Chapter Text
Chester was still pissed off. She was also extremely embarrassed; she hadn’t had a dressing-down like that since the Academy. But with the shock of the revelation of her own Force-sensitivity fading, and time to think about the argument, she had a much clearer idea of where she’d gone wrong, and where she needed to push back. Which was going to require a certain finesse; no one liked a qualified apology.
Firstly: her outburst about the war had been unhelpful in the extreme. This was not going to be an easy fix, and to imply otherwise was to place blame on someone caught in a horrific situation. She owed him an apology for that at least.
Secondly, the issue of her own safety. In a number of ways, Plo had a point. She was a guest, she was unfamiliar with this galaxy, and she hadn’t the training to protect herself in the way he clearly felt necessary. But neither was he entirely right; she could see that he was in many ways treating her like an apprentice, his junior; someone naive and ignorant of his people and their ways, who very badly needed guidance before she did something very wrong indeed━or got herself killed. In short, to him, she was in dire need of protection.
She had had it with being treated like an ignorant little fool, but wounded pride wasn’t the only thing at stake here. It was a fundamental misunderstanding of one another, a collision of mismatched expectations. And it had to be dealt with, her pride be damned. So she was going to go in there and apologize. And then, if that sufficiently mollified him, she was going to gently introduce the idea that she was an accomplished professional in her field, and a lot of what he was seeing as ‘boldness’, or foolhardiness, was in fact the result of years of training and experience, including in combat. From there, she’d try apologizing a little more, if needed.
There was a large part of her that would have preferred to saw off a limb with something blunt and rusty rather than do this, but since that was also the part of her that had blurted out the information about the war, it didn’t get a say.
She composed herself, and went back to his tent. Unsurprisingly, he was already at the flap when she arrived.
“May I come in?” she asked, figuring that etiquette was a good way to get this started correctly.
Plo nodded━the set of his shoulders looking perhaps a little stiff. “Of course, Commander.”
She wondered, briefly, if he put any more importance behind her rank than any of the sneering natborns had, then pushed the thought aside as profoundly unhelpful. She stepped into the tent, hands clasped behind her back, and then met his eyes.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. “My earlier outburst, about the war and the clones, and the role of the Jedi━it was out of line and presumptuous. First and foremost, it is not my place as a guest in your galaxy to dictate how these affairs should be handled, or to cast judgement on your decisions in a profoundly,” fucked up , “difficult situation. This can be… challenging to remember, under circumstances like this.” She gave him a crooked smile, self deprecating. “I am not in a position to understand all the facts and complexities of the situation, and after the events of the last few days, I’d become emotionally invested without being informed. I overstepped because I had lost my temper, and I apologize.”
She meant it, too; she knew also that many people who weren’t empaths probably would have doubted her sincerity. She hoped his own abilities would forestall that kind of misunderstanding.
Plo remained silent for a long moment, considering. Then he nodded, once, slow but sharp.
“Thank you,” he said, thoughtful. “I appreciate it, and in all fairness I must apologize to you in turn. I too spoke out of anger, and while I was trying very hard not to allow it to guide my actions, I was not entirely successful. I fear I have treated you with some disrespect, and for that I am sorry.”
“Yes, because that’s not at all a natural reaction to being in a tight corner and having someone come along and stick pins in you.” She raised her eyebrows with grim humor. This was going well so far.
“Indeed, but usually I prefer to lose my temper in private, where I don’t require so much self-restraint.” Plo made a resigned little laugh through his respirator. “And it occurs to me that as much as your lack of familiarity with this galaxy led you to say such things in anger, it was unfair of us to expect you to… adapt without error, perhaps? Clearly there are fundamental cultural differences between the worlds we each live in.”
She made a face at that. “Yes, it does seem so. You’ve been very good about giving me as much background and information as you could, but I suspect that what I’ve subsequently done with that information has been… perhaps startling would be the right word for it?”
He nodded, something about the tilt of his head amused. “In particular, defying a Sith Lord by kicking him in the privates will be one for the record books.”
She snorted, looking down. “I’ll take your word for it.”
After a moment, she glanced back up. “I think this would be best if I clarified some of my own background, so you can better understand the way in which I’ve been approaching those problems.”
