Work Text:
Coruscant was always in motion, she thought absentmindedly. It was like the planet never took a break, never slept, and never stopped. You had to keep up with its rhythm, or it would pass over you like you were nothing, just something to be stepped upon and left to be forgotten in the deep, dark alleyways that tangled like a maze in its underbelly. It was, in essence, the complete opposite of Vutulara and its peaceful, green landscapes. She couldn’t say she had missed it.
Koda sighed, clearing her throat and trying to get rid of the cloying, greasy taste of the polluted air. It was futile of course, even if the Jedi temple was gifted with a prodigious position along the planet, its high spires rising in the sky yet unable to reach the clear, breathable air above. Maybe nothing was really breathable anymore. Or maybe it was Koda the one that was unaccustomed, as everyone else seemed to not notice it.
It had been decades since she had last stepped foot on the Jedi Temple of Coruscant, having been sent on a long-term mission on a planet in the outer rim with the task of learning their mysterious ways of Force healing and helping her with her own gift. Vutulara was hidden from the plain eye, its location not even in the Jedi Archives for its own protection, and Koda felt like she missed it more than ever. How could it be that the Jedi Temple, the place she had once considered her home, felt now so oppressive and asphyxiating? Koda observed the mighty pillars and her multiple fellow Jedi, people she had thought she missed dearly but that now didn’t generate any kind of genuine affection or emotion. Maybe it was the years, after all, thirty years for a human was a long time, although for an alien of her race, it wasn’t all that long.
She descended from the platform of her spaceship, noticing Mace Windu waiting for her in the hangar. She smiled, thinking how time had affected her long friend. Who once was her fellow padawan, a young handsome human man with a striking smile and a gift for lightsaber combat; who was now a high Council member with years of experience reflecting in his face as deep wrinkles. Koda took her gloves from her pocket, covering the sensitive pads of her right fingers first while laughing gladly at the smile Mace returned to her, his excitement and elation at seeing her again after so long vibrating in the force.
In her haste, she stumbled over an errant mouse droid and tumbled forward. Everything happened in the span of a few seconds- a nearby Jedi instinctively reached out for her, taking her left uncovered hand and helping her regain her balance. She spasmed, gasping as the sensitive pads of her fingers linked her to the knight that had caught her.
Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
She saw it , even if it was for a brief second. It clung to the psyche of the knight, huddled up in a far corner, its sickening sticky tendrils curling around the fragile threads of the young Jedi’s mind. But the second the man released her, mumbling a cautionary commentary on her clumsiness before continuing his way, it was gone. The broken connection left her only with the usual dizziness of being so closely connected to another Force Sensitive mind, and the dreadful feeling that something was wrong.
“...da? Koda?” Mace’s voice suddenly became clear, and she refocused her gaze on her old friend, who looked at her worried. He carefully took her left wrist, concentrating on not touching the pads of her fingers, and once again asked her if she was alright.
She looked at his face, his deep frown that had only become more pronounced with the years. Koda took her hand and quickly covered it with her other glove, protecting the connective pads of her fingers with the soft, force-canceling fabric.
“I’m alright, old friend” she smiled, composing herself. Mace turned and guided her towards the temple.
The Jedi temple was timeless, she thought, as she walked down its huge hallways. It could have been the morning that she had last walked through them, instead of almost thirty years later. Yet there was something off, a difference hard to pinpoint or discern between the multiple thrumming presences in the living force. Koda couldn’t quite listen to Mace, too focused on looking around trying to find it.
It felt dark. Consumingly and worryingly dark. Like an asphyxiating blanket covering everything, suffocating in such a slow way that the people below it couldn’t notice they were out of breath until the very last minute. It was right there- everywhere, but nowhere at once. She took a deep breath, regretting it immediately. Even though the Jedi temple put an effort into cleansing the circulating air and lighting different kinds of incense, the pollution from Coruscant was still noticeable.
