Chapter 23: Jyn iChapter TextAhsoka brings them out of hyperspace just inside the Tatoo system, and makes a casual approach to Tatooine, as if this were just another run for Amira and Matariki. The twin suns are rising over the Mos continent as they hit orbit: early, on many other planets, but Tatooine's suns are such that most people will be up and moving now, hoping to escape the main heat of the day. Jyn wakes to the ship jerking into orbit, and gets up and dresses as Ahsoka begins a slow sweep of the continent, looking for… something. Jyn doesn't quite know what. Ahsoka seems to have sensed her old teacher pretty clearly before, so maybe she's using that to find him now.
Jyn hopes for her sake he hasn't moved on. Jedi that have lived this long are hard to find.
She settles knives and blasters into place; wonders about truncheons, then decides that would be too aggressive, considering how much Ahsoka loves this man. Jyn would go fully armed to an appointment with Saw, but Jedi are different. Thank fuck.
She takes caf into the cockpit with her, one for her and one for Ahsoka, though Ahsoka already looks to be vibrating with nerves or caffeine or both. She takes the caf with a distracted thank-you, and Jyn takes her usual seat. N-8 whistles a greeting at her, and she whistles back almost absent-mindedly. Ahsoka's habits are getting to her.
The noise gets Ahsoka's attention. She looks up from her frowning examination of the instruments, and blinks hard at the sight of Jyn. Jyn waves a caf cup at her in salute.
"Yeah, I'm here," she says, thinking internally but with great affection idiot Jedi .
Ahsoka's face splits into one of those impossible grins. "No - I know that, I'm just thinking that Bail doesn't know how lightly he got off."
Jyn glances down at herself and immediately takes Ahsoka's point. She put no conscious thought into her clothes, but she's dressed in old, battered things in dark buff colours and browns, pulled her hair into a practical knot, and dressed to fight rather than talk. She certainly doesn't look much like she did on Alderaan, though she doubts a protocol droid would appreciate the differences.
"That was a completely different situation," Jyn says, and is treated to Ahsoka's soft laugh. She sips at her caf and refocuses on the instruments, face a little lighter than it was before.
They're flying quite low now, just out of the range of the radar Jabba uses - never let it be said they haven't learned a lot about Tatooine - over the sparse settlements between Mos Espa and the Jundland Wastes. Jyn peers out of the view screen. "How are we doing?"
"Fine," Ahsoka says. "He's close by." She draws her legs up underneath her into a meditation seat, though it has to be hugely uncomfortable in the pilot's chair, and shuts her eyes. The controls are still moving very slightly, and they're circling lower.
"Ahsoka," Jyn says, clutching slightly harder at her caf cup. "Not to complain, but you're flying with your eyes shut."
"It's fine," Ahsoka says reassuringly. "I know what I'm doing."
" Really ," Jyn says, somewhat strangled.
N-8 assures her, in a series of bleeps and whistles she has to check the droid's translator to be sure of, that while Ahsoka is in primary control of the ship N-8 is there to provide all necessary navigational support.
"Thanks, N-8," Jyn says, patting the astromech's head absently. "That's… good to know." She looks up again. "Ahsoka, we're drifting towards the cliffs."
"I know," Ahsoka murmurs. "It's fine."
"This is Tusken territory, too," Jyn says, draining her caf. "I don't believe half of what the locals say about them. But the other half is enough to be going on with."
"The Tuskens around here haven't raided for twenty years," Ahsoka says. "Jyn, you're distracting me."
Jyn shuts up abruptly, and sinks her teeth into her lower lip as the looming cliffs of the Wastes get closer and closer. In the distance she can see the gleam of a homestead's solar panels, its white-painted dome standing out against the sand, but apart from that this place seems completely uninhabited and miles from anywhere. There are probably worse places to put a Jedi Knight.
They hover around for a while, and then Ahsoka's eyes snap open and she uncrosses her legs, taking charge of the controls with her hands and feet.
"There," she murmurs, half to herself. Jyn tries to suppress a relieved breath, and sees, sidelong, Ahsoka's grin. They land fairly smoothly in the end, on a patch of bare sandy rock slightly sheltered by overhanging sandstone; less than a hundred metres away, a narrow canyon carves into the cliff. Jyn takes the speeder out of dock and sets up, ready to go, while Ahsoka locks up the ship and leaves N-8 in charge. The Tuskens may be quite quiet around here, but the Jawas are not; however, Amira and Matariki paid for excellent security and only charged Jyn and Ahsoka fifty percent. Apparently it was tax-deductible even if the Lady Luck wasn't part of their fleet.
"Are you sure this is structurally stable?" Jyn demands, pointing at the cliff with one hand and checking their water supplies with the other. She is not getting stuck in the Jundland Wastes without enough water, not if she has any say in the matter.
Ahsoka glances up, and opens her mouth to let out a note so low Jyn hears it in her bones not her ears. She listens to the echo for a long moment, then shrugs and nods.
"Fine." Jyn hops into the passenger seat.
"You're not driving?"
"You're the one who knows where we're going," Jyn says, folding her arms. "And you're a lousy backseat driver."
Ahsoka flashes a smile, but it's visibly smaller and more tense than before. Jyn wants to say something, but she isn't sure there's anything to be said; there's no getting round this encounter, not unless Ahsoka chooses to turn back now, and no making it less painful. Ahsoka isn't going to turn back, Jyn knows that much.
Ahsoka stops with her hands on the steering. "What?"
"Nothing," Jyn says. But she slides her hand across the central reservation, and Ahsoka grips it tight.
Jyn licks her lips and clears her throat. "Whatever happens… we're leaving here together."
Ahsoka smiles again without showing any teeth, very small but real, and lets her head tilt sideways against Jyn's for a second. Jyn breathes in, and feels the lift of Ahsoka's shoulders alongside hers.
"Thanks, Jyn," Ahsoka says very quietly. She kisses Jyn's fingertips like the dainty creature she isn't, releases her hand, and starts the speeder.
Ahsoka drives to Obi-Wan Kenobi's hut like she's been there a thousand times before, and knows exactly where it is. The canyons twist and wind, and though Ahsoka sticks to a reasonable speed for once - Anakin Skywalker, Jyn sometimes thinks, taught her way too much about breaking the speed limit whether your vehicle is rated for it or not: it's not that Jyn doesn't appreciate a quick getaway, but fuck, she wants to live - Jyn quickly loses track of the turns and obstacles. The canyons are beautiful in a way that makes Jyn's fingers itch for her blasters, half-knowing what might be around every corner: carved by rushing rivers hundreds of thousands of years ago, throwing shadows that trick the eye against the fierce sun, pushing the speeder into blind corners and under deep overhangs. Sound refracts strangely, and so does light. If the local Tusken Raiders have chosen this as a redoubt, then Jyn respects their strategic thinking. And also hopes she isn't going to get shot. Ahsoka would have noticed anything hostile, she thinks, even as focused as she currently is.
