deercountry | Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls...

"She's, uh, a cat," Ezra admits, a little sheepishly. "White loth cat." He makes a gesture to demonstrate the size, which is a little bigger than most house cats, but not by much.

He shakes his head. "It makes sense. There was a cat like that back on my homeworld that turned up a few times, when I needed to be pointed in the right direction."

Then he glances around. "Introduce me to the rest of the grove? And what's your Omen?"

Ariadne thought she could sense some embarrassment. But she smiled warmly. Cats might be domestic animals, but they were much more clever than most humanoids realized. She actually had quite a lot of respect for cats. Felt some kindship, even. The way they could leap from branch to branch. Just like she did as a little girl.

Walking forward, she started pointing around to the different trees. "Well, the plum tree over there is named 'Toby.' And the cinnamon tree is 'Araceli.' That one over there? That's an orange tree. I named it 'Morgan.' The lemon tree is 'Dagmar.' Mostly because lemons are sour fruits and I once knew a courtier named Dagmar who was also kind of sour."

She had the grace to look a little embarrassed about that.

It was...kind of cruel.

Ezra snickers.

"I'm sure a perfect Jedi would say something pithy about revenge here. But it's not exactly like they're here to have their feelings hurt, are they?"

"I'd change the name, if she were here," Ariadne replied, walking over to give her lemon tree a reassuring pat. She wanted it to know that she loved it just as much as all of the others. "But the odds of me ever seeing anyone from home feel...small."

Not impossible. She couldn't rule it out. And even if she had all the information, she wouldn't.

It just...wasn't something she was going to count on.

"You're lucky, you know," she said, walking back over to him. "There are people from your world here. And whether you like them or dislike the or don't even know them, at least they understand you in a way that no one else could."

"I know I'm lucky," Ezra says, earnestly

"Both here and Temba - where I was for a while before, there were people from my galaxy. Some of them very easy to love. There were even a few Jedi. But I made some good friends with people from other places, and I'll miss them too."

Lucky. But also kind of unlucky. The downside of having a big group of friends--from home or the multiverse--meant that you had many more people to lose when the multiverse...did its multiverse-y thing.

Ariadne, though, wasn't really made to be a pessimist. It fit her funny. Like a gown that had been made for someone else.

"I'd love to hear about them," she said. "If...if it's not too painful or anything."

"The people from my galaxy, or from other places, or?" he checks.

"The thing that hurts the most are the people I know a version of them, but they don't know me. And what's really weird is Kyle, who's from Earth, does remember meeting me in Temba. I think maybe Obi-wan and Luke are from...earlier point in time?"

He slowly nods. "Obi-wan is definitely from earlier. He doesn't look much younger from the last time I saw him, but he feels different."

"He seems like an old man to me," she said. "But that might be because he always seems a little cranky." Probably Anakin's fault. At least, most of the time.

Although there was still that nagging bias, rooted in the back of her mind, that refused to accept his 'no attachments' rule.

It just didn't make sense. As hard as she tried to make sense out of it.

Ariadne shook her head. "That was unkind of me. I shouldn't have said it."

"Well. He can be a little stiff," Ezra admits, but with obvious affection.

"'Something of a relic they don't understand' I think is what...Ben. I'm just gonna call the older versions of Obi-wan I've met Ben. Anyway, he said that about himself, once."

"Well, I certainly don't understand him," she admitted, sucking in some cold air, between her teeth. "And I'm sure he doesn't understand me. So we're the same, in that sense."

Which was a funny thing to admit. To be opposites and yet the same.

Perhaps that's what the Force was really meant to be. She didn't know. She'd asked him for lessons but then...

Well. Then Anakin happened. And Ariadne wasn't sure she could face either of them right now.

"Can I ask?" Ezra tries hesitantly.

"Is it just him being confusing when he's deflecting or talking in circles - which is - that's a thing. Something he did?"

Ariadne shrugged, walking over to the cherry tree. This one was named Sara. In the spring, the cherry blossoms covered the ground like the snow did now. It was the most fragrant of the trees. She loved to sit under it and think. Usually happy memories. The small bits of freedom she tasted in her early life in Valeria.

Maybe Sophia was her favorite-favorite.

But Sara always knew how to make her happy.

"I think it's when he insists that Jedi aren't supposed to form attachments that I get confused. That...doesn't seem like any way to live." A pause. "Also, he does talk in circles a lot. All the time." She smiled a little. "I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets that treatment!"

He makes a so-so gesture with his hand. "I managed to figure out how to cut through a lot of that with Ben. But Anakin wasn't there. And Ben-"

He sighs unhappily. "He had lost basically everything. For better or for worse, Obi-wan and I won't have quite the same relationship here. Which to me, at least, is most of what is meant by lack of attachments. I could try to cling to the relationship some part of me wants. I could try to force it by telling Obi-wan certain things. Or-"

He makes a fist and then releases it, gesturing out. "I can let that go and try to love him as he is."

"But how can you love someone without being attached to them?"

It wasn't a challenge. Ariadne wasn't confrontational and the last thing she needed was to be 'right' all the time. It was...well, it was a genuine question. Because it didn't make sense to her.