“This will be your quarters for the night, Knight Zuulke. Tomorrow the council will hear your progress and your report on your years out on Vutulara, we are excited to hear about your results” Koda bowed, smiling one more time before entering through the sliding door and into the small, austere bedroom. Its only window looked above the lower buildings of Coruscant and right into a traffic line of speeders. She sighed, touching the button pad in the side panel to close the blinds.
Koda unpacked the few belongings she had taken with her back to Coruscant, her lightsaber, and an extra set of robes. She wondered if the council would let her go back, or if she would be tied back to Coruscant along with her Jedi brothers and sisters. The decision they would make would probably be the wisest, yet she couldn’t help but feel that if they desired for her to come back to her home temple, she would never be able to fit in again among her fellow Jedi knights.
Sitting down in a lotus position, she took off her gloves and closed her eyes, trying to even her breath and release the tension plaguing her body. She had always loved to meditate, to break off partly from her material body and let her soul and mind lift and connect to the core of the living force. She relaxed the tense muscles of her back, her shoulders hunching down along her exhales as she slowly disconnected herself from the physical reality, letting herself fall into the deep trance of the force. It was like descending into a pool, the water slowly taking over her senses and muffling down the constant noise of the outside world, but at the same time, allowing her to feel the enhanced vibrations and movements of the flowing liquid surrounding her.
She didn’t know how much time had passed, but suddenly she began to feel... Off. What usually brought her joy, the light of the force embracing her and flowing through every cell of her body, began to turn sticky and slimy. Her breath quickened as she frowned, feeling as if her lungs were being pressed down by a rock.
Darkness. She gasped, coughing loudly as she retched off to the side, feeling like slime was slithering down her throat although there was nothing there. There was a deep, asphyxiating darkness. Not only in the temple but everywhere .
Koda thought of the knight that had caught her in the hangar, preventing her from falling forward and letting her look into the fragile threads of his psyche while doing so. It must have been the darkness that threaded inside their mind, tangling and braiding itself. There was something wrong, deeply wrong going around.
She took her cape and slung it around her shoulders, breathing heavily. The small room felt claustrophobic, she needed air, she needed to breathe . But she also needed to know what was generating this darkness that her peers seemed not to notice.
Koda glanced one last time towards her gloves, closing her eyes and searching for strength and guidance in the Force to do what she must. It was her gift, her duty. There was a reason why she had gone to Vutulara, and maybe there was also a reason why she had come back to Coruscant at that exact moment.
‘Force, guide me’ she thought, leaving the room.
She walked down the hallways at a hasty pace, quickly following the flow of Knights and Padawans of various ages heading to the dining hall. She looked around, on edge, trying to discern and pinpoint where or what was tainted with darkness, what was generating it. Could this dark entity notice that she was untainted, aware of its presence? Could she help the Jedi before it was too late?
Turning around the corner, she once more lost her breath at the sight of another of her old friends. The pungent urgency and uneasy feeling of unfamiliarity slipped into the background of her mind, and she suddenly felt the need to run away, or maybe run forward to meet her, or maybe both . The Twi’lek had her long lekku decorated with a variety of jewels, her Jedi robes as pristine and beautiful as always. Jengiri had not changed that much, at least not in the force, Koda thought. Her presence was still bright, shining with purity and calmness.
“Giri?” She said, out of breath.
Jengiri turned around, her bright yellow eyes open wildly like she had heard a ghost. Her face had matured, now a clear adult woman with no traces of the young teenage girl she had seen the last time. Smile lines and crow's feet graced her face but she remained beautiful. Koda laughed, happiness buoying her body and making her feel warm as she ran to embrace the Twi’lek. Their bodies clashed in the middle of the hallway.
“It’s been so long, my friend” Her voice was soothing, just like she remembered it. The fond memories of sneaking off to the far corner of the temple garden, away from their masters and their duties, made her feel giddy and nostalgic. Jengiri had been the guiding beacon and the calming balm she needed when her Force gift was just manifesting, the light of her signature and psyche being the only place she could find peace when everyone else was just too loud, too much to take in.