Jyn isn't sure Ahsoka could see her if she looked directly at Jyn right now. Her hands on the controls are unerring, but her eyes are so distant Jyn thinks it would be less unnerving if they were closed again.
"Does he know you're here?" Jyn asks, unease prickling up and down her spine. Her crystal seems warm, and there's some kind of strange, steady hum of anticipation in the air that could be Ahsoka or the crystal or just Jyn's own tension.
"He knows," Ahsoka says, quite shortly for her.
Jyn looks across. "Are you talking to him?"
"No. He hasn't said anything."
Jyn could be charitable about that, could say that it must be almost impossible to think of what to say to someone you abandoned the way Obi-Wan Kenobi abandoned Ahsoka; she doesn't know what Saw would say if she walked back into one of his bases, doesn't actually think he would say anything. Saw doesn't tend to justify his decisions after the fact. He knows what they were, and on what basis he made them, and if you don't accept them, then he shrugs that off. Jyn wonders if Obi-Wan Kenobi is like him or not. How he carries his ghosts, and what he says to them, in the long dark hours when no-one is listening.
She's probably given too much thought to a man she's never seen before, and will likely meet only once. But he matters to Ahsoka, and therefore he matters to her, and as much as she's chosen to let go of the anger that she carried on Ahsoka's behalf, that doesn't mean she's going to look on him with a kindly eye. She's been thinking about what she wants to say to Kenobi, rather than dwelling on what he might say - something she can't control. It's a pretty long list by now. Part of her wishes she'd contacted Rex - she knows where to find the details, Ahsoka hasn't hidden them from her - in order to add to that list. She's sure Rex would have a thing or two to say, and equally sure that Kenobi would regret hearing them.
She didn't, though. This is Ahsoka's call. If she'd wanted to bring Rex in, she would have done. Hell, he could have flown with them all the way here.
Ahsoka brings the speeder to a halt as Jyn's thinking about this, and climbs out with the keycard still activated.
"Expecting to have to make a quick exit?" Jyn says.
"No," Ahsoka repeats. She's looking up at the house halfway up a cliff, built into a cave; smells and sounds tell Jyn of a bantha stable at ground level, and behind the windows of the house, something moves. A person, Jyn thinks.
A long, winding path leads up to the house. It's thin and crumbling at the edges. It could probably just about take two people, and it widens out into a broad ledge at the top, but there is no rail and it would be easy for a single person to defend. The house is well-hidden, with a good vantage point and lines of sight; the metal and wood shutters are adapted to allow a sniper to use them as cover. Obi-Wan Kenobi clearly doesn't expect to be sneaked up on. Jyn grudgingly awards him a point.
Ahsoka starts up the path without saying anything. Jyn locks down the speeder and follows after her at a reasonable distance; Ahsoka is unarmed save for her lightsabers, and Jyn's assuming she won't end up in some kind of Clone Wars-style duel, but it seems fair to give her some space. Jyn sucks in a deep breath; the air seems to have turned thick and heavy, and although she isn't having trouble breathing, she can feel it weighing down on her.
She reaches the top of the path as Ahsoka reaches the front door, which is ajar. This is the point at which Ahsoka would usually raise a blaster or, on very rare occasions, one of her sabers, to cover herself as she opens the door; Jyn unholsters a blaster, just in case, but Ahsoka only pushes the door open and walks straight in.
Jyn sidles out of the door's direct line of sight and approaches the door sideways. Inside the house she can hear only silence; she swallows her apprehensions, keeps her blaster as low as she can stand it, and follows Ahsoka indoors. The house is lit, and handsomely so, which compensates for the thick curtains drawn over the loosely shuttered windows, but it's still darker than it is outside, and cooler: Jyn blinks as she adjusts.
In the house is one old man. He can't be older than his early fifties from Ahsoka's stories, but he looks like the war has aged him at double-time, the way it aged Rex; there's still red in his hair, but it's turned thin and lank, and his face is chiselled down to its essentials. Pale blue eyes are locked with Ahsoka's, and the brown cloak thrown over his shoulders reminds Jyn strongly of the ones Ahsoka sometimes wears. His face is perfectly unreadable, his body perfectly still. Jyn can't get anything from him - whether he feels anything, whether he's angry or sad or pleased they're here - and Ahsoka has gone similarly unreadable and remote. All she knows is that the air has turned thick as well as heavy, like she's moving through treacle.
Jyn holds her position and her blaster, but she doesn't honestly think either of them knows she's here right now.
"Ahsoka," Obi-Wan Kenobi says. "This is unexpected."
"Really?" Ahsoka says. "You didn't think I'd eventually realise my sense of you was more than just unresolved grief? You didn't think I'd figure out, sooner or later, that you can't release something to the Force if it's real?"
Obi-Wan Kenobi winces. "You brought a friend," he says, like this is a social call.
"Don't mind me," Jyn says, and her voice comes out harsh and raw. "I'm just here to open doors and drive the speeder."
He turns those pale blue eyes on her, and Jyn feels like someone's looking extra hard at her mind, feels a little bit like she does when Ahsoka's soothing her bad dreams, except this she didn't ask for, and it angers her. But she did prepare for it.
She closes her eyes, and thinks as hard as she can of the way Ahsoka's heart visibly snapped in two when she learned her teacher had deliberately left her to suffer alone; thinks of Ahsoka weeping and curled in on herself on the grass of the Great Garden. Ahsoka, bleeding from a thousand glass cuts, Ahsoka pale and feeble after the rock fall, bruising under dyed skin, Ahsoka half-starved on Takodana.
Obi-Wan Kenobi recoils a step: Jyn opens her eyes when she hears it, and offers him her very nicest smile.
"Get fucked," she recommends. Ahsoka chokes on a noise that might be a giggle and covers her mouth. Her eyes are over-bright.
"Charmed to make your acquaintance," Kenobi retorts, as silken smooth as any senator.
"Can't say it's mutual," Jyn says. "My name is Liana Hallik. I watch Ahsoka's back because you ditched her. If you've got a problem with that, that's your problem, not mine."
Kenobi opens his mouth, closes it again, and looks at Ahsoka. "You always did inspire great loyalty," he says, almost wistful.
