Chapter Text
“We need to talk,” Shmi says, staring out at the Coruscant skyline. There’s a wonderful view from the healers’ floor, and Qui-Gon’s room is dark inside, allowing him rest.
(“I don’t need rest,” he’d argued. “I’ve apparently been asleep for months–”
“In a coma is not the same as asleep, Master Jinn, you need actual rest–”
The argument had ended when Qui-Gon had drifted off in the middle of a sentence.)
Yoda glances around the room – at Qui-Gon, asleep in his bed, breathing slow but steady, in a true sleep rather than a coma. Obi-Wan, passed out on a chair next to his bed. Ani, curled up and snoring gently, leaning on Dooku’s shoulder, the Jedi Master just as asleep as Shmi’s son.
“Quietly,” he says. “Rest, they all need. Rest, you need.”
“You need rest, too,” Shmi says. “We all do. But this discussion needs to happen.”
Yoda sighs. “True, that is,” he says. “Very well.” He settles himself cross-legged in one of the chairs, Shmi sitting across from him.
“Calm, we must be, as Jedi,” Yoda says. “Distract us, emotions will; endanger us. Endanger others, as well. Set us on the path to the dark side, they will, left unchecked.”
“But emotions don’t preclude calm,” Shmi counters. “I can feel my joy and remain calm and collected; I can feel my anger and remain calm and collected. Or I can be perfectly emotionless and still be out of control. In my time, I’ve seen lack of care cause more pain than caring ever has.”
Yoda’s ears droop a bit. “True, it is, that indifference may lead to pain,” he says. “And sorry, I am, that so much pain, you have seen. But lead to the dark side, does anger unchecked; lead to hate, it does. And much suffering, the spread of hate causes.”
Shmi nods.
Yoda looks surprised, as if he hadn’t expected her to agree.
“The problem here,” Shmi says, “Is that we mean different things by unchecked. You see all anger as uncontrollable. But if anger can be controlled, not dispelled but acknowledged and addressed, then it can be resolved peacefully. Not all anger is evil. I felt angry when Watto beat Ani or me, and when Qui-Gon bet his entire mission on my son’s life. But was that anger unjustified?”
Yoda takes a long time to answer. One minute, then two–
“Completely justified,” Qui-Gon murmurs from his bed.
“Asleep, you should be,” Yoda snaps.
“And you’re a little angry now,” Qui-Gon mumbles on, “Both at the Sith and at me, and a bit at yourself – you shouldn’t be angry at yourself, he tricked us all.”
“Insufferable, my line is,” Yoda snaps. “Uncontrollable, stubborn–”
“Insults are a good method to help express anger healthily,” Shmi says helpfully. “Identifying the source of your anger helps you address what’s causing it – you’re fixing the problem, not the symptoms.”
Yoda stares at the two of them for a long moment, then sighs. “Angry, I am,” he agrees. “Deny evidence, I will not. Adress the root, hmmm?” He closes his eyes, and his breaths even out into meditation-style. “Feel that helped you more, I should have,” he says. “A trick, I know it was; fell for it, I did. Fall for it again, I may. Change that, I cannot.”
“We can find the Sith,” Shmi says. “We can stop him, make sure that he’ll hurt nobody in the future.”
“Hmmm.” Yoda nods slowly. “An invisible thorn, this anger has been in me; now that see it, I can, address it, I can.” He opens his eyes; in the dark of the room, they reflect the hundreds of tiny lights of Coruscant. “See what you are saying, I believe I do.” He shakes his head. “Flawed, our teachings are not; but twisted, hmm.”
Shmi feels chill-bumps raise on the back of her neck. “The senate has some measure of control over the Jedi Order,” she says slowly.
“They have ever since the Ruusan Reformation,” Qui-Gon says tiredly, ignoring Yoda’s and Shmi’s quiet requests that he go back to sleep. “Ever since the Sith were thought to be destroyed.”
But they weren’t destroyed, Shmi thinks, letting Yoda hear the thought. They went into hiding. There’s one in the senate – but how long have they been pulling the strings?