“I would appreciate that,” said Plo, the tone of his voice a little wry. The line of his shoulders had loosened a little, and his stance was less rigid than it had been. Chester felt herself relaxing a little in turn.
Where best to start? Probably what she suspected was the central conflict; the assumption she was thoroughly civilian, one probably reinforced by her disinclination to use violence.
“I realize that you’re deeply concerned about my safety,” she said. “If our positions were reversed, I would be much the same about yours. And between you and my conversations with others━including Asajj━I take your admonishment about the dangers faced by untrained Force-Sensitives very much to heart. I understand also that I have a target on my back.
“But all that aside━Master Plo, I am also a Starfleet officer. Having a target on my back is in no way unusual for me. I have years of training and experience, and no small part of that has been in combat. This is a new galaxy for me, and I have a lot to learn━but I did not leave my experience, training, or tactical knowledge at home.” Well aware of how that sounded, she gentled it with a quirk of a smile.
Plo reached across to the stack of folded camp chairs, and offered one to her. “Your escape from Dooku certainly proves that. There are very few people I know of who could have pulled that off, let alone bring home all six fellow escapees alive.”
She settled into it with a grim little smile. “Dooku isn’t as unique in the universe as he’d like to be. In normal times, I would have several such encounters under my belt by this point in my career. But in normal times, I’d be a great deal older by the time I made first officer.”
That masked face now somehow conveyed a little skepticism. “Dooku is somewhat unique here, I am afraid.”
“Well, then,” she said, with an impish grin, “I’d better shut up and accept my compliments on my first such venture against a being with such powers.”
“Please do,” said Plo, his voice now resonant with humor. “If nothing else you have lightened our spirits a great deal with your exploits.”
“Well, it’s a good example of one of the differences I’d like to point out here━my training and experience are very different things than Jedi training or experience. I work with a crew, not alone. I’ve usually got seven hundred other Starfleet officers watching my back━people with a wide range of expertise, from astrophysics to botany to history and linguistics.”
“Whereas we Jedi have historically worked alone or in much smaller groups.” Plo sat back, contemplative. She nodded, acknowledging the comparison, and continued.
“The job of my crew is to work miracles; my job is to bring them home safe. That’s what it means to command a starship, and commanding a starship is exactly what I’ve been training for and aspiring toward since I was a little girl.
“There are cultural differences between my galaxy and this one, and some of them…” She paused. She wasn’t sure how to word it. “Some of them scare me,” she said bluntly. “Some of them scare me, because they’re what I’ve studied in my history courses and my own research. There is… what I might term a malaise, a rejection of idealism in favor of brute practicality, that resonates deeply with my people’s history. Namely, the years leading up to the near extinction of my entire species. I am worried about what it means for you━especially in the midst of a war where you are faced with choices between your values and practicality.
“We’ve faced similar challenges in our war. We’ve had to choose between our ideals and our survival and I won’t pretend it’s an easy choice, that we’ve made the right one, or that it’ll translate to your circumstances. But I can say that the determination to make that right choice matters. I can also say,” her mouth quirked wryly, “that you and a lot of your colleagues have been trying very hard to stay true to your ideals. And I apologize for saying that you had not. But it doesn’t change the situation itself.”
“It does not,” Plo agreed. The set of his shoulders dropped, fatigue showing through. “This… malaise, as you say, is something we have noticed for a long time, and believe me when I say we have been doing everything we can to combat it. It… simply has not been enough.”
“I can see how. When systems go rotten, it’s easy to feel helpless. I just don’t want to see you repeat our own history. The urge to rage against that is very strong, even for an outsider.” She quirked another wry little smile at him. “Or do rather more than simply vent with words.
“I’m a Starfleet officer, Master Plo. I’m not going to react to things the way a Jedi ought to. Our noninterference directives severely limit what I can do–but I’m not going to stand idly by when I can help. Krell, Dooku━those were both situations in which I was in a position to do something, and as far as I could judge with the information available to me at the time, you were not. They were both situations in which my neck was my own to risk, and I stand by my judgment in both cases; knowing what I do now, I’d approach both the same way, even though Krell’s reaction was far more extreme than I had expected. Among other things, he would not have allowed himself that reaction if he had been afraid one of you had overheard it; I could not have provoked that unless he believed that the only people around him were people who didn’t matter.”