Ahsoka shrugs her shoulders and clears her throat. "I'm fortunate to have someone I can trust at my side." Her voice is uneven, but it holds, and something about what she said makes Kenobi flinch. Good.
"I am glad to see it."
You little shit , Jyn thinks extremely loudly. Neither Jedi so much as twitches.
"I'm sure you don't want us to stay long," Ahsoka says steadily, "and equally sure that we shouldn't stick around either. We weren't followed, but there's always a risk of Imperial attention."
"Why did you come?" Kenobi says, and Jyn feels like she's been punched in the stomach.
Wish I'd brought Rex , she thinks, as viciously as possible. I'd love to hear what he has to say to that, old man. She remembers Rex and Ahsoka, on Kamino; the ex-trooper clearly loves Ahsoka to pieces. And this man Ahsoka has spoken of with faith, reverence, respect, he has the absolute fucking gall to stand there and ask Ahsoka why she even showed up for him.
Jyn thinks about maybe staking Kenobi out for a krayt dragon. The krayt dragon would probably throw him up again.
"You ask me that?" Ahsoka says. Her voice breaks on a sob, and Jyn desperately wants to go to her, to comfort her, but the set of those broad shoulders and the lip half-lifted over her canines tells Jyn to hold back. Disrupting her focus would be foolish. "I spent seventeen years convinced you were dead. I mourned you. I thought there was something wrong with me when I visited Tatooine and sensed you, like it was a memory piggybacking off the sense of Anakin you can still get in Mos Eisley, I - for nearly twenty years I've treasured every single memory. I was so alone for so long. Do you expect me to believe you didn't know I was alive? In all my darkest moments it never occurred to me that you would have chosen to leave me behind."
Kenobi looks shaken by that, at least, and somehow older even than he did before. He takes half a step towards her, and one wiry, papery old hand reaches out towards her in supplication. Ahsoka doesn't move.
"I did know you were alive," he says. He still has the mellifluous, persuasive voice of the Negotiator he allegedly once was. Allegedly , Jyn thinks, with spite. But his words are hoarse-edged, and grow more so as he speaks. "Bail referred to you once or twice. I believed you to be safe, so long as you were separate from the Jedi. I knew if I reached out to you it would put you at risk, and it would likely put… the very precious objective I am here to protect at risk."
"Luke," Ahsoka says baldly. "I know his name."
Kenobi goes very still, and his eyes flick almost imperceptibly towards Jyn.
"I can keep my fucking mouth shut," Jyn tells him. "Just pretend I'm the wallpaper."
"I have never before entertained wallpaper which calls me a banthafucking shrikeface," Kenobi informs her. Some tiny curl in his voice sounds almost amused, and that makes anger surge in Jyn's throat; she catches it just behind her teeth. This isn't fucking funny.
"A banthafucking shrikeface?" Jyn looks directly at Ahsoka, who is looking at her with the tiniest curve to her weary mouth that could almost have been a smile, and shrugs pointedly. "I didn't hear anything. Did you hear anything, Ahsoka?"
Cowardly Hutt-swiving intestinal blockage , she adds for good measure.
"I didn't hear anything, Liana," Ahsoka says. She folds her arms. "Perhaps Master Kenobi's ears are playing tricks on him. Like the rest of us, he is older than he used to be."
"It's the suns," Kenobi says. "I know. Ahsoka, did you tell this young woman of Luke's existence?" He has the temerity to let teacherly disapproval slip into his voice, like he has the right to question Ahsoka's decisions after all these years.
"No. Bail told her. He told both of us at the same time." Ahsoka squares her shoulders. "Bail considers the threat from the Inquisitorius is growing. We just came from a mission to exfiltrate a child before they could reach her. He was thinking about sending Leia to you, for her own safety. And that's how I found out you were alive. He had no idea I didn't know."
Kenobi leans heavily against a rough countertop. Jyn leans back against the wall, and hooks one ankle over the other, watching him.
"I may have allowed too much to go unsaid," he admits, at last. "I believed I was acting for your safety, and for Luke's."
"And when you sensed me visiting Tatooine?" Ahsoka says, implacable.
"Jabba the Hutt's enforcers sniff round the farm too often."
Ahsoka raises one unimpressed eyebrow. "You expect me to believe you didn't have ways of reaching out to me that wouldn't come to his ears? Come on. No-one's buying that."
Kenobi looks at the floor.
"For the record," Ahsoka says, and now, for the first time, real anger bites in her voice. "I wasn't safe. Not being a member of the Order wasn't enough to keep me safe, not during the Purge, not at any time since. My boys turned on me. Jesse turned on me. Rex turned on me. I had to dechip him with a med-droid and the Force, with his brothers shooting out the locked door. I don't know what you think safety is, but in my eyes it doesn't include defending against light artillery while a clonetrooper recovering from medical intervention lies helpless behind you. I don't know what you think safety is, but it's not what I've lived. It's not what I'm living."
Kenobi looks like he's shrunken in on himself. Ahsoka's voice cracks on her last word, and he blinks hard, his jaw tight.
Pitiful , Jyn thinks, but keeps it to herself. Saw would never have crumbled like this. Kenobi won't even give a straight answer to a straight question.
"Why am I here?" Ahsoka says, and her voice cracks again, hard and painful. "Didn't you think I might miss you, grandmaster?"
"You had your own life," Kenobi says wearily. "How could I jeopardise that?"
"If you knew what kind of a life it's been -" Ahsoka says, and stops halfway, and looks at Jyn.
Jyn raises her eyebrows. "Don't let me interrupt," she says.
Ahsoka's face lightens very slightly, and she huffs. "The last two years have been good," she says, and then her face falls again. "But the fifteen before that…" Her voice trails off, and then she swallows and picks up again. "Neither of us had to be a Jedi alone, with or without the Order. That's something that you imposed on both of us. You chose for the both of us."
"You were an adult," Kenobi begins, "I had every faith in you -"
Jyn has an abrupt, unpleasant flash of Saw taking pride in her as one of his most skilled fighters, keeping her at his side and trusting her with key positions, mere days and weeks and months before abandoning her in a bunker with a lamp that didn't work after the first twelve hours. Banthashit , she thinks, as loudly as she can. That's just a fucking excuse for your own bad choices.
Kenobi stops halfway and looks at Jyn. She balances a knife on the tip of her finger like she's bored, eyes focused on it like that's the only thing she sees.
"Ahsoka," Kenobi starts again, and he sounds more broken by the second. Jyn will consider being nicer to him when he considers apologising. Nothing of the kind has crossed his lips yet.
