Chapter Text
Plo exited his rooms and found himself promptly greeted by a friendly whack on the shins with a gimer stick. “Walk with me, you should,” said Yoda cheerfully, from not much higher up.
Plo sighed internally. The other Master was clearly in a playful mood, one that was miles away from his own. He folded his hands in his sleeves and projected as much longsuffering good nature into the Force as he could, well aware his own anxiety was a little too apparent underneath it.
Yoda had already picked up on his disquiet, and evidently dismissed it. “Regarding Padawan Offee, this is not,” he said, because gossip moved faster than light in the Temple. “A break you are owed, Master.” He glanced sidelong at Plo, his eyes glittering wickedly. “Especially after the events of the last few days.”
“As you say, Master Yoda,” said Plo dryly. Cad Bane’s attempt to collect on Chester’s bounty had come so soon on the heels of the Crace affair.
Yoda chuckled a little to himself and started off down the hallway, moving quickly.
“A Padawan’s achievements, we wish to recognize,” said Yoda, as they made their way through sunlit hallways. “Away at the front, the Master is, so to me the task has fallen to select an appropriate recognition.”
That had happened far too often of late.
Padawan beads were often made, rather than found, but over the centuries the Temple had built up quite the collection regardless. They occupied a small room near the Archives, where waist-high sets of drawers sat quietly until you pulled one of the drawers open. Things were quiet, this close to the Archives.
Plo did not know the Padawan in question, so he occupied himself with looking over the drawers of beads and other tokens as Yoda puttered along to his side. The possibilities were eclectic. He couldn’t have begun to guess where most of them came from.
A handful felt more strongly in the Force. Impressions of memories, senses, emotions, most faint enough that Plo closed his eyes behind his mask to concentrate on the echoes within each bead.
On impulse, not entirely sure what he was responding to, he reached out to one small drawer, nudging objects aside until his searching claw landed on a small, dull brass bead. He pulled it out and examined it in the light. Something turned over abruptly and uncomfortably in his chest as he realized just how much it looked like the small arrowhead symbol Chester wore like a protective charm.
He wished, for a moment, that he could be picking out the first charm for her Padawan braid, instead of simply providing Yoda with company. This bead seemed particularly appropriate. It would suit her very well, a recognition of her place between two peoples, with a pleasant simplicity that suited both her own and Jedi principles.
That was not to be. He moved to put it back in its place, and then stopped. It did not feel right.
Yoda was watching him thoughtfully, a bead already in his claws. “Listen to the Force, you should,” he said. “Not only to what you believe must happen.”
“I cannot ask her to train as my Padawan,” said Plo. A jolt of some inscrutable emotion went through his mind at the mere idea. He turned the bead over in his fingers, directing a questioning look Yoda’s way. “Aside from our own principles regarding the age of students, it would be asking her to turn her back on her duty. I will not keep her from her home.”
“Hm,” said Yoda, unhelpfully, and selected another bead. “More ways than one there are to follow the path of the Jedi. Certain, you are, that no she would say, but afraid, you are, that yes the response might be. Why?”
Why was he afraid, or why did he believe that the response might conceivably be yes? Plo contemplated the bead in his hand.
“Stranded, she is,” said Yoda. “Decline the offer, she must. Yet know she should, perhaps, that a place for her here you will make. That help others, she may, even should she fail. Not meant to be alone, she is, no more than we are, no more than any of the clones.”
Plo couldn’t quite look at him.
Yoda hrmed thoughtfully. “Even more important this is for you, perhaps, than her.”
“I fear,” said Plo, “that even if she succeeds in returning home, it will only be to die among her people. But her dedication is such that I don’t believe I can turn her from that course in good conscience. Failing to try troubles me, yes. But that is for my own sake. Not for hers. I should not burden her with those fears.”
Yoda just watched him.
“Asking her to turn away from her home for my sake would be selfish—the worst kind of attachment,” said Plo, and as he said it, he realized it was not Yoda he was trying to convince. It was himself. “It would be to ask her to compromise herself and her principles for my feelings.”
