Chapter Text
For her part, Chester was fighting the feeling that she’d just trotted out in front of the entire camp and stripped naked. It was not a circumstance under which she would have preferred to do that. It would have been fine on the Bedivere, where few of the crew were telepaths, but here in a hostile galaxy, surrounded by people she knew thought little of her, it was intensely uncomfortable. Never mind the slightly gobsmacked silence it had provoked. She could feel all of them ‘staring’ at her in a way that would have been unfathomably rude on Vulcan━and would have been considered gauche by even the permissive standards on Betazed.
She fought to get her mind back under control. Plo’s instruction was a welcome distraction. Focus on the exercise. Put shields back up afterwards. She was looking forward to that second part.
But she would not let this galaxy make a monster of her.
She would learn to control this and fold it away and leave it alone. That was the important thing, against which her personal discomfort was unimportant. So she tried to think of Plo and how he seemed to her and reach out.
The first tap of the staff startled her badly. She then deliberately put it aside, and focused on that sense of personhood she associated with Plo, which was nearly impossible as she had never shown a shred of telepathic ability. She had no idea if she was just making things up━she and T’Volis had shared a handful of melds, and she knew what that felt like, but she’d never been the one to initiate, for the obvious reason of species. Still, she tried, and resolutely ignored the second and third taps. It felt like she was on the brink of something, so close she could taste it━
The fourth tap was quite a bit harder, jolting her out of her concentration. She reacted without thinking, sweeping her staff around in a long smooth blow that actually made contact, sending shocks all up her arms.
“Don’t think,” said Plo, and was that amusement in his deep voice, the bastard? “React. Listen to your instincts. Let your feelings guide you.”
My feelings are sometimes idiots who make bad decisions, she thought, forcing herself to relax again. But when the back of her mind prickled, she let herself move. Again, contact, the first time she’d managed to block him. That was satisfying━and that moment of satisfaction was all he needed to land another firm tap against her waist. Dammit.
She focused on reacting. It was hard. Historical fencing was a game of strategy; if you let instinct take over, you could be taken unawares by an observant opponent. As an officer, she had on occasion relied on instinct, but only when all else failed. This did not come naturally to her.
Plo seemed to understand. At least he’d gone back to just gentle taps. After a time, she seemed to find the rhythm of them, responding almost before he moved. Something told her he was pleased about this, but she couldn’t put a finger on why she was so sure of it.
“Very good, Commander,” he said after what felt like only a few minutes. “That will do for today.”
She pulled off the helmet and blinked. It was much later in the day than she remembered.
“Dinnertime,” said Ahsoka, beaming up at her from Plo’s side. She handed her a ration bar: one of the ones with the pink wrappers that the clones traded favors for. “That was really good for someone who’s never done anything with the Force before!”
“Not on purpose, at least.” Chester caught a flicker of movement in the back of the room: Skywalker’s dark robes as he slipped through the door, followed by Kenobi.
Ahsoka shrugged. “Same difference,” she said easily. “C’mon, let’s go have these,” she holds up the ration bar, “in the mess tent.”
The mess tent was raucous━Ahsoka was immediately caught up in conversation with other troopers. Looking around, a glance to the side showed Chester her team celebrating with their squadmates, being slapped on the back and cheered. Joyride was up on the table reenacting something; by the dramatic stumble and fall backward, it was one of the pirates. She smiled, watching, knowing that the moment a natborn showed up there, the delight would go out of the air and decorum would take its place. She’d like to think her men trusted her more than that━but their comrades wouldn’t, and given Krell, they’d be right not to.
“Commander.” It was Obi-Wan, hovering politely at her elbow. “Would you join us?”
“Of course,” she said, with a second glance at her team. Command was lonely. That was as much of a trope back home as it was here. But it wasn’t this lonely.
She followed Obi-Wan to another rickety camp table, tasteless rations in hand, and followed his gesture of invitation to sit between him and Plo. Obi-Wan gave her an odd smile━an honest one, she thought, but odd all the same━and passed her a bowl of some kind of stew.
It looked like it had been made of old boots, but it tasted all right. It filled a hole in her stomach that she hadn’t realised was there until the scent caught her nose, which was really all she cared about.
