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WHO: Character(s)
WHAT: Obi-Wan Kenobi catch-all open post
WHEN: Backdated to cover the vaguely handwaved span of October/late september
WHERE: Kirkwall (Hightown), The Gallows courtyard, ect
NOTES:

I. Obi-Wan at the Hawke Estate

Obi-Wan Kenobi lived in a lovely house in Hightown. He was the only Rifter who lived there, indeed the only one on the entire street. This was, of course, because the house did not belong to him. It belonged to the Hawkes.

Specifically, most recently, to Bethany Hawke.

He valued his friendships for other reasons, but there were times when it was truly, geniunely good to have connections. Hemight work for the Inquisition, but living outside of the Gallows provided quiet, and privacy, and the luxury of at least pretending that they didn't all live in a prison built to house slaves and worse. Specificially it allowed him to putter aorund the kitchen and pretend that his arrival 'home' was no more remarkable than any other such arrival. That nothing was wrong. That he need not think of the future, or the past, or any moment beyond the present.

That he had returned as whole as he had left. Surely, there was that at least. There would be no miraculous bacta, or cloned flesh, or sybernetic replacement. This would be his life, from now on and he would just... have to cope. Alone.

There was no sense in worrying anyone, really.

II.Catching up with Cody

The first thing you'll see of them is a ball. It's small and rubber and it's brown in a way that suggests it used to be red, before time and dog had gotten their way. Mabari need a lot of exercise, and young mabari moreso than usual. So the first thing, is the ball, and shortly thereafter, bouncing at least as chaotically, is the dog. It's a sand-colored puppy, big-pawed and lanky in the way of growing dogs everywhere and running with a gait like an ambulatory pancake.

Floppa-floppa-floppa— pounce!

And thereabouts, just as the dog turns to return its prey to the hand that threw it, is when you might catch sight of Obi-Wan, walking at a much more sedate pace, and using the ball's added doubling back to make up for the lack.

III. Getting Back On The Horse, So To Speak

Obi-Wan no longer made his main residence in the Gallows, but it was still a useful place to visit. For one, most of the Rifters were still there, and for another, it was one of the few places in Kirkwall that a man could sit cross-legged with many small and often shiny pieces spread out in the sun and be reasonably sure that all of them would be where he left them a moment ago. Obi-Wan is, slowly, and with great care, taking something small and delicate off his lightsaber. It's not a terribly graceful process, for the most part, hampered as he is by the lack of a hand, but between that handicap and the use of the Force, it's a chore that requires a great deal of concentration. He's grateful for that, for the ability to simply forget about pretension, to make mistakes, even stupid ones and strive only for the hoped-for outcome.

Of course, the actual reassembly does not require the use of hands at all. But it's the time that counts, the ability to lose oneself in the work, in the meditation of it. And to forget, until someone else's shadow falls over him, that he's not entirely alone.

IV. Wildcard

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The Hawke estate is one of the only places in Hightown that Merrill can get to without as much difficulty as- well, everywhere else in Kirkwall. It's still not great; it takes her a while as she accidentally ends up crossing through someone's garden and circling the same block three times. Still, she gets there. She's not actually expecting anyone to be there - she had wanted to go and visit the estate because it had been where Hawke lived, where her friends lived.

How fortuitous that another friend lives there, now!

Merrill hasn't forgotten what happened at the Abbey on the White Cliff. She thinks she will remember it for a very, very long time. When a passerby finally tells her that the estate is occupied, and by Obi-Wan, she doubles back to the market. She finds tea and bread and herbed butter, and after Barkley finishes trying to chase a bird, she and her little dog go back to the estate. This time, Merrill knocks - and then doesn't wait for an answer, pushing the door open.

"Hello?"

[ after this ]

Rey had half considered just going to the Gallows and crashing on the cot in the Base Operations office for the night, but she'd told Ben she was going to Obi-Wan's, and only after she'd left had she realized she'd never actually asked Obi-Wan if she could stay.

The walk to High Town wasn't a terribly long one, but she took the time, trying to get her tears and the ache in her heart under control. When she turns up at Obi-Wan's door finally her eyes are red from her wiping the tears away, but she's no longer crying, for the moment.

She rings the bell, surreptitiously rubbing the back of her hand over her eyes again, feeling as if they're still wet even though they aren't. When the door opens she forces a weak smile, trying to look happier than she is.

