Chapter Text
They reported the incident to Plo and Mace, whose exhausted expressions were the next thing to all the names Chester was calling herself for her stupidity. The fact that Anakin was wearing this mess too was scant comfort. She went back to her quarters feeling pretty deflated, the high of embarrassing Bane having drained away somewhere in the Temple’s parking garage.
Showered, hair brushed and loosely braided, and dressed in loose tunic and pants—just this side of pajamas, acceptable enough she could go out in the halls if she felt the need, but certainly more comfortable than formal—she tucked herself up on the couch to read, try to get her mind off the mess she’d made.
She’d gotten hardly ten minutes in before the door chimed.
Chester set the datapad down, pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long breath. The last thing she wanted was the surely-coming conversation about her unwise course of action, and she was fairly sure Plo would feel the need to deliver it. Mother hen hardly described it.
Chester climbed to her feet, made a face as a muscle complained—she’d probably pulled something while applying the frying pan to Cad Bane, she’d twisted weirdly while doing it—and staggered to the door, keying it open.
She blinked. Her visitor was not Plo.
“Commander?” Ahsoka’s friend, Barriss, stood in the doorway.
The expression on her face was not a good one—tight and determined, and very freaked out behind it. It hurt to hear how hesitant she sounded, how young she looked.
“Barriss, right?” Chester said warmly. “Come on in and sit down. What’s up?”
“I need to talk to someone,” Barriss said, letting the door close behind her. “And you’re the person I think I should talk to. I think. I’m not sure.”
She sat down on the couch and hunched inward almost instantly, looking at her feet. She looked exactly like one of the Bedivere’s cadets in that moment, and it hurt Chester’s heart. “Take all the time you need, kiddo.”
Barriss darted her a scandalized look. “I’m eighteen.”
“Sorry,” Chester said, and ducked her head, acknowledging. “By our standards, you’re barely of age.”
Barriss shook her head, wordless. She took one deep breath, let it out slow, and then another deliberate inward breath.
“I think I might be Falling,” she said.
“Oh, honey.” Chester sat down beside her, put her hands on the kid’s shoulder. She searched Barriss’ blue eyes for any sign of discomfort, but although Barriss was looking determinedly at a spot somewhere past her head, she leaned into the contact just enough that Chester could feel it.
“What makes you think that?” Chester asked, gently.
Barriss breathed deep, and this one went shaky near the end. “I was supposed to be a healer. And I am, but… all of the fighting and killing, and so often there’s nothing I can do but watch the people I’m supposed to heal die because there’s just too many of them. ”
She fell silent, pressed her hands to her face and tried to gather herself.
“I’m angry,” she admitted. “I’m furious and I can’t stop being furious. I can’t acknowledge it and let it go anymore; it just sits in my stomach and burns. I just want to do something to make it all stop.”
She sniffled behind her hands. Chester cast around for some kind of tissue and came up with a scrap of fabric; best not to ask where it came from, but it would do. “Here,” she said, and looped an arm in around Barriss’ narrow shoulders. “Tell me about it when you’re ready, and we’ll fix it together. All right?”
Turned out Barriss’ species blew their noses with just the same honking noise as humans made. “I’m supposed to be Knighted soon. It’s early, but Master Luminara says she’s proud of me, and I know they need me. But I’m so angry, I can’t control it, I can’t let it go, I can’t stand this! It’s wrong! ”
“It is wrong,” Chester agreed. “I understand the anger, believe me. Anyone who’s been through what you’re going through would want to burn the universe.”
Barriss stared at her through watery eyes. “Anger is dangerous.”
“Sure—it can be. But a lot of the time it’s an entirely natural reaction to the injustices of the world around you.” Chester gave her an awkward one-armed hug. “I can see why you’re worried, but just having that anger isn’t wrong. It shows that you are a dedicated and compassionate person. Anyone who could look at the things you’ve seen, the situations you’ve been in, with equanimity is in a lot more danger of cruelty than you are. Your rage is because you’re a good, kind person, Barriss, it’s not your enemy.”
