Looking into those utterly devastated brown eyes, I knew I had to say something, but nothing I could say would balance the scales for depriving a saint like Shmi of her only joy.
Fear that they were all right about me rose like dozens of beating black wings belonging to a murder of crows out to kill.
I tried Vinrae's trick again, but this was no mere panic attack to sidestep with the tracking of biological minutia. Shmi had struck right down the major fault-line of my character and sent me reeling.
Gasping as I fought to draw in enough air and failed, I mentally flailed about for anything to beat back the terror with.
What dropped into my mind's eye then, I later promised myself never to share with another living soul, because no one in this galaxy would ever believe I'd coined such wise words, and who else would I attribute them to?
"I must not fear,
Fear is the mind-killer,
Fear is the little death which brings total obliteration,
I will face my fear,
I will permit it to pass over and through me,
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path,
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing,
Only I will remain."
I repeated the Litany Against Fear silently something like a hundred times with my eyes closed. Around the fiftieth repetition, I got my breathing under control, and by the seventy-fifth my heart was no longer threatening to rip right out of my chest. Opening blue eyes grown darker with sorrow, I offered Shmi the only thing I had.
"If I took your son's life, it wasn't because I asked for it, but from the bottom of my heart I apologize regardless. I found myself here, so I did my best with what I was given. I tried, harder than you'll ever know, but I couldn't make you my mother when you're not, Shmi.
I promise I never for one moment in what you call my scheming forgot I had a responsibility to see you free and safe though. Not as some sop to my conscience, but because I believe no one should ever be enslaved.
If it were up to me, the only target a horror like the Death Star would ever fire on is Nal Hutta, and for the purpose of crushing the slave-trade only" I began in a voice which was still uneven after my ordeal.
Shmi was still staring at me intently, but her expression didn't seem so accusatory now. Just, involved and expectant, maybe? "I can't give you your son back, Shmi, but I can try to honor his memory and make his legacy something that you might be proud of.
This is not a game to me. I understand and accept that countless sentient beings are counting on me without knowing it to save them from the oncoming horror of the Empire.
I promise to do my very best to stop the darkness from blotting out the light, and to be a light in dark places whenever and wherever I can. It's all I have for you. The truth, and my promise to keep these truths close."
"Can you really stop such evil, Ani? Palpatine has almost the entire government under his thumb. He'll have found a deadly apprentice somewhere to be his sword, if he doesn't still have Maul.
All he has to do is slip those chips past the Jedi, and get the Death Star plans, then doom will hang by a thread. In the face of all that, what can you really expect to accomplish?" Shmi asked. Her voice sounding almost mournful, but considerably more animated, as if she cared what was going to happen now.
I took a deep breath, then told her what my Master had been grinding into me for seven and a half years now, because to my surprise I found I actually believed it.
"I can do my very best to stop him, then accept that's all I can do. I'm not responsible for vague what-ifs. Only for what I choose to do in the here-and-now. Rooted in the present moment, Fear can have no claws or teeth, because it can only exist in my thoughts of the future."
Unlike the other apparitions, Shmi grew more and more radiant. Until she finally exploded into a galaxy of white star-bursts that left me feeling warm inside.
My head snapped up as if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice-cold water over my head. Causing me to gasp as I looked wildly about, then down at myself in confusion.
I was seated on the ground cross-legged, and my hands were moving of their own accord. Slotting a trio of diamond-like crystals as finishing touches into the almost completed lightsaber in my lap. I was technically proficient to a ridiculous degree in this life, but this was something else altogether.
Calm seemed to radiate from the largest of the faintly blue tinged crystals. Something I imagined would otherwise have been in short supply. I'd read about characters constructing their lightsabers in a trance, but I thought I would be at least vaguely aware of finding the crystals or beginning the procedure.
The hilt casing closed over the crystals once two final connections were made. Finally allowing me to study in completion that which I had apparently fashioned as I regained control of my hands.
"Well, that definitely tears it. Thank you influence of the Living Force, because now I'm going to start off making a horrible first impression on Yoda" I muttered quietly.
Not feeling all that encouraged by the sight of Anakin's second lightsaber in my lap. While I had brought the materials to build a Form V-type lightsaber, I was sure my casing and grip had been of traditional size.
Not the elongated and admittedly superior version an adult Anakin had fashioned after Geonosis. Looking at the weapon in my lap, I felt like the Force was telling me war was inevitable and felt a lump form in my throat.
Until I stood and depressed the activator for the first time, because discrepancy or not, nothing was robbing me of this moment completely. There was the real snap-hiss no mere training saber made as the lightsaber ignited.
The auditory announcement that the fun and games were over, because the Jedi in the room was no longer fucking around. It was the sound that more than twenty years of fandom caused me to associate with Moral Authority, but it was the blade which presently held me enthralled. It was blue of course, but a deep blue with a silver core.
Tears suddenly stood in my eyes, as I realized how badly I'd misconstrued the nudging of the Force. The calm the one crystal had filled me with made sense now, as I realized I'd found a pontite crystal to use as a focusing agent in my weapon of war.
Actually, not a weapon of war; I realized. A weapon capable of seeing me through a war, if necessary, but one which would always dampen my unruly emotions and make me think twice about employing it in earnest whenever it ignited.
It was just the sort of improbable find I so desperately needed right then, and maybe something that might help me not end up in the Temple killing children like myself a few years down the line. I would like to be able to say I took this revelation with noble stoicism and blazing hope for the future.
I'd like to be able to say that, but instead I just bawled my eyes out for a few minutes. Great, gasping full-body wracking sobs that could not have possibly been more cathartic.
Tears which allowed me to find an outlet for all the residual tension and internal discord from the emotional roller-coaster I'd just gotten off of.
I was at least smart enough not to try and fight said tears out of some misguided need to be "tough." When the tears had finally run their course, and my hands were as steady as my breathing once more, I reignited my lightsaber.
Feeling a cool calm settle over me as I ran through a couple of Djem So cadences there was actually room for in the tunnel. The weapon felt like an extension of my arm, of my will. It had nothing in common with a training saber beyond a resemblance of shape and dimension.
There was character and nuance to it that would take time to understand.
"You were never going to make a good first impression on the Hobgoblin of the Light. Just do your best, and leave Yoda to the Force." The whispered voice sound a little like Dark Woman, a bit like Adept Vinrae, and even just the tiniest amount like Shmi.
It's tone was completely irreverent but warm in that laughing-with-you-and-not-at-you kind of way. Seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere as I began retracing my steps.
It brought a smile to my face as I started to jog. I might have felt like a rung out rag inside, but the Crystal Caves hadn't beaten me, and I had my lightsaber to prove it!
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