A New Beginning

Chapter 4- A Promise

Several weeks went by. Noelle was settling in at home– but not well. Relations with her family were anything but smooth. The only one she literally didn't have a problem with was her brother Alex, who had Down's Syndrome. Joseph, her sixteen-year-old brother, wouldn't speak to her. Her father also barely spoke to her unless he had to. Her mother more or less tolerated her. She was kind enough to Noelle, but she always seemed sad. Noelle didn't bother to try and pretend things were normal. She had been anything but normal since Gandalf had shown up on that front doorstep fifteen years ago.

Since the night she had come home, there was no more discussion about everything she had told her parents. They hadn't asked for proof. Noelle had never shown them her abilities, and her lightsabers were stashed away along with her remaining money under a rock quietly in the woods.

The fact that neither her parents nor her brother had said nothing about this at all made Noelle suspicious as to what they were planning. Were they going to kick her out at some point? Turn her over to the psych ward or the police?

Noelle had a feeling if they were going to do that, they would have done so already.

Or were they going to ask her about it again? Were they just waiting for her to tell them the "truth" in her own time? If so, that was never going to happen because she already had.

She needed money. She needed a job and she needed to leave here because she didn't belong. They weren't her family anymore– not really. And who could blame them? Noelle was the one who had chosen to leave them.

As far as she was concerned, most of the people she had been able to call "family" over the past eight years were dead or out of her reach. She was literally all alone again, which she wasn't entirely used to. She had always had someone having her back, whether it was Bern, or Ahsoka or Gandalf or Legolas. But at the moment, she had no choice. Her family didn't understand let alone believe her. She would stay as long as she had to, then figure out what to do.

She didn't want to move on and pretend this had never happened, but she didn't really know what to do now that she was back on Earth. It wasn't like she could get a college degree anyway given that she was a highschool dropout and hadn't completed the last two years. She'd have to get a job though. Maybe at a coffee shop or something and then move into an apartment.

But is that really who I am?

Noelle knew it wasn't. Gandalf had brought her on a quest for more than just fitting in and living for no one but herself. Unfortunately, the person who Noelle was supposed to be had no place here on Earth. She couldn't protect people who didn't want to be protected in the way she was designed to do it. Earth – her people – would never accept her as who she was now, who she had become.

Noelle as usual– didn't know what to do. Again, she was self-doubting now her judgment on whether coming home had been a good idea. So far, she had been able to make due here, but she couldn't hide who she was forever.

Nor could she sit back and do nothing when she had the ability to stop terrible things from happening.

~~~~~~

Noelle ended up getting a job downtown at a fast food restaurant. Her parents lent her money for the bus and she paid them back as she could. The job was easy enough. She would either work the cash register or clean the dining room area. Just because she hadn't finished high school didn't mean she couldn't work.

Fitting in at work was almost as hard as fitting in at home, as Noelle had absolutely nothing in common with any of her coworkers. Most of them were young high school or college kids, people she used to be and people she would have been if she had stayed. Watching and listening to them almost made her glad she wasn't one of them.