Koda couldn’t contain her laugh, and neither could Giri. It was like time hadn’t passed at all, the implicit and silent communication that always seemed to happen whenever they were together was still there, intact, and before Koda knew it she was sliding her hand slowly through Jengiri’s sleeve in search of her touch, of her fingers.
The touch brought a shock of warmth and pleasure, the well-known giddiness of holding her friend’s hand that had been partially forgotten as a fond old teenage memory.
Yet Koda gasped because when the pads of her fingers touched Jengiri, connecting her to her psyche and the nethers of her force signature, she also saw it again. The Darkness .
She separated from Giri like she had been burnt, breathing heavily in a desperate search for air. It was like reality had come crashing down on her again like a bucket of ice-cold water, making her remember just what had happened a few minutes ago in her room. The Darkness surrounding the temple was so imperceptible, so well hidden that even Koda had managed to forget about it when she got distracted by the light of her friend. But touching her- feeling her psyche and caressing the tendrils of her thoughts, she saw it again. Jengiri was tainted with the same darkness that she had seen in the Knight a few hours ago.
“Koda?” Her friend called her name, worried. Koda looked at her, noticing how she was essentially the same, with the same signature, and the same kind, yellow eyes.
“Come with me” She quickly took her sleeve, pointedly not touching her skin as she dragged her away to a more private corner. “Giri, I need to touch you. I need to see something”
She watched as Jengiri slowly blushed, opening and closing her mouth without knowing what to say. Koda took a deep breath, trying to calm down her erratic heart as she slowly slid her hands from the fabric of the robes to Jengiri’s dark skin, connecting their fingers. She gasped at the familiar feeling of falling into the half trance of Force mind reading, diving into Giri’s psyche, looking at the frail, fragile threads of her beautiful conscience where the memories, feelings, and thoughts shone like golden threads of light.
It was a very unique ability, manifested when she was a teenager, to be able to feel and see so vividly the minds and thoughts of fellow living beings just by a touch of her fingertips. It was both a gift and a curse, hard to master and control and not let take over her own mind, that’s why she had traveled and trained herself on a remote planet of the outer rim. Because the few beings born with this ability were also gifted with the opportunity to heal others' minds.
Koda swallowed, concentrating on carefully navigating the fragile threads of the mind of her friend. It was difficult and dangerous. One wrong movement- the wrong pull of the force, the careless slip of an unthinking motion; could permanently alter the psyche of a living being forever. Take away a memory, or a personality trait, or even render them useless.
The Force guided her, whispering and bathing everything in light as she felt and explored. And it was the Force itself the one that shifted and curled towards where the darkness had taken place in Jengiri’s mind, where the dark tendrils curled and tensed one of the threads of her psyche in an unnatural motion. Koda knew this, she had seen it- but it was impossible.
She felt her breath quicken, observing what was undeniably a Force suggestion.
The Force resonated in it in a particular way that she had never seen it do, curling around it but bouncing back, attracted but repelled by it. A Force suggestion should be impossible in a strong-willed mind, less the one of another Force-sensitive, but there it was. Threading itself, pulling Jengiri’s will and mind as it grasped around one of her threads of consciousness with its slimy, dark presence. Koda concentrated, extending her will and slowly working around it.
Touching it was like a shock, and although physically it wasn't something tangible, it was as if the darkness was clinging to her, making her want to retch and pull away from such a horrible feeling. The Force signature of the user who had done this was strong, unbelievably strong, singing and vibrating in the living Force in a way that she had never seen, not even in the more powerful Force sensitives like Master Yoda. It was unsettling, deeply uncanny, and gut-wrenching. Such a magnitude of power, of will and manipulation… Enough to make another Jedi bend to their will. This wasn’t just a human, a creature- this was a monster. It had to be.
