DISCLAIMER: Star Wars and all publicly recognisable characters, names and references, etc are the sole property of George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd, Lucasarts Inc and 20th Century Fox. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
“OK, things to do and people to see,” you say as you scurry around your room trying to get ready. First on the agenda is that dreaded dentist appointment. You would think that in a galaxy where broken bones could be healed through energy medicine that someone would’ve discovered a way to examine your teeth without actually having to stick their fingers in your mouth and spray liquefied sand paper all over you. “Ah well…” you say out loud.
Then after lunch there’s that interview with Adi Galla, another Hot Jedi exclusive. You’re rather excited about talking with her, to hear the female side of Jedi life. Since there won’t be much time between your dentist appointment and the interview, just enough for a change of clothes, you stack all your necessities – pen, notebook, tape recorder, candy bar – on your dresser so you can dart in and dart back out again. You pick up the notebook and rifle through it, finding the page with the name and address of the restaurant where you’re meeting her and leave it open to that page so you won’t even have to think when you get home from your dentist appointment.
You burst through the door of the JH building, back late from the dentist, of course. You run up the stairs and nearly run over Kim. “Sorry,” you say out of breath. “Don’t wanna be late for Adi.”
“That’s OK. Just be sure to wash that stuff off your face. What the hell is that?”
“Stupid dentist,” you say. “Thanks!” You wave as you run toward your room. Right as you approach, your door opens and out steps…. “Terri. What are you—“
“Oh hi! I’m sorry….Kayla told me you were in your room. I was looking for you….” She gives you a big smile. “We’re uh….a bunch of us are going out to lunch. Do you wanna go?”
“Sorry, no can do. Got an interview today. But thanks for asking,” you say.
“You have something on your face,” she says.
You put a hand to your cheek and groan as you rush into your bedroom and shut the door. You scurry into the bathroom and scrub the remaining toothpaste off your face. “Nice of them to tell me I was covered in goo.” You then check the clock on your nightstand. “Thirty minutes. OK.” You stand still for a moment to catch your breath. Then you pull your sweater over your head while you unbutton and jump out of your jeans. You grab the dress out of the closet that you planned to wear ahead of time, proud of yourself that you’re so well-organized when you have to be.
You sit down on the bed and pull on your tights. Then you sit still for another moment and breathe. Then it’s up again to grab that candy bar, which everyone knows is the antidote for that fluoride aftertaste. You rip open the wrapper and take a large bite of the chocolatey, peanutty, gooey goodness. You sigh as you chew and look down at your ready-to-go provisions. Then you stop chewing. “What the?”
Your notebook is closed. It was open to the page with the restaurant on it. Open when you left. Closed upon your return. Alright, maybe it really wasn’t open when you left, maybe you kept thinking about leaving it open but forgot. No, you’re obsessive about things like that. It was definitely open. You think for a moment. “Terri,” you say quietly. You stand frozen for who knows how long as suddenly everything makes absolute sense to you. All the pieces that just didn’t fit finally reveal themselves and form one perfectly terrible picture. Your whole body begins to shake.
You look at the clock. Shit. You have to leave in a few minutes. You growl and think of all the reasonable excuses you can give for your tardiness as you march out of your room, driven by boiling blood. “Terri!” You have no idea where she is so you figure you’ll just shout until her bouncy little head appears. “Terri!”
“She’s in the kitchen,” someone yells.
You sound like a stampede going down the stairs in your thick-heeled shoes. You turn with precision on the ground floor and stomp into the kitchen, passing Kim on the way.
“What are you still doing here? You’ll be late,” she says.
“Gimme a minute,” you say.
“You don’t have a minute,” she says.
You keep walking and rush through the kitchen doorway. There Terri sits at the dining table. You realize you have a melting candy bar clutched in your hand, and you huck it into the sink. “Terri,” you say in a low voice.
She looks up at you with her perky eyes and bats her lashes at you. “Hi! What’s up? Change your mind about lunch?”
“You read my notebook,” you say calmly, smoothly, deadly.
She twitches, just barely, but you catch it. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s how you knew what he said to me. I wrote it down. All of it. That’s how you knew,” you say.
She stands up and says in a patronizing tone. “This is about the Temple party, isn’t it? Listen, I don’t want to be mean, but your loss. Don’t blame me for that.”
“No,” you say. “This is about you being a completely pathetic, laughable, conniving airhead. Game over. You lose. Bye.” You turn around and walk out of the kitchen, passing Kim again.
“You mean?” She begins to follow you down the hall
“Yep.”
“She actually….”
“She did,” you say.
“Whoa,” Kim says. “Well, that wasn’t a very dramatic confrontation.”
