CHAPTER FOUR
ALIBI

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For an hour after her attack, Aliss was forced to sit with Anakin in one of the meditation rooms at the Temple, waiting for Obi-Wan, Mace Windu and Yoda to return from the Senate Building. They were going to confront both the Chancellor and his supposed intern on the events that had transpired. For a while, Aliss had paced, anxious beyond measure, feeling like there was something inside her that was ready to burst if she didn't keep moving. Eventually, though, Anakin had forced her to sit down, kneeling in front of her and holding her hands in his own.

"Your hands are cold," he told her.

"I didn't even realize..." she said.

She looked down at their hands as he rubbed them to work some feeling and warmth into them. The strangest sensation began to build up in her chest as she turned her eyes from their hands to his face and took in his look of intense concentration. A smile slowly grew on her face, a feeling of calm overtaking her previous anxiety.

It was a strange feeling. In the two months that she'd been there, she'd repeatedly had to remind herself of who the boy in front of her became. What he would one day do. Some might say the first of his atrocities wasn't even that far in his future. The slaughter of an entire tribe of Sand People who had kidnapped his mother couldn't be more than a year away and, in fact, Aliss would bet it was less than that. Every day the people around her looked more and more like they would in Episode II. It could only be a few more months before that happened.

But when she looked at Anakin, she didn't see the character from a film that went crazy and killed a bunch of people. She saw a person — a boy — who was struggling with the two conflicting lives he'd led.

Despite the years, nearing a decade, that he'd been training as a Jedi on Coruscant, he still couldn't let go of the little slave boy who liked to build droids and pod racers and had only his mother, the alien that owned them and customers to keep him company. A little boy who didn't know what freedom was but believed it felt like how the stars looked.

"Thank you," she said finally.

"For what?" he asked, looking up at her.

"For... being here. For caring. For not caring that I've changed. For making me feel safe when—"

Aliss cut herself off. She'd almost said for making me feel safe when I should be terrified of you. That was too close. She didn't want to imagine his face if she hadn't caught herself.

"For making me feel safe when I still feel like I've only known you for two months," she quickly corrected.

"Hey, I've told you this a million times," he told her, giving her a smile. "You're my friend. Memories or not."

She couldn't help the smile this time as she felt her heart start beating a little faster. Unbidden, she remembered the last time that someone had made her heart skip a beat and Ivan's face, smiling down at her, appeared in her mind and her heart sank. She quickly retracted her hands from Anakin's and did her best to keep up her smile.

"I think my hands are warm now," she said.

"Oh, okay," he said, standing up.

Before either of them could say anything else, the door opened and Obi-Wan, Windu and Yoda came inside. Though they tried to keep their expressions neutral, Aliss could tell in an instant that it hadn't gone well. She didn't know what 'not well' entailed, but she definitely didn't like that this was the outcome.

"What happened?" she asked.

"The Chancellor's intern has an alibi," Windu told her.

"What?"

"Certain, you are, that it was him?" Yoda asked her.

"I saw his face plain as day," Aliss said, standing up. "I was confused, called him by his name and he responded to it."

"He's on camera in the Senate Building at the time of the attack," Obi-Wan told her gently. "It couldn't have been him, Aliss."

"It was him!" she insisted. "That footage was doctored somehow! I know what I saw!"

"Calm down, Master Kade," Windu instructed her.

"Don't tell me to calm down! I was just attacked in this temple where I'm supposed to be the most safe, why would I calm down?"

"Master Kade, please," Yoda said. "Get us nowhere, shouting will."

Anakin placed a hand on her arm and she took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down.

"I saw him," she said again, more calmly. "It was Atlas Voland. I don't know how he got in, but it was him. I'd swear it on my life."

"Perhaps a shapeshifter?" Obi-Wan suggested.

"No shapeshifter is going to be a Sith," Windu said dismissively.

"But why would someone want to kill Aliss to begin with?" Anakin asked.

