FicWad

Additional Author's Notes: 1) Again, please remember what I've warned about SW vernacular and my nonstandard Gaelic.
2) What happens with Padmé and Sola is loosely based on what happens with Callista (Callie Ming) and Cray Mingla in Barbara Hambly's SW EU novel /Children of the Jedi/, for those who're interested.
3) Please note that the scene that was cut in half to keep the chapter sizes all approximate continues immediately below!







"I am here because Qui-Gon caught me, as I fell free of my body into the Force, and then preserved me. He taught me how to keep myself from dissolving into the Force, and that is why I am able to call upon the Force as I now am, albeit in a limited fashion," Padmé quietly replies, forcing herself to maintain the appearance of dignity even though the shockingly real sense of pain suffusing the whole of her being makes her wish with desperate intensity that she could still cry. "It is why I was able to speak to you both, earlier, when you were leading Anakin to the knowledge of Sidious’ true identity. I doubt very much if Qui-Gon ever thought I would be able to remain here any longer than would be necessary for me to speak to you, then. But I continued to remain behind afterwards in order to make sure that my attempt to repair at least some of the damage I had helped to inflict upon your relationship was successful. I only want to help."

"Not good enough," Anakin immediately snaps, clearly unimpressed with her attempt at a quick explanation. "If that were so, then why wouldn’t Qui-Gon tell us what he’d done?" he demands, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"I don’t know, Ani. I’m sorry. He may have been trying to shield you both from any more pain, since my time here, in this form, is limited, no matter how much I might wish to remain."

"That doesn’t scan," Anakin only insists, eyes darkening with increasing distrust. "If he was really trying to protect us, then you wouldn’t be here now, talking to us. He would have made sure you wouldn’t be able to appear to us again."

"Then perhaps he knew I would be needed here," she offers with a helpless little shrug.

"Then he would have warned us!" Anakin immediately counters, scowling at her openly.

"Then I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I just don’t know. I can’t begin to fathom the depths of Master Jinn’s mind. He is as far beyond me in the Force as the intelligence and awareness of a human being is beyond that of a single-celled organism. If he didn’t tell you, then I’m sure he must have had a reason. But it doesn’t really matter, at least not now. I’m here because I want to help clean up the mess that I made. And this creature," Padmé continues determinedly, jerking her chin in Sola’s direction, "is also a part of that mess and therefore my responsibility. I’m sorry, my loves, but you will not stop me from seeing to her. Neither of you will," she adds, not bothering to hide her sorrow but also unwavering in her determination to see this final task through to its completion before she passes on to her final resting place within the Force.

"I’m sorry, Padmé, but you’re not a Jedi. This isn’t your task. You haven’t the right to judge someone like Sola. And even if you did, unless your power in the Force is a great deal stronger than you have yet revealed, you lack the power to truly neutralize the threat she poses,” Obi-Wan quietly notes, his voice carefully neutral even though she can tell, from the hardness of his expression, that he does not quite believe her.

The agony spikes in her as if someone has somehow grabbed hold of a part of her and twisted that part while simultaneously yanking hard, preparatory to beginning to hack that piece of her away, and she almost staggers in stunned pain, gasping soundlessly as her arms come up close around herself, hugging hard across her middle as if to bolster herself physically against the pain. She hasn’t felt such pain since before she died, and she is completely unprepared for it. The closest she’s come to real pain since her death are the mental agonies she deliberately put herself through in the process of analyzing herself and her life and coming to terms with the (far too many) mistakes she managed to make during the course of life. And this is nothing like that. No, this is actual agony, as if she were still in possession of a body and something were literally tearing her limb from limb . . . or as if something has actually caught hold of the fabric of her being – insubstantial though that fabric is, being woven only of energy and Force-shaped light – and begun to methodically shred that fabric apart. And it is then that Obi-Wan finally notices Padmé’s very real distress, a slight frown creasing his forehead and an uncertain light entering his eyes as he makes a move as if to take a step closer to her. Anakin’s right arm immediately lashes out, though, faster than thought, snaking out to block Obi-Wan’s path forward, the lightsaber hilt in Anakin’s hand finally creaking ominously as he whips his head around to shoot a warning glare at his former Master. Something passes between the two men – Padmé can sense movement in the Force, if not the actual meaning of the words or even the general shape of the thoughts and emotions flowing between them – and Obi-Wan sighs and shakes his head, a rueful smile touching his lips. Anakin, scowling, rolls his eyes and shrugs, and then, for some reason, the two Jedi suddenly seem to relax. In any case, an infinitesimal shift of Obi-Wan’s weight lets the folds of his robe slide forward around him, brown fabric settling over the part of his utility belt that his deactivated lightsaber hilt is attached to it, and some of the thrumming tension abruptly leaves the all but crackling air as Anakin relaxes his grip upon his lightsaber until finally the hilt is hanging laxly in his fingertips.

While Padmé is still panting reflexively with pain and wondering what the kriff is going on, though, and before either of the two Jedi can speak or Padmé can begin to gather up enough wits to frame a proper question, a sudden flurry of motion from behind her snaps her head around abruptly, just in time to see Sola surging up to her feet, yellow eyes blazing and with her lips wrinkled back from her teeth to bare them in an animal snarl of fury. And apparently Dun Möch and the ability to disguise one’s power within the Force (one’s Force-aura, as it were) are not the only tricks that Sidious has taught Sola, because somehow she has also managed both to smuggle in to herself and then hide a lightsaber from them, and, as soon as the blade ignites into a fountain of coherent light that is so darkly red that it is almost black, the restraints on her ankles fall away, cleaved neatly in half, after which a single neat flick of her wrist is enough to split the material and bindings of the straitjacket open all down the back. Freed, Sola spreads her arms wide in a sweeping, encompassing gesture even as she is still rising, the motion bringing her lightsaber around into a threatening position, the blade out at an angle before her as if to skewer someone upon it like a spit, her stance obviously preparatory to a furious charge. There’s just enough time between the sudden revelation of the hidden lightsaber and Sola’s swift rising for Obi-Wan and Anakin to automatically defensively fall back from her a long half pace, Anakin’s lightsaber igniting with a distinctive snap-hiss into a classic high guard as he protectively angles himself slightly to the fore, giving Obi-Wan enough cover for him to reach down and, in one fluid blinding motion, retrieve and ignite his own lightsaber into an equally classic low guard, completing the familiar circuit of defense. Sola, though, ignores them completely. Instead of seeking to follow through immediately on her widely threatening gesture and stance, she locks eyes with Padmé and, with a wrinkling of lips that is half snarl and half smile, throws herself bodily at the apparition of her younger sister.