There's a long and horrible silence. Jyn puts the knife away, since having a weapon out right now is frankly much too much like temptation. The shutters swing slightly in the faint and unforgiving breeze, and down below Jyn hears the faint sounds of banthas moving and lowing. Ahsoka can probably tell how many of them there are by now.
"I failed Anakin, I failed you, I failed Qui-Gon and Cody and Master Yoda and the whole Order," Kenobi says, coming out with a bunch of names that mean nothing to Jyn, words falling from his mouth like blood wrung from a cloth. Ahsoka's affected; her breath catches and skips in her chest. "I didn't want to risk compounding my failures. And I never believed you would want to see me. Considering what I've done."
Ahsoka stares at him. Jyn eyes them both from under her eyelids; this is beginning to seem like more than either she and Ahsoka bargained for, even considering the sheer weight of confronting someone after a twenty-year absence from your life. She hopes this isn't going to lead to the reveal of yet more secrets, but has little faith that it won't. She notices that Anakin Skywalker heads up that list of failures, and Bail Organa was very careful what he said about Ahsoka's dead teacher.
"I find it very difficult to believe that you could do anything that would make me not want to see you," Ahsoka says, at length, "after a- a twenty year absence, and a galactic cold war, and - Master Obi-Wan, so far as I know, everyone but Bail believes you're dead."
"Bail," Kenobi says, "and a very few others." He looks wretched. "Ahsoka…"
"I was almost convicted for crimes against the Republic that I didn't commit," Ahsoka says, which is news to Jyn. She doesn't drop anything or fall over, but she's not good enough to hide the signals of her disbelief from both Jedi: they look at her immediately and she blinks back at them, limpid as she can, pretending this isn't the first she's heard of Ahsoka's pre-Imperial run-in with the law. After a second, they both look back, and Ahsoka picks up the threads. "You weren't sure I was innocent, but you still wanted to see me. You still cared."
"Of course," Kenobi says, as if it goes without saying, as if he thinks they should believe that it goes without saying for him. "You're my grandpadawan, Ahsoka. You are dear to me. You always have been."
"Do you understand how hard it is to believe that, after you let me believe you were dead for seventeen years?" Ahsoka asks, more gently than he deserves, but maybe it's one of those times when a light touch hurts worse because he flinches again. And he says nothing, but he bows his head.
Jyn folds her arms; taps the fingers of her left hand against her elbow.
Ahsoka sighs. "Come on, Master Obi-Wan," she says, and opens her arms to him. He looks like he's lost height and breadth with age - Ahsoka doesn't actually dwarf him when she hugs him, but he certainly looks smaller and more fragile than Jyn thinks he should - but he's clearly still a powerful Jedi. Jyn can sense the temperature and pressure change in the hut as he and Ahsoka react to each other's comfort. Ahsoka holds him for a long moment, and then lets go.
"Put the kettle on," Ahsoka says. "And then tell your story from the start."
Kenobi glances at Jyn. "I'm not sure that's wise."
Fair. The surviving Jedi haven't made it this far by being stupid, and Jyn can respect that. She unfolds from her place against the wall. "I can wait in the speeder."
"Liana stays," Ahsoka says, a thread of steel in her voice. "We don't work apart."
It's the same thing she's said to the Alliance, over and over again, and it makes Jyn's heart warm a little more every time. But she's not imagining the slight frown between Kenobi's weathered brows as he nods in acknowledgement and then says:
"I see."
Chapter 24: Jyn iiChapter TextKenobi puts the kettle on, and potters around his hermitage drawing out chairs, pointing out features of the hut, making them welcome. Jyn reserves judgement, but she can see Ahsoka doesn't. Kenobi talks as the kettle sputters to life over an old heating element, and Ahsoka relaxes visibly as she listens to him. Jyn feels like she's remembering less complicated times, falling back into familiar patterns: as Jyn watches, she can imagine all too easily a younger, stronger Kenobi, the wise teacher to Ahsoka's starry-eyed student. She takes the seat Kenobi offers her with a brusque nod of thanks, and peoples the vision with a younger Rex, too, his hair blond instead of white, and (according to Ahsoka) without the beard. She can imagine Ahsoka spending happy years alongside them, even though those years seem to have involved things like getting buried alive in a tank, and even though there are missing elements: the troopers Ahsoka has occasionally named, the lost Cody, dead Anakin Skywalker. Ahsoka's nostalgia as she chats with her old friend is as obvious as her affection for Kenobi.
Jyn doesn't blame her. Ahsoka can enjoy the first time she's seen Kenobi for decades, and Jyn can keep her guard up for both of them. Kenobi has a practised charm that Jyn doesn't trust, and she notices the way he lowers the stakes of the conversation and keeps Ahsoka smiling.
Jyn doesn't smile. She isn't reassured. And she knows, from the way Ahsoka holds herself, that Ahsoka has noticed that and is keeping it in mind. Kenobi's noticed too, but that doesn't make him get to the point any faster. Either he really is this finicky about being a host - and they are probably the first guests he's had for years, so it's just about possible - or he is drawing the conversation out as long as possible, trying to escape whatever comes next. He doesn't want to talk about something, Jyn thinks, which could just as easily be his fuck-ups as it could be Ahsoka's dead master, the one Bail Organa told them to ask Obi-Wan Kenobi about.
"Do you think you could ask your friend to use slightly less prejudicial language about me?" Kenobi complains, carrying a tray of teapot and cups to the rough table. It's a fancy blend, classier than anything else in this place; it's probably smuggled or stolen. Ahsoka and Kenobi have been teasing each other about his predilection for good tea, which Ahsoka does not share.
"Liana is only very slightly Force-sensitive," Ahsoka says, accepting a cup. Neither yes nor no, Jyn notes, and doesn't bother to hide her smirk.
"However - if you'll excuse my saying so, Miss Hallik - she thinks extremely loudly."
"You're excused," Jyn says impassively, watching as he pours a cup of tea. It smells crisp and smoky. Sophisticated, and quite wasted on Jyn. But he seems like the type not to begrudge that, possibly in the pious hope that he's improving Jyn's palate.
She accepts her tea with a tiny, sharp nod. Ahsoka has her hands cupped around hers, and is breathing in the scented steam, eyes half-closed. Jyn wonders if it's a blend he favoured before, and she remembers it. She asks herself, for half a second, what she'd smell or hear or see that she'd remember if she tracked down Saw, and then cuts off her line of thought. She's here for a reason.
Kenobi sits down with a slight sigh. Ahsoka closes her eyes, and observes: "Old bones."