Barriss shook her head slowly, looking lost. “Anger leads to fear,” she said, with the cadence of a saying learned by rote. “Fear leads to hate; hate leads to suffering, and to the Dark Side of the Force.”
“I can’t say I’m familiar with that philosophy,” said Chester. She took a deep breath of her own; she wanted to shut down that line of thinking hard, but Barriss was already terrified and a philosophical debate wouldn’t help her at all. “Anger doesn’t have to call the shots, and yeah, it’s better if it doesn’t, but mine’s kept me on my feet and fighting when anything sane would have laid down and died. It’s better than despair. It’s better than walling yourself off. And rage against death and pain and suffering—it’s what keeps us compassionate. There’s very little space between the two.”
Barriss sniffled again. “That’s what I’m worried about, though. Sometimes I get so angry I can’t even be compassionate about it. There’s no room in me for anything else.”
“Sometimes that happens, too. You’re not wrong to be angry, Barriss, even so.” Chester gave her a reassuring smile. “In fact, I think your fury speaks very highly of you. I’m enraged by what’s happening here, too. And I get to go home. That this is happening to your home is utterly horrific.”
“It is. ” Barriss’ face twisted into a grieving rictus. “We’re hurting and dying and our sacrifices aren’t even making things a tiny bit better!”
Chester let out a long quiet breath, and then after a moment, let her own grief flow into the space around them. “I know how that feels.” More than anyone here knows, she thought, but did not say.
“It’s not your anger, Barriss, that you have to be worried about. It’s walling yourself off. It’s deciding other people’s feelings and desires aren’t important. It’s treating other people like things. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.” She paused, searching the younger woman’s face to see if it was sinking in, and then added, more quietly but forcefully, “And that includes yourself, Barriss. Don’t treat yourself like an automaton, to follow orders even when it feels like cutting pieces out of yourself.”
Barriss gave her a dubious look and blew her nose again. “You talk like that’s from experience.”
Chester laughed a soft, very grim laugh. “Yeah, and if only I were better at taking my own advice.”
“Everyone says that,” said Barriss, with a certain grim humor, and put the cloth down. “I just want to get away from this. I can’t be the person I want to be with—with this all around, all the time.”
“No one can,” said Chester.
“That’s easy for you to say, you’ve got your Federation to go back to, but I—I have to stay, I should help but—”
“If staying will hurt you and others, and you have an option to leave, it’s a viable option,” said Chester gently. “Perhaps you need someone to tell you it’s all right to consider that.” You’ve got your Federation to go back to. Oh, that was heartbreaking.
She got up and went through the motions to make the two of them some tea, though what she really wanted was a replicator that could introduce the kid to hot chocolate with extra marshmallows. “If you do want to go, I will help you,” she said. “You’ll be welcome in the Federation, if you choose to go with me and if we can get there.”
Barriss lifted her eyes to meet Chester’s, and she was struck with a sudden wave of misgivings, the memory of her conversation with Dex strong and sharp. “But the Federation is also at war,” she said. “You should know that, before you make your decision. We’re not conscripting people, and we certainly need doctors—but it could go either way, and it’s very possible you’ll be in a lot more danger if you come with me than if you stay here.”
“Ahsoka said there was something you weren’t talking about, and I could feel your fear when Dex brought up the Dominion.” Barriss looked up, looked her in the eyes, and Chester felt the steel of her resolve set in place. “You’re at war with the Dominion, aren’t you.”
Chester nodded and handed her the tea. “Yes. We are. And while things just got a little better—we have new allies—I can’t tell you which way it’ll go. The Federation is very small by Galactic standards, and very young, and the Dominion is… it’s larger, it’s older, and it sees us as a threat. So it’s trying to destroy us.” She sat down. “I don’t want you to trade one war for another,” she said. “What I can tell you is that we won’t ask you to fight. And it’s my job—and the job of my crew and all of my fellow officers—to keep it that way.”
She gave Barriss a little crooked smile. “I know, it’s not the best exit plan. I’m sure we can find a third option.”
Barriss was looking at her tea, intently. “Your Starfleet has medical officers that are noncombatants?” she asked.
