#daytwenty

prompt: The Silent Treatment

ao3

"Ahsoka," says a voice behind her. "I was hoping to speak to you for a second."

 Ahsoka jumps and twists around and for half a second is utterly certain she's seeing a ghost before—

She remembers.

Obi-wan hadn't been dead after all.

"What is it, Master Kenobi?" she says, trying not to betray her moment of panic. Obi-wan looks—well, as well as he can be. His beard and hair are still growing back in stubbly bursts, so his appearance is rather bizarre to say the least, but other than that he seems to have returned from his. . . mission completely unscathed.

"Ah," Master Kenobi says, and at least his voice hasn't changed much. "I was hoping for your perspective. I—it's about Anakin."

Ahsoka blinks. Once. Twice. "What about him?"

Obi-wan sighs. "He's, well—he's giving me the silent treatment. He hasn't said a single word to me since I returned. Quite a feat, considering we had to deliver the mission report together." He turns back to Ahsoka. "Forgive me if I'm overstepping here, Padawan. I was just . . . hoping for some insight."

He'd been expecting Anakin to be angry, she realizes. To shout and glare and make his opinions known. The silence is—throwing him for a loop.

Suddenly Ahsoka wants to laugh at him. She knows his mission must have been filled to the brim with action and exhaustion, but it's like he's forgotten that to them he was dead.

He has no idea what it had been like. How his corpse freshly fallen from the rooftops had haunted—still haunts—her dreams, how Anakin just suddenly went—mute, afterwards. As if his ability to speak had just disappeared. How she'd been so certain she'd lost both her Grandmaster and her Master that day, because Anakin was little more than a hollow shell, only getting out of bed and eating mechanically because Ahsoka needed him to.

How they both blamed themselves for Obi-wan's—death. Anakin because he hadn't sensed the shot, Ahsoka because she hadn't stopped his fall.

She knows Anakin still isn't talking. Master Che had told her it was a response to the grief, when it had first begun, and now because of the warring clash between the grief and guilt that still cling incessantly and the knowledge that it was a trick all along.

But she hadn't realized Obi-wan would take personal offense.

(Maybe that's unfair. But she'd had another dream, last night, where Obi-wan had fallen off the rooftop only for her to find Anakin's corpse laying beside him.

She knows she hadn't needed to witness Obi-wan's death for the mission to be successful. They could have just as easily kept her out of the way. But now his dead body is burned into her eyelids and she sees it every time she blinks.

She's . . . angry. It's unbecoming of a Jedi, but she is.)

"Giving you the silent treatment?" she finally says incredulously. "Master Kenobi, he hasn't spoken at all, to anyone," Not even me, though I think I might be the only reason he's still—still breathing— "since you—died."

There's a silence. Obi-wan opens his mouth once or twice before thinking the better of it and letting the silence stretch. 

Finally he says, "My apologies, Ahsoka. It seems I mistakenly assumed—"

"Yeah," Ahsoka cuts him off in frustration. "You did."

"My apologies," he says again, and turns to leave. Ahsoka watches as he disappears around the corner.

She loves her Grandmaster deeply, of course, Hardeen mission or no. And Anakin is just the same, she knows.

alt prompt: “I’m sorry.”

ao3

alright I know this au is bizarre even for me so some background: - yes I started another matrix-inspired au - yes it's a separate au from both coppertop and the force battery au I've been writing this month - in this au, star wars canon is a simulation a la the Matrix, except on a much smaller scale and run by a shady research group, not run by ai - only ahsoka and anakin (that they know of) are actually people plugged in to said simulation; obi-wan, palpatine, and other characters are real people who live in the town nearby, whose personalities were imitated to fill the world up (because creating important people from scratch is much more difficult and takes up far more resources than just using a premade jumping off point) - at this point in the au, Anakin and Ahsoka have escaped (they escaped in what would be the Clone Wars in star wars canon), and are basically in hiding in the town - and they've explained everything to the real obi-wan, who's just like. a regular dude in town vibing until nowthere'll be another part that explains a bit more later in the month, but until then, enjoy! "I know it sounds impossible to believe," Ahsoka says softly, once they've finished their story. "But this has been our lives for. . . we don't even know how long, Mas—Mister Kenobi. I mean," she laughs humorlessly, "I don't even know how old I am. I don't even know my birthday." 

Obi-wan raises an eyebrow at that. He turns to Anakin. "Neither do you, I presume?"

"Uh," Anakin swallows nervously. Obi-wan's gaze is too much to handle; he looks away. "I didn't know age or birthday in the simulation either. They went a bit overboard for the tragic backstory."

He tries to make it sound lighthearted. Instead it just sounds bitter.

The silence stretches awkwardly. He can't imagine what Obi-wan is feeling right now—he doesn't even know what he's feeling. The man in front of him is—is the real Obi-wan. And the Obi-wan he knew never even existed.

It hurts like a knife to his gut.

"You have to understand, I had no idea the research would be used in such a way," Obi-wan says finally. "I was told it was for a psychological study—I had no idea it would hurt anyone."

"Well, it did!" Before he knows it he's on his feet. The other two look at him in shock. "You—you raised me in there, you know. You were practically my brother. My father, even. And you—it was never real. Any of it. And I meet you in real life and I'm—" He blinks back tears. "I'm a stranger to you," he finishes quietly. "You don't even know me."

Obi-wan looks at him, lips slightly parted. Finally he sighs. "I am. . . deeply sorry, Anakin. I had no idea it would come to this—that I would hurt someone in this way with that research. I," he bows his head. "If I had known, I would have never have done it."

Someone. Not Anakin, but someone. It still stings even though Anakin knows the real Obi-wan has never even met him before today.

"They didn't change that," Ahsoka muses, and they both turn to look at her. She meets Obi-wan's gaze. "Your kindness," she elaborates. "You were just like that in the simulation. A sarcastic bastard sometimes, to be sure, but you. . you cared." 

She blinks and looks around. "I'm sorry we bothered you, Mister Kenobi. I'm sorry we dumped all of this on you like that. I know you don't know us—you don't have to help us, if you don't want to."

Part of Anakin bristles at that, but he shoves it down. If he had been in Obi-wan's position, a couple of strangers telling him that some government survey he'd down years ago was part of a shockingly unethical research program in which random kids were dumped into some false simulation of a fantasy world—

Well. He doesn't know what he'd do. Probably accuse them of having a little too much to drink.

He's avoiding Obi-wan's gaze, he realizes. It's just—too strange.

Finally he looks back up. 

Obi-wan meets his eyes and he tries not to flinch. "Well, of course I want to help," he finally says. "This mess is partially my fault, after all."