Plo inclined his head–acknowledgement. “I think you may be underestimating your capacity for provocation, to be honest, but I do see the logic in your decision.”
Chester snorted at that. “Where I did allow my anger to guide me was in our previous discussion.” She paused to gather her words, let her profound embarrassment show for a moment. “Our war. I am a fool to have let that slip, and I did it at a minor provocation, because I was tired and afraid and couldn’t bear to be dismissed as naive again. I would prefer that not to leave this tent, but Dooku already knows; the CIS is just as much a security threat to the Federation as you are.”
She looked into his goggles, steady, willing him to understand the Republic as she saw it; a massive bloated unstable thing, a potential threat, a thing just as potentially dangerous to her home as the Separatists.
“That we are already in a war for our very existence makes us an attractive target as soon as this war ends,” she said, “and I am sure that whoever does win may put some thought into that possibility, especially if they’ve got troops without a lot to do and no legal status. I would have preferred the subject not arise at all, but,” she shrugged, sharp, annoyed with herself, “Dooku winkled it out of me within the first hour of our meeting, and here I’ve blabbed it to you and anyone in earshot of this remarkably flimsy tent. That was stupid, and I did it because I was angry; on that count, at least, I take your admonishment very much to heart.”
Plo remained silent for a long moment; she watched his face carefully, searching for any hint of the thoughts behind his mask. Eventually, he nodded, short but accepting. “I have not passed on that information to anyone, and I will not━it is of no tactical value to our current situation, after all. Commander Wolffe and Lieutenant Garter did overhear our discussion, but neither are inclined to share it themselves.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s a relief, and I appreciate your patience. It’s a difficult situation and my outburst was not helpful. I can take my leave now, if you’d prefer, though I rather suspect we’re due a conversation about my Force-sensitivity at some point soon.”
“Indeed,” said Plo, and she got the feeling he was eyeing her up beneath that inscrutable mask. “Perhaps now, if you feel up to it?”
She did not bother to hide her trepidation about that. It was not a notion that sat well with her at all, and there was no point in concealing it. In fact, she was quite sure it would make things worse.
“I do get protective of my crew, I do get angry about threats to them━and that anger isn’t my enemy, it’s kept me on my feet and thinking and between the people counting on me and disaster. It’s my job. And from the second Dooku dragged them out in front of me, the clones became my crew.” She stared blankly at the tent wall, mastering herself━the memory still provoked a great deal of anger. “They told me about decommissioning, and I got angry. And then I saw that my anger scared them. I do not ever want to see the people who’ve put their trust in my hands afraid of me, ever again, and Plo, the person who put that fear behind their eyes was not Dooku . I can’t risk being a danger to my own people when I get home. If I return, and I fall into Dooku’s ways of thinking…” She trailed off. “Much like Jedi, when starship commanders go bad, they go very bad indeed. I have no desire to test what happens if I combine the two.”
He gave her a thoughtful look. “Anger is an entirely natural emotion. It can be a powerful motivating force, and using it as such isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even as a Force-sensitive.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Not exactly what it’s sounded like in the conversations I’ve overheard, but that’s a relief. I’ve found mine rather useful in the past.”
“I will refrain from boring you with the philosophy, but there are many different strains of thought within the Order regarding…” he trailed off, somewhat wry, “essentially everything we believe. Each one of us is an individual, and for some people relying on anger can be genuinely self-destructive. That is not the case for all, of course, but it does tend to be a common experience for Jedi. Rest assured there are exceptions to that rule.
“The issue with anger, for a Force-sensitive, is that our emotions are an indelible part of how we connect with the Force. They’re an indelible part of us, for that matter, which means that when we delve into the Force, which can give us such great power, our emotions come with us. In fact, strong emotions can make connecting to the Force that much easier. The issue is that if you make a habit of channeling the Force while experiencing strong emotions━of any sort━the Force can end up amplifying those emotions.” Plo paused for a moment. “You said that you realised you had frightened the men. That seeing their fear helped you step back from the anger.”
“Our command structure doesn’t run on fear,” she said. “Unlike some I could name.”
“I suspected as much,” he said, dryly. “That is a good thing, by the way. As long as you prioritise the, hm, the autonomy of reaction perhaps? Of those under your command, over the motivation of the anger, then you are well placed to continue using your anger even as a Force-sensitive.”