“Sorry,” you say as you walk back upstairs to grab your things. “I don’t do Dynasty….or Melrose.”
“Bummer,” Kim says. “It would’ve made good photos for the Christmas party.”
Your interview with Adi Galla goes surprisingly well, especially considering everything else running through your mind. But just that fact that things finally make sense now allows you to think more clearly than you have in weeks.
You walk back home, excited about typing up your interview as well as planning the phone call you need to make. You walk in the front door and are immediately greeted by Kim.
“So how’d it go with Adi?”
“Good,” you say. “It went really well.” You hand her the tape recorder. “Take a listen. She has some interesting things to say about Mace.”
“Woo-hoo! Thanks,” Kim says. “Wanna grab some chow?”
“Just ate, remember?”
“Oh yeah…. Wanna come with me while I get some chow?”
“Can’t. Got something to do. But I’ll catch ya later,” you say.
“OK. Thanks again for the tape,” she says.
“Guard that thing with your life. She has some comments about teenies. You’ll die laughing,” you say. Kim’s maniacal laughter fills the hall as you walk away.
You sit on your bed and stare at the phone. Thank God you don’t have a vidphone. First an audio version, then a real life version. That’s how you need to approach this. Heck, you don’t even know if he’s in town. You dial. The phone rings and rings and rings. You are just about to hang up when you hear the click of a receiver being picked up. You stop breathing.
“Hello,” Obi-Wan says.
“Hi, it’s…it’s me,” you say.
“Yes, I knew that,” he says.
“Ah, I always forget about that Jedi caller ID,” you say.
“It’s handy,” he says.
“Yeah,” you say. “Um…are you busy?”
“Not at the moment,” he says.
“Good. I need to talk to you,” you say.
“What is it?”
“Can we meet someplace?”
“Why?”
“Well, I’d rather talk in person,” you say.
“Oh,” he says. “Will it take long?”
“Uh…. No. I guess not,” you say. This may be more difficult than you had anticipated.
“I could meet you at The Plaza,” he says.
“Sure. Now?”
“Alright,” he says.
“See you in a few,” you say, and you hang up the phone quickly so he doesn’t have the opportunity to back out. You grab your long wool coat out of the closet and wrap it around yourself. You psyche yourself up for some heavy duty groveling, and head out.
The Plaza is just across the street. It’s a gathering place, as its name suggests. One of the few open spaces on this crowded planet. It occurs to you that you didn’t arrange an exact meeting place, but he’s a Jedi so you figure he’ll find you. You find a picnic table next to a scarce group of small trees and wait for him.
He arrives a few minutes later and sits down across from you. “So what is this about?”
“I need to explain something to you,” you say.
“Alright,” he says.
You explain to him what happened the night of his birthday party, the conversation you had with Terri, and your feelings and thoughts. You even tell him how you dispensed of his gift, trying to make it a humorous anecdote, but he just stares at you. Then you add, “The conversations you and I had…. I wrote some things down in my notebook. Not everything, mind you, but some of the biggies…the things I was trying to work out. I just found out today that Terri had been reading my notebook and—“
“I know,” he says.
You sit, stunned. “What do you mean, you knew?”
“I knew that she had read your notebook and I knew that she had told you I had said the same things to her,” he says nonchalantly.
You feel your cheeks flush. “Since when did you know this?”
“Since my birthday party,” he says.
“Since your birthday party?!”
“Well, not exactly. I sensed something was going on. When I saw her that night at the party, she was…broadcasting, if you will, very loudly…about you. It wasn’t very kind…but it wasn’t clear either,” he says as though stating common knowledge.
The image of him staring at her at the party comes back to haunt you. You want to smack yourself very, very hard.
“And then,” he continues, “the night of the Temple party it all became very clear. She doesn’t understand the need to censor her thoughts.”
“Wait,” you say. “You knew about all of this. What she had done?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why should I?”
“Excuse me? I thought we were friends,” you say.
“So did I,” he says.
“Then why—“
“Did it ever occur to you that it was not like me to behave in the way that she suggested? Did you ever even question what she was saying?” His face begins to show a little more emotion.
“Yes, of course I questioned it,” you say. “But the things she said were so precise. Not just vague generalizations, but she literally repeated the same words you said to me.”
“So why did you not ask me about it? Why did you lie and say you had an inexplicable change of heart?”
“Because I felt betrayed. I thought you were just playing me for a fool,” you say. “And I didn’t want to run to you and whine about that very fact.”
“I see. So you immediately believed that I was a lout, and were too proud to even allow me the opportunity to defend myself,” he says.