And then several extraordinary things happen in bewilderingly swift succession.

Sola’s action is so unexpected and so irrational that it catches the other three entirely off guard. After all, the Force spirits of Qui-Gon Jinn and Dooku have always appeared as oddly semi-solid transparent figures of light, able to pass through solid objects at will and to absorb enormous amounts of energy whenever they place themselves deliberately into the path of discharging weapon without taking any harm from those weapons in the process, and yet still solid enough that they could sit upon objects like chairs or sofas without passing straight through them, handle and manipulate solid objects like datapads, and even accept solid objects to wear around their necks and keep with them at all times, even when they would decorporealize and dissolve directly into the Force. The apparition of Padmé looks much like the Force spirits of Qui-Gon and Dooku, aside from the blood-red glow liming her figure where an eldritch pale blue-white light has always surrounded and penetrated the forms of the two former Jedi Masters. Obi-Wan and Anakin likely would have half-expected that, based on that similarity in appearance, the apparition of Padmé would react both to solid matter and to energy weapons much as the two Force spirits have been observed to do, since Padmé is not physically present, as an embodied being would be, but rather is present only as an apparition of the Force, a being of energy alone given visible form by a distinct pattern of light. Logically, she should not be touchable or vulnerable in any way to a being of flesh attempting to reach out to and strike her down bodily. Yet, despite what logic would seem to dictate, when Sola springs forward, as if to simultaneously tackle the seeming of her younger sister and run her through with the red-black blade of her lightsaber, what happens is something that none of the beings present in the room would have ever expected or predicted – not even Sola herself.

Whether Sola has become so unhinged by her hatred that she actually believes she might be able to do some kind of physical harm to a being formed of light and will and thought or whether she simply intends to charge straight through Padmé on her way to the two Jedi Bendu assuming their defensive positions behind her, what results is obviously something that even Sola never would have anticipated. For as the figures of the two women come together, with Sola charging recklessly headlong towards the apparition of her younger sister, rather than passing cleanly through Padmé or being able to spear her through with the lightsaber and then knock her physically aside, having been struck cleanly down, the two instead begin to merge, the figures of the two women seeming to slide into one another as if dissolving into each other, Sola’s physical form and the semi-transparent, semi-opaque figure of sullenly scarlet-tinged light that is the visible manifestation of Padmé’s spirit literally coming together in a stunningly unexpected and apparently painful blending of beings. Sola, screaming in surprised pain and swiftly blossoming panic, immediately tries to backpedal, desperately straining to pull out of her forward dive and push back away from Padmé, but her increasingly wild struggles come to no avail. It’s already too late to turn back – has been from the very moment the two first touched – for Padmé, shrieking in agony, has already responded to the merging that immediately began to initiate upon their collision by clamping down convulsively on Sola’s arms, obviously in so much pain that she is grabbing more out of reflex than intent, her fingers of angry-looking blood-tinted light instantly sinking into Sola’s arms, literally spearing through Sola’s flesh just as effortlessly as if her slender fingers were actually the blades of ten tiny lightsabers.

Sola’s lightsaber, meanwhile, drops from suddenly nerveless fingers, the darkly red-black blade first badly burning the fingers and palm of Sola’s right hand as the whole length of the lightsaber falls all the way down through the convulsively loosening and tightening and loosening hand, then neatly slicing away a part of her filthy nightgown on the way down to the ground while simultaneously cutting and burning a long stripe of a wound down the outside of her right leg that runs deep enough that a part of the flesh actually chars away rather than simply burning or being neatly sliced, in the process nicking the tendons at the back of her knee and making the leg buckle enough that, in between the slightly altered trajectory of the falling lightsaber and Sola’s wild teetering, the blade dances up and stabs entirely through her left thigh, just above that knee, and so makes that leg fail her as well, crumpling beneath her and tilting her body inexorably forward so that she is, in effect, thrown more firmly against and into the crimson-limed form of Padmé. The lightsaber then hits the floor, pommel first, to bounce, with a hissing and spitting clatter, back across the room away from the figures of the struggling but nevertheless still melting into one another woman, and, since the lightsaber apparently lacks the built-in safety precautions that essentially all Jedi lightsabers have, rather than automatically shutting down when it strikes the floor, the blade remains active, in the process searing a sweeping patch of charred fabric and burned flesh across the bottom of Sola’s rump before the weapon finally drops away to fall backwards inexorably towards the bare mattress that Sola had been huddled upon only a few heartbeats earlier. In the instant before the still angrily thrumming blade of the lightsaber can cleave its way through the mattress and into the floor below, though, a startled Obi-Wan instinctively reaches out to it in the Force, skillfully catching the weapon and bringing it arcing across the room into his empty left hand, where he automatically moves to thumb the blade off – something that takes him two tries to accomplish, as the blade is apparently also rigged so that only a specific series of touches to its jewel-stud activator buttons can safely deactivate it, a fact that makes Obi-Wan have to stop and carefully feel his way in the Force along the blade for several moments, searching for the right pattern, so that he won’t accidentally trigger the long-hilted weapon’s second blade (his first attempt to shut the blade off having fortunately resulted in nothing worse than a sudden lengthening and slight diffusing of the strength of the weapon’s first blade).