She snorted. “Our ships wouldn’t function without that autonomy. Why have the brightest minds in the galaxy if you’re not going to consult them? But I take your point, again, with great relief. But what you said earlier about my ability to contact the Force, that it might come unbidden from now on…”
“A definite risk.” Plo stood, and moved toward the tentflap. “I believe that is a problem we can begin to address now, Commander. Come with me, if you would.”
She tilted him a confused glance, but did as he requested. She winced inwardly at the almost textbook immovable expressions of the two men on guard duty━Wolffe had somehow arranged to be one of them━far too aware that no one unaware of their argument would bother with such careful impassivity.
Wonderful. She didn’t exactly look forward to talking about the war with him. And he was worried enough about her intentions that he would try, on some level. Plo might have accepted her apology, but Chester suspected that Wolffe would not.
“Commander Wolffe,” said Plo gravely, “would you know where we could locate two staffs and a blast helmet, please?”
Wolffe’s eyes darted to Chester, impassivity slipping as his eyebrows rose. Knowing Plo as they both did, Chester rather doubted he thought Plo was going to beat the hell out of her━but it was clear he didn’t think such a reaction would be unreasonable. Slowly, the corner of his mouth turned upward. “Yes, General, I think that can be done.”
Plo inclined his head. “Thank you, Commander.”
Chester made a mental note that, should she ever spar with Wolffe, she should expect a lot of bruises the next day.
“Dooku already tried sparring with me,” she said. “It didn’t do much.”
“Dooku was trying to push you into acting rashly, on your anger,” said Plo. “A shortcut to power, you might say. I suspect that is why he failed.” He gave her a thoughtful look, one that made her intensely nervous for all its kindness. “You do not seem to be someone inclined to the easier path. Furthermore,” and here he did pause, considering what to say, “perhaps it is… counterproductive to assume you are entirely untrained.”
“How so?”
“You are using a mental discipline with which I am unfamiliar,” he said. “I have sensed it a few times, when you are mastering very intense emotion. I suspect it may be having some effect.”
She felt her gaze drop, a sharp stab of pain lancing through her. Funny , she thought, I hadn’t expected to still care so much, after everything. Given the intervening three months━and it seemed like much longer–T’Volis ending their relationship shouldn’t still hurt so much.
Then again, it wasn’t like trauma was a recognized remedy for a bad breakup.
“My former partner was Vulcan,” she said. “Vulcans are telepaths and empaths, with a long tradition of mental disciplines. I learned and practiced what I could, for her comfort.”
They turned the corner, out of the narrow lane between the tents. “Her comfort?”
“Human emotional expression can be very unpleasant for Vulcans,” she said. “It is not culturally acceptable. T’Volis made her efforts to accommodate me; I made mine to accommodate her.”
And yet, it hadn’t been enough. But he didn’t need to know that.
With the way he was carefully not looking at her, however, she got the feeling he’d picked up more of the emotion behind the statement than she would have liked.
“I see,” he said. “Dooku, I suspect, was relying on your sense of threat and survival instincts to push you to a reflexive reaction━reaching for and drawing on your anger and fear, as is a very natural reaction for a person in your situation.”
“But I’d already learned to control those,” she said, suddenly understanding. “So it didn’t happen.”
“Precisely.” They turned left, toward the patch of cleared ground in the center of camp that served as a sparring ring. “This exercise will encourage you to draw on the Force intentionally, and to become familiar with the sense of doing so. Your self-control is already so highly developed that I suspect all you really need is a sense of what you can, do, and how. Thank you, Commander Wolffe.”
Commander Wolffe, already there with two staffs in one hand and a helmet in the other, gave both of them an absolutely wicked grin that made Chester’s heart sink a little. Whatever Plo intended for this exercise, she suspected her pride wasn’t getting out of it intact.
Oh well. Her pride had gotten her into enough trouble today. She could at least be a good sport about it. She caught the quarterstaff Wolffe tossed at her out of the air and took the helmet, watching Plo heft the other one.
Whatever her abilities with the Force, she needed to gain some kind of control over them before she returned. She could not risk being a danger to the crew, or to Starfleet. It was the last thing they needed at a time like this.
“Put the helmet on, and the blast shield down,” instructed Plo, and Chester’s last glimpse of the training area before she obediently toggled the opaque blast shield was of a slowly-growing crowd of clones and a trio of thoughtful Jedi in the background.