Like saying that two plus two somehow equaled three.

Everyone knew it equaled four. But Obi-Wan was always telling her otherwise and it just...boggled the mind.

"Ok. Let's back up. What does being attached to someone mean to you?"

If there's one thing Ezra's learned in the last half year or so, was that even when everyone seems to be magically - maybe literally magically - speaking the same language, that doesn't mean everything translates.

Edited (wrong word) 2022-01-10 02:19 (UTC)

It was a reasonable question, she supposed. And he was right. Precision of language was important in a conversation like this.

But she needed to take it back a step even further:

"My people...Alastrians. We're pack animals. Nomadic. We don't have a home and most places we go, we're either chased out or just killed. Mostly because people don't understand us. There are all kinds of terrible stories about what we are. They say we're demons. That we're portents of evil. And where we go, death follows."

A pause.

"Which isn't true."

Just to be clear.

"But," she continued slowly, "because of that, our culture believes that the key to survival is attachment. In the pack. We call them the 'three kinds of love.'"

"So...because you're, uh, different, you're forced to be outsiders and rely heavily on your own people. You're tight-knit. Am I getting that right? What's the three kind of love?"

She held up her index finger. "The first is the love between parents and their children. The need to protect them. To sacrifice anything to keep them safe, to ensure their survival. What you'd hope most parents of most species would do for their offspring."

Even though she knew that wasn't always true. Which made her genuinely sad.

Ariadne ticked a second finger. "The second is the love between brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews. Members of a pack. Family. And the close friends that become family."

Like Dean and Sam for her. Which was something that Anakin didn't understand, since he was hung up on the third love.

"And then the kind of love, which I guess most people think of when they think of love: Romantic love, sexual love. The love between mates."

"None of that strikes me as any kind of unusual, but I can see how Order as Obi-wan grew up in could seem very, very strange in contrast. Because while this hasn't been true for all Jedi, everywhere, the Order he knows wasn't centered on biological family, sex, or romance. At all. Most children were brought into the Order very young, and raised communally. And this is where, to my understanding, it gets complicated, because there's politics stuff and philosophy stuff and then just straight up Force stuff."

He shakes his head. "To just say 'no attachments' is a quick rule that wraps up all those issues, and...yeah, explains nothing if you're not part of that culture, raised in an Order surrounded by thousands of Jedi, under the Republic, for which the Order served specific roles."

She smiles wanly. "Probably just as it makes no sense to an outsider how utterly devoted an Alastrian becomes to her mate."

They mated for life. And when taking a mate, you were trading everything for that partnership. It wasn't something entered into lightly. It wasn't romance or sex or flirtation.

It was...complete devotion.

"Well, someone getting married to one person and staying married to them the rest of the life isn't a foreign concept?" Ezra offers. "But yeah, under the Order as it had been under the Republic for centuries, if you wanted to do that, you'd leave service as a Jedi of the Order."

"And that's where I get confused," she said. "Obi-Wan tells me that the Jedi are about protecting civilization, ensuring peace. Bringing love and order to society."

She made a useless gesture with her hands.

To be certain, she hadn't expected to have this conversation today. But she had to admit, it had kept her awake at night, trying to understand. Struggling to line it all up.

"How can you protect society if you aren't...a part of its very foundation? It seems disconnected. How can you learn empathy with an institution you never experience?"

"I think Obi-wan would say 'how can you serve everyone, if you've devoted yourself to one person above everyone else?' My answer is - and I'm not completely sure on this, because well, I'm only eighteen. But I don't think marriage will ever be for me. Not even sure about sex. And that's not a Jedi thing, just. Hmmm, I haven't wanted any of that with a specific person, for longer than about 5 seconds initial consideration?"

He tilts his head at her. "Does that mean I don't have empathy? That I love less?"

"I don't know." She smiled a little, shaking her head. "I'm twenty, but the truth is that doesn't make me wiser than you. I've never been in love. Never had sex."

It occurred to her, for about half a second, that a similar conversation to this had started all of the trouble with Anakin. But Ezra was just so much...

Well, she couldn't say calmer for sure. But he seemed less volatile that Anakin, anyway.

And really, she didn't understand the humanoid hang-up, talking frankly and honestly about sex. It was truly baffling.

"And I don't know that wanting those things necessarily makes me more empathetic." She reached over to pick a dead twig off of the cherry tree. "I don't mean to speak about individuals though. I guess I'm just confused by the mindset as a whole. Blame it on the way my parents were, I guess. They were always at their strongest together."

"I think that was true for my birth parents. And generally for Kanan and Hera. Hera isn't a Jedi. She's a pilot - an amazing one." Which might mean Hera was a little more Force sensitive than average. That wouldn't surprise Ezra. Also not the point.

"But mostly she's a great person. I don't know all the details, but somehow meeting her made Kanan stop shutting the Force out and want to be a Jedi again. She convinced him to offer to teach me. But duty to the greater good - to the rebellion against the Empire - that was important to both of them."

Ezra bites his lip. "When Hera was captured, Kanan asked me to step and lead the mission to rescue her. He didn't want his feelings for her, and his fear, to lead him into a making a mistake. One that might risk her or our bigger mission."

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