"Sorry to drop in unexpected, but I was hoping you'd let me stay with you for a few days?"

Obi-Wan hardly had time to put down what he'd been using to poke at the fire, let alone answer the door. That was another thing he'd had to get used to in Thedas all over again. Fire, as a primary means of warming oneself and one's food. It was hardly civilized, and yet...

Well, none of it had to do with the knock at the door, or his new visitor.

"Merrill?" He pokes his head out of the kitchen, a decidedly off-to-the-side affair, built into the house as if to minimize the presence of foot-traffic through the living spaces. Obi-Wan like it very much, even if it had likely more to do with isolating the servant's quarters than with any notion of his own privacy.

"What a surprise! Is everything alright?"

Aside, of course, from the obvious; Obi-Wan keeps his arms tucked into his sleeves more than usual, these days.

Obi-Wan answers the door without surprise. He lets her babble through the formalities, comforting nonsense-words that mean things like please, don't reject me and I'm lonely and frightened under the platitudes. Obi-Wan steps back to let her in and closes the door behind her.

"Of course you can stay as long as you like. I'm certain Bethany wouldn't object, even if she were here to do so. Come, sit," The house is full of the steeping smell of tea, Merrill's gift, and there's half a loaf of bread and pottage, not really too stale. They've both eaten much worse, and been grateful for it. Anyways, it's warm, "I can see we have some things to discuss."

You aren't fooling anyone, Rey. You get blotchy when you cry and it persists for hours, despite your dignity; it doesn't take a Jedi to see that you're upset.

The relief she feels when she steps over the threshold into the manor is almost palpable. She exhales, her shoulders relaxing, the tension she'd felt a moment ago slowly leaving her body, and only leaving behind the hollow empty feeling. Padawan is on her heels, though she does spare Obi-Wan a cursory sniff and tail wagging greeting. At Obi-Wan's observation Rey gives him a half smile, though it's fleeting.

"Ben and I got into a fight."

"I see," He says, which is his way of asking for more without pressing. He leads her through into the kitchen, and it's homey and warm, flat brown paving stones and the smell of good food. Cody lifts his tawny head from where he's lying beside the fire, wuffs once, then goes back to his nap.

And the table, yes, with the seat now meant for Rey.

"Conflict of some kind is inevitable in any relationship, however peaceful it might otherwise be," He says, though not without a certain trepidation. It's hard to imagine Kylo Ren or Ben Solo as a peaceful person, regardless of the relationship, "...It was an argument, not a..."

Not combat, he means. There's a difference between shouting and lightsabers, surely.

She settles in at the table without further comment, Padawan laying down at her feet, the kitten still asleep in her pack that she puts next to her chair. The kitchen being homey and warm just makes her wish she were sitting in her own kitchen with Ben.

Shaking her head she leans her arms on the table, suddenly feeling very heavy.

"No, we didn't come to blows. He just... did something I don't agree with. Which I know is a lot of what he's done in his past, but I thought he was leaving it behind him." Maybe that's what she's most upset about. That she'd been foolish enough to think that the light in Ben Solo's heart was stronger now in this place than it had been in their own galaxy. That he'd be able to push off the darkness when it came for him, even without her help.

Kylo had felt adrift for a few days, now it tapered off into an almost numb sensation. He could still feel Rey through the Force and knew she could feel him too. It didn't change things. He didn't feel much changed despite having time to think and to turn over everything in his head. Now all he had was time to think.

When he wanders to the Gallows after a day at the Forges, the first thing he sees is Obi-Wan. He could tell even from a distance that he was concentrating on his lightsaber, that he was removing something from it or perhaps trying to reconstruct it. He didn't know. Still, the curiosity got to him and he watched, albeit from some distance. He didn't know what to say to to the seasoned Jedi. The last thing he wanted was to talk about Rey, and yet he still worried - still cared despite being the cause of her hurt.

"How long have you been at that?" He asks with some hesitance, like a stray dog that's likely to bolt when startled. He refused to talk about Rey right now, but he would talk about this.

Edited (whoops didn't change my icon) 2018-10-27 04:55 (UTC)

Homey it may seem, but it's lonely too. Not that Obi-Wan is likely to complain— whether it's wise or not, he prefers to withdraw, most days. There's only so much reason, now, not to dwell upon the past. Not to meditate and let the days slip past him without much friction, when he can.