Beside her, Plo disconnected a straw from his mask. He had what looked like a milkshake, possibly a blended-up version of the same stew she was eating. Back at the Temple, he’d shared meals with her, unlatching his mask just long enough to take a mouthful at a time. Out here, he seemed to subsist on liquids. She wondered if that was preference or precaution.
“So,” she started, “was that an exercise Jedi learn as children? I still don’t think I understand your training practices.”
“One of many,” Plo said, nodding her a polite greeting. “Ordinarily we would start with simple meditation, but given your prior instruction I doubt it would have done us much good. The Force is a very complex thing to learn, and of course every student is different━we personalise their training to match. Is there anything in particular that confuses you?”
“I’m still unsure whether I was successful. The way I’ve heard you, and others, speak of the Force makes it sound as if I should have more of an awareness of connection to something. An understanding of why I was able to so accurately anticipate your blows. I…suspect that may be some of the reason you generally do not train adults? Our sensitivity is just not accessible enough?”
Plo took a quick sip of his dinner, gazing thoughtfully into the back of the tent. “Awareness of one’s own sense of the Force tends to come with experience,” he began, carefully, “and while there might indeed be a sudden sense of connection, I wouldn’t expect it to come after only an afternoon’s worth of practice. Give yourself time to develop some familiarity with what that connection feels like to you, and don’t lean too much on others’ descriptions of it. Everyone is different in the Force.
“Secondly━the reason Jedi training is restricted to children is not that it is impossible for an adult to learn to use the Force. If you have that sensitivity, the potential is always there. Once upon a time, the Order did accept adult trainees, as the majority of Force traditions across this galaxy still do.”
Chester listened quietly, raising a mental eyebrow as he continued.
“The reason for our current age limit is also a part of the reason that we adopt our children, rather than leaving them with their birth families. As we grow, our experiences in life shape us━and some experiences teach us things that make the life of a Jedi difficult. If we can control, to an extent, the experiences that our children go through at formative ages, we can help them develop mental habits and coping strategies that will be helpful or even necessary for them as adult Jedi. Adults, and even older children, often must unlearn things they have internalised based on their previous experiences━things that may be entirely appropriate for those experiences, but that are… unhelpful, or actively harmful for a Jedi to hold onto.”
“Such as?” she asked, aiming for an understanding tone. It did not sound good. “I assume that this may apply to my situation.” She gave him a wry smile.
“Of that, I remain uncertain.” Plo paused for a long moment. “To use an illustrative scenario rather than one many Jedi are likely to encounter, channeling lightning. Fundamentally, lightning is a flow of energy, much like the Force, or perhaps a river. If you wish to use the Force for a certain purpose, you must place yourself firmly among that flow, like a rock in the river, and guide the ripples of that flow around yourself. If you wish to cross a river, you might angle yourself in such a way as to minimise the profile you present to the force of the water, to avoid being swept off your feet.”
He turned his head toward her a little, as if to check that she was following his explanation. Chester gave him an encouraging nod.
“Channeling lightning is not like this. The energy one might handle in a lightning bolt is many, many times greater than in a river or the ambient Force. Your learned instincts, to brace yourself against that flow, will actively impede your ability to channel lightning, and put yourself at significant risk. Instead, you must make yourself an empty vessel, open at both ends, and allow the flow to continue through yourself unimpeded. Among the Baran Do, channeling lightning is a fundamental skill for what we call the Stormwalkers, the Sages who work directly with the storms. In every year, there are deaths. Aspirants die, because they cannot let go of their fundamental urge to brace against the torrent.”
“Of course, as Master Plo says, most of us are not going to have to unlearn basic survival instincts to do our jobs,” said Obi-Wan, dryly. “The more usual scenario would be effective emotional regulation in extremely stressful situations, such as, hmm, heated Senate debates over basic sapient rights. Retaining our cool heads and thinking on our feet when presented with extreme injustices, of the sort that would━ rightly, let me be clear━infuriate any moral person. It is entirely possible for adults to learn these skills, but it is much more difficult to do so when you are already used to doing otherwise. And the majority of these scenarios have less to do with our direct use of the Force, and more to do with our roles as Jedi.