“Keep the bead, you should,” said Yoda. “Acknowledge those feelings, if nothing else you do. Hers, the decision is. Not yours. Withhold information from her, you shall, because you assume to understand her principles? Know better than her, you do? A contradiction that is, perhaps?”
The subsequent whack with his stick was rather friendly, by Yoda’s standards, and then he left with his beads in hand.
Plo stood there with the bead in his hand several long moments. Yoda was correct, of course, and it was a significant thing to have overlooked. His own shortsightedness disturbed him. He had been so focused on protecting Chester from his own feelings that he had not considered what hers might actually be.
He drew in a breath, and then another, stowing the bead carefully in a pocket. A glance over the array before him had him picking out a handful of others that might be appropriate, but those he left where they were. That was getting ahead of himself. But there was also a relief to it. He had stopped trying to ignore his own feelings, and his course of action now was clearer, if not necessarily better.
It was past time he stopped assuming what would serve her best, even if it would make little difference to her ultimate fate.
What would happen with Barriss was, in the way of everything worth doing, a lot of hurry up and wait. They said goodbye to Barriss, Plo went off on another errand, and Chester was left to contemplate her choices.
She was glad, of course, to offer the younger woman a way out of the trap the Jedi had found themselves in, but she was also going to need to have a serious discussion with her about the specifics of the Dominion and just how much danger she was going into. That meant telling her a great deal more than she’d told even Plo. But even if they got home, even if they got back through the anomaly, even if the Federation were still standing, they would still be behind enemy lines. The chances that they’d both end up in some Dominion prison—or worse and more likely, a laboratory—were far too high for Chester’s liking. The Founders would like Force-sensitivity just about as much as they liked the Federation showing up on their doorstep.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Whoever took them home would be in no small danger, either. It was insanity to drag basically a kid along with her, someone who really couldn’t make an informed decision about the dangers she was going into, because there was no way Chester could fully communicate the horrors of the Dominion, not in any way that measured up to actually seeing them.
The thing was, Barriss was so desperate to leave. It wasn’t just about the outside circumstances, it was about who they were turning her into. And Chester knew that feeling intimately , after the last few desperate months of war.
Something in her flinched as memory bubbled up; looking out over the Pacific Ocean from the cliffs with T’Volis. She couldn’t even remember the question T’Volis had asked, not the exact words, but now she realized it had really been when their relationship ended–when she had told T’Volis that no, she would not apply to be transferred into Strategic Analytics, which could have used her linguistics background in breaking codes and working with Intelligence on forecasting and tracking Dominion movements.
Please, T’Volis had said. You are not simply meat to be thrown at the enemy.
Chester had looked at her then. She’d felt the change in her own expression, the way she closed down and went cold when there was an ugly decision to be made, the inward-turned brutality necessary in those circumstances. And T’Volis had looked at her and seen that–and the way her face had shifted, the smallest changes in that still Vulcan mask, had shamed Chester to the bone. It was the face of a woman seeing a monster. It was fear. What kind of person looked at their partner in a way that provoked that fear?
I am a very good soldier, Chester had said, and if the statement hurt her, it was both true and all that she deserved, and for all our ideals, the Federation needs that now.
And never, never, did she let that on-duty expression out around T’Volis again. She had sought the coaching of the Vulcan counselor aboard the Bedivere, and reinforced her shields still further, so that T’Volis wouldn’t have to see that from her again, no matter how the war dragged on.
T’Volis had cited Chester’s risk-taking as the reason for their parting. Chester knew better. It was because of what she had become in response to the war, and she could not blame T’Volis. She had not signed up to wed a murderer.
If Barriss had a hope of escaping the same thing—which she would, as a civilian doctor—how could Chester let her own fears stand in the way?
The sound of the door chime broke through her reverie, and she found Plo standing on the stoop with his hands folded in his robes. “May I request your company, Diane? Master Luminara would like to speak to you.”
Chester let out a breath. And so the other shoe drops, she thought. “Of course,” she said, tugging her robes into some kind of order.
Plo put a hand on Chester’s arm for a moment, concern in the gesture. “Be kind to her?” he asked, far more quietly. “She is taking this hard.”