“And there are civilian organizations as well,” said Chester. “Either way, you won’t be forced onto a battlefield.”
“If I stay here, I’m a Jedi,” said Barriss. “There’s no getting away from that, no matter how far I run. We’ve been drafted; they’ll want me to be a commander, a soldier—a killer. But being a healer, even if it means going to another war…”
“It’s your decision,” said Chester. “And again, we can always find other options. This is just the one that’s in my power to offer, right now.”
Barriss was still examining her tea, shifting the mug between her palms and a crease of a thoughtful frown between her eyes. It was a whole lot better than the misery she’d come in with, though.
“I like how you talk about your Federation,” she said slowly. “Jedi spend a lot of time talking about our ideals, and how the Force works, and justice and fairness and mercy. But when we go out into the galaxy, suddenly all we can do is compromise it all to deal with a Republic that doesn’t seem to care all that much about any of us. Look at the clones. We keep trying to give them rights and citizenship—and the Senate won’t let us. Look at the war. We want to end it, find a way to negotiate, but here we are still fighting it, and the Senate doesn’t seem to care what it really costs, because it’s all far away and the people dying don’t seem to matter at all to them.
“And then I hear you talking about your Federation and it seems like the people there—they think everyone matters. Like it’s not just you talking about justice and fairness and mercy, it’s your whole society deciding that those are worthwhile, and even though you talked about it going wrong, about how you’ve messed up and your people have done terrible things, you’re still trying to do better. Sometimes… sometimes I think we’ve forgotten about that, trying to do better.”
Chester put a hand on her shoulder. “I’d like to think we live up to that,” she said softly. “And I know I’ve got a lot of company in it.”
“I’m so tired of living somewhere where so many people don’t matter, and almost everyone else seems okay with that,” murmured Barriss. “And after so long… it’s easy to start thinking that way myself. When I’m angry, when I’m desperate… I’ve caught myself, a few times, and I’m ashamed of myself.”
“You noticed it,” said Chester. “A lot of people don’t. And a lot of them stop bothering to be ashamed of themselves for it. They just cover it up with excuses. That’s what these circumstances do to you, Barriss. The question is, what do you do once you realize it?”
Barriss snuffled, wiped her eyes, and said, “Are you sure you have no Jedi training? Because you’re sounding a lot like the Masters right now.”
“Trust me,” said Chester, with a return smile, “I’m really not. Every time I see the Senate domes, I have to resist the urge to go down there and flush their heads down the toilet.”
Barriss giggled suddenly at that, and raised a hand to her mouth as if startled by her own reaction. “I did hear that you threw champagne on a Senator.”
Chester cocked her head to the side, and gave the kid a conspiratorial look. “Flushing his head down the toilet was the next step of that plan. Too bad the Guard stepped in to arrest him first.”
Barriss laughed again. This time, she let it go on.
“I want to go with you,” she said. “Even if it’s into another war, or otherwise dangerous—I’ve been in this war for years. But I need to be able to play a different role. If I stay here, that’s not going to happen.”
It was an enormous show of faith, and Chester felt touched. “Let’s go talk to Master Plo, then,” she said. “At this point, I think we’d better be asking his advice.”
Plo opened his door to Chester, whom he had been expecting after her ill-advised jaunt in the lower levels—and a downcast Barriss Offee, which came as a surprise.
“Plo,” said Chester, blunt, “I think Barriss should return with me.”
Plo stepped back, ushered them into his little oxygenated social room. He took a close look at the young Mirialan as she entered, trailing behind Chester with a weight to her feet. There was something very different about her today—a fracture woven into the bedrock of her presence, perhaps, the heaviness of her steps. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy dark circles on the lower lids suggested she hadn’t been getting nearly the sleep she needed. (Not that that was out of the ordinary for any of them, these days.)
Luminara had been worried for her, he knew. Barriss had become withdrawn and somewhat curt in recent months, as the suggestion of her Knighting was raised. More recently, the curtness had apparently been replaced with a well-hidden fear.