That was one mystery that Aliss didn't need the answer to. While in his office, Palpatine had managed to get in her head and figured out that she knew who he was. Whether he'd seen the memory of what happened to him when she'd first entered or read it from her mind sometime later, he had figured it out. And that didn't exactly bode well for her. It meant that he wouldn't stop trying until he got her.

"Many people have reason to want to kill Jedi," Windu said. "Could it have been a Mandalorian, perhaps?"

"They weren't wearing armour," Aliss said. "Like I said, it was Atlas Voland."

"And like we said, he has an alibi," Windu told her.

Aliss took a deep breath before she said something to him she would regret. Whether because of simply the harshness of it or because she'd call him something that was a reference and he would have no way of understanding. And, more importantly, she'd have no way of explaining properly.

"Without my memories, I have no way of knowing why someone might try to kill me. Sith or no. Because they were a Sith. They had a red lightsaber, that part couldn't be a trick of the light or lack thereof or... whatever else. It was red."

"Suggesting what, are you, Master Kade?" Yoda asked her.

"I need to go back to the meteor crash site."

"No."

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?" Aliss asked, looking between Anakin and Obi-Wan, the two that had voiced their opinion on her idea. "Seeing where it happened could be the key."

"Taking you back to Cas Leoch..." Obi-Wan shook his head. "Aliss, did you read the parts of the datapad where your life before the Jedi was detailed?"

"No, I didn't," she said. "I didn't think it would be relevant. I came as an infant, right, just like everyone else?"

"No, Master Kade, you did not," Windu said. "Your induction into the Order was much more similar to Skywalker's."

Aliss looked over at Anakin, who shrugged and looked as confused as she was. Perhaps learning the past of the life that had been created for her here would have been smart but Aliss knew about the Jedi, Ivan had told her while they watched The Phantom Menace that Anakin was a rare case because just about everyone was brought to the Order as young as possible. She'd had no reason to believe that "her" past wouldn't be the exact same.

Obi-Wan muttered something to Windu and Yoda and they left, leaving Aliss alone with her two friends. She was quickly guided back to a sitting position and then Obi-Wan sat down next to her while Anakin knelt down in front of her.

"You were discovered when you were five years old," Obi-Wan told her. "On Cas Leoch, where your accident happened. That's where you were born."

"Okay, so I came a few years late, what difference does that make?" she asked.

"Because your time spent with your parents made a world of difference," Obi-Wan said. "When you were three, you were in some sort of an accident with your older sister, Lorna. She died. Your parents... they didn't take the news well. They took their grief at losing a child out on you, their only remaining child. They blamed you. The trauma you experienced at the hands of your parents had such a last effect that even after years with the Jedi Order."

"O–oh," she managed.

"They treated you so terribly that it drew Jedi to Cas Leoch, your power in the Force calling out. They came to take you away and... your parents were eager to allow them. You hadn't been back there since leaving. Until your accident."

Something deep inside Aliss broke. Part of her had hoped that the story concocted for her backstory here would have different than her real one. That she would have been spared, saved perhaps, by the Jedi taking her as an infant. She didn't think that her entire history would have followed her into another universe, perhaps just modified to fit the science fiction fantasy world she now found herself in. Even her sister's name was the same.

Aliss had spent years of her life trying to get over the trauma her parents had inflicted on her growing up. Too many alone and finally in therapy. Getting out of her childhood home had been the first good jump in her mental state in years. And the years that followed, living with Ivan, going to therapy more regularly and even getting her parents to as well had done wonders. Things were as good as they'd ever been before that meteor. As good as they had been before Lorna died, maybe, if Aliss could remember that time.

And here? With the Jedi? Everything Ivan had told her about them as they watched the movies told her that she'd not gotten that same treatment here. And that was what broke her heart.

"They..." Aliss began, eyes filling with tears. "That's not fair. I was... we were children."

"I'm glad to hear you say so, Aliss," Obi-Wan told her. "Before your accident we had a hard time getting you to believe that what your parents told you wasn't true. While it made you extremely efficient at completing your missions, it was often at the cost of your own safety."

"What—" she started, biting her lip to stop herself before her voice could break. "What did they tell me? What did I believe about myself?"