"I see," He says, quietly, and thinks about Ben's grandfather, disappearing into the black and returning much quieter than he had gone. He hadn't asked questions then, hadn't even considered asking; too aware of what the answer might be, and too unwilling to risk he inevitable consequences, "I should council you to go back to him immediately, to try and... guide him, somehow. That's what I would have said, before."

Before, in the lifetime when they had first met, and he had been a younger man.

"The truth is, sometimes, for there to be any good, there must first be some pain; you did the right thing, and I'm glad you had somewhere to run to, when you needed it. Anyways, I could use the help around the house, for a while; it's suddenly gotten a little... harder."

She feels cold creep over her skin as he tells her of what he should council her to do, because she feels guilty, suddenly. Had she run out on him too quickly? He had been so desperate for her to stay, that had been a large reason why she'd felt she needed to go. He had needed her to put distance between them, she'd felt. The cold subsides when Obi-Wan continues, and she musters a brief smile as he commends her, but the guilt remains.

"Harder? What do you mean?" Rey's eyes flick up to Obi-Wan's brow furrowed as she then looks around. She knew that the other occupants of the mansion were gone, but he'd been living like this for a few months, now. She couldn't imagine it changing, much. She's also tired and horribly distracted, so maybe not as observant as she usually is.

"Thirty years," He replies, with only a slight hesitation while he examines the part in his hand, "This is only my third lightsaber. I still had the last one, somewhere."

Probably destroyed, now, or confiscated by some dire regime, repurposed for use by a dark apprentice, or sealed away somewhere. That seemed worse, somehow: a beautiful, practical tool, reduced to little more than a trophy.

"Your lightsaber is your life," He says, still not looking up, and the rote rule of it is obvious in his voice, a lesson Obi-Wan had given a thousand times, "Lose one and you're likely to lose the other."

Obi-wan blinked at that. No, of course she couldn't know; and he'd done precious little to prepare her. But then, what could he possibly do? It wasn't the sort of news you threw a party for.

"I... took an injury, while I was away," He begins, sure only that to simply lay it out for her to see with her own eyes was... very much the wrong approach, "It's very likely to be permanent. So, this is going to be an adjustment, until I get used to it; I'm not sure how long that will be."

Time, like sand, there was so very much of it, until suddenly it was all slipped away through your fingers, and gone.

“Did Jedi often lose their weapons so easily?” It felt strange to him. He couldn’t imagine losing his. It was an extension of himself. He had worked to craft it to perfection despite the glaring flaws and instability to its functionality. It suited him fine. It had been the only thing to keep him alive back when Luke had tried to kill him. He could still imagine the brilliant blue glow that clashed with green inside his hut that night. All he had to do was close his eyes.

He moves closer to Obi-wan, wanting to see his work. He’d dismantled his battered blade so easily and reassembled it. Yet this was taking more time. He couldn’t help wanting to learn this process, the curiosity calling him to the Jedi’s side.

“I’ve always had this with me. I’ve never lost it, not once.” But then he’d never met anyone strong enough to oppose him until Rey. He unclips the weapon from his belt, turning it over in his hand. It was a mess compared to Obi-wan’s craftsmanship.

"I lost my first lightsaber when the Sith that killed my Master kicked it down a reactor shaft. And the second, as I said, I still have. Had," Obi-Wan replied, in a tone of politeness so calm and bland as to constitute an insult, "Anakin lost his constantly. He'd drop it in a fight, or have it stolen, or get it confiscated when he was captured..."

There is a pause in the slow rhythm of Obi-Wan's progress. He half-reached with his right hand, then paused, stopped, and heaved a sigh. And then he turned to look back at Ben with a face that showed every one of his years.

"I kept having to go find it for him, or else he'd have to make a new one. It was the stupidest thing you can possibly imagine. So, at least you're doing better than that."

Edited 2018-10-27 22:06 (UTC)

Her eyebrows crease slightly as he speaks, her lips pursing as her eyes scan his face and torso, everything she can see immediately looks fine. She doesn't recall him walking strangely when they'd come in, so surely the injury couldn't be something so serious? She reaches out with the Force, too, and she can still feel him there, strong and steady, so it isn't something to do with his abilities, either.

"Of course. It took Ben a while to adjust to the scar I gave him and he had the advantage of a bacta patch having been applied to it not long before he ended up here. You didn't have a healer with you who could help?" She'd found that the healers here often had better results than bacta. With bacta you were often left with a scar, but that didn't seem to be the case with magical healing.