Barriss and Chester occupied his two best chairs. Plo elected to forego the wobbly stool in the cupboard, and crouched at Barriss’ side. “Padawan, are you content with this plan of action?”
Barriss looked at him, wide-eyed. “I should stay—shouldn’t I? You would let me go?”
Her surprise twisted at Plo’s heart. Once upon a time, such a question would have been unthinkable. Of course they would have let her go. The only thing standing in her way would have been a long line of friends, crechemates, teachers and mentors all wanting to give her a hug and blessings for the road.
He rested his hand on hers, and pressed reassurance through the Force.
“That depends on whether it is the best choice for you—and I think you are the only one who can answer that question.” He turned to look sidelong at Chester, searching.
Chester raised her spread palms with a little smile. “I know better than to meddle with a choice like this. What I can say is if she does come with me, I’ll do everything I can to make sure she’s all right. There’s a lot of work for doctors back home.”
A viridian burst of longing rippled through Barriss’ Force presence, which burned away any shred of reluctance in Plo’s mind. Among the worst violations of the war had been the healers forced to fight and kill. Barriss hadn’t been a healer for long—but long enough, apparently.
Barriss’ shoulders slumped. “I can’t be a Knight, Master. I can’t keep fighting. I have to go, or I’ll forget how to do anything but kill.”
And oh, if that wasn’t the most damning indictment of this whole pointless war.
Plo reached up, laid his other hand on her shoulder. “Knowing your limits,” he began, gently, “and accepting them for what they are, is one of the most crucial skills you must practice as a Jedi. You have not failed, Barriss. Not all limits can be pushed past—and for that matter, not all limits should be pushed. You will go with Chester—I will make sure of that—and you will be able to remember yourself once you’re free of this war.”
Barriss all but slumped into him, leaning hard into his encouraging hand, and the bedrock cracks through her glimmering presence began to fill in with opal. The sheer relief was overwhelming. Plo imagined what sort of fear she must have been grappling with, alone, that such basic, minimal support could generate such a reaction.
“In terms of logistics,” Chester said quietly, “technically you’re of age by Federation standards. But it’ll take time for you to adjust to the new environment. I’m still posted to the front, and the Bedivere doesn’t carry civilians. We’ll look into positions for you to get medical experience aboard Deep Space Nine, our home base, and I’ll make arrangements so that you can fall back on my parents or close friends—Commander Jeln or Commander Sotek—should something happen to me. You’ll have your pick of institutions. However, I do have a…” she trailed off, briefly, flushed up to her eyebrows as she visibly opted to tell the truth, “...former partner with whom I remain on amicable terms at the Vulcan Academy of Sciences, and of course there’s Starfleet Medical. But these are decisions you can make later. I will be there, of course, but I also have a track record of high risk assignments, and I want you to know that if something happens to me, you won’t be left alone.”
That was good to know—not that Plo had expected any less. A young Jedi of Barriss’ age had an entire lifetime of intensive practical and academic training to draw on; the aim being that should they find themself stranded somewhere unfamiliar, they could support themself indefinitely. That said, an entirely different galaxy would have been a tougher assignment than most.
“Diane,” he began, and Chester broke off in the middle of her sentence, her whole attention on him. “How much have you shared regarding the current state of your galaxy?”
“I’ve told her our situation,” Chester started, but Barriss interrupted her.
“I know they’re at war, Master,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “I know that they’re probably losing.” This with an apologetic glance at Chester, who looked down at her lap, a shiver passing through her presence. “I still want to go. Because even if it kills me… there are worse things than dying with people who believe everyone matters, and aren’t afraid to act on it.”
Is it better to die, Plo asked himself, than to survive and lose oneself in the process?
“Then you have my support,” he said, aloud. “But before we start making plans, I believe there is someone else who needs to be brought into the loop.”
Master Luminara Unduli was the very model of the Jedi value of self-control. She simply sat, and listened, and then asked her Padawan for time to meditate on the issue. Barriss granted her request, and they all saw the hope burning in her eyes and on the edges of her presence.
As their charges left, Luminara turned to Plo, and let her controlled mask fall.