Limited, Darth Zannah’s information is, Yoda lets her know. Darth Bane’s apprentice, she was; the last of the known Sith, he was. Passed, a thousand years have, and changed, the galaxy is, from what she knows.
It’ll take years to piece together the Sith’s influence, Shmi thinks. Let alone start undoing it.
Years, it may take, Yoda says. But first… “Acknowledge my emotions, I will,” he says. “If help the Jedi Order, help me, it will. Yet the only one, I will not be.” He glares across the room at Qui-Gon. “A duty, you have been neglecting.”
“I’ve been neglecting many duties, it seems,” Qui-Gon agrees. “I’ve… I didn’t even realize how careless I was being, how…” He takes a deep breath. “I won’t be able to truly stand for another month, maybe more. Do you think he would wait–”
“Waited long enough, he has,” Yoda says, but sighs. “A little longer, I doubt he would mind waiting. But his decision, that is.”
Qui-Gon closes his eyes. “I’ll be able to stand in two weeks, then,” he says.
“No, you won’t,” Shmi says, amused. “And if you hurt yourself trying to stand too soon, it’ll only take even longer. Have some patience, Master Jedi.”
“Patience,” Qui-Gon says. “Fine. I suppose I can try.”
Obi-Wan’s knighting ceremony takes place three days before Anakin’s birthday, two months after Qui-Gon has woken up and a month into his physical therapy for atrophied muscles and damaged nerves.
Shmi watches from a distance, beside Siri, Bant, Quinlan, and Obi-Wan’s other friends. Anakin stands closer than he should strictly be standing, hopping impatiently from foot to foot until Shmi puts a hand on his shoulder.
Qui-Gon, still shaky on his feet, cuts Obi-Wan’s braid, then embraces him; Shmi doesn’t know what he’s saying, but whatever it is, it brings tears to Obi-Wan’s eyes.
“Welcome, newest Knight of our Order,” Mace Windu says, and as one, the council bows to Obi-Wan.
Later, at the party, Shmi goes in search of Obi-Wan and finds him and Qui-Gon in a quieter part of the gardens.
“–Always been proud of you,” Qui-Gon is saying. “And if I didn’t say that, if I didn’t show it, Padawan, it was never your fault, but mine, and I am so sorry–”
Shmi decides that there are other people she can be talking to right now.
The gardens are bright, lit with dozens of small lights on strings – Siri had called them star-lights, and Quinlan had called them fairy-lights, and they’d nearly gotten into a friendly fistfight over the issue before Bant had come up and declared them fish-lights.
“Why fish-lights?” Quinlan had asked, so confused that he’d forgotten to put his fists down.
“Well,” Bant had said. “When you’re swimming deep in the oceans, sometimes the only thing you can see are these little strings of lights, trailing along, one after the other.”
“Schools of fish,” Siri had realized.
Bant had just snorted. “No. A big fish. When you see fish-lights, you know that you should run.”
However amazing water is, Shmi never would want to be on an entire planet of it, because fish sound terrifying.
Now, of course, Siri and Quinlan have roped a small group (a group including Adi and some other councilors, no less) into some sort of drinking game, one which Mace Windu appears to be winning.
“We should get Obi-Wan,” Siri says. “He can drink everyone else under the table–”
Shmi moves on before someone tries to get her to try drinking someone under a table.
It’s a small celebration, but definitely an exuberant one. Celebrating Qui-Gon’s awakening, Obi-Wan’s knighting, and Anakin’s birthday (a little early, but who cares, when there’s cake?)
Ani himself is sitting by a small group of his friends, mechanical parts scattered all around them.
“So it’s like sand,” he’s explaining as Shmi walks close enough to eavesdrop. “You let it sink to the bottom of the glass, so that the water can be disturbed but the sand stays steady.”
“Why don’t they ever just say that?” One of his friends demands.
Ani shrugs. “My mom says that they’re being silly, but also probably ‘cause it’s how they were taught.”