Both Sola’s and Padmé’s cries have, in the meantime, risen in volume and stridency, taking on an ear-piercing, inhuman quality that makes them both sound more like the keening, screeching wailing of a screaming machine or a massive steam-engine brought to a dangerously hot and high boil than the shrieks of actual woman. And Anakin, shocked out of his distrustful anger at Padmé over her sudden reappearance in such a questionable form, finally tries to act, crying out his wife’s name and throwing his left hand towards the women in an effort to use the Force to tear her away from Sola and bring her back towards him, to safety. Even with all of Obi-Wan’s enormous reserve of power coursing through him as well as his own staggeringly enormous strength in the Force to bend to that task, though, it’s still already far too late to extricate Padmé thus from the bizarrely joined and still merging tangle of half physically present limbs and half radiant smear of blood-shine energy and light. Both women have their heads thrown back – Padmé out of agony, Sola in a desperate attempt to keep herself separate from the lumpy knot of flesh and light where their two forms are melting into a single figure – but eventually the merging brings them inexorably together so that they are facing one another squarely, their noses almost touching. Sola tries once more to turn her face, still struggling to keep herself free even though the effort is obviously hopeless, but then agony seems to unhinge Padmé’s knees as well, throwing both what remains free of her own figure and the amorphous mass of their inexplicably and inextricably tangled and joining bodies further forward, into each other. At that point, the spreading binding pulls them together so that their still horribly screaming mouths meet in a parody of a kiss, their faces pressing together so firmly that their features almost instantly slide into the surface of each other, coming together in a final rush of melting movement that signals its end, as the rest of Sola is abruptly swallowed whole into the strangely half-solid mass of Padmé’s red light, with a sudden burst of energy, the excess of which bleeds off of the joined figure in a flash of brilliant blood-red light, blinding the two men even as they are rushing forward in a last desperate attempt to try to intervene with the process of what is happening and throwing them back, a wave of energy rushing out from the place where Sola and Padmé just were like the expanding shockwave of an explosion.

Sightless, Obi-Wan and Anakin check their forward rush, unwilling to do anything that might somehow make matters worse than they already are. Being temporarily blinded does not keep either of the men from hearing the sickening thump of a body limply hitting the floor, though.

"Obi-Wan – !" Anakin cries out in confusion, shivering on the edge of panic, and Obi-Wan instinctively reacts, hooking the captured lightsaber to his belt with a sure, practiced motion that needs no sight so that he will have a free hand to reach out and place on his beloved’s shoulder, reassuringly squeezing tight.

"Patience, Anakin! We’ve only been flash-blinded and the light was not that intense. A few moments more and we’ll be able to see again. And then we will do whatever we can to help Padmé," Obi-Wan promises, his voice soothing and surprisingly even despite the hard knot of regret and self-recrimination for not trying to act earlier already eating away at his conscience.

For a moment Anakin simply holds tensely still under his hand, all but vibrating with the need to act – to do something, anything, if only to be doing instead of simply waiting blindly – but then a part of the thrumming tension goes out of the warm flesh under his hand and then Anakin is reaching around to him, lacing his fingers with Obi-Wan’s in silent agreement and promise.

A few moments more of waiting, while the flash-blindness fades, and then they find themselves looking down, their still slightly blurry gazes drawn to movement on the floor. And then the both find themselves falling back yet again, taking a startled step back away from the sight meeting their eyes.

The figure of a light-limed Sola stares up at them with Padmé’s soulful brown eyes, wincing and gasping in pain as she strives with grim determination to push herself back to her feet despite the four only mostly cauterized lightsaber wounds marring her right leg, left thigh, lower posterior and right hand.

***

The Force moves through all things, weaving the many threads of the universe (and all possible universes) into an invisible, living, growing, multidimensional tapestry of energy (of Light) that ties the smallest of living creatures to the largest cluster of stars. Synergy makes the total far greater than the sum of its parts. And so, when even one of the tiniest of those threads is torn, or snagged, or harmed in any measurable fashion, strain and unbalance spreads out across the entire delicate latticework of light-strung netting and life-spun lace that makes up the webbed matrix of that living tapestry as various other threads come unmoored and unknotted from their neighbors before replacements for those previously anchoring but now abruptly fraying or broken outright neighbors can be spun. Actions and reactions . . . spreading ripples from shock waves that affect not only those directly or even obliquely tied to the source of such a disturbance but also all of those who have the ability to sense those reverberations, due to an innate sensitivity to the flows of energy that make up the Force. Most such disturbances are relatively minor, the strength of their echoes petering out before they can reach far beyond the world of their origin and registering only on the nearest and strongest Force-sensitives, if they register on anyone else at all. But the torrents of destruction unleashed upon the galaxy that has been host to the Galactic Republic by the Sith Lord Sidious’ carefully planned and triggered Clone Wars have been an exception to that rule, so much untimely death and unnecessary suffering, complete with all of the various dark emotional handmaidens that accompany such evil deeds, screaming out through the Force for such an extended period of time (more than three years of constant fighting across multiple battlefronts) that the spreading shockwaves have been gathering power as they reflect off of other minds sensitive to such disturbances, gaining both in destructive force and momentum as they spread out across the whole of that galaxy, the disturbance increasing in strength as it draws nearer to the galaxy’s borders, threatening to spill over into the space of its nearest surrounding neighbors.

If Sidious had been able to succeed in his plans for Order Sixty-Six, those ripples would have inevitably gained enough power to breach the borders of at least one of those neighboring galaxies, with results that, in less than a century’s time, would have brought about catastrophic results. The death of Sidious, though, followed by the cleansing of the Force from the dark choking miasma of the taint upon it resulting from the unnaturally twisted energies of the so-called Dark Side users and the deaths and suffering of the far too many sentient beings brought about by those Dark Siders, has helped to quell the rising tide of that disturbance. As reverberations of a certain pitch can cancel out waves of sound, the cleansed power of the Force and the explosions of life and love and Light within the Force triggered by Obi-Wan and Anakin’s successes and their surrender to the Force and to each other have acted as sources of harmonic echoes, spreading rapidly throughout the Force and the galaxy and countering and dispelling the growing tsunami of destruction that has built itself up out of the death and anguish of the Clone Wars. In the wake of these events and the calming of that terrible building disturbance within the Force, a fragile and friable peace has sprung into existence, and while the depth and the immovability of that tranquility increases with each new outpouring of love and joy and surrender within and to the Force that Obi-Wan and Anakin and those whom they have helped to free from the dark bonds of their previous lives triggers, that calm is still so chancily balanced that even the sudden disturbance of but one lone thread can be enough to set the whole of its surface to vibrating, even if only for a brief moment of time. The overlay of an elemental core of energy with the living thread of a human being results in a brief shriek of discord that would have gone unnoticed in the previous din but that echoes like a tumult in the relative calm, as the filament of a former thread of life melts into and burns away a part of the individual core that has made up the individual consciousness of that other living being, consuming essentially all of that individuality and releasing energy in a shockwave that hits the Force like a blow.