"I sometimes think I have lived longer than I was ever meant to," Kenobi says, with a wryness that makes Ahsoka's eyes snap open and focus on him. Jyn's trying to build up a picture of the guy in her head, something that doesn't come from Ahsoka's fond recollections or Senator Organa's diplomatic words, and she's getting the impression that he isn't either the wise counsellor Senator Organa considers him or the warrior teacher Ahsoka recalls. He just seems elderly and tired, and weary of life the way old soldiers sometimes get, the kind who've seen and lost too much to take joy in what's left over.
"Trust the Force," Ahsoka says, very simply. Jyn can hear how that might be a kind of friendly rebuke, to someone who understands Jedi theology rather than occasionally letting it wash in through one ear and out of the other while doing chores. Kenobi certainly seems to take it as one, going by the acknowledging nod and faint smile.
"Words we would all do well to keep in mind," Kenobi says, and then directs that gaze at her. "You seem to have significant experience working with Force-users, Miss Hallik; are you yourself a believer?"
Jyn really doesn't know what's wrong with the name Liana. "Do I need to believe in it for it to exist?" she says, raising an eyebrow.
"Touché," he says politely.
"Liana's not much of a one for theology," Ahsoka says, affection in her voice. "We do meditate together. It's helpful, I find. I never thought I'd miss meditation sessions, but it's lonelier, meditating by yourself."
"How curious," Kenobi teases. "I seem to remember Anakin threatening to glue you to your seat to get you to join meditation classes."
Ahsoka rolls her eyes. "He was such a hypocrite. He hated seated meditation, too." She sips at her tea. "Bail couldn't tell me for certain what happened to him." She looks over at Kenobi, and Jyn's arrested by the naked fear and hope in her eyes. "I thought… you might know. If you found Padmé and her children."
Kenobi looks awful. His flesh seems to have shrunk in on itself, wasting into deep shadows. Maybe it's just the light, or his expression. He looks devastated - but then, as he realises that Jyn is watching him, he tucks some of that pain away, visibly slides behind a screen of imposed calm. "I took Padmé to a medical centre," he says. "She had fled the Senate quarter in search of Anakin. She had gone into labour - I think she must have been relatively near term, but twins are often early, or so the medical droids told me. She survived the birth long enough to choose names for them."
"Anakin wasn't there," Ahsoka says. She sounds confused. "He was so protective -"
Kenobi doesn't wince, clearly still conscious of Jyn's eyes on him. But Jyn can see the tiny twitch he tries to cover by adjusting his robes. "He was not. They parted on poor terms."
"I - what, in the week between him returning to Coruscant and Empire Day?" Ahsoka asks, obviously baffled.
Kenobi gives her an extremely direct look. "I never understood Anakin and Padmé. At a remove of twenty years I am not even going to try . I suggest you abandon the attempt likewise."
Ahsoka snorts. "Well. Fine, then. So. Padmé didn't… didn't survive."
"No." Kenobi sighs, and runs a thumb over the surface of the table, worn by many years' use, and probably polished with sand to take the splinters out. Everything here is shabby, but well-cared for, Jyn has noticed. She can hardly be surprised by high standards in the teacher when Ahsoka is the student. "It was…" He labours for a long time over a word, and then settles on: "Eerie. There was no medical reason for her to die. The droid suggested she had lost the will to go on, which -"
Ahsoka laughs, sharp and harsh.
"- precisely." Kenobi stares at the table surface. "It was as if the life was draining out of her. It was as if the life was being drained out of her."
That stops Ahsoka in her tracks. "Some kind of Sith… curse? She spent enough time with Palpatine for him to try something."
"It could very well be." Kenobi shakes himself, and looks back up at Ahsoka. "Something severely damaged Palpatine - possibly his duel with Master Windu. He may have drawn on her to preserve his own strength." For a moment he looks deeply grieved, and Jyn remembers with a faint stab of pity that the woman who was a role model and a politics teacher to Ahsoka was a peer to Kenobi. "Padmé was always so full of life."
Ahsoka hums her soft agreement. Jyn sips at her tea, and listens.
"Master Yoda said, once it became clear Padmé wouldn't pull through, that we must separate the twins. Had she lived, their best interests might have been otherwise. But they played off each other like a pair of mirrors - separated, their extraordinary powers are certainly a threat if discovered, but together -" Kenobi shakes his head. "They cannot be reunited until the Alliance is ready to move. Palpatine will stop at nothing to get his hands on them if he realises their existence, and it would be difficult - almost impossible - to conceal them from him entirely."
"I can't begin to imagine Vader's reaction," Ahsoka says. "They'd be powerful rivals to him. And he's not always in the Emperor's favour."
"Exactly," Kenobi says, but there's the faintest, slightest hesitation. Jyn doesn't think she's imagining it, but she doesn't dare to look at Ahsoka for confirmation.
"In any case," Kenobi continues, "Bail offered to take Leia. I knew he and Breha would make loving parents, and that they were well-equipped to hide her."
"I taught her," Ahsoka says. "Did you know that?"
The smile that lights over Kenobi's face is brief, but warm. "Bail told me, though not in so many words. I thought it… most fitting. She is as strong a character as you are, I think."
Fucking flattery , Jyn thinks, but tries to keep a lid on it. Kenobi's talking around something: she can tell.
"I brought Luke here, to Tatooine," Kenobi says. "The one place I could guarantee Anakin would never willingly return, and sufficiently far from the Core and any of Padmé's allies that I hoped it would be overlooked, if anyone determined that she did give birth before she died. Her relationship with Anakin wasn't public knowledge, and Anakin's origins weren't public knowledge either. However, he did have family here. His stepbrother and sister-in-law agreed to take Luke in and care for him… though I have seen little of him." Kenobi looks sad and weary again. "Owen hasn't allowed me to visit the farm since Luke was very small. I watch over him, as much as I may."
"That must be hard," Ahsoka says, with her characteristic kindness.
Kenobi pauses, and then says diplomatically: "I regret not developing a better relationship with Owen and Beru. It might have been possible to teach Luke more, or at least to see him. He resembles Anakin very closely, but I see Padmé in him too."
"I thought I was seeing ghosts when I saw Leia standing next to Bail," Ahsoka says, and there's a flicker of something Jyn didn't expect and can't define in Kenobi's eyes.
Ghosts aren't real, Jyn is fairly confident, and she thinks Ahsoka would have mentioned it if Jedi believed in them.
There's a short pause. Jyn finishes her tea, and listens to canyon crows calling outside.
"There's one thing I'm curious about," Ahsoka says, almost lightly, but Jyn can hear the steel underneath. "Why did Padmé flee the Senate quarter in search of Anakin when Anakin was already there, according to his last orders? And why did she go looking for him if they'd parted on poor terms?"