And is most certainly not one of my fans, thought Chester. She would have been blisteringly mad if someone she neither liked nor trusted had poached someone under her command, both out of her own sense of failure and a fear of what might happen to someone she felt responsible for. She was sure that this would be an uncomfortable interview. Plo’s confirmation was something of a comfort. At least she’d read it right.
“I will,” she said. “She has every reason for it, and with the present circumstances in my galaxy as they are, she has good reason for concern.”
“She does,” said Plo, “but I believe her concerns focus on you.”
“Ah,” said Chester, unsurprised. “She has every reason for that as well, I suppose.”
“Do you have so little faith in your own discipline?” asked Plo, gently. The tone made it clear he wasn’t worried about her, which was a welcome relief.
She wasn’t worried about succumbing to the dark side, because she knew she wanted nothing to do with it. She didn’t even want anything to do with most Force abilities that were acceptable Jedi practices. “I’m not worried about that,” she said, “but I know my approaches are alarming to many Jedi, and Master Luminara has not exactly concealed her feelings on the matter.”
“Ah,” he said. “That is true. However, you should be careful not to allow their feelings to color your own confidence, or assume that all Jedi feel similarly. You would be a superb apprentice—and a still better teacher.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, and he hesitated as if there was more he wished to say. But after a moment he simply shook his head and gestured her onward, to the meditation room in which Luminara sat. There, he excused himself.
In the silence that followed, Chester settled herself down opposite of the Jedi master, mimicking her crosslegged posture. Luminara simply looked at her, assessing.
“Commander, I have reservations about this.”
“I do too,” said Chester, folding her hands on her lap. “I do not wish to get into the specifics, but the circumstances in my galaxy are not a great deal safer than the ones in this galaxy. Should we return, we will have a long journey to safety.”
“That is not what I meant,” said Luminara. “My reservations are…” She paused, sweeping that assessing look at her again, and then with an evident decision said, “Specifically about you.”
Ouch, thought Chester. She really was getting directly to the point. “I find that understandable as well,” she said. “My training is not that of a Jedi.”
“If Barriss is indeed struggling with her own anger and fear, and feels herself at risk of Falling,” Luminara said, and paused again–the idea evidently pained her, and Chester could feel regret playing along the edges of her presence. Guilt, too. Luminara must feel that she had failed Barriss in circumstances that were impossible to succeed in, and she could not help but feel profoundly sympathetic about that. How many of the people under her command had she felt she’d failed, the bright-eyed cadets and ensigns who’d joined the crew to wonder at the universe and help people, and instead found themselves in a vicious war?
Luminara’s concern had evidently won out over her diplomacy. She fixed Chester with a stern stare, one no less intimidating because of her tiny stature or polite manner. “I cannot see your presence as anything but a risk,” she said. “You have made little effort to release your anger or your fear, Commander, which makes the danger you pose only tempered by your lack of training. That alone is unlikely to be sufficient protection, and though I trust Master Windu’s assessment of your control, that is in the present. Not under the strains of what you yourself admit is a very dangerous journey. And your lightsaber…” There was the faintest of pauses before ‘your’, an implication she found it all too plausible it was still Dooku’s saber in all but current location, “is hardly a stabilizing influence. You repress and restrain your emotions, rather than releasing them; you have strong attachments; your actions, though apparently effective, have shown a concerning impulsivity. You have reacted according to the standards of your home, rather than taking into account the actual circumstances in which you find yourself. What I understand of your altercation with Knight Skywalker shows that you are indeed liable to lash out, effectively and powerfully, in anger and fear. Though it is no fault of your own, your first introduction to the Force was under the tutelage of a Sith.
“If Barriss is indeed in danger of Falling, I am concerned that your influence will be anything but helpful for her. Indeed, I believe it might be outright corrosive.”
Evidently finished talking, she folded her hands in her lap and watched Chester, her gaze one of calm concern.