“And the feelings thing,” another of his friends says. “That’s… that’s really okay?”
“Uh-huh!” Ani grins. “’Cause my mom’s Master Yoda’s padawan, and she says it’s true and it makes sense, too, right?”
Yoda is going to kill her for corrupting the younglings.
Or maybe he’s going to help her, based on what she hears as she wanders around to yet another secluded glade in the garden.
“A thousand years of tradition, overwritten because of one woman?”
“A thousand years of tradition,” Yoda says tiredly, “Because right, it feels. Because admit our faults, we can; because sing, the Force does, that correct, this is. Not for everyone, no,” Yoda sighs, “Your path, this may not be. But padawan of mine–”
“If we’ve been wrong this whole time,” Dooku interrupts, “If our teachings have brought harm to the galaxy–”
“Impulsive, you still are,” Yoda snaps. “Impatientce, hmph. Helped the galaxy, we have. Help differently, we may; help more, we may. Invalidate the help that has been given, this does not.”
“What are you going to tell the rest of the council?” Dooku shoots back. “The rest of the Order?”
“Thinking too far ahead, you are,” Yoda says. “My padawan, have patience. Have faith. Cross this storm, we will, and come out the stronger for it.”
“Forgive me if it doesn’t sound like that,” Dooku says bitterly, then Shmi hears him stalking off towards the exit.
Shmi wants to intervene, but Dooku is already gone, and Yoda… she peers into the clearing. Yoda appears to have climbed a tree to be alone.
She doesn’t exactly want to tell him that his reassurances had been bad reassurances, but… Dooku was looking for words of comfort, and that wasn’t what Yoda had been giving him.
It was a little sad when two accomplished Jedi Masters were worse at talking to each other than a group full of nine-year-olds.
Maybe she should make the nine-year-olds their teachers, and watch how it turns out!
… The sad thing is that that’s probably not a horrible idea.
“Mom?”
Shmi turns to see Ani, looking unusually solemn for what should be a happy occasion.
“What is it?” she asks. “Is everything–”
“Everything’s fine,” he says, then sniffles a bit.
“Is it?” She says, and sits down on a bench, gesturing for Ani to sit next to her.
“When…” Ani takes a deep breath. “When Obi-Wan becomes my master, you’ll still be my mom, right?”
“Oh, Ani,” she says, and hugs him. “Of course I will.”
Her son’s emotions are twisting and conflicted – joy for Obi-Wan, fear for Shmi, his worry that he’ll have to choose one over the other.
“Yoda choosing me didn’t make you stop being my son,” she says. “And Obi-Wan choosing you won’t stop me from always being your mother. You understand?”
He nods against her chest, still holding her tightly.
“It’s not a replacement, or a swap,” she continues. “It’s an addition. They become family too, not instead of. And if anyone tells you otherwise… you just direct them to me, and I’ll set them straight.”
Ani giggles a bit, pulling back from the hug. “Okay,” he says, and wipes a tear-track off his face. “Okay. I can do this.”
“You can do this,” Shmi agrees, pulling him forward and kissing his forehead. “And so that you don’t forget…” She pulls Ani’s gift out of her pocket; no reason not to give it a little early.
His eyes widen as he holds the carefully-carved japoor snippet in his hands. It’s traditional to give one before a separation, before time spent apart – or as a physical reminder, a physical bond.
“Where did you get this?” he whispers. “Did… did you go back?”
Shmi laughs a bit and shakes her head. “You’d be surprised by what you can find in the lower levels. Ani, when you wear this, remember that no matter what, I will always be your mother, and I will always love you, even when the suns burn out and beyond, into the blackness of the night. Remember that, and be strong, and be kind.”
“And come to you if the other Jedi start acting too weird?” Ani grins at her.
“Of course,” Shmi says, and grins back. “Now, go out there. Be a Jedi, Ani.”
“I will, Mom,” he says. “I’ll be a Jedi like you are, and it’s gonna be great!”