If Hate Leads to Suffering... | Obi Wan Kenobi

Act II. v

The Republic archives were dark and damp and looked to be abandoned. Xaela wondered how anyone could treat knowledge like this.

She tried to coax the Senator out, worried that the pregnant woman might catch a cold, but if she thought she could win the argument, she didn't know Padme Amidala. So they ended up browsing together.

"Only on Darth Plagueis?" Padme asked from a few rows over.

"That or Force healing." Xaela replied.

"This is for me, isn't it?" She said and Xaela didn't say anything right away.

"This is for you as much as it is for Anakin." She finally spoke when the Senator appeared by her side, waiting for an answer.

Padme handed a couple datacrons she found and Xaela looked them over before starting a pile of potentially helpful material. It didn't grow over the next while as much as she hoped, but Xaela was looking for anything she could get.

"Don't the Jedi in the Medical Corps have a better understanding of this?" Padme passed by her on her way to place a datacron on the pile.

Xaela spoke as she walked by her again.

"They will be there anyway when you give birth." She said. "This is extra precautions."

Then Xaela stopped for a second to think.

"You don't seem tense." She said.

"I don't see why I would be." Padme was on the other side of the shelf.

"Well talking about someone's death usually puts them on edge."

"I'm not afraid to die." She said.

"No," Xaela agreed, "but Anakin is."

And the two searched in silence. Time couldn't be kept in the room, no light shone through and no one but the two of them were in there. Xaela spent so much time in libraries she wondered if she would always find herself in one no matter where she went.

Eventually, Padme called Xaela over to where she was. It took a minute to find her in the maze, but she made it and Padme was holding an old, worn out, piece of flat stone the same width as a datacron. The inscriptions carved into it were rushed and Xaela immediately knew someone was in a hurry to translate this into Galactic Basic because it was the story of Darth Plagueis the Wise.

"Perfect." She whispered and the two of them, not bothering to look for a table, sat on the floor to read.

The Sith hide their power, for the secrecy provided brings comfort to those that do not wish to have their training exposed. This we call the Dark Side.

Since the Eradication of the Sith millennia ago, Darth Bane instilled the Rule of Two: only one Master and one Apprentice shall represent the Sith. And so, Bogan was practised two at a time until the rise of Darth Plagueis the Wise.

So powerful was he, in his search for immortality, that he could manipulate midicholrians to create life and prevent death.

His wisdom, past down to his power hungry apprentice, was the cause of his undoing. For in his sleep, his apprentice killed him, having nothing more to learn from his master.

Said to be a Dark Side temptation, this skill will seduce those that wish for more and more power. Like the apprentice, who lives in fear of the lose of his control and authority.

Fear not the lose of something, but impassion the creation of the new and you will not fall like Darth Sidious.

Xaela turned over the tablet in her hands, not believing what she just read.

"Darth Sidious?" Padme asked, looking over Xaela's shoulder.

"I guess so." She whispered, finger trailing over the last lines of the inscription. "Fear not the lose of something, but impassion the creation of the new."

"So what now?" Padme took the tablet from the thinking Jedi and stood up.

"I'm not sure." Xaela said and looked up at her friend. Padme thought for a second before trying to comfort the Knight.

"Well if anyone could figure it out, it's Xaela the Wise and Anakin the Hotshot." She said and Xaela couldn't help but crack a smile.

"I think you're right." She said and finally got off the floor. "With two people, maybe we could balance out each other."

Padme nodded.

"Let's read the stack of datacrons we have, because I would like to get home to eat." She said.

"Of course, Senator."