The silence chills with its inevitability.
"Bail said he feared the Emperor had been able to make use of Anakin in the end," Ahsoka continues. Her eyes are fixed on Kenobi. "I know he's dead. Our bond has been severed since Empire Day."
Kenobi presses his lips together. "Anakin is dead," he says slowly, "in a sense. The man we knew is dead. Bail was correct. Emperor Palpatine did find a use for Anakin."
Jyn watches Ahsoka's face whiten from terracotta to peach with every word that passes, and she sways like she's just been punched in the montral when Kenobi stops talking - except that Jyn has seen Ahsoka take punches with much more aplomb than that. She grips Ahsoka's shoulder, and Ahsoka's hand comes up to clasp her wrist so tight it hurts. Jyn bites the inside of her cheek and doesn't react.
"It seems there had been a trap, long in the making, laid for Anakin," Kenobi continues, papering over obvious pain with his elegant diction. "But I cannot deny… he walked into it willingly. We will never know how he feels about the consequences. Anakin is gone. All that remains is Darth Vader."
A strangled cry chokes from Ahsoka's throat, and dies in silence. Her eyes have gone wide and staring, fixed desperately on Kenobi's, and her grip on Jyn's wrist is momentarily tight enough to bruise, before abruptly relaxing. Her hand falls to the table like she can no longer keep it up, and her jaw has dropped.
"Darth Vader," Jyn says. "Dormé mentioned him on Naboo."
"There are always two," Kenobi says heavily. His eyes are much too bright, and slightly reddened. "A master and an apprentice. Emperor Palpatine is the master. Darth Vader is the apprentice." He looks at Ahsoka with pity. "You have not encountered him, then."
"Never close to," Ahsoka whispers. "And not for years." She coughs and chokes on a sob again, and then breathes freely. Jyn pours another cup of tea, no doubt stewed, and puts it directly under her nose.
"Drink something before you choke on your own tongue," she says, and Ahsoka snorts wetly and takes the cup. She wipes tears from her cheeks.
"You know what I like about you," she says. "You're always so eloquent."
"That's me," Jyn says. She rubs Ahsoka's shoulder bracingly, and lets her hand rest there. Kenobi watches them both closely.
"I feared he would try to coerce you into joining him," Kenobi says. "He hoped to persuade me, and Padmé as well, to join the Emperor's cause. But I had seen the security footage from the Temple. I knew what he'd become. Padmé knew, too. There was no chance she would follow him. And when he believed her to have betrayed him, he attacked her. It was clear then that nothing remained of Anakin."
"The footage from the Temple," Ahsoka repeats, and then sets her cup down hard and covers her eyes. "Oh, no. Oh no, no, no."
"I'm afraid so," Kenobi says quietly. "He was… at the head of his men."
Ahsoka has let slip very little about the ultimate fate of the Jedi Temple to Jyn. Jyn isn't sure how much she even knows. Little escapes Imperial Center. But it's pretty clear that the Jedi's youngest and most vulnerable were massacred in their homes by those they trusted: by clonetroopers. And it seems they were led by Ahsoka's own beloved teacher.
Ahsoka stops breathing for several long seconds, and then, just as Jyn is thinking about yelling at her to do so, she draws in one long rasping breath. It sounds like she has half choked on the sand outside.
"How could he?" she whispers.
"I don't know," Kenobi says. "He was rash, to be sure. Impulsive. Passionate. Attached." His eyes linger on Jyn, and she stares flatly back at him. "But I always believed him to have a good heart."
"He had a good heart," Ahsoka murmurs, still covering her face. "He had a good heart. I know he did. I know he did."
"Even at the last," Kenobi says heavily, "Padmé agreed with you."
That's what breaks Ahsoka. She gets up clumsily, all her grace fled, and knocks several things flying as she rushes out of the hut onto the ledge, the door crashing wide behind her. She stops once she's hit the open air and takes several deep breaths. Then she sinks to her knees again, and cradles her head in her hands.
Jyn picks up the various bits she dropped, and puts them back where they came from. Not because she cares, but because Ahsoka will.
"I feared this would hit her hard," Kenobi says.
You fucking moron , Jyn thinks. "Yeah," she says aloud. "No shit."
She tucks in Ahsoka's chair.
"You two are lovers, I assume," Kenobi says, and the absurdity of it makes Jyn want to laugh or swear or hit him, or all of the above.
"We're fucking," she says. "Draw your own conclusions."
She walks out onto the ledge and sits down next to Ahsoka, dangling her feet over the edge and peering over. It's a long way down. The speeder looks fine, at least.
"Mind the edge," Ahsoka says, automatically.
"I could jump and you'd catch me," Jyn says. Ahsoka winds her hand into the back of Jyn's shirt.
"I can't believe you said that to Obi-Wan."
"Believe it. I said it."
Ahsoka snorts, and wipes her eyes with her free hand. Her cheeks are wet, the whites of her eyes reddened, and she seems to have drawn blood biting her lip: It's raw. She's trembling like a lothwolf at bay, and her breathing judders.
Jyn waits for several long minutes, watching the canyon crows. "I'm sorry," she says, when she judges the time is right.
Ahsoka lets go of the back of her shirt, and puts her arm around Jyn's shoulders instead. She squeezes tight, and presses her face into Jyn's hair. Jyn feels her inhale and exhale.
"I never thought," she says, and then stops, and repeats herself: "I never thought. I never even dreamed -"
Her voice fails.
"I don't think it's ever easy to find out your mentor went wrong," Jyn says. She thinks of Saw, and the way Baze reacted to the idea that she might be a Partisan, and swallows. "And this is more than just wrong." She remembers Ahsoka's grim and haunted look on Naboo, as she spoke of Darth Vader. The Sith has become the terror of the galaxy; unstoppable, unmerciful, pitilessly brutal.
"It's everything Anakin fought against," Ahsoka says. "Almost his whole life, before the Empire. He hated the Dark Side. He hated the Sith. And that's what he's become." She wipes her eyes again, this time with her sleeve. "I wish I knew how Palpatine did it," she says, muffled. "So I could undo it."
"You know how reluctant I am to give that man credit for anything," Jyn says. "But it seems like if that could be done, Kenobi would have done it."
"Master Obi-Wan is a great man," Ahsoka says, lifting her head.
"Sure," Jyn says, who has no doubts of Kenobi's talents or abilities or whatever, just his character. "And an arsehole."
There's a very slight clatter from inside the hut.
"Liana. You said you'd let go of your anger."