"He sounds irresponsible, if he was making you constantly retrieve it for him." Honestly that surprised him. He pictured this hardened man with an iron fist, someone who didn't have a stitch out of place nor lost his lightsaber so easily. Even so, part of him latched on to what Obi-wan was saying. It was what he'd wanted from the beginning, to hear the truth of his family even if it was small innocuous details like this.

"A far cry from Darth Vader, I'd think." He wouldn't know. The man had been dead not long before he'd even been conceived. All he had were Snoke's assertions of Vader's greatness and the legacy he'd squandered in a moment of weakness. Kylo had always aspired to be above such things, and yet here he was walking about with a broken heart he was still trying desperately to pretend wasn't really there.

Edited 2018-10-28 04:29 (UTC)

"I—" Obi-Wan though about Anders, cursing him all the while, hands blue and bright around the stump of his hand. And the pain had been...

Unimportant. Obi-Wan reminds himself of that with a wrench, shaking himself away from the memory.

"Yes. Anders was there. Without his help, it might have been much worse," Obi-Wan heaved a deep, heavy sigh and turned more fully to face her, "It's a bit worse than a scar. I'll show you."

Obi-Wan put his arm up. He would have liked to wait, to breathe, but bullied his way through the impulse to delay: there was patience, and then there was cowardice. Obi-Wan slid back the sleeve. And there it was.

The scar was ugly, though not even half as ugly as it might have been. The cut had been crude, violent, tearing, but the healing had been immediate if not thorough. And now, for the forseeable future, his arm looked like this: abbreviated halfway between the elbow and a now-hypothetical wrist, the stump knotted with scar tissue, slightly reddened, the skin there still new. His hand was gone.

"I should have told you earlier. When I first arrived. But there's nothing to be done, and it seemed... unnecessary."

"I only met Darth Vader once. He looked like my brother, fought in the same way, had much of the same impulsiveness; I thought, I knew Anakin."

He had known Anakin. Had known him well enough that their duel had been very nearly a farce, that parries had slipped by and emotion overtaken reason. Had known him so poorly that he had woken up one day to find his life in ashes and Anakin— Vader holding the flame.

"He was irresponsible. But he was also very brave. Perhaps one came from another, in a way. It doesn't matter," Obi-Wan turned back to his parts, though he didn't reach for the next one, only looked at them as if they were the most unremarkable things in the world. It was an excuse to look away from Padme Amidala's eyes, living in a younger face, "He's dead now. They both are. And I'm not. So much for prophecy."

Kylo frowns at that, feeling almost snubbed once Obi-wan turns away from him again. He didn't know what to say at first, so he just turns over the man's words in his head.

"'They both are'.... you mean my grandmother, too." He sighs, clearly frustrated that he can sense Obi-wan withdrawing back to his work instead of wanting to talk more about his grandfather.

"I think my mother was more concerned with pretending I wasn't like him than telling me things about either of her parents." What he knew of Padme Amidala was kept close to chest. No one was supposed to know that a respected senator had birthed the children of Darth Vader. He wished his mother had at least given him something to carry with him, even if it wasn't the man she hated.

"She named me after you, though. She had a lot of respect for you. You helped her stop Vader." And because he knows 'Ben' would probably make no sense to Obi-wan without an explanation, "Ben is the name you chose to go by while in exile on Tatooine, watching my uncle grow up."

He honestly felt less worthy of it since meeting the man himself, even if he was several decades younger than when his mother knew him. He realizes that he's never told Obi-wan this - that his name comes from him. He can't help but wonder whether Luke had been the one to suggest it. Probably. Most likely his parents would have bickered about what to name him and then Luke would have stepped in. The thought made his stomach knot. He hated his uncle.

"Your mother never knew Padme," Obi-Wan reminds him, quietly despairing, "She likely would have considered Queen Breha Organa, of Alderaan, to be her mother. Senator Amidala would have been..."

Academic. It would have been little more than a voting record, hologram-portraits, and the content of her public appearances, her speeches, if Leia were lucky. But then, what could he do? Padme herself was gone, and Bail had as much access to knowledge of Leia's true mother as anyone not of Naboo ever could.

