ℝ𝔼ℂ𝕂𝕃𝔼𝕊𝕊 ➵ o. kenobi {my only hope; book 2}

【 SEVENTEEN 】

     ᴏʙɪ-ᴡᴀɴ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴍɪꜱᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴅᴀʀᴋ ʙᴇꜰᴏʀᴇ ɪ ʟᴇꜰᴛ, but if I was being honest, that was an empty promise.

After I'd filled him in on the conversation I'd had with my mother, he'd been surprised, but to my shock, hadn't treated me any differently. He helped me to my feet, and gave me hug, like the day he had when I'd told him the truth about that day in Mos Espa. He told me I wasn't anything more than I made myself. Just because my mother was a mind witch, he said, that didn't mean I was one. He told me I wasn't a dark person. I wasn't even Emeré Naberrie. To him, I was just Em.

We parted ways as soon as we broke out of the Kamino system. While Obi-Wan was going to track down Jango Fett, using a tracker he'd placed on the ship before it had taken off, I was heading back to Coruscant--not just to avoid Jango Fett and my urges toward darkness, but to confront Kera. As much as I was trying not to listen to the words of my mother, I knew deep within me that she was right--about Kera, at least. She had lied. Again. As I thought back on our conversation about my strange ability, something stuck out to me, something I hadn't noticed then. I'd asked her, back then, if there was something else she'd been hiding. I hadn't really thought there was a part of the story she hadn't mentioned--I'd meant it more as a last minute retort--but when she'd answered, she hesitated. Kera never hesitated. She was always level-headed, always had an answer ready. Unless she was lying. She never hesitated, but she did that day.

She knew. She knew this whole time.

I still had yet to call her, like Master Windu had instructed. Whatever she had to tell me, she could tell me to my face.

I'd thought that the ride to Kamino was long; the ride back was excruciating. All I could do was sit there as I piloted simply back to Coruscant, marinating in all of the new information that had been dumped on me. My mother's voice had disappeared from my mind, but I could tell her presence wasn't gone. I could still feel it deep within me... buried, as it had been this whole time.

A mind witch. That was insane. As Jedi, we rarely ever heard of them, but sometimes, on Coruscant, we'd hear crazy stories of people confronting one. They were extremely powerful, and extremely wicked, using their way with the Force to project sensory illusions onto an individual, and using that link to then drain the energy out of the individual to use for themselves. They had extremely long life spans for that very reason.

But my mother... it seemed impossible. She may have been absent, yes, but I'd never, in my six years knowing her before I left, witnessed anything that would have made me believe she was proficient in the Force, much less a mind witch. She'd never struck me as an old soul, or any older than she appeared to be. She'd never struck me as someone so evil. My father couldn't have known, either. He never would have married her otherwise.

It didn't make sense. Yet so much did. Like Padmé's connection to the Force, like my unique power that came so naturally to me, but seemed so strange and abnormal to others. So many things that I hadn't been able to explain before suddenly made sense, impossible as it seemed, impossible as it was to believe.

My head was spinning by the time I arrived on Coruscant. I guided my way down through the familiar airspace, landing my ship in the hangar from which I'd gotten it, and hopped out, immediately making a beeline for Kera's room in the Temple. I tried to stay out of the way of major hallways, to avoid talking to others as much as I could. However, that failed spectacularly when I nearly ran into Master Windu in one of the side hallways, who looked like he'd been coming from Kera's room himself.

"Naberrie?" He asked, confused, squinting, as if he wasn't seeing correctly. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be on Kamino, tracking down that bounty hunter as we discussed?"