The Hermit Shack in the Woods, Saturday Morning

[saddeserthermit]

Yesterday had been... unpleasant. Or at least troublesome. And yes, eventually Obi-Wan would have to have that conversation with Ahsoka he'd been putting off for some time.

But that would come whenever it came - whenever Ahsoka chose to have it.

Today, Obi-Wan was meditating, the eopies wandering around him, undisturbed. His efforts to refamiliarize himself with the Living Force this past year and a half had been steady, if slow-- but it was easier now, to simply throw his consciousness into the winds and feel the life around himself.

Obi-Wan sat outside his shack, but in truth, on this island, he was everywhere, all at once, and everyone, all at once.

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[snipsnspecks]

Ahsoka was... not adverse to putting this off a little longer. "That would be...yes."

[saddeserthermit]

Obi-Wan nodded.

He was rather more anxious about this visit than the one he'd had shortly before she arrived, and so there was some hurry in his steps as he walked into the shack and put the water back on.

[snipsnspecks]

Ahsoka didn't dawdle, exactly, as she followed him and found somewhere to sit, but there was a marked lack of hurry to her movements.

[saddeserthermit]

Far too soon, the tea was ready, and Obi-Wan put both cups down on the table. "So," he said, "I suppose we should start at the beginning. Or rather, our end."

[snipsnspecks]

Ahsoka focused on her cup rather than Obi-Wan. "It'd make things...simpler."

Not easier. Nothing would make this easier.

[saddeserthermit]

The only reason why this did not count as the hardest conversation Obi-Wan had ever had was... well, that reason was called Anakin Skywalker.

He nodded.

"Where did you go?" he asked quietly.

[snipsnspecks]

"Lots of places," Ahsoka replied, vague in the face of impending jossing. "An actual destination mattered less than being somewhere...not Coruscant. Mandalore for a time."

She'd learnt to fight with only a blaster there. She hadn't liked it.

[saddeserthermit]

Something passed over Obi-Wan's face at the mention of Mandalore, but he said nothing of it.

"I see," he said. He took a sip of his tea. "Did you run into trouble after Order...?"

[snipsnspecks]

Ahsoka's grip tightened on her cup as she remembered what the death throes of the Jedi Order had felt like, the remnants of her bonds with Anakin and Master Plo flaring up then out with fire and pain and silence.

"Not with the clones, not like that." It had been the most grotesque possible reminder of what she wasn't any more. "After, sometimes, if someone recognised what I could do. So I started looking for places that wouldn't."

Which was how she'd ended up here.

[saddeserthermit]

"As have we all," Obi-Wan said.

To his cup, which was a riveted audience, obviously. "I only barely escaped with my life," he said. "As did Master Yoda."

[snipsnspecks]

"I saw the footage of the Temple burning," Ahsoka said quietly. "They played it alongside Palpatine declaring the Jedi traitors."

[saddeserthermit]

"I wasn't there," Obi-Wan said. He took a sip. "I was on Utapau. I did not see the footage until I returned home... and saw the state of the Temple."

The real, uncut footage. Anakin.

[snipsnspecks]

Of the realisations that were going to break Ahsoka's heart, that one was going to be be right up there.

"I can't imagine." Except she could, and did.

[saddeserthermit]

Obi-Wan was still mopping up whatever remained of his heart after seeing that, and being on one island with a repentant Anakin only helped in as much that it let him simmer in denial.

"I am glad you didn't see it," he said. "Gladder still that you were nowhere near that place."

[snipsnspecks]

Tell that to Ahsoka's survivor guilt.

"Because I left." Oh, look, there it was.

[saddeserthermit]

"Because the Order did not treat you with the kindness it should have."

And there was Obi-Wan's own guilt.

[snipsnspecks]

That was one way to put it.

"It wasn't just what the Council, or Barriss, did." Though both had been more than bad enough on their own, let alone together. "It was after."

[saddeserthermit]

"After?" Obi-Wan echoed.

[snipsnspecks]

"I didn't realise it at first, but Master Plo was the only one who actually apologised," Ahsoka said. It wasn't the explosion or accusation that might have come from Anakin, just a statement about something she'd turned over over in her mind far too many times. "And on its own that might have been enough."

Especially when Anakin had been shining with such sincerity and belief in her that if she hadn't left as soon as she realised she had to, she might never have been able to.

She ran her finger over the rim of her cup. "But it wasn't. The Council offered me a Knighthood I didn't earn, and I just knew I couldn't stay."

[saddeserthermit]

Master Plo had been speaking for all of them.

And once again, Obi-Wan's position on the Council had kept him from doing what he needed to do.

"I would say you did earn it," Obi-Wan said quietly. "Perhaps even well before that point. The war made adults of our younglings far too quickly."

[snipsnspecks]

Then they really should have just let him do the talking, because as ways to undercut apologies went 'it was actually the Force making you a better Jedi' was spectacularly bad.

"Maybe, but can you tell me it wasn't offered out of guilt?" Ahsoka asked, again without accusation.

"A Sith was more willing to believe in me then the Council." Ventress may only have helped because of that promise to speak on her behalf, but she had to have known that the only way Ahsoka could actually have followed through on it if she was telling the truth about being innocent. "How long do you think it would have been before knowing that left me eaten up inside the way Barriss was?"

[saddeserthermit]

"You are not Barriss Offee," Obi-Wan said. "Not then, and not now."

He took another sip of his tea.

"We failed you, that is without question," he said quietly. "Don't think there are not a million things I wish I would have done differently."

He wasn't sure what, exactly. Yoda had seemed determined not to listen to him. But everything was his fault surely he could have done something.

[snipsnspecks]

"Barriss wasn't always like that either."

Ahsoka focused on her cup again. "In the Chamber of Judgement Master Yoda said the Council wasn't in full agreement..." It was the kind of non-question where the asker didn't actually know if they wanted the answer.

[saddeserthermit]

Obi-Wan was quiet for a while. He'd more or less trained himself not to let slip anything he did in defiance of the Council, but that had also done enormous damage with Anakin.

"I dissented," he said. "I did not believe we should simply hand you over to the Republic - your case deserved to be explored fully by the Jedi Council, instead of seeing you sacrificed on the altar of politics. Not that it matters now."

[snipsnspecks]

"It matters," Ahsoka said softly.