Chester looked steadily back. She’d never thought she’d actually have cause to be glad of her fleeting experience with the old Vulcan tradition of telling a child’s partner and prospective addition to your House all their flaws baldly to their face—many Houses would have dispensed with it, with a human partner, but T’Volis’s grandmother had felt it appropriate in her case, and calmly accepting Luminara’s assessment now was much the same as calmly accepting T’Venat’s statement that she would be no use at all to their House; the dead seldom were, and all her human thoughtless impulsivity would give them was a grieving widow and a Starfleet condolences letter. Better to remove herself from the courtship promptly and completely, and allow T’Volis to find a more suitable mate.
That conversation had preceded the end of the relationship by over a year. She hoped, for T’Volis’s sake, her grandmother had not been too smug.
“I understand your reservations,” she said. “I harbor some similar ones myself, though my concern about Barriss’s safety is primarily about the journey, not myself. Unfortunately, I do not know what reassurances I can offer.”
“I… do not know what else I can ask of you, Commander,” said Luminara, in tones that made it very clear that she felt this answer was insufficient to alarming. “Ultimately, the decision will be Barriss’s, not ours. But I do feel that perhaps she might recover better here in the Temple, rather than in a strange and dangerous galaxy.”
Chester inclined her head. “With all respect, Master Unduli, while my influence may be corrosive, I do not feel that even I can match the effects of a galaxy-wide war.”
She wasn’t sure if she’d misstepped or not; Luminara’s face gave no indication. “Indeed,” she said, and the dryness of her tone could have been either humor or dislike. “Thank you for your time, Commander.”
“Likewise, Master Unduli.” Chester paused, reading the worry evident in every line of the other woman’s body. “I cannot promise her safety, whether it concern my influence or the dangers we encounter, and I cannot promise that this is the right thing to do, or if it will be what heals her from what she’s suffered, much less give her happiness. But what is in my power to promise is that I’ll be there for her, and whatever dangers we encounter, I will be between them and her.”
“It is clear your intentions are good,” said Luminara. “I appreciate that.”
Chester managed a pained smile that, by Luminara’s stony expression, was not reassuring at all. “But intentions are not enough, I take it.”
Luminara nodded. “This must be Barriss’s decision, not mine, and if the time has come to let her take her own path, that is what I will do. Are you prepared to do likewise for her?”
“The circumstances when we arrive will leave me with little other choice,” said Chester. “A starship under the present circumstances in an unfamiliar galaxy will give her none of the relief she is looking for, and I do not wish to endanger her further than is necessary. The journey will be bad enough.”
“You are proposing taking her from circumstances and dangers she knows well, into unfamiliar circumstances and dangers she does not,” said Luminara. “For what reason, Commander? Your comments about the Republic, and about this galaxy, have been such that I do wonder whether your own nostalgia for your home has colored your perception of the situation more than it should.”
“It’s not inherently better, no,” said Chester. “Indeed, the current circumstances are very dangerous indeed, and I’ve told Barriss about them. I foresee that being an ongoing discussion; one cannot learn an entire galaxy’s worth of dangers from a single conversation, and she deserves to know what she is getting into. I suspect, however, the prospect of being a dedicated healer was what tipped the balance. If she stays here, she’ll end up a general, no matter what her feelings in the matter—at home, she can be a doctor, and a doctor only. It’s her decision. I don’t want to make it for her, either.”
“Will you be also encouraging her to abandon her own heritage?” said Luminara, fixing Chester with a hard look. “Your comments about the Jedi and the situation in which we find ourselves, not to mention your own actions, make it clear you have little respect for our traditions. Will Barriss feel free to be herself in your presence, then?”
“I am sorry I have left that impression,” said Chester. “Please understand that my frustration with the political situation does not extend to the Jedi Order itself. Master, I know I am a poor candidate indeed for the Order, even if Krell had never been involved in my experiences, but that does not mean I do not respect those who are. And I apologize for my lack of respect, and for my evident frustration. I have not been at my best.
“A cornerstone of my people’s values is the joy in our very differences— infinite diversity in infinite combination, as the Vulcans put it. We would certainly welcome Jedi and Mirialan traditions, although…” She paused, saddened at the thought. “Leaving a galaxy so far behind as Barriss might would be a hard thing indeed.”