"...After me?" Ben, for the ugly, blunted name those who spoke only the rim-native dialect of Basic used when they didn't know to sneer Jedi. Why everyone seemed to be able to manage Kenobi but not the other had always escaped him. Without meaning to, he found he had turned back towards Ben, blinking incredulously, "...I only ever used to use that name to escape bar tabs."

There's something sad about that, somehow more sad than lost legacies and dead grandparents, as if that smaller sadness stood atop the shoulders of the genocide of the Jedi faith and thereby boosted itself above some invisible ceiling. It seemed almost to loop back, like an orbit, until it was funny.

"Oh no."

Rey's look of concentration turns to one of horror when she sees the stump where Obi-Wan's hand had once been. She can't school her reaction, even if she were trying, it's so much worse than she'd expected. No, no healer would have been able to repair his hand, as gifted as they were.

"Wh- Of course you should have told me! Here I am making a scene because Ben and I a fight, and you've lost a hand! I would have been here helping you if I'd known." She somehow is both mad at him for not telling her, and embarrassed that her problems had seemed anything but trivial in the face of his rather permanent one. The rift between her and Ben would be mended. This, unless magic was very advanced, was something he'd just have to live with.

Embarrassed— ashamed, rather, Obi-Wan pulled his maimed arm away with a grimace. It was easy to push the sleeve back over it, covering his offense, and that was a silly impulse; there was no taking it back, any of it.

"I'm sorry."

He isn't sorry that he didn't tell her, not really. All Obi-Wan had wanted to do was to pretend, however poorly, that nothing had to change. It had been a welcome respite, after a week of near-total chaos. But he was sorry that he had made her feel like a fool, or disregarded her feelings on the matter.

She pulls back from her anger quickly, letting out a breath and furrowing her eyebrows.

"It's all right. How- what happened? You're one of the best fighters I know, I wouldn't think anyone here would be able to get so close as to take off your sword hand." Unless there are weapons that can match a lightsaber here, which is a bit of a startling thought. She'd gotten used to assailants thinking that her saber was simply a trussed up spirit blade and being thoroughly surprised when they tried to meet her with steel and were left with a significantly shortened sword.

"Of course they wouldn't have known that." He scoffs, adding it to the list of his family's offenses against him. His parents had wanted to give him some strong, profound, name and pin all their hopes on him. Instead they had named him after an alias for a bar tab.

There wasn't any changing it, though. It was the name he was given, but somehow he didn't feel right using it after so long. Rey made it feel almost right again. He still didn't feel comfortable having strangers use it, but somehow with her and Obi-wan he allowed it.

"It doesn't matter. I don't use it anymore. Rey is the one who started using it." Kylo was the shell he surrounded himself with because in his mind 'Ben' was too weak by comparison. He'd been taught well enough by Snoke that he couldn't allow his weaknesses or his sentiment to overtake him the way Vader's had. Somehow he really was more like his grandfather than he thought and not in the ways he wanted to be. He'd allowed her to get close enough to hurt him.

"I apologize. I distracted you from your lightsaber. Is it broken or were you modifying it?" He was trying to deflect, hoping it would work. He didn't want to talk about himself anymore. He didn't know what made him think it was a good idea to tell Obi-wan about his name. Perhaps it was the connection it gave him to the Jedi. He didn't exactly have anyone else.

Edited (i can't type remind me not to tag at 2am) 2018-10-29 06:13 (UTC)

Obi-Wan considered that, and what he knew about Kylo Ren, about Ben. Named for him, a son of Leia, Anakin's grandson. That was something, though he didn't know what: an inkling of family. But in the nest moment the light of that flickered— ah, but hadn't it already gone to the Dark Side? If not in totality, then...

What's the point?

"Not all legacies are without value," He says, at last, because it's true even if he often doesn't feel it. Out on the bay, a seagull cries and the sound carries even past the thick, muffling walls of the Gallows courtyard; broken? No, the lightsaber wasn't the broken thing, here. Obi-Wan sighs at the components.

"Routine maintenance. Much of it can be repaired, but it's good odds that Thedas hasn't even noticed Selenium exists, let alone refined it to a purity that could be of any use," It's easy to be lively about this, technical details, shop-talk. This wasn't about fraught emotional values or judgements of opinion. Lightsabers might fail you, or break, but never for no reason, "I wanted to be sure I could still keep it in good repair. So far, so good."

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wildcard with a touch of i probably

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iii. but also wildcard i guess

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