“I feel as if I’ve failed her,” she said. Her voice wavered a little; she breathed deep and slow, and kept going after. “She is my Padawan. I should have been able to protect her from this.”
“The failure lies with our Order as a whole,” Plo said, gently disagreeing, “and if it must be placed on any individual Jedi, let it be with those of us on the Council, who chose not to take the necessary risk when the potential consequences were not so dire.”
Luminara shook her head. Grief came rolling off her in waves. “You could not possibly have seen this future coming.”
This was true. Even Sifo-Dyas had only seen snatches of the apocalypse, fragmentary and confusing. Visions of the future never gave the whole story, and only seldom provided enough clues to work on. The Council had deliberated for years, and in the end erred on the side of caution. In hindsight, this had been the wrong choice.
Plo dipped his head, acquiescing. “Then shall we set aside our guilt, and turn our thoughts to the future instead?”
The ghost of a smile tugged at Luminara’s lips.
“Commander Chester has a history of disruption,” she said at last. “Are you sure this is not simply a continuation of that history?”
“It may well be,” Plo admitted, “but thus far, her… disruption has occurred in response to genuine issues. Krell, particularly, gives me pause. Chester’s status as a non-Jedi allowed her to both sense his status and do something about it. It may also have made her a less anxiety-provoking figure to seek help from, for Barriss.”
Luminara blinked rapidly, and closed her eyes. “That does not help me release my sense of guilt, Master Plo.”
“I am sorry.” Plo got up, went to sit on the vacated chair beside her. “All I mean is that our Masters are typically the last people we want to disappoint. As a Padawan, I argued frequently with my own Master—I still felt badly when I had to tell him of my own failures. Barriss is struggling with a problem far greater than a failed exam. There are worse ways of dealing with that sort of thing than to seek advice from someone who is not explicitly tasked with raising her into a good Jedi.”
“I understand,” said Luminara, quietly. She paused, evidently weighing her next words carefully. “I am… concerned about her course of action, and—I apologize if this sounds harsh, Master—her choice of confidante.”
Plo nodded, unsurprised. “Speak freely, Master Luminara.”
“If Barriss is concerned about her own rage—if she is finding herself overpowered by it—I fear what may happen in company with someone who has no compunction about using hers, and who is so new in our tradition that she has very little control over the result.” Luminara paused, ever so briefly and added, “I speak of the incident with Knight Skywalker, which concerns me the most, but I am given to understand there were others. If I am honest, the interactions I witnessed with her lightsaber were concerning on their own. Further, I fear Dooku’s training may mean that Commander Chester is working from a faulty foundation. It is a great risk to her, which I believe you and Master Windu are managing as best as it can be managed, in a student of her age. But the risk it poses to Barriss… that, I am less ready to accept. And her… interest in recruiting Barriss…” She trailed off, and shook her head, looking somewhat lost.
“All very reasonable concerns,” said Plo, “and I will be discussing this matter with Masters Windu and Yoda before we make any final decision.” He sat back, and folded his hands into the hem of his sleeves, considering the rest of his response.
The Order’s teachings on emotional regulation played a fundamental role in their operations on behalf of the Republic, and because of that, their standards were high. High enough that many people simply could not consistently live up to them; and nor would many of those have wanted to, even if they could. This was not a sin—the Jedi Code was clear on that account—merely a reflection of the extreme responsibility resting on the shoulders of each Knight. Such responsibility, said the Code, should only be freely chosen.
Luminara Unduli had always excelled at that self-control. Partly, Plo reflected, this was an inborn personality trait. She just wasn’t particularly emotional to begin with. And when she did feel very strongly, her first response was to look inward, to examine her thoughts and feelings against the context of the world around her… and to discard what did not truly reflect the situation.
This was an important skill for a Jedi. Jedi could not afford reactions which, from anyone else, would be perfectly reasonable. Shows of anger at unspeakable injustice, desperate self-preservation instincts in a fight, the urge to call out deliberate obstruction in a delicate negotiation. Considering the authority with which the Republic entrusted them, and their own skills and abilities, such reactions from a Jedi could easily cross the line from an understandable response to bullying or abuse, simply because of the power differential between themselves and others.