"I let go of my anger on your behalf about a man I knew nothing about," Jyn says. "Now I've met the man, and I think he's an arsehole. Satisfied?"
"No," Ahsoka says reflectively. "But I'd give a lot to see Rex's face if he heard you."
Jyn smiles, and together they sit and stare at the opposite canyon wall for a while, in silence.
"So much makes sense now," Ahsoka says, solemn and weary again. This news has laid weights of stone over her shoulders, and although Kenobi did have to tell the truth - fucking finally - Jyn can't help but dislike him for it. She can see the extra droop to Ahsoka's shoulders, the tension in muscles trying to hold up against this new pressure. "Bail was right. Leia is in unimaginable danger. If Vader guesses that she's Padmé's daughter… at least we'd have warning, if he came all the way out here. It's a backwater. But he could grab Leia on Coruscant at almost any time, and there's a limit to how long she could remain hidden even on Alderaan."
"Mm," Jyn says.
"I wish I didn't know," Ahsoka says.
"Bollocks," Jyn says, too raw to be gentle. "You would have found out sooner or later. You mean you wish it wasn't true."
Ahsoka sighs, and kisses Jyn's temple. "Occasionally, I wish you were not so perceptive." She gets to her feet carefully, and pulls Jyn to hers. "Come. I still need to talk to Obi-Wan."
Obi-Wan Kenobi is still inside, apparently meditating on a gecko making its careful way up his wall. But when Jyn and Ahsoka pass through the doorway, his eyes flicker to them at once. They land on Ahsoka, and soften.
"I am sorry," he says, rising to his feet. "If there's one thing I'm grateful for about my isolation, it means that I have had to tell few of the many people who loved Anakin what became of him. It's a painful burden to bear."
"Another one you should not have borne alone," Ahsoka says, embracing him. He holds as tightly to her as she does to him.
"I believed I had no choice," he says, as he lets go.
"Cody would tell you," Ahsoka says, taking her seat again, "that if your lateral thinking always involves martyring yourself for the greater good, it's not lateral thinking."
"I seem to remember that Cody's pronouncements were generally more concise than that," Kenobi says, "and contained more bad language."
"You earned every last swearword," Ahsoka says unsympathetically. Jyn sits down beside her, and watches as she eyes her teacup. Then she picks it up and takes a sip, closing her eyes against the taste.
"I talked to Maul," she says. "On Mandalore. When we fought."
"You captured him, I believe," Kenobi says. There's a distinct ring of pride in his voice.
"Well, you did give me very clear orders to capture and not kill him," Ahsoka says, smiling slightly.
Kenobi glances at Jyn like this is an in-joke. "Maul had a nasty habit of coming back from the dead."
Jyn nods like that's a completely normal thing to say.
"On Mandalore," Ahsoka says, running the tip of her finger around the rim of her cup, "he said Anakin was part of Sidious's master plan."
"I'm only surprised he knew," Kenobi says wearily.
"His intention was to lure you there," Ahsoka says, "after what happened on Mandalore before, I guess -" For the first time, her eyes flicker away from Kenobi's; there's a story there, but Jyn won't stop to ask: there's an old exhausted grief in Kenobi's face, and he isn't troubling to hide it - "and Anakin would follow you, and Maul then intended to kill Anakin."
"And I suppose then one of us would have killed him," Kenobi says heavily, "had he succeeded." Kenobi sighs, and shifts in his chair. "I doubt it would have changed the ultimate outcome, Ahsoka, given the chips controlling the clones - whether Maul succeeded in killing Anakin or not. It is not a possibility to discount. He is, or he was, a skilled duelist, and he remains powerful."
"I thought he might have died," Ahsoka says. "I don't know if Qi'ra No-Name killed him or overthrew him, but Crimson Dawn no longer operates at his command." They avoid the cartels, for the very good reason that Ahsoka in particular would fetch a high price in the right market, but Ahsoka reads her Intelligence briefings from top to bottom, and as low as Jyn's personal opinion of Draven is, the Rebels are smart enough to watch people like Qi'ra No-Name closely. It pays to be informed.
Kenobi is already shaking his head. "As formidable as Lady Qi'ra is, no, she did not kill him - and no, he is not dead. I sense him still. Full of rage. But barring some circumstance I cannot predict, he will not find me here."
Ahsoka swallows, and bites her lower lip again. Blood runs. "If I had told the full truth when I reported to the council - I thought Maul was raving when he said the Emperor planned to use Anakin. He was hysterical when we caught him. But my judgement was clouded."
"I had the fullest confidence in Anakin right until the very end," Kenobi says. "You were not alone in your mistake. None of us saw what was in store for Anakin."
Ahsoka's voice trembles like glass that has shattered and is soon to break. "I still could have warned - perhaps we could have saved him -"
Kenobi shakes his head again. Grudgingly, Jyn awards him a point or two. He is at least telling Ahsoka the full story: he could hide lies from Jyn, but not from Ahsoka, and she would have pulled him up on it by now.
"It was too late," he says. "I was already en route for Utapau by the time you captured Maul. All Palpatine needed to do was activate Order 66. And such was his influence over Anakin's mind I am not sure Anakin could have resisted him."
"Given evidence," Ahsoka protests, "if he were told -" but the look on Kenobi's face is grim and set.
"You have not encountered him," Kenobi says. There is a dreadful gentleness, and yet a sternness, to the way he cuts across her, and Jyn's heart sinks deep into her stomach. Her crystal is flaring with heat again. Something is about to happen, she knows, and it can't be good. "There is nothing left of the man we loved. That is not damage that is done in a day or a week."
"But - you have encountered him," Ahsoka says slowly. "You aren't talking about just the footage you saw, are you? You were with Padmé when she found him?"
"Yes," Kenobi says heavily. "We found him on Mustafar, where we now realise he must have murdered the remaining Separatist leadership on Palpatine's orders."
Ahsoka swallows convulsively, and her hand reaches for Jyn's under the table.
"Padmé believed she could calm him. Persuade him to come quietly. She left me little room to argue, but - Palpatine had persuaded Anakin that I was no longer on his side."
Which you weren't , Jyn thinks. The quick flick of Kenobi's eyes towards her suggests he picked something up, whether from her posture or her face; it doesn't feel like he's touching her mind.
"When he saw me, he believed Padmé too had betrayed him. He lashed out, and she collapsed. We fought. He would not - I begged him to stop." For the first time Kenobi's voice takes on an uneven, cracking quality. Ahsoka is deathly pale, and too still. Jyn, unsettled, thinks of the Cloudriders' hideout, the wampa's nest, the cave-in.