This wasn’t going to just be about the training, she realized, resigned. There was something else here, some evaluation on the part of Plo’s colleagues. Whatever it was, she most sincerely hoped it would be served by her embarrassment; the helmet had closed off all light and muffled sound, so the usual sounds of footsteps and the shift of fabric she would have listened for were gone. Nevertheless, she took a ready stance, staff in both hands and one leg back from the other, and waited.
“I will tap you with my staff,” said Plo, speaking loudly. “You will block me. Listen to your instincts, Commander. Try to feel, not think.”
Well, she was going to be awful at that. Chester let out a long breath, reaching for calm, and waited.
Plo circled the young Commander, considering. Her comment about Vulcan mental disciplines had been both illuminating and concerning. The control of emotion, for example, sounded on the surface enough like the way in which Jedi connected to the Force━but the sheer iron control with which she had kept herself restrained spoke of something far beyond merely clearing the mind. But she had connected to the Force, and doing anything but teaching her how to control that ability would be irresponsible in the extreme.
She was steady and focused now, but it was the stability of a heavy stone in a stream, when she needed to be moving with the current. He would need to dislodge her, without damaging her trust, or worsening the thread of trepidation that ran through her presence.
“From our time together, you will have a sense of me,” he told her. “Reach for that. You are seeking to feel where I am, and in time, my intention.”
Chester was definitely doing something, but it was all inward━not the right response. No sense of the outward reaching even a very young Force-Sensitive would have found instinctive. Curious, and somewhat disturbing.
Plo reached out with the staff and delivered a firm tap to the point of her right shoulder. “Reach out . Your attention is inward.”
She jolted a little at the contact, and the helmet bobbed in a sharp nod of acknowledgement. She shifted her grip on the staff.
Plo could feel Obi-Wan’s gaze on him, could see without turning the consternation on the other man’s face. There was still no sense of her reaching into or contacting the Force. The unshakable calm was there, and the focus, but still she stood there with it flowing placidly around her, with no attempt to reach out for it, despite the roiling sense of activity he could feel in her mind even here.
He tapped her shoulder, her side, and she responded just a little too late━someone with good senses reacting to environmental cues, not the Force. Obi-Wan’s worry shaded deeper, as did Plo’s own. The Council had been concerned that Anakin had been too old to train; in Chester’s case, Plo was beginning to fear it very much might be true. Her mind might be set too firmly in the ways of her training, unwilling to reach outward and learn new paths.
Was that fair to her, though, in only the first ten minutes of trying to train her? Even if she seemed more unaware of the Force than most genuinely Force-blind individuals, was not even trying to reach for it? He circled her again, landing a few more taps; she moved deliberately to counter, always wrong. Frustrating for him and for her━was this going to be more counterproductive than helpful? A failure to make even basic progress, when she had already stated she was afraid of what her lack of training might do to the people who relied on her, would build up the wrong calluses in her mind and strengthen her resistance even further, leaving her liable to reach for it in moments of profound emotion, exactly when a lack of self-control might be most devastating.
No motion toward the Force, and now she was standing still, head tilted. Like she was trying to put together a pattern of his movements. Logic, reason–not the instinct she needed to use. The instinct he knew she could use, or she wouldn’t have survived Dooku or Krell.
She stood there, carefully contained, doing nothing. Seeking a pattern she’d closed herself off from seeing.
Perhaps the humans in this other galaxy were different, he wondered. But she had used the Force once today. She could again.
Was she too tired? After her outbursts, the loss of her iron control, she had to be. Even if it was back in place now.
Plo stopped in his movements and stilled, a thought coming to him. That very control might be the issue━control that was second nature. Tentatively, he reached toward his sense of Chester. Rigid shielding, and not even a hint of the frustration anything sane should be feeling just now.
“Ah,” he said aloud. “Commander. The people whose mental disciplines you have learned. They are a private people, I take it? Shielding one’s mind is a matter of good manners?”
A shift of surprise under the surface as she straightened. “It is,” she said. “And good practice in other ways.”
“Yes, that would explain your difficulties here,” he said. “I will need to ask you to lower those shields. They are actively impeding you in this exercise.”
“It won’t cause you discomfort?” she asked, sounding surprised, and Plo felt a secondary pang; evidently she had been shielding, at least in part, for their sakes.