“But before we progress any further down this line of inquiry, I actually have another one I’d like to raise. It may have something of an impact on the manner in which you wish to pursue this, Master Plo.”
Plo made a little go ahead gesture, and Obi-Wan withdrew something from the sleeve of his robe and set it gently on the table with a heavy thump.
Up and down the line of Jedi, people stopped chewing and looked at it, Chester included.
It was her lightsaber. Then she corrected herself. It was the lightsaber Dooku had given her, plain black and resentful in the middle of the gray prefab table with its rather pathetic whorls that were probably supposed to mimic wood grain.
“It is on its training intensity setting,” said Obi-Wan into the rapidly spreading silence; the men at adjacent tables were craning their necks to see what had so completely silenced the Generals. “Still, I would take it as a kindness if you stepped over there before you activated it.”
“You would like me to activate it?” Chester asked, looking down at the dead black hilt.
“I realize we are at the table,” said Obi-Wan, apologetic.
Chester got up, quashed the urge to tell no one to steal her dinner or else , as she would have with her squad, and picked up the hilt. It felt a little less bad this time. Maybe it had been the oppressive sense of Dooku that had made it so bad.
She walked to the indicated clearing, settled herself in her usual fencing posture, completely ignoring everything Dooku had been trying to beat her over the head with (fuck you, Dooku, she thought as she did), and activated the blade.
It still did not feel good, but it felt significantly less like it was trying to vibrate her hand off her wrist. Encouraged, she ran through her guards, and a few parry-riposte combinations, then looked over at the Jedi.
Obi-Wan was stroking his beard, looking both surprised and immensely pleased with himself, and also, for some reason, a little wistful. “Extraordinary,” he said. He gestured to her to return to the table. “I apologize for the interruption. I believe we have kept you from your dinner quite long enough.”
“There is something quite familiar about that,” said Plo, as she sat back down, equally surprised as Obi-Wan. “Something, perhaps, of one of Dooku’s former padawans.”
Obi-Wan gave him an amused look, his eyes glittering oddly. “Yes. I thought so myself. It’s not the first time Dooku’s adopted a tall, extremely troublesome apprentice.”
“Indeed not.”
There was a sudden silence around the table. It had a very strange quality, like there was something they were all seeing and feeling━maybe even someone ━and she got the faint shape of it, a looming shadow in the ever-present heat haze of Felucia’s atmosphere, but nothing else. The normally composed Obi-Wan had ducked his head, a hand rising briefly to his face. Anakin was looking at her with a very odd expression, something between annoyance and realization, the look of a man finding himself very upset to agree with everyone around him. Ahsoka, beside him, seemed about as confused as Chester felt.
“Dooku,” said Obi-Wan, his voice uncharacteristically rough, “in his grief, may have just provided us all with a reminder we very much need. Qui-Gon would have had very strong opinions about the situation in which we find ourselves in at present; I do not believe any of us would have to think very hard about what they would be. And as much as I myself would be the first to admit my Master could make himself a royal pain on many occasions… on most of those, he also had an annoying tendency to be right. ”
“That doesn’t explain why that lightsaber feels like his,” said Anakin, frowning down at the saber in question. Chester placed it back on the table, and went back to her stew.
“I suspect Dooku may have used parts from one of Qui-Gon’s old lightsabers,” said Obi-Wan. “An old hilt, perhaps, from when he was a Padawan. I sensed it when I first handled this one, after Master Plo was kind enough to let me have a look at it. It was faint, twisted, occluded by the Dark Side. In the hands of the good Commander, however…”
“It is much clearer.” Plo was eyeing her, somewhere between critical and fond, like he was seeking out hints of this Qui-Gon and finding at least some.
“Indeed,” said Obi-Wan, pensive. “I think separating her from the lightsaber would certainly be an error.”
“Are you saying you should train her, anyway?” Anakin sounded torn, a little disbelieving, a little angry, and also strangely almost relieved. Obi-Wan swiveled to look at him, worried.
“The Council almost disregarded his request that you be trained, Anakin,” he said. “I think we can all agree that would have been an enormous mistake.”