In the city of Theed on the planet of Naboo, Sola’s mind – the thoughts and the memories of the woman who has been both Sola Naberrie and the ally and pupil of Darth Sidious – burns away in a brilliant flash of energy, the conscious mind and controlling essence of the woman consumed and eradicated in an instant by the blazing electric light that is the preserved spirit of Padmé Amidala. The soul, being a thing that becomes, for most sentient species, inexorably and irrevocably linked with the mind as the body ages and the mind gains awareness of itself as the seat of consciousness and awareness of an unique individual, is dependent, in some ways, on the sanctity and wholeness of the mind. Sane individuals who become or are otherwise driven insane are generally those beings whose minds have been injured in some manner so awful that the soul has either also similarly damaged or else ripped away (either partially or entirely) from both its rightful mind and body. In Sola’s case, what remains of the badly damaged (and much reduced in size) core of her soul that has not already been either ripped apart by her Sith Master or else willingly offered up as a sacrifice to increase her own dark powers or to aid in the furtherance of the evil that Darth Sidious once encompassed is summarily shredded, unraveled in conjunction with the destruction of her mind. Sola’s spirit, having neither mind nor soul to continue acting as anchor and binding thread between the intangible and ineffable and the simple reality of physical flesh, receives a similar fate, torn away handfuls of hair ripped up by the roots, bleeding and shrieking pain, small fragments left behind, perhaps, but the vast majority literally torn out of the body that has acted as its living receptacle for over thirty-two standard years now.

In the surrounding Force, there is a brief but comparatively shocking shriek of anguish and fury as the mind and spirit of Sola are literally ripped from existence, accidentally but irrevocably torn away and utterly consumed and, thus, destroyed by the sudden superimposition of the blazing energy of another’s mind and spirit within the space that Sola has been occupying. And what would have been, at almost any other time, a relatively minor disturbance to the Force is enough, in the face of the calm that has so recently spread throughout the Force, to unexpectedly and abruptly jolt and tumble the blazing knot of the conjoined energies of the Force spirits of Qui-Gon Jinn and Dooku of Serenno out of the Force and away from each other, back into their own separate beings, and their shock and pain over that sudden parting adds strength to the disturbance as it carries on past them in the actual physical location that they are occupying, spreading out into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and startling others, jostling and disturbing the minds of all of its Force-sensitive residents – including one whose mind has turned so far in upon itself in an effort to escape the pain of the disturbance of the Clone Wars that she has been all but unreachable in the Force now for the better part of the past three years, jolting her out of an endlessly inwardly turning spiral back up towards the far reaches of true consciousness – before continuing on from there in an even stronger wave, one that manages to travel as far as the planet of Bunduki before it dissipates, and not before touching the Force-sensitive spirit of one who has been in the suspended animation of a deep Force healing trance that was forced upon her by another over two dozen millennia earlier, the touch not quite enough to completely rouse that slumbering mind but more than enough to weaken the bonds upon it and cause a dramatic lightening of that trance, suspended animation altering to something more closely resembling a mere coma rather than the near-complete suspension of bodily functions in a state of complete preservation of but utterly static stasis of life.

Meanwhile, though the echoes of that disturbance have, by that time, long since petered out, Force-sensitives from Naboo to Coruscant and from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant to the Pacanth Reach of the Outer Rim, where Bunduki resides, find their attention suddenly, unexpectedly, and quite inexorably (if not entirely inexplicably) drawn towards the direction of the Chommell Sector, where the Naboo system resides . . .

***

Anakin’s mind is a humming blank and he can feel Obi-Wan’s stunned dread on the other end of the open bond, weighing him down as if a mass of lead has been unceremoniously dropped down onto the center of his chest. So much has happened since the two of them first came into this tower room that he would probably be having a hard time processing it all even if the murderous Sith-trained disinherited former elder sister of his wife weren’t currently looking up at him with his wife’s chocolate eyes. But it is precisely because what otherwise looks like the figure of the traitor Sola is looking up at him with those shockingly familiar sensitive and soulful dark eyes while cursing a blue streak of profanity laced with Huttese expletives that he himself once taught Padmé Amidala that Anakin’s mind has gone empty, in essence whitening to an utter blank. He has no more idea of what to do – either how to react or what to even think of what has apparently, however impossibly, happened – in that moment, than an actual infant given a lightsaber would have known how to battle and successfully defeat a contingent of droideka destroyer droids. Fortunately for all involved, Obi-Wan soon takes the decision over how to react out of his hands.

Taking a small and somewhat uncertain step forward, Obi-Wan deactivates his own lightsaber – attaching it to a loop on his utility belt that he has modified to be able to hold a second weapon, at need, since the deactivated hilt of Sola’s lightsaber is currently hooked onto the place where his own weapon usually hangs – and then, with only a slight hesitation, stretches out his right hand towards the woman, quietly asking, "Padmé? Is it only you in there, now? Are you all right, child?"

The woman’s response is to throw herself forward into Obi-Wan’s arms, crying out in a voice that somehow sounds more like that of Padmé than Sola, "Oh, Force, Obi-Wan, what have I done?"

"Child – careful, now! This body is wounded. All together, it is bad enough that the body may go into shock. You must take care not to cause it more stress!" is Obi-Wan’s anxious response as he awkwardly strives to hold onto the clinging form of the woman without causing her any further damage.

"But Obi-Wan, you don’t understand!" the woman – Padmé? Sola? Some odd amalgam of the two? – immediately replies, almost wailing in her distress. "That doesn’t matter. I’ve already let my guilt and fear goad me into staying behind longer than I probably should have. I can’t stay here. But I’ve done irreversible damage to this body. Sola . . . she’s completely gone, now. Her mind. Her memories. The essence of her, everything that made her the person she was. It’s all just – gone. I burned her out of her own body, when I fell down into this flesh. I don’t know why it happened. I just know that she’s gone, now. This body may live, but the mind and spirit that have animated it are both dead. I killed her, Obi-Wan. It wasn’t my intention – not then, at least – but I’ve killed her, all the same. I wanted to bring Sola to justice. I wanted her to know what she’d done and suffer for it, but instead I’ve just killed her!"