Luminara looked unconvinced. Chester tried again. “Master Unduli, Barriss is terrified of herself. That’s a terrible thing for anyone to be, and it’s not going to get better in this war. There are a lot of people who can help with that, here and at home. I just want her to be able to choose who she asks for help from.”
Luminara was clearly not satisfied, but equally clearly aware there was little more that she could reasonably ask. Chester watched the internal struggle for a few moments. She could tell Luminara more about the Federation, but she wasn’t sure she’d find it convincing or reassuring. She’d seen enough of the Federation, it seemed, from Chester herself, and Chester could not blame her for prioritizing those experiences, that interpretation. Still, she tried. “There are as many different personalities in Starfleet, and as many different approaches, as there are Jedi,” she said. “They are not necessarily all like me. She will find a place there, whether or not it includes me.”
Luminara looked at her hard, then bowed her head. “There is little else I could ask you to say,” she said, but it was reluctant. “I will speak further with Barriss, though, as you have noted, it is her decision to make. Good evening, Commander Chester.”
“Good evening, Master Unduli,” said Chester, rose, bowed, and made for the door with no small sense of relief.
Chester was subdued when Plo saw her next. It was hardly a surprise. She found him at the door to her quarters, wordlessly invited him in, then sank down on the couch and put her head in her hands. Her presence hummed with pain and a low self-recrimination he had not felt from her before—as if she had been upset before discussing matters with Luminara, and the conversation had only reinforced it.
“It’s a very hard thing Barriss is proposing to do,” she said quietly. “Leaving all of you behind like this, let alone her people and planet, on purpose. We will be lucky to have her, if she comes to us, but…”
She raised her head from her hands, and gave him a resigned look. “It’s also not pleasant being reminded how my presence is seen in certain quarters. I did it to myself, I know, but…”
“There are as many opinions in this Temple as there are Jedi,” said Plo, sympathetic, “and very often more.”
Chester managed a small, crooked smile. “I’ve done nothing but sow chaos since I arrived—I think the difference in opinion is on how many different kinds of chaos I’ve made.”
There was a deep lonely chord in her presence, the longing for someone who might understand. Or, perhaps, for a sense of belonging.
This was what Yoda meant, Plo realized. Chester might not say yes, very probably could not say yes. But in the moment his silence meant she felt excluded and very alone, and that was pain he had failed to alleviate in his determination to protect her from his own feelings.
“Master Unduli’s opinion may be shared by some, but there are many others, including me, who would disagree.” He withdrew the small bead from his pocket, turning it over between his claws. “Fairly profoundly, in fact. Diane, allow me to preface this question with the statement I am absolutely certain you will say no. From what I understand of your sense of duty, you would be very unlikely to do anything else.”
He paused, unable to decide how to word it. Funny, that for all his experience and wisdom this might still be so hard. He held out the little bead to her, and at her puzzled expression, said, “It would be for a Padawan’s braid. You may have noticed that many have decorations—tokens of experiences, accomplishments, battles won within and without, often bestowed by their teachers and mentors. Were you to stay, I believe the Jedi Order would be better for your presence—and I would be most honored to serve as your mentor.”
Shock, first, unadulterated by her shields, and then a rush of painful gratitude and relief and some emotion neither of them could quite name, something on the edge of agony and joy and grief all at once.
He saw, then, another view of her actions—since the droids, since the incident with Skywalker, her feelings that her adherence to her home galaxy’s regulations had erected a barrier between her and the Jedi. She had turned to the determination to do with an outsider’s status what no Jedi could do, no matter the damage to her reputation, in the need to make some good come of the whole mess—and now, his gesture had offered a sudden balm. A welcome she’d been missing since she’d first come to this galaxy.
A lifting of the loneliness and regret that had preceded even that.
It was a long while before she spoke. “You’re right,” she said, “I can’t say yes, not if there’s a chance I can get back.”
“Then you should have this,” he said, disappointed even though he’d known this could go no other way, and she looked at it for a while and then shook her head, reaching out to close his fingers back over it.