“Wait a minute—“
“No, you wait a minute,” he says calmly but forcefully. “You became so blinded by your own self-pity that you didn’t for one moment consider that I would never treat you the way you believed I was treating you. I have given you more latitude than any other person I have known, and still you were so ready to believe me a person of such low character, judging me by rumor instead of by my actions.”
“I was confused…unclear….”
“Do you remember the day that we went for lunch and you said all those terrible things to me and stormed out of the restaurant?”
“Yes,” you say quietly.
“I didn’t write you off, did I? In fact, I quickly forgave you for it. What was unclear to you about that?”
You look down at the table but say nothing.
“And the night of that party, when you had too much too drink. Now, if my only motives were to get you into bed,” he says disgustedly, “I certainly could have taken advantage of you then. Did that ever occur to you?”
“Yes,” you say quietly.
“In fact,” he says. “I could have taken advantage of you SOBER, and you know it. But I never did. Did I?”
“No. Listen, I--”
“I am not finished,” he says. “Back to that night. I made sure you got upstairs alright. In fact, I stayed with you the whole night to keep a watch on you. And in the morning when you were sicker than I’ve ever seen a respectable woman, I didn’t walk away, did I?”
“No,” you say.
“No. I could have just kept walking, like you said, but I didn’t. What part of that was confusing to you?” He takes a breath and continues, “And the day on the shuttle…the accident. I nearly thought you were dead for a moment. I carried you off that shuttle – got your blood all over me, in fact – and stayed with you…and paced around the waiting room of the damn clinic not knowing if you’d ever remember my name. And then you thought it was funny to tease me about it.”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper.
“Yes, so you said. But I forgave you for that, remember?”
“Yes,” you say.
“So…. What part about that experience was confusing or unclear to you?”
“Obi-Wan… “ You give him a pleading look. “I—“
“That night that I helped you fall asleep. I felt all your fears then. I took them from you so you could sleep, do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“I felt that…kept myself awake with them so you could sleep. All of your insecurities, your fears…of betrayal, of not measuring up, of being unloved, abandoned—“
“Please stop,” you say.
“All those things that you use as a crutch…all things that you blame for whatever you lack, things that keep you frozen, things that blind you to truth. You betrayed our friendship just so you could hold on to those fears,” he says.
“That’s not true,” you say.
“It is true. I told you that you were special to me, and I meant it. But you would prefer to carry your pain around so you can participate in pity instead of living,” he says. “You would rather have people confirm how especially difficult the road is for you instead of doing what needs to be done and participate in the hard work of getting through things.”
“Hold it right there,” you say.
“I do not deny that you have been hurt in the past. But that is no excuse for causing other people pain in order to hold fast to your own. I told you that you deserved to be treated better, and you do. I told you that you were special, and I meant it. But instead considering those possibilities, you chose to prove yourself right and believe everything Terri said,” he says.
“But she said all the words you said to me. What was I supposed to think?”
“Perhaps you were supposed to have a little more faith in me. Perhaps you were supposed to be honest with me and tell me what happened right from the start. Perhaps you were supposed to consider the reality of my behavior over a longer period of time than a two minute conversation with a woman who possesses obvious insecurities. Perhaps you were supposed to put our friendship ahead of your pride and your fear. Perhaps,” he says before taking a deep breath. “Perhaps you could have simply given me the benefit of the doubt…as I have given you so many times. That is why I didn’t say anything when I learned the truth. I was waiting for you to do the right thing. And you didn’t. So it made me wonder what kind of friendship we really had if you didn’t even spare me the slightest bit of consideration. This experience…. I barely…recognize you. Despite minor offenses, you had been so giving…until this. I don’t quite understand it. It made me wonder…who…you really are.”
You cover your mouth as you choke on a sob. Then you take a deep breath and pull yourself back in. You give him a nervous chuckle, “Yeah, a person’s true character is made obvious when they are under diress.” You have no defense. “I have really, really messed up.”
“Yes, you have,” he says.
His words hit you hard. Very hard. His disappointment in you is palpable. “I feel terrible about this,” you say.
“Do you understand why I didn’t say anything?”
“Yes,” you say. “I have taken you and our friendship for granted. God knows I am far too old to behave like a high school girl, throwing fits and buying into gossip, but for some reason….” You search your brain for the right excuse…the right apology, but there is none. You look up at him. “Well, thank you for meeting with me. I’ll let you get back to things.” You stand up, your body practically numb.
“It’s getting dark. Perhaps I should walk you home,” he says.
The fact that he has no ability to be outright mean in spite of your transgression is not lost on you. “No,” you sigh, wrapping your arms around yourself. “I’ll be fine. Thanks, though.” You give him an apologetic half-smile. “Bye.” You don’t wait for a response. You turn and slowly walk away.