment again. Her notes on Sascha had been pretty blunt and damning. She remembered wondering why he had even been allowed in the tournament as he clearly had no hope of becoming a Jedi Knight. It was kind of funny that, years later, he would be her closest friend.

Sascha took the insult amiably, "To be fair, I was terrible at fighting back then. Still am, really."

She smiled, "I remember starting the second round of the tournament where I faced you, I was already looking forward to the next round. I underestimated you terribly. You were this nondescript looking human who had a very below average talent in the Force that was clearly not a particularly good fighter, and yet here you were just standing implacably in my way, refusing to lose. I threw everything I had at you, and it almost wasn't enough. It was perhaps the only lesson that I ever could have received that would have made me open my eyes and see that I was going about things all wrong, and that while you were less talented than I was, you were actually the better Jedi. I simply knew how to use the Force to accomplish tasks. I had been going about everything all wrong."

She got choked up for a second, "And when I needed someone to be a friend …when I was finally ready to accept a friend, you were there, and I thank the Force for that every day. Without you, I would have been lost."

"I'm happy to be your friend, Nara. And I always will be," said Sascha solemnly, from behind his deep brown eyes.

They smiled at each other for a second, before she decided to turn the conversation in another direction. "So," she said, slapping her leg, and trying to force some positivity into her voice, "Considering I just shared my life story, I figure I might as well return the favour. Do you know anything about your parents?"

"I…do actually." Sascha took a deep breath, "My parents…are actually best-selling authors."

Despite herself, despite what had transpired today, Nara laughed so hard that she forgot all about where she was. In that moment of laughter it was just her and Sascha in her room at the Jedi Temple or in the cafeteria just sitting and swapping stories. For that moment everything was as it should have been. She snapped back to the present and grinned at her friend, "Good joke, my friend."

Sascha smiled genially, "It's true actually. Here, I'll show you."

Sascha removed his datapad from his belt and started scrolling through it. "It's okay Sascha, I believe you. You don't need to show me."

"I think I do."

Curious, she wasn't exactly going to stop her friend. "I mean, have you read the book that your parents wrote?" she asked.

Her best friend paused in the middle of his motion, and shook his head, "I could never get past the cover page, actually. I gave the book to Tyra once, and she couldn't finish it either. She said whenever she started reading it, she'd end up in tears five minutes later…and Tyra never cries." Finally, he finished scrolling on his datapad and handed it to her.

Nara was intrigued that any book could reduce Tyra Harker to tears. That girl had the mental strength of a Jedi Master. Nara turned her attention to the screen and scrolled downward, finding the title of the book was, 'My son, the Jedi. By Donah and Robry Whitestar.'

Reading the title made a lump form in her throat and then scrolling further down she saw why Sascha couldn't get past the cover page. The picture on the cover showed a family of three humans, a mother, a father and a baby in swaddling clothes. It didn't exactly take a genius to realize that this was Sascha's family, and that the baby was Sascha himself.

His mother, Donah, was petite and somewhat plain, but her smile lit up her face with genuine happiness, and her eyes were as deep and caring as Sascha's own. The father, Robry, wasn't very tall either, but seemed rather athletic, his mustachioed face was turned towards his wife and son, a look of contentment and pride on his face. When Nara looked up at Sascha, she could see that he had grown up to be a physical reflection of both of his parents, possessing the kind, empathetic eyes of his mother and the athleticism of his father.

The son that their family never got to have.

It took a couple of tries, but Nara managed to get words past the lump in her throat, "Do you know what the book is about?" she asked.

"You could have just read the synopsis," Sascha said, clearly trying and failing to be lighthearted.

Obviously this was a touchy subject for him. Nara decided that she would tread carefully, "You know what I meant, Sascha."

Sascha forced a tense shrug, "As I said, I've never read it, but from what I understand it's something of a diary of the two years that my parents had me, before the Jedi came and took me to the Temple. I can't bring myself to read it, though I've always wondered about what it said. I'm mostly confident that my parents were okay with giving me up, because this book is part of the reading list that the Jedi Order gives to parents of children that are going to be taken to the Temple. But…I just can't deal with it. It's too emotionally charged."

"I think it would be an emotional journey to read the book," she said sympathetically. A thought occurred to her, "Would you mind if I read it?"

Sascha nodded gravely, "I'd be honored if you would read it, Nara."

"Do you want me to tell you about the book? About your parents?"

He shrugged, "Nara, you know me pretty well by this point. If there is something that you think I'd like to know, you can certainly tell me, but you aren't obligated to. There is something I want you to do for me though."

"I'll do anything for you, my friend."

"Anything?" he said, raising his eyebrows, obviously trying to make a rather lame joke.

She reached out and shoved him playfully, "Okay, not anything."

Sascha brushed his short brown hair in a nervous motion, and spoke in a taut, emotional voice, "If…I don't make it, I want you to find a way to get a message to my parents. Tell them that I was loved. That I led a good life. Tell them that their little sacrifice meant something. Tell them about me. Who I was. Who I tried to be."

Those words landed heavily on her heart, how could they not after all that had happened over the past few hours? "I…promise that I will, Sascha. And I ask that you do the same for me."

"I will Nara. I'll try to let your parents know how wonderful you were."

"But let's hope neither of us has to do that."

"I can't imagine a worse conversation to have."

She nodded, but privately she thought that the worst part would be having to live the rest of her life without the friendship of her first, and best friend. Soberly, Nara turned her thoughts towards more pressing matters, like sleep, given that she thought she could see the yellow sun of Ubrora starting to rise outside of her window indicating the dawn of another day. "I think we should leave our conversation on that note."

"Thanks for sharing those memories with me, Nara."

"If anyone deserved to know the real story behind my past, it's you Sascha."

"And if there was anyone I wanted to have read my parents book, it's you."

They embraced briefly, allowing warmth to spread between each other physically as well as emotionally. When they broke apart, she felt a wave of fatigue wash over her. She spared a look down at her chrono, "It's pretty early in the morning, and we should probably get to bed. Jedi still do need to sleep."

"Could I stay in this room tonight?" asked Sascha cautiously, "I don't want to be alone….tonight…"

"Sascha, it's okay, I understand. You could sleep in my bed," she offered, "it's big enough for two."

Sascha's face reddened, "I don't think I could, Nara. I'll sleep on the floor though, so we can be close. Just let me go get my pillow and blanket"

Sascha left to get his things, and Nara let out a sigh as soon as he was gone. She wished that Sascha had accepted her offer, not because they would have done anything physical while sharing her bed, but because it would have been nice to sleep beside and cuddle with a boy for once in her life. As far as she could tell, she might only get this one chance. But she would content herself with having his presence by her bedside and the knowledge that their friendship was stronger than ever. As a consolation prize, it wasn't half bad, she thought with a tiny smile.