"Aliss, I would really prefer not to have to say it."

"I need to know."

Obi-Wan sighed. "You believed that your life wasn't worth anything. That your parents were right when they... when they told you that you were better off dead."

"No," Aliss said, her head falling into her hands as the tears started falling down her cheeks.

All the years she'd spent in therapy, all the hours she'd put into breaking herself of that mindset and the fantasy version of herself had felt worthless the whole time. It hadn't been fair in the real world but in a world with magic powers, space ships and fancy weapons, it should have been better. She should have gotten the help she needed long before the accident. Long before she had gone to therapy for the first time in the real world, in her world.

For a little while longer, Aliss cried there with her head in her hands. Obi-Wan placed a hand on her arm and Anakin got up from where he'd been kneeling in front of her to put his arm around her shoulders. She felt comforted by their presence with her, even as she continued crying.

"It's not right," she finally managed. "No one should feel like that. Everyone's life has value."

"It's good to hear you say that, Aliss."

She sat up again, taking a deep breath as she wiped the tears from her face. She took another deep breath to compose herself before looking between her two friends and gave them smiles.

"Now that was all... good to know about myself. But um, I still need to go back to the crash site."

"Aliss..."

"I really don't think that's a good idea."

"No, I need to go back there," she insisted, standing up again and beginning to pace. "I need to see the meteor and see if it jogs my memory. A Sith broke into the Temple to try and kill me, I need to know why and the answer could be in my lost memories."

"There are other ways—"

"I'm not letting anyone go digging through my head right now," Aliss insisted, cutting him off.

"And going back to a source of trauma for you doesn't sound like—"

"I think she should go," Anakin said.

"Anakin, really, how could you think that this is a good idea?" Obi-Wan asked.

"I trust her judgement," he answered. "She had better instincts than me sometimes before the accident. That wouldn't have changed just because she hit her head."

"Only sometimes?" Aliss questioned him.

"Until you can remember something that can contradict me," he answered with a smirk.

Aliss managed a smile before she fought it down to turn to Obi-Wan again with a serious expression.

"Anakin agrees with me."

"That does not make it a good plan," Obi-Wan said.

"Hey!" Anakin protested.

"This place is a source of great trauma for you, Aliss, for more than one reason. I don't think going back there is going to have the effect you think it will," he explained.

"I need to go back," she insisted. "We don't have to go see my parents, I promise that I'll be fine."

"I really don't think the rest of the Council would sign off on this excursion," Obi-Wan said.

"We could always just sneak—" Anakin began.

"Any ship from the hangar could get us there!" Aliss agreed.

"Accidentally shut off communications—"

"By the time we get there—"

"They couldn't stop us."

"We might as well just do what we went there for."

"Stop, stop, stop," Obi-Wan said. "We can't go against orders."

"We're not going against anything if we don't have any orders yet," Anakin pointed out.

Obi-Wan sighed heavily. "How did I end up with the two of you?"

"Qui-Gon," they answered.

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The night after she was attacked by the Chancellor's intern, Aliss dreamt of Ivan. She remembered herself standing in the kitchen of their small home, leaning against the counters as she watched him, the whirring of the microwave the slow popping of the popcorn within as it finally got hot enough to begin popping.

He had a look in his eyes that could only be described as joy. They'd just finished watching The Phantom Menace and were taking a short break to get themselves a snack to continue watching the next movie, Attack of the Clones, which would be their final of the night. She'd been confused as to why they had to stop after this next one and not watch the movie that was titled as Episode Three. Ivan was only too excited to explain to her the animated movie and then show that they were going to watch that took place between the two movies.

When Aliss sat up suddenly in her bed, she inhaled sharply as her room at the Jedi Temple slowly came into focus. Letting out her breath shakily, she closed her eyes, the memory lingering in her mind. She held onto that memory, desperately watching his smiling, happy face. She clung to that image in her mind for a few moments before opening her eyes and finally letting it go.

"I'm going to get back to you, Ivan," she whispered to herself. "Even if I have to steal a ship to get to that blasted planet alone."