Hallik's going to take this out of your hide .
"I - he slipped up. The Dark side has made him sloppy. And I- I am not sure I was well controlled, either. He lost limbs, and fell onto a bank above one of the lava rivers. But he still wouldn't stop trying to kill me. I begged him to give in, but - he would not. He kept screaming that he hated me."
Jyn's eyes slip sideways to Ahsoka's face, and stay there. The look in her eyes is worse than anything Jyn has ever seen. Like what she's seeing is not just her mentor's face, but another man, younger, lying on a bank of laser-hot rock, screaming in agony, bursting into flame.
"Lost - Master Kenobi," Ahsoka says. "You killed him?"
The silence that falls is worse than anything yet.
"You left him to die?" Ahsoka whispers.
"Ahsoka," Kenobi says, with a terrible pain and weariness in his voice, and suddenly Jyn gets it, gets the selfish selflessness of his choices and the deep wounds they spring from. Betrayed by the men he probably cared about as much as Ahsoka did, betrayed by his best friend, watching another close friend, heavily pregnant, fall wounded because of their lover's jealous rage, stripped of all his family -
Jyn doesn't like him any the better for it, but his bad choices are less inexplicable than they were. Seems there's more than one way for a Jedi to go wrong, and not all of them involve the Dark side. Which makes sense, kind of.
"Ahsoka," Kenobi repeats. "What would you have done?"
"I would have shot him in the head," Ahsoka says brutally, "rather than leave him to burn to death, and to become Vader. But I guess I learned that kind of mercy from Rex and Cody, not you."
Kenobi flinches, a great full-body shudder that leaves his teacup juddering across the table. "Master Yoda told me something similar," he says, "if not in so many words… that if I could not contemplate fighting or killing Anakin, the Emperor had already won. I begged him to let me go after the Emperor instead."
Ahsoka says nothing for a long moment, and then she says: "Excuse me. I need to move." She gets up and walks out, and then leaps from the cliff: the kind of move that shakes Jyn's heart like a heat-activated ration pack, until she sees Ahsoka make contact with the rock wall on the opposite side of the cliff, land lightly, and drop from sight. There's no mistaking that degree of Jedi bullshit.
"Does she do this often?" Kenobi enquires, frowning after her.
Jyn considers the question. She has seen Ahsoka get fidgety, restless, need to move to burn off energy; typically that isn't driven by emotion, though, just cabin fever, and usually she solves the problem with practice katas. Here, though, she won't want to use her sabers openly.
"No," Jyn says. "When she's upset she usually just meditates a lot." She taps her cup against the table, raises her eyebrows at Kenobi. "Never had to deal with anything like her teacher confessing to the attempted murder of her other teacher, who became a Sith, though. And then there's the fact that you abandoned her and didn't even reach out when we were pretty much next door."
"I did not want to kill Anakin," Kenobi says, a faint hint of steel in his voice. He does sound a lot like Ahsoka sometimes.
Including in the way he doesn't deny the other charges.
"You mean you weren't willing to," Jyn corrects.
Kenobi just sighs.
"Well, you don't answer to me." Jyn shrugs.
"No," he says dryly, a sliver of entertainment peeking through.
"And it's Ahsoka's call on whether she ever sees you again," Jyn adds, getting to her feet and observing with satisfaction the way that wipes the amusement off Kenobi's face. She raises her eyebrows at him. "Senator Organa will probably expect her to continue Leia's training. Maybe Luke's too. But Ahsoka's a professional and she doesn't hold grudges, so she'll find a way round… I guess."
Kenobi says nothing. Jyn refills her water bottle from the tank in the corner, and goes back out to sit on the ledge - this time with her back pressed up against the wall. She tries to find a patch of shade to sit in and watch for the occasional flash of Ahsoka's blue montrals as she flips and twists around the canyon, but it's not an easy balance to make, and by the time Ahsoka sails back onto the ledge and comes to a perfect stop, Jyn can feel the skin of her cheeks tightening.
"You're burned," Ahsoka says.
"Are you better?"
"Up to a point."
Jyn examines Ahsoka. She's breathing slightly hard, and sweat sheens her arms and shoulders. There are hard, unhappy brackets around her mouth, and her eyes are full of exhaustion, but something about the way she holds herself tells Jyn she doesn't need to worry about a breakdown. Which is good, because getting Ahsoka back down that path if she were half-collapsed again would be a nightmare.
"I think I already knew pieces of this story," Ahsoka says, soft and low, almost meditative. "I think I've feared this for a long time, without understanding it."
Jyn gets to her feet and brushes herself off. "Does it change the plan?"
"No. But it makes it considerably more dangerous than it was before. I faked my death after Order 66, and Anakin and I no longer share a training bond - he must have broken it when he Fell, accidentally or otherwise. But if we do follow our plan, and he is trying to expand the Inquisitorius, it is likely he will eventually guess who I am. And Obi-Wan is right. He won't let me go easily. And he won't care about hurting you to get to me." Ahsoka pauses, watching Jyn's face. She must be able to see the way the idea of a Sith lord with a personal interest in killing her hits Jyn like shock after a wound too bad to hurt. "I would never hold you to any promise you made, or felt you made, to stay with me."
"I don't remember making a promise," Jyn says. "I just remember telling you what I was going to do." She squares her shoulders and glares Ahsoka directly in the eye. "Look. Nothing has changed yet. If it changes, and I'm holding you back, or risking you -" the thought hits her throat like bitter gall - "we'll think again. But now is a bad time to make big decisions."
Ahsoka smiles. "Decisions made out of fear," she says, and it sounds like an agreement. Jyn presses her lips together and nods, thinking about the Holy City. She had been tempted to quit the mission and leave Bana and her dad to their own devices, but she hadn't done it. Maybe that was more important then she realized at the time.
"Shit like that," she says, "yeah."
Ahsoka lets out a breath, and reaches out to cup Jyn's jaw in her hand. Jyn leans into the touch, but winces; she had to wait a while for Ahsoka to come back, and she is burned.
"All right if I clear that up?" Ahsoka asks.
"Be my guest." Jyn closes her eyes against the cool relief of her skin reforming, the burn easing and soothing under Ahsoka's fingers. "You want to go back in?"
"It would be rude to leave without saying goodbye," Ahsoka says. She glances over Jyn's shoulder. "And he wants to talk to me."
Jyn glances back, and sees Kenobi busying himself with a second pot of tea. Whatever sympathy she may have found for him, she doesn't trust him one inch.
"Jedi bullshit," she says.
"Some day," Ahsoka replies, "I have got to introduce you to Wolffe."