“Indeed,” said Plo, with a little sidelong glance at Anakin━less the movement of his eyes, hidden under the goggles, than the way his head turned slightly toward the younger Jedi. “I for one have been glad to have changed my mind on that account.”
Anakin appeared to relax a little at this, the look in his eyes gratified. “Thank you, Master Plo,” he said.
“Commander,” Obi-Wan said, “thank you for your patience━we have been quite uncivilized not including you in this discussion of your own training.”
“I understand,” she said. “This Qui-Gon must have meant a great deal to all of you. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Obi-Wan bowed his head. It was Plo who answered. “Thank you for your sentiment,” he says solemnly. “It is our tradition that those who die are transformed into the Force, and not truly lost. But even knowing that does not mean we do not feel a loss of their presence in the here and now━especially when brought such reminders of them in such an unexpected fashion.”
She couldn’t help but notice that Anakin also looked intensely uncomfortable at this discussion of death.
“Qui-Gon was Dooku’s former padawan,” Plo said. “A trainee, an apprentice, a junior partner for a little more than a decade, and beyond. Qui-Gon trained Obi-Wan in turn.”
“He found me,” Anakin said, abruptly, and then fell silent just as suddenly.
Plo nodded toward him, acknowledging, then added, a little more lighthearted, “Qui-Gon was my crechemate–we were raised together as siblings are. As much as I loved and respected him, he was… something of a maverick.”
“A maverick?” Chester lifted a spoon to address her neglected stew. “I was given to understand that there are almost more opinions in your order than there are Jedi━what, then, constitutes a maverick?”
Plo looked at Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan looked at Plo. A slow bloom of humor grew between them. “Do you remember the baby gundark?”
“Of course I do, Master. You didn’t have to live with it,” said Obi-Wan, neatly shepherding the last of his stew into his spoon. “Feedings. Every four hours. The less said about the droppings, the better. I have never been so glad to see the back of any living being.”
Ah, thought Chester, that sort of maverick.
“I may not have had to live with the gundark specifically, but that was far from the first little creature he saw fit to adopt.” Plo gave Chester an arch look. “He and our friend Micah climbed the spiny palms in the Room of A Thousand Fountains once, and found that going up was significantly easier than coming down. Master Yoda found them, and decided that they had stumbled upon a wonderful meditating spot, so he went up after them and refused to help them down until he was done communing with the Force. They were, let me see, ten years old at the time.”
“Oh, is that why those palms are off-limits to Initiates?” Ahsoka laughed. “We used to dare each other to climb them anyway.”
“Of course you did,” said Anakin, shaking his head. “Master Qui-Gon once bet a royal Naboo J-Type Nubian on the Boonta Eve podrace. It had a broken hyperdrive generator, but still, talk about a risky bet.” He smiled as he said it, the cloud lifting from his expression.
“That does sound like him.” Plo said, resting a sympathetic hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder; the man had buried his face in his hands. “He gambled your lightsaber once, too, didn’t he?”
“And lost it. I had to steal it back the next morning.” Obi-Wan sighed forcefully into his hands, resigned, and lifted his head, turning to Chester. “My Master, you see, followed the ways and whims of the Force, particularly that of the Living Force, to a degree that most of us do not. Cannot , really━it took mental flexibility and energy that many of us simply don’t have. To me, as a Padawan, it sometimes seemed foolish. Frequently, in fact. But sometimes, and especially now━I think we could do with a great deal more of that approach.”
His voice shaded sad at the end of the sentence, and he looked hard into Chester’s eyes for a long moment. It was hard not to be unsettled, being so scrutinized. “I believe he would have liked you a great deal.”
Chester let out a long breath, touched. “I would have been glad to have met him.” And entertained, quite possibly, she thought; this Qui-Gon seemed to have been the sort of person Starfleet attracted.
The mood around the table had lifted, as if the reminder of Qui-Gon and his antics was a balm over a raw wound.
“I believe he would have encouraged your continued learning about the Force,” Obi-Wan said. “At the very least, we can aid in your safety, if that lightsaber will continue with you.”
“A not-so-trivial matter, in light of recent developments,” said Plo. “Dooku has placed a significant bounty on your head, Commander.”