"Padmé . . . " Obi-Wan trails off uncertainly, turning his head to shoot a confused and pleading look at Anakin. "Don’t take on so, young one. This wasn’t your fault. Sola is the one who charged straight at you. You shouldn’t blame yourself for what’s happened. She brought this on herself."

"But – !"

Shutting off his own lightsaber and clipping the hilt to his belt, Anakin steps up to Obi-Wan’s left side and places a comforting hand on her right shoulder, cutting her off by gently insisting, "Obi-Wan’s right, Padmé. This isn’t your fault, love. Sola started this, not you, and the Force itself finished it. And if it’s any comfort what’s happened has probably saved us quite a bit of work. We would have had to isolate and erase or block off and overwrite every single memory Sola had of us and of Sidious, to neutralize the threat she posed," he explains, earnestly holding her tearful gaze when she raises her head from Obi-Wan’s chest to look over at him. It is beyond disconcerting to see his wife’s familiar eyes in such a haggard and unfamiliar face, but Anakin preserves, refusing to show his unease as he quietly adds, "There wouldn’t have been much left but a body, by the time we were done, and it would have taken a lot longer, since she would have fought us every step of the way. The pain would have lasted for much longer. This way was much quicker – and probably more merciful than she deserved. Don’t cry, Padmé. Sola doesn’t deserve any of your tears."

"Oh, Ani! I’ve made such a mess of things!" she half sobs and half sighs in response, reaching out with her right arm to pull him down into a slightly awkward three-way embrace that becomes much more comfortable and natural when Obi-Wan obligingly shifts over so that he and Anakin can loop their left and right arms respectively around each other’s waists and gather her up to them with their other arms, the greater height of Sola’s body just barely allowing her to wind her right arm (injured hand and all) up around Anakin’s bowed neck and to press her forehead against Obi-Wan’s right shoulder after she’s gone up on tiptoe.

"Shhh, Sabia-love, it not your fault," Anakin hushes her, deliberately using the name he had nearly always called her whenever they were alone together (after he’d found out about the name she’d been given as a child and called by all of her loved ones growing up, as part of some ancient Nabooian custom originally meant to ward off bad luck and evil spirits) to try to calm and reassure her. Bending down (and bringing Obi-Wan with him, with a gentle pressure exerted against the small of his back) so that she can reach him more easily and hopefully put less strain on the injuries inflicted by the dropped lightsaber, he carefully traces soothing circles across her back with his left hand. "Everything will be alright. Obi-Wan and I will make sure that it is, love. I promise."

"But this body – "

"Can be healed. And taught to take care of itself, like a child or the victim of some amnesia-inducing trauma. There are healers and therapists a-plenty who can see to that, Padmé. Believe me. So long as the brain itself has not been damaged – and I do not believe that it has been, or else you would not be able to speak to us so clearly or control the finer motor functions of this body so well – a new personality can be generated by the act of raising it up again. This body can still have a full, productive life, child. We can see to that. You needn’t worry yourself on that account," Obi-Wan quietly cuts in.

Padmé heaves a long shuddering sigh and some of the tension goes out of Sola’s body as she relaxes more fully into their careful embrace, letting them actively support her more of her weight as the lack of tension finally allows her injured legs to start shaking beneath her. Obi-Wan turns his head to Anakin, shooting him a questioning glance, to which Anakin nods. As one, they then bend down even further, carefully tightening their arms around her waist and back so that they can lift her up off of her feet as they straighten back up. A small noise that sounds suspiciously like a whimper of relief escapes her as the weight is all taken off of her injured legs, the extra height of Sola’s body just enough to let her toes barely skim the surface of the floor if she points them downward. Padmé sighs again, raising her head up so she can nestle her head into the crook of Obi-Wan’s neck and shoulder, and Anakin shifts his arm so he can place his hand against the back of her head, cupping it and cradling it down against Obi-Wan. He would try to run his fingers through her hair, but it’s so horribly snarled and matted that he’s too afraid he would hurt her if he tried it. Instead, he moves the pads of his fingers ever so slightly, gently massaging first the base and then the crown of her skull. Lifted up as she is, her injured hand is no longer turned awkwardly against his neck but instead laid carefully on top of his shoulder, so that there is as little pressure as possible being placed on the burns covering its palm and fingers. The lack of strain on the wounds seems to help calm her almost as much as their words, for when she speaks again her voice is steady and, aside from being somewhat muffled, she sounds more like herself than ever as she admits, "I can understand that what happened to Sola was not my fault. But I still regret it. I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t want things to end between us this way. I was . . . very angry. I won’t lie about that. I was furious with her. A part of me wanted to hurt her, and badly, for what she’s done. But she was my sister. I – I still loved her, for all that. I didn’t want her to die. I wanted her to understand what she’d done and try to make amends, even if she would never be able to do enough good to make up for the evil she’s taken part in. I didn’t want this. Never this."

"Sometimes what that Force wants must take precedence over what we want, Padmé. When Sola ran at you, it was the Force that brought the two of you together, and this is the result of that. The Force wanted this. That should be enough to calm your fears, little one. There can be no doubt that the Force wanted this," Obi-Wan murmurs, laying the side of his face against her dark head and, in the process, letting Anakin’s fingertips brush across his lips.

"But why would the Force want this? I can’t remain in this body, /cariodal/. It wouldn’t be right. I’ve already stayed longer than I should have – "

"You don’t know that, Sabia-love. You’re just afraid that you have because no one told you that you could. But the Force let you remain and it put you into that body, sweetling. I’d say the Force has made it’s will in the matter pretty clear, and it’s not what you’re afraid of," Anakin quietly but firmly cuts her off, most of his hand still soothingly massaging her scalp while his thumb traces gentle, loving arcs across Obi-Wan’s ever so slightly parted lips. "The Force wanted you to be here, or you wouldn’t have lasted for as long as you have without a body to anchor you. And Obi-Wan’s right. The Force must want you in this body for some reason or it wouldn’t have made sure that only your consciousness would survive this."