She concentrated on trying to undo it, working around it, and figuring out how to untangle the Force suggestion that had been pushed upon her. It looked old, very old, but strongly attached to her consciousness, made to stay in there. Koda navigated her mind, finding Jengiri’s memories of working as the main dining hall planner, investigating and searching for the best kind of nutritious food to give the younglings. Koda frowned, confused and on edge. What was this about?
Koda breathed heavily, feeling the exhaustion of using her gift slowly catching up on her. She looked at the force suggestion, and with one last pull, she finally undid it. Jengiri’s psyche let go of it, releasing the tension and snapping her will in place again. Koda retracted from the Force, gasping for air as she felt cold sweat go down her back from the exertion. Jengiri just looked a little bit confused, frowning and looking around, like she suddenly remembered something that had been forgotten.
“That’s weird… “ Giri mumbled, licking her lips. “Why did I stop putting Quatin berries in the meals for the young Padawans?”
Koda breathed heavily, the sound of multiple footsteps falling into the background as she tried to take in what Jengiri had said. Quatin berries ? What was that? What was the Force suggestion about?
“Why am I remembering this now, what did you do, Koda?” Jen laughed, moving her head from side to side as she pulled away, motioning to go to the dining hall “It’s been years since I helped in the kitchens, I guess it doesn’t matter now. Quatin berries taste awful anyway, although they have so many good nutrients”
Koda couldn’t hear anything, white noise filling her ears and taking over all her senses. She felt the exhaustion from healing Jengiri, the nauseous need to puke due to the effort of taking away the Force suggestion in her mind. Quatin berries , she thought. A Force suggestion to keep Jengiri from putting Quatin berries in the food .
Jengiri called her name as Koda began to step back, her gaze fixed in the background, nausea twisting in her gut as she thought about what just had happened. Quatin berries. Had the author of the Force suggestion planned to make the Padawans starve, or to make them malnourished? It didn’t make any sense, to just force the berries out. And Koda thought, terrified, how childish the nature of the Force suggestion had been. Childish, because in essence, it looked like what a child would desire to push in an adult.
A child, she thought, breathing heavily. A child had managed to pull such a strong, unyielding Force suggestion on an adult Jedi.
The hallways were a blur around her, Jengiri’s voice had disappeared from the background a while ago, probably lost between the crowd and the maze-like disposition of the Jedi Temple. Koda felt the cold, dreadful feeling climb up her spine, freezing her legs and making her stomach twist with nauseous knots. It was a feeling she hadn’t had in a long while, a feeling that every Jedi was trained and encouraged to let go of, to manage in order to keep their mind clear and assess the situation in the best way possible, to keep themselves in the path of the light and not falter to the sticky temptations of the Dark Side.
But she felt it, vibrant, true, overwhelming. The Fear .
Fear of what she had just witnessed, Fear of the darkness that had surrounded the temple in such a slow, painful, and insidious way. But mostly, terrified of the being that had been able to do such a thing as a child .
Koda bumped against another Jedi, earning herself a sideways look. Before the knight could chastise her or complain, she lunged forward and took the Zabrak’s hand, the familiar feeling of Force connection taking over her body and letting her look inside their psyche. She gasped when there was, once again, one of the sticky, unnatural force suggestions tugging at the Knight’s consciousness. She reached to touch it carelessly, the Knight protesting and trying to break their connection now that he was aware of Koda’s presence inside their mind, and touched it. It was fresher, more recent, just a few years old. But the scars of the presence were there, the echoes of the suggestion.
<You will turn back and ignore what you saw here>
She erratically ran through the hallways, reaching for her fellow Jedi’s hands and sensing their minds. Some people had deeper, twisted thoughts embedded. Other ones were just a simple innocuous order. But everyone . Everyone had been subjected to this horrible being’s will, their minds twisted and laced with suggestions, contorting their wills and memories. She didn’t have time to cure them as she had done with Jengiri- She didn’t have time for anything, she needed to go to the council, she needed to warn them .
