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

"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."

Try as she might, Ariadne couldn't imagine a situation where a threat to her father would ever make her mother stand down. If anything, knowing Feofan was in danger would propel Rotspine to do the impossible.

It was strange to hold her mother up like that. Some kind of bizarre sort of mirror. They'd never gotten along, while Rotspine was alive. They'd fought like cats, in fact. And if it hadn't been for one of their many fights, there was reason to supposed that Ariadne wouldn't be alive now.

Impossible to live with. And yet some kind of ideal.

Kind of funny. Like the multiverse had a sense of humor.

"These friends of yours sound interesting," she said. "I'd love to hear more about them."

Edited 2022-01-10 20:51 (UTC)

"And here I was beginning to worry I was talking about myself too much," he says with a laugh.

Then he sobers. "I'd love to tell you more about them. But I think I have to ask you not to tell Anakin any of the personal details. I'd like to think that he's wrong, that just because in my past, he chooses to serve the Emperor and hunt Jedi and rebels, doesn't mean he's destined to make that choice. But if he somehow went home and with all his memories from here and did make the same choice...."

Ariadne nearly laughed. Not because it was funny. No. None of it was even remotely funny. Painfully familiar, if anything.

But. The idea of her telling Anakin...anything. That...that part was laughable.

"Ezra," she said, holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I don't mean to sound dramatic. But if I ever see Anakin Skywalker again, the last thing you need to worry about is me talking to him. After the way he's treated me and my friends, he'll be lucky if I just turn around and walk in the other direction." She wasn't violent by nature. But she was sorely tempted to throttle him.

All that to say:

"We're not friends any more."

"Good to know," Ezra says, sincerely.

"We're not friends either, but he's kinda family, so. Never fun when you have to tiptoe around and keep secrets from even family you don't know well, and may never get along with."

This time she did laugh. A little. "Remind me, someday, to tell you some horror stories about my mother. There was a lot of tiptoe-ing in my childhood."

But now wasn't the time for that.

She made a sweeping gesture toward the shop. "Come inside? I'll make some tea and you can tell me about your friends. I might even have some leftover chocolates, if you like your tea sweet."

They were a prized possession. But she was more than willing to share with Ezra.

"That sounds extra difficult," Ezra replies, sympathetically, about tiptoeing around her mother. He lucked out, as far as moms go - when they've been around and alive, at least.

"And I'm happy to try tea without any sweetener. Thanks," he adds, following her.

She opened the door to the shop, trotting happily across the threshold, holding it open for Ezra.

The lower level was one enormous great room, ringed with countertops. Across them, spilled out like coins in a treasure, were a variety of dried herbs, picked from the orchard. In the middle of the room, there were a series of tables, with a variety of mismatched vases. Some of them are real vases, others are just jars or pretty containers that Ariadne had encountered.

And the air smelled of springtime.

That was one of Ariadne's favorite things about the place. Even though it was dark and cold outside, if she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine one of the rare, lazy afternoons on the shores of Lake Hyli, watching the dandelion seeds drift on the breeze.

"This," she said, "will be filled with flowers in the spring, I hope. And herbs and spices. And fresh fruit."

The flowers surprised Ezra a little. Not that he didn't like flowers - he'd grown up surrounded by the wildflowers of the grasslands of Lothal. Sometimes the green daises by the tower he'd made his home for a long time had seemed like his only friends.

He just hadn't really expected anyone to take the time to grow and collect things what were that temporary and just pretty.

"What, no vegetables?" he teases.

"We have farmers for that," she said. "Anyway, this isn't enough land to cultivate more than a kitchen garden. And since I barely use a kitchen, I think it's more practical to dedicate it to a space that everyone can use."

Also, she just wasn't a farmer. She admired them, yes. Even thought they lived idyllic lives. But theirs were lives that followed routines and cycles. And ultimately, that wasn't for her. She was a little too spontaneous. Too energic.

Too mischievous.

"Although I have been wondering if people might like to bring some of their vegetables or herbs here for trade. A sort of open, neutral space people can use to fill their larders."

"Well, if we have enough people growing food, I guess I can do....something else," Ezra muses.

"On the other hand - there's not anywhere like a market for food stuffs?"

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