Office #8, Friday

[saddeserthermit]

Obi-Wan had been careful not to move too much into his office, if simply because he had had little idea if he'd be staying for another semester. But his decision on that had now been made, and he could now spend the last day of this semester organizing the few items that had made it in here.

He'd be rifling through paperwork for most of the day, occasionally stopping to make notes for future consideration.

Perhaps he should bring some more light to the room. Add something that could boil water. And move in some instruction manuals for future classes. That would be useful.

[[ open! ]]

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[sith_happened]

Anakin frowned. "He was a Sith, Obi-Wan. Vengeance and hatred were kind of his thing."

[saddeserthermit]

"I'm aware, Anakin," Obi-Wan said mildly. "I just wonder how many tragedies could have been averted had the first moments of that battle with Darth Maul gone very differently." A pause. "But I shouldn't linger on that."

[sith_happened]

"If it had gone very differently, you would have been dead," Anakin said, "and there's no way that would have been a net positive for the galaxy."

[saddeserthermit]

"The will of the Force had its reasons," Obi-Wan said, his mouth quirking briefly. "But I will miss Satine. That is what you wanted to hear, isn't it?"

[sith_happened]

"Yes," Anakin said, nodding. "And I'm sorry for your loss."

[saddeserthermit]

"Thank you," Obi-Wan said. "Though let me underscore that she was not my girlfriend."

Repetition might get that notion through Anakin's ferrocrete skull, surely?

[sith_happened]

Anakin waved his hand. "Unrequited love interest?"

[saddeserthermit]

Obi-Wan sighed. "I'll settle for it."

[sith_happened]

"I saw how you were looking at each other," Anakin said, "I don't have the 'Obi-Wan could never' blinders from my Padawan days any more."

[saddeserthermit]

"Oh, so that spluttering the evening she left was a mature assessment of the situation, was it?" Obi-Wan asked dryly.

[sith_happened]

Anakin's cheeks went pink. "Well. Um."

He looked down at his boots. "Do you know how much that would have meant to me to know when I was 20? To know I wasn't the only one in the whole Temple who felt like that?"

[saddeserthermit]

Obi-Wan let out a sigh. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised Anakin had missed... that. His own inclination to ignore personal baggage at work, he supposed.

"There were few at the Temple who hadn't experienced something similar, I believe," he said. "But we were Jedi. We had to let go of such things. Sometimes it took more than a small measure of trouble to teach us so. I had assumed..."

He shook his head.

[sith_happened]

"Yeah," Anakin murmured. "Kind of missed that part."

[saddeserthermit]

His first instinct was to cut this conversation off here, again, before it got too pointlessly personal. But at this moment all they had was time and regrets, and it felt wrong not to allow Anakin this conversation.

"I told her once that I would have left the Order if she had asked," Obi-Wan said quietly. "I would have."

[sith_happened]

Anakin's blue eyes went huge. "You would have left me?" he stammered, hating how much he suddenly felt like a ten year old kid being told he wasn't good enough.

[saddeserthermit]

"No," Obi-Wan said. He was not fond of the tone of Anakin's voice, so he explained. "I would have, when I was younger. I could tell her as much later, because there wasn't a shadow of a doubt that I would remain with the Jedi."

[sith_happened]

Anakin chewed on his lower lip. "I tried to have both," he finally whispered. "Padme and you. I didn't want to have to make a hard choice."

[saddeserthermit]

That had always been Anakin in a nutshell, though, hadn't it?

Obi-Wan was quiet, if for a moment.

"You always did want to have everything, if you could," he said. "No doubt a consequence of having so little, once."

[sith_happened]

Anakin's lips quirked up humorlessly. "Once?"

[saddeserthermit]

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. "How would you describe it?"

[sith_happened]

Anakin shrugged. "I never really spent much time thinking about myself," he said, like that was news for Obi-Wan, "but material things were never something I had or wanted. Switching from Tatooine to the Temple on that part was easy. But I'd had people..."

[saddeserthermit]

"You made friends at the Temple," Obi-Wan said. "And you weren't alone."

[sith_happened]

Anakin's mouth twisted. "I always kind of felt alone. And cold, at least in the beginning."

[saddeserthermit]

"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan said quietly.

He had not been happy that Qui-Gon had dumped a Padawan in his lap, but neither had he wished on Anakin the uncertainty of his own first year as a Padawan.

[sith_happened]

Anakin gave a small shrug. "It wasn't your fault."