Whomever she touched, she could see in their minds the scars of that presence, the tugs and knots of force suggestions laced with their wills, the unnatural pulls that were horrifying by their mere existence. She could graze them with her fingers, feeling the echoes of the intentions and the suggestions.
<Forget what you saw> <Search for Master Vokara and distract her> <Leave the door that leads to the lower levels unlocked> <Buy this set of clothes for me> <Never talk to him again> <Hand me your lightsaber>
Each suggestion was more confusing than the other, some were older, and some were more recent. The nature of the suggestions seemed to be no other than personal desires that evolved and got more complex, more selfish, and more concerning. Koda tried to keep her mind sharp as she walked quickly down the hallways, heading for the elevators that would take her to the Council spire, where she could ask for help. She couldn’t help but look around, the asphyxiating feeling of darkness clouding her senses and making her feel on edge. But there was something more , something lurking in the corners. A presence in the Force- Bright, blinding, and that somehow felt warm, but deeply uncanny and out of place. She felt her legs lose strength the more that presence grew, announcing its closeness. It was a primal reaction, something merely instinctual, the need to just freeze there or maybe run away .
“Are you alright?” She jolted, gasping and turning around. Koda hadn’t noticed that she had stopped walking, standing there in the hallway trembling like a youngling. The man in front of her looked concerned, his gentle blue eyes, analyzing her face quickly. This man… She knew him, didn’t she? There was something, something familiar. Something in this human’s signature, bright and pure in the force, seemed to whisper to her in a comforting manner.
“I’m-” she looked down, holding her head. She tried to breathe deeply, but whenever she did so the pungent, polluted smell of Coruscant’s air assaulted her senses. She tried to think about Vutulara, about its beautiful landscapes, about Jengiri and her comforting presence and mind, about her favorite kind of sweets that she indulged in whenever the stress and the pressure of the expectations weighed down too much on her.
But no matter what she did, the darkness was like ice-freezing gust of wind, causing chills down her spine no matter her recalled comforts. Like a door left ajar, sucking out warmth and slowly making everything go cold.
“I’m sorry to intrude, but you do not look well” the man spoke in front of her. She once again looked at him, unable to ignore the feeling that she had seen him somewhere. Ginger hair wasn’t a very rare trait to have in humans, but it wasn’t that common either. It was neatly styled, accompanied by a very tidy beard that framed his face. His clear blue eyes had a gentle shine and little crowfeet that, combined with a few gray hairs in his temple, betrayed his age.
“I need help” she breathed out, trying to compose herself. “The council- I need to speak to them. There’s something that they must know”
“Well consider yourself lucky, I’m part of the council” The Jedi in front of her smiled, bowing in front of her to present himself “I’m Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, at your service”
“Master” she panted, feeling the Force curl around her with a comforting, bright signature. Obi-Wan took a step closer, and in her shock, she wasn’t able to prevent him from taking her hand between his. The pads of her fingers grazed the warm, calloused hands of the Jedi, and the shocks of entering another Force-sensitive being’s mind wrecked through her once again.
She was ready to see some corruption in the man’s mind like she had seen in everyone else. She expected, for some reason, a warm and embracing feeling like the one of Jengiri’s psyche. But she felt the acrid need to puke when she saw .
Obi-Wan’s mind was filled with suggestions, to the point she almost couldn’t discern what was his will and what was someone else tugging his mind, lacing themselves and their desires with the Jedi’s thoughts. There were some old ones, really old, childish and harmless ones that looked to have stayed there from a long time ago. But there were more- hundreds, thousands of suggestions, of thoughts, of pushed will. She looked at Obi-Wan’s eyes, concerned and filled with warmth. Did he even know? How long had this man been played and meddled with?