“Not at all,” he said. “Among Jedi, at least, we use limited empathic connection as a secondary mode of communication. We are quite used to sensing others’ feelings.”
She took a deep hesitating breath, then let it go━and with it, her shields slid away. It was not smooth. It took her several breaths, a great deal of focus. They had evidently become habit.
Plo took a moment to be very glad indeed that Dooku had not found the root of the problem. The Sith approach would have been to break her shielding with force, and as well-wrought and habitual as they were, it would have been quite possible to do━and for Dooku, already skilled in matters of the mind, fairly trivial. The trauma would have been tremendous. She might very well have died of it.
Or ended up the broken husk of an apprentice that Dooku sought.
“Interesting,” said Obi-Wan behind him, as the Commander’s presence in the Force clarified. It wasn’t that she became brighter. More that she came into focus, the colors of her flame intensifying, leaving all of them realizing just how blurred she’d been before. Emotion, too━still well-controlled, but now present instead of obscured into the artificial tranquility she’d projected.
She was… very angry. Packed down and strictly leashed, but very, very angry, and scared, the fear a sharp edge around the white-hot molten core of it, and dry, vicious humor buffering it all from the rest of the world. Driving it all, the source of the rage and the humor too, determined, committed compassion.
It was like watching a blade come out of a sheath, sharp and glittering with deadly intent. Her shields had made her seem almost harmless, a well-intentioned idealist prone to rash action, unaware of the possible consequences. What stood in the middle of the practice ring now was anything but the cheerful steady brash youngster she’d been playing; this was ruthless, experienced, utterly dedicated, with that focused well of compassion behind it. Everything she’d done, every risky action, had been deliberate and fully cognizant of the consequences, backed by experience. That was why she’d gotten away with it.
Unusual by any Force tradition’s standards, Plo thought. The balance between such powerful anger and compassion was a knife-edge where one slip could mean disaster. Of course, this was Chester at her worst, stranded far from home, facing the prospect of perhaps never seeing her loved ones or the Federation she clearly loved again. Plo wondered how much of that anger, that fear, would remain were this instead a training gym on her home starship, surrounded by her crew.
It was true that this did not by any stretch of the imagination resemble a Jedi presence. She allowed her anger too much space and regard, and yet that merciless self-control still threaded through every aspect of her presence. A Jedi would have done the opposite, released the anger after acknowledging it, not sought to control it.
It was also true that some Jedi could come close to this sort of presence. Mace Windu, for example, whose own carefully-controlled anger was fueled by a sense of compassion and justice just as strong.
“Where the Sith hells did she learn to do that?” Anakin said to Obi-Wan, rather too loudly.
Plo could feel Chester’s shields flicker, trying to reassert themselves. It was very clear she did not like to be so emotionally exposed. Worse still, there was yet another aspect her shields had hidden, one Plo had doubted of which even she was aware.
She had spoken of being accustomed to working with a crew. A crew that was not here. And while the clones with whom she had escaped from Dooku were something at least, there was a yawning gap in her presence that they were only a bandage over. It was like an amputated limb, a terrible absence.
He supposed that it might happen, a strong Force Sensitive surrounded by other beings, all working together for a common goal, and serving as the linchpin to unify their disparate selves━something solid and calm to look to.
No wonder she had tried so often to escape. No wonder she had been so dedicated to protecting her group of clones. No wonder she had not blinked at the idea of facing Krell for them, or even Dooku.
Plo wondered how many of her crew, how many other officers of her Starfleet were also Force Sensitive, to establish such bonds.
“Are we all done staring?” she asked, her humor forced.
“We beg your pardon, Commander,” said Obi-Wan. “Your way of interacting with the Force is unique, and very unfamiliar to us. Please forgive our rudeness━you requested to be trained, not to satisfy our curiosity.”
He caught Plo’s eye, his own very wide. They certainly would have a great deal to discuss after this.
“That’s very good, Commander,” Plo said aloud. “Keep your shields down, remember the feelings you associate with me, and reach out.” And he began to move again, circling her.
After a few moments, he felt the brush of her presence carefully unfurling, the outward reaching that should be instinct, and let out the long breath he’d been unconsciously holding. There was, at least, a chance of giving her the skills she so desperately needed.