“To the tune of almost twenty million Republic credits,” said Obi-Wan, in a tone that suggested to Chester he felt this was a significant step toward living up to Qui-Gon’s reputation.
Further down the table, Anakin sputtered. “What!? How much exactly? ”
“Eighteen million, five hundred seventy five thousand, and open to negotiation,” said Obi-Wan. “Congratulations on making it to the top of the Separatists’ most wanted list, Commander. By a considerable margin.”
Chester couldn’t resist. She frowned. “Is that a lot?”
“You could buy a small planet for that!”
“A not so small planet,” corrected Ahsoka, who’d taken an economics class much more recently than Anakin had. “One with a breathable atmosphere, even.”
The tilt of Plo’s head was now tolerantly amused. “I believe the Commander is being facetious; I have it on good authority that Lieutenant Garter and his men sat you down with a basic primer on our monetary system.”
“Hmph,” said Chester. “Trust them to tell you and spoil my fun.”
“It’s certainly one of the higher bounties I’ve heard of,” said Obi-Wan.
“A little surprised the Separatists aren’t seeking my head more directly,” said Chester. “A bit disappointed in them, actually. I would have expected Dooku to take a more active hand in these things, having met him.”
“Any opportunity Dooku has to not pay that bounty on you, he will take,” said Obi-Wan, dryly. “I expect, however, that the number of bounty hunters that contract will attract will be more than sufficient to harass you, and us, into making mistakes that he can exploit. Bounties are a practical way of obtaining a target, but in this case, it serves a secondary purpose. An indication to us what lengths he will go to in order to obtain you. It is a threat, and a declaration, and while your encounter with him may have allayed the concerns of Republic Intelligence━which it has━I am sure there are some groups weighing the risks of protecting you against the benefits of quietly allowing Dooku to succeed in order to focus on other aspects of the war. You have many enemies, Commander.”
“And you should have killed Dooku while you had the chance,” said Anakin. “Leaving him alive was a bad call.”
“It was the only call,” said Chester. “Had I killed him, I wouldn’t have been able to bluff the droids and we all would have died. Aside from that, I cannot take sides in an ongoing foreign conflict, which this is. Dooku sought to force me out of my neutrality, and I couldn’t allow that, but killing the head of state of one faction in this war would have broken every noninterference reg in the book.”
There was a pause, all of them looking at her with surprise and confusion. She realized, too late, the kind of acceptance that the discussion about lightsabers and their fallen friend and the bounties indicated, and put down her spoon, her conscience prickling. “Gentlebeings,” she said, “I know my chances of returning home are slim, and the process difficult if it’s even still possible. But as much as I appreciate this, what you’ve taught me and what you’re teaching me, I owe it to the people back home to keep hoping there’s a way to return, and to keep acting as if I will. Please do not take this as a diminishment of my regard for you and appreciation of what you’re offering. Even if I do return home, I need some knowledge of what I am doing; the last thing my people can afford is for me to be a danger to them.”
Obi-Wan’s face softened. “It says a great deal about your home, and your Starfleet, that you think so highly of them.”
She smiled, a little sad. “I’d like to think so. But I think those high expectations are part of what makes it live up to them–the collective will to maintain it as a place where we correct our mistakes and strive to be better. Not as individuals, but as a society.”
“If only more of ours saw it the same way,” said Obi-Wan, wistful. Nods went around the table; Plo and Ahsoka resigned, Anakin still a little skeptical.
“Well,” said Anakin after a moment, “if you’re planning to get trained, Commander, you should know it’s not going to be easy.”
“Judging by this afternoon,” said Chester, “I don’t doubt that at all.”
Plo and Obi-Wan presented the issue of the rescued lightsaber to the Council that evening. Obi-Wan did the talking, eloquent as ever.
Predictably, the Council was torn on the issue. Mace, Ki, Adi, Oppo, and Eeth wanted the saber returned to the Temple for safekeeping; Shaak and Kit and Depa felt the swordsmiths of the Order ought to try purifying it. Saesee kept his mouth shut and merely observed, as he frequently did. Yoda surprised them all by agreeing.
