Being Bahama

Meeting On My Terms

With instructions to ‘maintain silence’ I left the situation with that troublesome acquaintance behind me.  Or so I’d hoped.

With his plot discovered I figured it was unlikely I’d hear from him again.  I didn’t consider him to be any great threat based on the fact that he’d already had so many opportunities to cause me physical harm and yet he’d only ever tossed a subtle threat at me here and there.

I had every intention of reporting his activities to the authorities as soon as I found the time.  I hoped they might have some ideas about what motive he may have had in the first place.

I didn’t get the chance to do that.

Much to my surprise, he sent a message a few days later.  It was difficult to make out what he was saying with all the explosions in the back ground but I could make out something about the Black Sun.

I told him I had every intention of alerting the authorities to his suspicious activities.  “Who will you report?”, he asked.

“Well, you, of course.”, I responded, a little taken aback that I had to state the obvious.

With slightly restrained chuckle he replied, “See what good it will do you.”  Then he was back to a line of questioning he’d been pursuing since that very first meeting… He wanted to know the details of where I was during the Clone Wars. 

Then a new question.  He asked what I thought of Jedi.

Suddenly I saw a possible motivation for everything that had come before.  My son.

I took a deep breath and steadied my voice, “What do you know… or think you know?”

He repeated the question. 

With as much sincerity as I could muster I responded, “I consider them neither friend nor foe if that’s what you’re asking.”

He then asked what I thought the Jedi stood for and what I thought of clones.  As he continued his questioning there was an audible difference in his voice.  There was anger there, however much he tried to hide it. 

I wanted him to keep talking, to reveal his reasons for asking me in the first place…. so I stated that at the time I was young and didn’t think much on it.

What followed was a tale of clones and jedi told with such sincerity and detail that I found myself feeling for the man who’s story it was …without the suspicion I’m sure the situation merited. 

When his story came to an end, I took advantage of the fact he hadn’t been able to see how his story had affected me and simply told him it was quite a far fetched tale.  I asked him again what he was really after.

For the first time since we’d met, he suddenly seemed quite open and honest.  He had wanted to share his knowledge, then gotten caught up in the trouble we’re having with the Black Sun and besides, it was rare to find a decent person….

I was completely baffled.  Every instinct told me that he was telling the truth.  Every part of me believed everything he’d told me at this point.  Perhaps the explosives had been the Black Sun… goodness knows we’ve had problems with them in the past.  Perhaps he had meant what he said about earning his trust….

But then I hate being taken for a fool.  I needed to look him in the eye and see for myself if he was being truthful with me after all.  I asked him to meet me in a public place I knew well.  I asked him to leave behind his weapons and his infamous helmet.  Without hesitation, he agreed.

The whole flight there I kept going over in my mind all he’d said.  Even if I took it all at face value, even if I believed everything he told me, there was still a danger.  The way he spoke about jedi, the anger in his voice when he’d told his story…  I needed to know if he knew about my son.

I arrived at the meeting place and he was waiting, without weapons or helmet, just as he had promised.  His body language indicated he was relaxed, open… even friendly.  He was willing to answer any questions I had.  So I asked, “What do you know about me?”

He mentioned my business, Moneta, my dislike for armor, my approximate age…. and then mentioned that I had a husband and a son.  I inquired how he knew about my husband and son since neither were around and I rarely spoke of them to even close friends.

I watched his face closely.  The corners of his eye turned up as he smiled a bit and explained he had ‘good hearing’.  Not a trace of deceit nor a hint of anger anywhere to be found.

I breathed a sigh of relief and we began chatting about our little problem with the Black Sun.  I told him we were aware there was a threat and that it wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle.  It seemed we’d finally come to place where we could chat without such mistrust between us.

But suddenly his demeanor changed and his line of questioning took a turn toward the bizarre.  He accused me of being force sensitive, a general in the clone wars and even a jedi!  I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.  But he continued on. 

I thought to myself that he was either a master of distraction or else a victim of an over active imagination… and I told him so.   He grabbed his helmet and weapon from their hiding spot and left in a hurry, all while insisting that indeed, I must be a jedi.

So much for clearing up the confusion…