"Ani . . . no. Please, don’t. Don’t try to tell me that I can stay here. I can’t/, love. I know that I can’t. I knew, when I made the decision to appear before you here, that it would be the last time I’d be able to do it and I would have to let go of my worries and trust in the Force enough to move on and pass into the Force, when I was done," Padmé Padmé explains, sounding more tired, now, than anything else, actually raising her head up from Obi-Wan’s shoulder this time so that she can face Anakin directly. "I’m not quite done here, yet – there are some things that I wanted to tell you both, before I go, and some information that I need to share with you – but then I need to let go and move on. A part of me wants to stay – a part of me desperately wants a chance to not only make things right, with the two of you, but to do things over and to have a life for myself, this time – but that’s exactly why I can’t do it. I /have to go. Part of wants to stay too badly for anything good to ever be able to come of it, if I were to give in to the temptation. And I’m tired, Ani. I’m so very tired, Obi-Wan. I want to go home and the Force is my home, now. The Force has been calling to me ever since Qui-Gon caught me,/ am’chara/. I want to go. I don’t want to remain in this body. I wish I could stay a little bit longer – to ease a part of my family’s pain, if for no other reason – but I know that I mustn’t try to do so. I can’t stay here."

With a disappointed frown, Anakin begins to protest, saying, "The will of the Force – "

"It made itself very plain to me, before I chose to appear to you here," Padmé insists, cutting him off as she struggles to disentangle herself from the three-way embrace, obviously reluctant to pull away from the two men but determined to make her point and to look Anakin directly in the eye while doing so. "My second chance came when Qui-Gon caught me. I will not be so greedy as to take a third, not when the Force has already been far kinder to me than I have deserved. I love you, Anakin. You were my husband. And you are my /am’chara/, Obi-Wan, the one who completes my soul. But I can’t stay here for very much longer, not even for you."

Oddly stung and a little disappointed by her insistence on not remaining (it would be nice to have a chance to sit down and have a real, honest conversation with Padmé – to discuss where exactly they went so very wrong and how much of that happened because of their own blind stupidity and how much of their insanely selfish and irrational decision to wed was probably influenced by the hold that Sidious already had upon them both, so as to help them come to terms with the gravity of their mistake and to help them put aside any lingering guilt over that mistake; to talk openly about his love for Obi-Wan, which he never tried to hide although he never admitted the true depths of his feelings for Obi-Wan, either, at least not while Padmé was still alive, and to discuss, openly, her feelings for Obi-Wan, too, so that they might be completely honest with each other and so perhaps be able to come up with a way to help Obi-Wan overcome the deeply ingrained sense of inferiority and perpetual shame that the Jedi Order has instilled in him; to solicit her ideas and input about how they might go about rebuilding a truly democratic as well as a self-reliant galactic-wide government of genuinely cooperative equals while at the same time stripping the Jedi Order all the back to its roots, if not even earlier, so as to refashion it in the image of what the Force has always truly willed for the Jedi Bendu – even if it does hurt his heart to think that they might have their first completely open and bluntly honest discussion only now that Padmé has died), Anakin grimaces slightly and has to sigh before he can bring himself to reassure her that the decision is hers alone. "It is your decision, of course. If you’ve made up your mind and if the Force chooses not to intervene, then Obi-Wan and I will not try to challenge your decision, either. Though I really do think that since you’re here now, you should at least take the opportunity to speak to your family one more time, just to tell them that you love them and will miss them and to give them a chance to tell you goodbye," he adds, an echo of pain from the loss of his mother momentarily lowering his voice and causing his eyes to darken.

"You must do what you believe to be right, Padmé," Obi-Wan agrees, his voice so quiet and even in tone that only the presence of the open bond gives Anakin any insight to the turmoil currently wracking his heart – a confusion that is, as far as Anakin can tell, bound up in Obi-Wan’s inability to decide how he should even feel about Padmé’s spirit having survived the death of her body for this long, much less what he should want her to decide to do about having essentially gained what could be a whole new body with a whole new chance at life. As unobtrusively as possible, Anakin tightens his right arm around Obi-Wan’s waist, squeezing reassuringly, hoping to calm some of that turbulence.

"Thank you for understanding. Both of you. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such dear and devoted soul-kin. I don’t deserve you, ma’charai. /But I wish to try to make myself a little bit more worthy of such understanding and faith. There are two things I /must tell you, before I leave here. It will go much more quickly if you will agree to read these things from my mind," Padmé simply declares in reply, gazing up at them beseechingly.

Anakin manages to beat Obi-Wan to a protest, this time. In all the time he’s known Padmé, he has never once used the Force to try to touch her mind or influence her in any way – even though he’s been tempted, more than once (and actually came with a hair’s breadth of giving in to that temptation once, when Obi-Wan tracked Anakin down to Naboo during his last real leave from the war to try to recruit Anakin’s help in his search for Asajj Ventress, a request that Anakin nearly refused to honor because he had, mistakenly, been convinced that the woman was dead and that Obi-Wan was not only wasting his time but becoming dangerously obsessed with a ghost because of some hidden hurt he’d taken during his time as the woman’s prisoner, after he’d been kidnaped from the Jabiim battlefield) to try to figure out what she’s really feeling or worrying about by pushing beyond the surface of emotions that he couldn’t help but pick up on, simply because of the strength of his power in the Force – and the thought of doing so now, after the death of Padmé’s true body, fills Anakin with kind of sick horror that makes his voice come out a bit sharper than intended when he says, "No, Padmé. Absolutely not. Out of the question. Your mind is your own and it is sacrosanct. I’ve always believed that."

"Ani, please. It would take far too long for me to try to simply tell you everything you need to know, and I’m not entirely sure I could actually put a part of the news I need to share with you into words. And I’ve given you permission – "

"/No/, love. The mental tricks are far too easy to abuse. Obi-Wan’s made it a policy never to use any of them, unless it is absolutely necessary, and I try not to use them, either. If there is something you want to explain to us, you can tell us, yourself," Anakin insists, cutting her off quietly but firmly, knowing how much it discomforts Obi-Wan to touch the minds of other sentient beings (having been told far too many times and almost always in a disapproving and faintly suspicious manner that he was simply far too good at touching and manipulating the minds and perceptions of others, when he was a still a child growing up in the Temple crèche) and so shaking his head with as much finality as possible.