“Came to young Chester the saber did; chosen its champion the kyber has. Prolong its suffering we shall not.”
Oppo Rancisis let out a sigh so deeply heartfelt it was nearly a groan. “You think an untrained stranger from a far-flung galaxy who had never even heard of the Force before she arrived is best placed to alleviate that suffering?”
“I think the two of them will help each other,” said Obi-Wan. “And neither the Force nor the kyber itself objected, so I think it may be worth a try.”
Mace raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Were you expecting an objection?”
Obi-Wan sighed. “I find it hard to describe the reaction of the saber when any of us handle it in any other terms. It is so aggressively malicious.”
That was Plo’s cue to step in. “I felt for myself the way the energies in that crystal calmed just fractionally when she touched its hilt. By contrast, it did the opposite for me, any time I dared handle it, and the same for Master Kenobi.” He allowed himself a quiet laugh at his fellow Councillors’ faces. “I will supervise any attempts at communing with the crystal, of course, though I don’t believe either of them will be ready for it before we return to Coruscant. Otherwise, I think it best we leave its handling to the Commander.”
Eeth rubbed his chin with an idle finger, thoughtful. “On the condition that she will not use it, surely?”
“I imagined so, yes.” Obi-Wan’s blue eyes twinkled subtly in the light of the holocomm. “My observation was that the kyber seems to find her mere presence more tolerable, so, perhaps by doing so we might establish a foundational accord with which to begin its rehabilitation.”
Kit frowned, his tendrils rippling in a wave. “Can a bled kyber be rehabilitated?”
“Possible it is, yes.” Yoda hummed and twitched his ears. “Much effort, it takes, and only with great compassion for the wounded can it be achieved.”
Obi-Wan shared a wry glance with Plo. “Both of which Commander Chester has in spades.”
“The Commander also has a great deal of anger, which she has no compunction about tapping into,” said Ki-Adi-Mundi, faithfully playing the skeptic. “I somehow doubt that this has changed since we last saw her, given her encounter with Krell. That alone is dangerous. It takes years of training and control in order to channel anger such as that; there is a reason we do not generally encourage our trainees to attempt it. Combined with her lack of experience and the influence of the bled kyber, it may become a great deal more so. Are we not setting up a circumstance where Dooku’s lightsaber may succeed where Dooku himself has failed?”
Yoda hrmphed. “Influence its wielder, a kyber may. Yet only so far, that influence goes.”
“Commander Chester has an advantage on that account, I suspect,” Plo put in. He glanced at Obi-Wan beneath his goggles; the man’s brows twitched downward, and then up in sudden comprehension. “When I tested her ability to deliberately draw upon the Force, I found that she had prior training in an unfamiliar mental discipline. Nothing Dark–in fact, nothing that would seem natural to any sect of Force-sensitives in this galaxy, since it involves nearly cutting oneself off from the Force entirely.”
Audible whispers crackled out of the comm at that. Plo kept going, raising his voice to be heard above the objections. “Apparently, this is done among a strongly empathic species so as to prevent the intensity of one’s own emotions from disturbing others. It is a matter of basic manners, and thus is deeply entrained. Reaching out to the Force, Chester tells me, is nearly the opposite. When she did release her mental shielding, the mind I felt beneath those shields was full of anger and fear, but it was deeply aware of those emotions and powerfully disciplined nevertheless. My friends, we should not mistake the unfamiliarity of a newcomer to our particular traditions for a lack of training in any discipline.”
“I concur,” said Mace at last, which came as a surprise to Plo and, it seemed, most of their fellow Councillors. Mace’s holographic figure paused for a long moment, then continued. “I would like to sit in on one of these training sessions when you return to Coruscant, if Chester won’t object. In the meantime…”
He paused again, thinking. “Kenobi, you and Skywalker should accompany them back to Coruscant.”
Obi-Wan stroked his beard. “In case Dooku’s influence, the kyber, and the Commander’s own anger win out.”
Mace inclined his head. “Powerful though Chester’s mental discipline may be, there are a great many things arrayed against her. Should our concerns prove unfounded, I am sure she will benefit from your experience. If they are not … I do not intend to repeat Dooku’s mistake in underestimating her.”