a small smile tugs at the corner of his lips when she says she doesn’t need to go. ever since he woke up on geonosis in this new time, obi-wan has never expected a conversation to be easy. specially since there’s so much he has yet to learn about, but every time it just seems like all there is is heartbreak, infinite sadness. and he just hopes this conversation would have a glimmer of hope at the end of the pain he is sure will cause both of them. it is not easy to talk about the actions of the person they both loved, a person obi-wan is certain both feel like they could not help. in different ways they both feel like they failed anakin, and it is in those grounds that he hopes ahsoka would see them as equals. she is after all older than him now, and has lived through things that obi-wan is sure would break him. and yet he knows the part of her that gave him that answer.
    ❝but it is that simple ahsokaâťž obi-wan says in a calm voice, a stillness he had not felt in this new terrifying reality, but this is ahsoka, the best and brightest of her generation, ❝tell me, what is a jedi?âťž he asks rising an eyebrow, ❝a protectorâťž he says with as much confidence as someone who lost a padawan to the dark side could muster, ❝at the end of the day, take the politics away, we are not soldiers… that’s not what we were meant to doâťž a part of him wishes he could have done more than just be a memory in a holocron for those in the run, ❝guardians of peace and justice, strip away the fancy titles, and a jedi is someone who protects those who cannot protect themselvesâťž he finished matter of factly, âťťis that not what you did? so it is that simple, and every force sensitive out there who wishes to join us should be able to, they earned their place far better than many who came before themâťž he said pointing towards him, ❝i just learned that i hid in a cave for two decades while the empire slaughtered the surviving jedi, hunted any force sensitive out there, how could i call myself a jedi after that?âťžÂ
for someone who was a padawan through the clone wars, who was a padawan to one of the greatest jedi general the clone wars had seen, to.. someone who had, really, been forged in war, the shift to a different kind of life hadn’t been an easy one for ahsoka. hiding, running, constantly knowing too much attention would get her trapped and killed - or worse, given what had happened to others, tortured into inquisitors, forced to work for the empire. ahsoka had needed time and.. opportunity to help people, to really help and protect people to understand what her life was supposed to be. what it might have been able to be before, had the clone wars never happened. it had taken her even more time to get used to that, to combine that with her choice to work with bail and the resistance. but it all seemed.. normal, it all made sense. she never really thought about it, never had to - not until now.
“i never.. thought of it that way.. it was never - out of obligation, or out of what a jedi was supposed to be, in hopes that i might become that again. it was only ever.. what i needed. what felt right, for me. after the empire rose, i - didn’t feel as though i had a path to follow until i found a way to help people.” on that ship she’d essentially stolen - borrowed, borrowed, not stolen - after the mess on raada, following a distress signal she had no business following - except she hadn’t been able to ignore it, in the end. it was that which gave her a new direction, a.. reminder, of who she wanted to be. the teachings instilled so deep in her, even after the order had been destroyed. but - can that really be enough? to return to a life she’d willingly walked away from? “you.. had reasons, i’m sure. you wouldn’t do something like that without cause, obi-wan. of that i’m sure, at least.” letting out a sigh, ahsoka offers obi-wan a sad sort of smile. “i never - did anything i did with the hope that it would lead me back to the order. to.. come back, after all this time - i’m.. not sure, if i’m being honest.”