She opened her mouth, trying to get the words, but the gut-wrenching feeling of that presence getting closer took her breath, filling her eyes with tears. The suggestions in Obi-Wan’s mind were so intricate, so rooted to the core, even if she had the energy and the power to untangle the dark slimy tendrils of the suggestions from his psyche, she wasn’t sure much would remain. How much had this person, this creature, this monster butchered this poor Jedi’s mind?
The noise and the presence of the suggestions were overwhelming, like trying to sort out millions of words and papers in an archive filled with documents. But as she glanced at them she could notice something- something in common, something that was laced in most of them.
Master .
<I don’t think this is a good idea.> <You should rethink about wearing that><Let me climb in your bed> <You shouldn’t go alone, you should let me go with you> <I’m old enough to do this> <I did the right thing> <I don’t deserve this punishment> <I deserve a reward>
Suggestion after suggestion, all ended up with the same title. Master .
Koda snapped away from Obi-Wan’s hold, the sticky, dark suggestion of ‘There’s nothing wrong with the way I wanna Love you, Master’ making her wanna retch. The level, the depth of the suggestions were monstrous, and the implications were just grotesque. Wicked, and dreadful.
“You need help” was the only thing she could mumble, making Obi-Wan frown. The horrifying knowledge dawned on her that not only did no one seem to notice that they were being asphyxiated by darkness but they were also unaware of the level of manipulation and control this foul presence had on everyone in the temple, on a member of the Council . On what seemed to be, their own Master .
“Beg your pardon?” the Jedi took a step back, raising his brows.
“Please, listen to me” She grabbed the sleeves of his tunic, trying to pull him to the side to talk to him. She needed to help him, she needed to unsling those force suggestions from his mind, she needed to stop whoever was causing this. Obi-Wan’s frown deepened, looking around and trying to say something as he resisted being pulled away. “Please, you need to listen. You are- You are sick, please. He’s inside your mind, he’s inside your psyche!”
“For the Force, what are you talking about?” The Master pried himself from her hold, making her desperately try to reach again.
“My name is Koda” she breathed, and a glow of recognition shone in the man’s eyes. He was a member of the Council, and he probably knew about their reunion scheduled for the next morning “I have a Force gift that allows me to see into the psyche of the people and cure them. Please, you have to listen to me. You have to-!”
“Master?”
Koda froze in place, dread and terror climbing up her body and making her go silent with pure, unrestrained fear .
The presence walked towards them, and she watched in horror as Obi-Wan’s eyes fixed on the person behind her, his gaze going soft with love .
The presence was blinding, resonating in the Force in a way Koda had never experienced in all her life as a Jedi, in all her years using her gift to explore the psyche and the Force signatures of different creatures. Every living being had a Force signature, a characteristic that made them unique among all the existing in the galaxy. But there was something deeply, inherently wrong with this one.
It was a light, blinding light. Like a Supernova, expanding and swallowing everything in its path. But at the same time, it was an uncanny pull, a gravitational anomaly. Where the Force always resonated in living beings, curling around them and giving them their shape and signature among the energy of the universe, here it didn’t . The shine of the supernova only seemed to blind and dazzle, concealing what felt like a black hole. The Force didn’t shape around this creature, it was part of it in a more primal, horrifying way. It didn’t curl around him, but was swallowed by him and spat out again, flowing through him as if the being was the Force, but something completely distinct at the same time.
The power radiating from the being’s Force signature was unsettling, and the pit of her stomach only deepened, making her feel like she was in constant freefall. The dreadful feeling of imminent doom, of disaster, and fear of the unknown only deepened and deepened as she spent more time in its presence. The more she felt it, the more she tried to figure out what it was, and the more complicated it got. It was like a tessellating maze, and whenever she would make a supposed final turn to finally uncover the truth and the core of the signature, it would twist and split into a deeper, more uncanny mess that was incomprehensible.
It was deeply unsettling and terrifying, but more importantly, it was powerful . Powerful in a way that the ancient arts and Gods were, powerful in a way she only had thought the Force could be. This man- this creature was as powerful as the Force itself, or even worse, he seemed to be made purely of the Force.