“No,” she said. “I want you to keep it, in case you get the chance to ask again. There’s no guarantee I can get home.”
That was even more of an open door than he’d been expecting. He looked at his closed hand, a mirror of her emotions rising in his own throat, and nodded, and said the next thing he shouldn't have, which was, “It pains me to know what you’ll be returning to. I do not want to send you to your death, Diane.”
“I do not want to leave you here to yours,” she said, her voice very quiet. “You’re in no less danger here than I would be at home. Plo—could you come with me?”
She said it with the same lack of hope with which he’d asked her to be his apprentice, and he felt he should try, at least, to answer it as she had. “One day, perhaps, after the war. But I owe Wolffe and the men and all the others caught up in this war better.”
She let out a breath, sad and understanding. “I might know something about that kind of obligation.”
They sat there and looked at one another.
“Thank you,” she said again. She paused, and then as if she couldn’t stop herself, asked, “If I were to stay… it’s good to know I might make a place here. But Plo—wouldn’t the Council have something to say about a thirty-year-old Padawan?”
“They certainly would,” said Plo, knowing as he did so that this was a terrific understatement. “However, should the Order survive this war, we are overdue a reckoning in regards to the way we do things. There is a good reason behind our age restrictions. There were also good reasons behind our historical choice to ally so closely with the Republic government, and look at where that has left us—drafted into a war to play a role we were never prepared for, losing our values and spirits and lives in the process.”
She nodded, her lips twitching into a grim smile. “A reassessment, you mean?”
“Indeed. There is a conversation to be had regarding flexibility in such matters. If we are to… draw back from our role in service of the government, perhaps there will be less of a reason to enforce the age limit, and perhaps other forms of membership to the Order itself. I would hardly be the first Master to raise the question.”
She cocked a dubious eyebrow at him, her thoughts projecting clearly through her eyes if not her shields— just as well we are in no position to test that, there will be no sacrificing one’s calling for her sake. “Yes, I believe our starship captains have similar conversations with Command,” she said, with half a chuckle in her voice. “Plo, really—thank you.”
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it, and they lapsed into silence as he tucked the bead back into his robes.
Maybe, sometime in the future, he might have cause to ask again.
Chester slept late. There was no duty shift to get to, and she was glad of the extra rest after an emotionally exhausting day. So when her door chirped again, she staggered out with a bathrobe wrapped over her pajamas.
It was Plo again in the doorway, most unsurprised at her state of dress. “May I?” he said, gesturing into the room, and Chester stepped aside to usher him in.
He looked at her, evidently looking for something to say first, and then simply got to it. “Dex contacted me earlier this morning.” For all the calm of his posture, there was an edge—relief or concern?—to his voice. “He believes he has a lead on returning you to your people.”
Chester felt the breath go out of her like she’d been gutpunched, and reached on instinct for the table to stay on her feet. She swallowed hard, not sure what she was feeling–joy, anticipation, a strange and growing fear, opened her mouth and had to close it, swallowing hard again before she’d trust her voice. She hadn’t realized how thoroughly her hope of return had faded in the time she’d been here, how it had been replaced instead by a kind of desperation that had no expectation of relief at all. “How soon can I see him?” she asked at last.
If her voice was unsteady, Plo was kind enough not to mention it. “I am occupied with Council business until this afternoon,” he said, “but Knight Skywalker and Padawan Tano are available immediately.”
She searched his face, torn. Somehow, it seemed only right to go with him to do this, but the idea of sitting here, waiting to see whether she could hope, was intolerable.
“Go with them,” Plo said gently. “I would not keep you from this.”
She nodded, sharp. Her eyes felt full. “Thank you,” she managed, not sure what she was thanking him for. “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
Once the door closed, she sank down against the door and raised a hand to her eyes—yes, those were tears. Her emotions were still a confused tumult, too many things at once. She sniffed once, dragged the sleeve of her nightshirt across her face, and sat there for a moment waiting for the surge to abate.
“It could come to nothing,” she said softly, and then went to get dressed.