"Ani, be reasonable! This would save so much time. And how can you claim to trust the Force and obey its will when you can’t even seem to believe that it gave you and all of the other Jedi Bendu these empathetic and telepathic abilities for good reasons of some kind, in any case? Logically, you can’t pick and choose which abilities you’re going to use out of what the Force has given you and still claim to be following the Force’s will. From what I understand, these are very basic skills and the Jedi Order has been neglecting them for a very long time as a direct result of those ridiculously impossible rules of conduct in the Jedi Code. The New Jedi Bendu Order has since rejected that Code, and for good reasons. What good will that do, though, if you do not also reject the harmful attitudes and limiting behaviors encouraged by that Code? The Jedi Bendu are going to be much more powerful and much more involved in the daily lives of the sentient beings of this galaxy than the Jedi ever were, and you will have only each other and your trust in the Force and its Light to keep you all honest, to keep you from either reverting back to old, harmful habits embodied by the old Jedi Order or else from falling out of touch with the Force’s will, as those who have traditionally been called Dark Siders and Sith do. And that means that you are all going to need to learn how to use and hone your Force-given skills of empathy and telepathy, to maintain strong enough bonds to be able to truly recognize whenever any of your fellows is in danger of a fall and to know how to help that person back from the brink. You’re probably going to all end up needing multiple versions of the kind of mental and emotional bonds that traditionally only exist between the closest of Master-Padawan pairs: you’ll have to have them, to gain the level of absolute honesty and the kind of unquestioning and ever-present and consistently available support that will be necessary to keep any of you from falling away from the Light. Have you truly not realized that, yet?" Padmé demands, shooting first Anakin and then Obi-Wan an incredulous glance.

Obi-Wan and Anakin instantly share a look of mingled dismay and hope, caught between shocked apprehension at the thought of an entire organization of very deliberately well-trained and practiced empathic telepaths as powerful as the Jedi Bendu are going to be and a sudden surge of optimism at the thought that what Padmé has just described will actually work as a way to protect both the Jedi Bendu from the dangerous allure of their own power as well as the other sentient beings of the galaxy from harm by the possible misuse of such power. /The four-way – sorry, five-way bond with us and the Grand Masters and Bail – /Anakin begins to offer, the feel of him cautiously excited across the open bond.

We are a family unit, Obi-Wan breaks in, sounding surprised as well hopeful at the sudden revelation. Master to Padawan to Master to Padawan to Master to Padawan to Master to Padawan, with two sets of Force-partners out of those earlier Master-Padawan relationships. Why did we not see this before? We are going to be living in praxeum-type enclaves, side-by-side with those who are not Force-sensitive, with no more forceful separation of children from their families, so there will no longer be such a remove between us and the other sentient beings of the galaxy, which should negate most of the distressing lack of empathy and subsequent tendency to come to regard other beings as expendable pawns, rather than thinking, feeling individuals, that has become a hallmark of many of the Jedi who have proven vulnerable to the dark. And if we have families amongst ourselves as well – or multigenerational clans of smaller, interconnected, bonded units whose members have all chosen to associate with and bond to one another and not just been arbitrary grouped together for purposes of teaching or classification according only to age or ability – and the individual members of those families have multiple bonds of varying strength that are strong enough, overall, to help keep all of their members safely centered and anchored in the Light –

– we should no longer be so vulnerable to the lure of the dark. By the Force, she’s right! Anakin exclaims, pure excitement flaring across the bond. Obi-Wan, do you realize what this means? She’s just found us a way to essentially abrogate the risk of fallen Jedi! With that many loved ones to call upon for help, in times of need, and to hold on to, in times of personal crisis, a being would have to either be damaged in some manner that negates the existence of a conscience or else purely evil, having willfully and deliberately chosen to turn to the dark, to fall away from the Light. Telepathy would instantly let the others in that family or clan know whenever one of its members is suffering or in need of reassurance or help letting go of some strong emotion that might otherwise fester into something dark and empathy would allow the others to respond in whatever manner would best help keep that being anchored in the Light. The bonds themselves will tie those within them to the Light! More than that, the bonds will allow those within them to add their strength to each other, to pool their resources, so that those who are less gifted in the Force will have less cause to feel inadequate in any way, since the collective power of even the smallest units within the larger clan should be more than enough to allow those bonded pairs or trios or what have you to perform feats of strength equal to that of the more powerful Knights. No one will ever need to fear being cast out of the New Jedi Bendu Order for lack of power in the Force, since Force-sensitivity itself should let everyone be incorporated into a family or clan.

And the process of achieving the necessary degree of mental sensitivity and control required to exercise such empathic and telepathic abilities without falling into the habit of abusing those talents when in the presence of non-Force-sensitives will also identify those who are . . . unsuited for the life of a Jedi Bendu, either due to a weakness in their overall character or an actual fundamental flaw in their physical makeup, so that we will be able to either identify and neutralize any threat they might pose or else help them early enough to keep them from either abandoning their efforts to learn control or else turning outright to the dark, Obi-Wan adds, a brief, slightly indistinct impression of Healers patiently working to permanently correct certain kinds of hormonal imbalances and to redirect the flow of electrons across specific areas of certain kinds of brains, either stimulating or checking the production and flow of certain types of neurotransmistters to adjacent areas and encouraging an increase and a greater consistency in the process of neurogenesis, flickering across the bond in support of his words. Anyone who is taught – and especially those who are taught and raised – under this system should be all but absolutely loyal to the Force and the Light. Padmé may have very well just found us a way to put an end to the perpetual wars that have dogged the Jedi Order since its founding – and Force-sensitives as a whole since even before the founding of the Jedi Order, if the legends are to be believed – sometime in the next generation or so, if we can neutralize the threat posed by the various Dark Acolytes, Dark Jedi, Dark Adepts, and all other such tools of Sidious before they can pass on their tainted knowledge to another generation of Force-sensitives. Irregardless of those already twisted in some manner by Sidious or recruited by him for their dedication to the dark, this should be a way for the Jedi Bendu to put a stop to the old Jedi Order’s much-lamented practice of creating many of its own worst, most dangerous enemies. /Obi-Wan pauses for a moment then, as if waiting to see if the Force will either confirm or deny that particular proposal, but while, for an instant, power seems to flicker, unbidden, around them, as if the Force itself has considered seeking to embrace them both, no far-sight vision comes. /She’s right. We can’t afford to pick and choose among the gifts that the Force has given to us. We especially can’t afford to be seen to do so if we’re going to have to convince everyone else who has already been trained under the rules and traditions of the old Jedi Order to agree to embrace this new system, with several varieties of differing strengths of shared bonds amongst family and clan members.