“Anakin”
Anakin , Koda thought. That was the name of the creature.
Obi-Wan pronounced the name with a softness, affection, and a breath that was heartwarming in the pure, uncomplicated love of it. And she couldn’t help but think, how much of this love was genuine, and how much was it just a manipulation, a twist of the being behind her?
The freezing fear of turning around and facing Anakin made her wanna retch once again, as she felt how her body reacted and shivered in the presence of him, rejecting it, unsettled by it. How could anyone live in this temple with such a being walking among them? How could they be comfortable in the presence of such a deeply unsettling Force signature? How could Obi-Wan have endured such a feat? She had been in his presence for no more than fifteen seconds and she already felt the need to run away and curl to heal.
Yet there, frozen and terrified, Koda watched as a young man walked to Obi-Wan’s side. He casually extended his hand to rest it on Obi-Wan’s waist, an affectionate but also possessive motion.
“You say my Master needs help , hm?”
Her breath hitched, tears welling in her eyes as Anakin glanced her way. He looked fairly normal, a tall, young human male with dirty blond curly hair and wearing dark robes. But his eyes . There was something in the way Anakin looked at his surroundings, in the way his stormy blue eyes gleamed and reflected the light. But she knew that it was a deception because what shone in Anakin’s eyes and signature wasn’t bright like a star, it was an event horizon.
Anakin looked at Obi-Wan, and his eyes transformed into a gaze of pure adoration and hunger, of a man looking at his most valuable treasure, of a predator taking in its prey. She swallowed as Obi-Wan smiled politely, not aware of the tense interaction between them.
“Master” Anakin leaned over Obi-Wan, his lips grazing the older man’s ear in an intimate, obscene way. His hand snaked through the Master’s body, sliding down to grope in a scandalous inappropriate show of indecency. She saw Obi-Wan blush profusely and try to shrug off his possessive caress, embarrassed.
But then she saw it. She saw it with her own eyes, the exact moment when it happened . Anakin met her eyes, leaning over his master but speaking loud and clear so she could listen to his order, to his suggestion .
“Master, why don’t you go to our room and wait for me in our bed?” he said, a crooked smile stretching his face. And Koda watched horrified as Obi-Wan’s eyes glossed over, just for the briefest of seconds, before looking at his apprentice and nodding. She lunged forward to pick Obi-Wan’s hand once again, diving into his psyche and seeing it . The suggestion curled against Obi-Wan’s mind, threading itself among so many others, bending his will and pulling it away to make place for this wretched, unsettling being's will.
“No” she breathed, snapping away.
She looked at Anakin’s eyes, his presence blinding her, burning her . And she felt it .
It was a sudden pressure, a light touch that turned more noticeable. Was this how other people felt whenever she was careless around their minds? She tried to fight it, to reinforce her mental shields, but it was fruitless. It was more powerful than anything she could try to do to prevent it. It invaded her, bloating around her mind, searching, pushing, pulling .
She looked at the man’s eyes, his gaze dark and his hand extended out to her. The sun had finally settled on Coruscant, the shadows swallowing everything. In the distance, she could see the fumes of the industrial district going up to the sky, and the feeling of being out of breath encompassed her once again.
She needed to breathe.
Coruscant’s pollution didn’t allow them to see the stars, she thought, turning away from him and looking from the spire as the cold wind tangled her hair. But it compensated with its millions and millions of lights from the buildings and cars, creating streams of light that seemed to extend to the infinite.
She took a deep breath. Up here, on the border of the nothing, the air seemed purer. More breathable, more like what she missed from Vutulara. The Jedi Temple rose above the streams of speeders, like an immaculate and immovable object in the middle of the hectic nature of Coruscant, always in motion, never stopping for anyone.
Koda walked to the edge, and looking at the infinite stars below her feet, she jumped.