But there was a downside, which Luminara now displayed; an difficulty in understanding that this self-control might not come so naturally to another. Perhaps, an inability to understand that such self-control might manifest in other ways, that another approach did not necessarily expose the individual to the risk of Falling, or even of incidental cruelty.
Chester navigated her interactions with others with a deftness that spoke of long experience with those power differentials and a strong awareness of the line from which she could cross from reason to cruelty. Plo did not see a risk there, not for her.
But Luminara, who had only heard of the highlights of Chester’s stay in the galaxy, was unlikely to be aware of that nuance. Her concerns were reasonable in the face of an individual willing to reject many of the teachings of the Jedi, holding the dictates of her conscience and preconceptions over the advice of those around her, the comfort of those around her, and even her own safety. That impression was alarming. Luminara’s hesitation at entrusting such an individual with her charge was very understandable, let alone a charge in such a vulnerable position as Barriss now found herself.
Plo knew it was not a well-founded fear, that what might look to others like Chester wobbling on the knife edge over the Dark Side was anything but. Communicating this was an entirely separate challenge.
“Dooku did not lay Chester’s foundations,” he said at last. “The root discipline she works from is not of this galaxy. It was developed by a species with inherent empathic and telepathic abilities, and as such, advocates the control of all emotion in favor of logic, alongside strict mental shielding and privacy. This prior training is very likely the reason that Dooku failed to corrupt her. It is also the reason that she has struggled somewhat with our own teachings. For that reason, I have very little fear she might fall to the Dark.”
Luminara shifted very slightly, discomfort rippling briefly through her. She made no move to speak, and so Plo continued.
“She is not, and has no interest in becoming, a Jedi. She has a hard time reaching out beyond those formidable shields at all, and little interest in unlearning that lifetime of habit in order to do anything but further contain her abilities. In the area in which she has the most innate skill—empathy and telepathy—she is deeply reluctant to bring her abilities to bear, for fear of violation of privacy.” The admission was painful. Being so blunt about Chester’s abilities was likewise unpleasant. It made it clear; she was unlikely to ever be a Jedi, and that woke a sadness in Plo’s heart that he would have to examine later. “She is powerfully disciplined. But it is not ours—and it is on occasion outright antithetical to ours. Still, I do not fear for her, not on that count. Dark disciplines would be more antithetical still.”
Luminara gave him a long look. “You do not seem entirely settled about this, either.”
“I am not,” Plo admitted, “but it is not Chester herself that concerns me.”
“But it is not something trivial,” said Luminara, still watching him.
“It is not.” Plo paused for a long moment, wondering how to phrase the worries he still had not yet fully examined himself. “As Chester herself said, they are at war themselves, and the enemy they face is… perhaps worse than the Separatists. Barriss would of course be insulated from the worst of the war, as medical personnel.”
Luminara inclined her head very slightly. “But Chester herself would not be.”
Plo let out a slow, resigned breath. “Indeed. Her presence here has been a welcome reprieve from the… pessimism and compromise of the war. But by her own admission, she has been promoted quickly, and is a senior officer on a frontline ship. She must return home, regardless of the danger that she may face. So, you see, this is a worry I must simply acknowledge and let go of; there is little else I can do.”
“I see.” Luminara let out a soft, knowing breath. “Perhaps it is not only the worry you must release. Perhaps it is also Commander Chester herself?”
And here, Plo thought wryly, was another downside to Luminara’s entirely natural emotional reserve. Where to draw the line between simple emotional bonds and attachment was nothing so much as a ten-thousand-year argument. Plo himself had always tended toward quicker, stronger emotional relationships; he’d felt a strong kindred to Commander Wolffe from day one, for example. Generally, Jedi doctrine drew the line at causing harm, but there were as many interpretations of attachment as there were Jedi—and some were more hardline about it than others.
“It is hard to say goodbye,” Luminara added, more quietly.
“It is,” Plo agreed. “And yet I have had a great deal of practice at doing so.”