Nodding in agreement with Obi-Wan, Anakin turns slightly, with a dazzlingly brilliant smile, and gazes down into Sola’s unfamiliar features and Padmé’s disconcertingly familiar eyes, declaring, "In a word: no. And we could both kiss you for sharing your idea with us, Padmé. We’ve been so focused on getting certain necessary tasks accomplished – revealing Palpatine’s true identity, as Sidious, and keeping Order 66 from being carried out; getting rid of the taint on the Force; convincing the Masters on the High Council that the old Jedi Order is no more and that the New Jedi Bendu Order will be a far different entity than the old Order; taking on a shared Padawan learner and then equipping him to help the Senate recreate a truly democratic galactic-wide government, from the ground up, if necessary; neutralizing Grievous so the remaining Separatists will have no real excuse not to offer peace terms; fun things like that – that we haven’t had much time yet to really sit down together and talk about how we’re actually going to organize the New Jedi Bendu Order. Well. Aside from the addition of more levels that just youngling, Padawan, Knight, and Master, that is," he adds, with a small shrug. "The Grand Masters are supposed to be thinking about ways to help ease the transition between the old Jedi Order and the New Jedi Bendu Order, but I think they would’ve contacted us about something this important. This should go a long way towards making the conversion safer, as well as easier, since such telepathic bonds will help identify those individuals who are sliding back into old, harmful habits, and the greater empathy will allow us to help them better."

"This may be why the Force wanted you here, in this body," Obi-Wan notes, a hand rising automatically to stroke his chin thoughtfully. "If you had not been here, in this exact situation, you would not have needed to argue about having us read the information you wish to share with us from your mind, and then you might not have thought to mention this to us."

"I suppose that’s true," Padmé agrees, looking, for a moment, at thoughtful as Obi-Wan. But then, with a small shake, as if forcefully recalling herself to the here and now, she asks, "Does this mean that you will agree, now, regardless?"

"If you’re certain that this is what you wish, Padmé," Obi-Wan replies, nodding gravely in assent. "Concentrate on whatever it is you wish us to know, please. This may . . . feel a little bit odd. This kind of knowledge transfer tends to be much easier with other Force-sensitives," he continues warningly, reaching out along the open bond to Anakin. Would you like to initiate this, or shall I?

I can do it, Master. Just a moment – ah. There she is. This will be easier if we are all touching. Will you – ?

Of course. Now, then?

Yes.

Obi-Wan and Anakin step forward as one, one arm each still looped securely around the other’s waist, Obi-Wan’s right hand and Anakin’s left rising up before them, reaching out to Sola’s body slowly enough that Padmé easily could have chosen to step away, if a sudden qualm were to present itself. Instead, she raises her head to them, allowing them to place their hands gently, carefully, almost reverently, along the sides of her face, cupping her head in their hands, the gesture reminding Padmé so much of that moment on the damaged ship fleeing from Naboo, when Obi-Wan had reached out to her and, for one breathless little stretch of eternity, allowed her to know the absolute joy of unity with the Force, that her eyes automatically fall shut, a small, dreamily happy smile lending her face a soft cast that, oddly enough, quite suddenly makes her look entirely like herself again, despite the many obvious differences between Sola’s facial structure and her own. The features – the generously full mouth and the straight nose and slender oval face with its classically delicate bones – are the same as before, and yet . . . somehow, in that moment, the shape of the smile is recognizably Padmé’s and the softening of her features around that dreamy little smile lends her face a cast that makes her seem wholly herself, an entirely different woman than this body has ever been or pretended to be.

There is just enough time for the sense of surprise that this observation generates to register across the bond as they automatically reach through the Force for one another and naturally fall into the total melding of awareness and power that is so much more than any simple touching of minds or even the deeper blending of being that comes only with the successful mutual achievement of that shared refinement of Battle Meditation that is more properly known among Force-sensitives as a Force Meld – a surprise that is swiftly followed by a fleeting, slightly wonder-tinged thought as to whether or not the features of that face would, given enough time, slowly but surely come to alter themselves, as the eyes already have, to more closely match those of Padmé Amidala’s face, and if the hair would also begin first to wave and then to curl even as it gradually, naturally, grew lighter overall in color, more like Padmé’s own hair, if only Padmé’s spirit were to remain within that body long enough to make it fully her own – and then the part of them that is Anakin is guiding their shared, twinned awareness out into the Force towards a patiently waiting presence that is radiating so much love and determination that it seems all but impossible that the one generating that presence in the Force should ever willingly choose to leave them behind. For all that, though, and despite the fact that, within the Force, the presence is also a shimmering warmth and a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic rainbow painted in all the colors of a rising sun, all shades of softly aureating light, there is also an underlying weariness there, a sense of growing exhaustion, as of one who has so long overshot her stay that she is literally approaching the point of burnout, of exhausting the last of her remaining energy stores, and it is that sense of nearing exhaustion that decides them, even as they are reaching out to her to touch her mind and share in the thoughts and memories that are currently filling to overflowing the surface layers of her mind.

No matter what does or does not happen next, Padmé is right about at least one thing: she is using so much energy that she simply cannot remain where and how she is for very much longer, unless she wishes to become so throughly a part of this body that she will lose the ability to touch and to use the Force (at least somewhat) granted to her by her status as an entity of spirit and come to live and die even as that body will, her continued existence inexorably bound up with that of the flesh now housing her mind and soul. In fact, her time with them is rapidly drawing to a close as she nears the time when she must either choose to remain within that body permanently, until its death, or else simply dissolve into the Force. And if they don’t finish what they are doing soon, it is entirely possible that she will lose the last of her strength and fade out of that body like a ghost, breaking up and falling away into the Force like a faulty transmission vanishing into the ether.

***