Waves on the Sand

Chapter 7

"Master Obi-Wan?" Ahsoka said, her voice running through several emotions. "What are..." she paused, before suddenly erupting from the bed. She froze for a moment as her feet landed on the floor, before lunging forward, her hand describing an arc intersecting his face. With the speed and timing of a Jedi Master, he swayed backwards, allowing the blow to miss by a few centimetres.

"STAND DOWN!" Obi-Wan Kenobi ordered, raising his voice significantly as Ahsoka came back around again, swinging a series of increasingly wild punches as she tried to connect with him. He effortlessly evaded each blow, before finally catching her hand and with a single movement, dumped her on the floor before holding her there in a wristlock.

"Finished?" He asked, calmly, as if she hadn't just tried to attack him.

"Kriff you!" Ahsoka spat back, twisting her head to look over her shoulder at him. "You betrayed me!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Ahsoka." Obi-Wan replied.

"Screw you, and the horse you rode in on!" She shouted in huttese.

"Really, Padawan? I know Anakin taught you better than that."

"Go hook up a power coupling with a gundark, and a rancor as well while you're at it! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Why did I have to have a useless master whose only interest was boning a senator?" She shouted, still in huttese.

"Ahsoka, Anakin sees you as his daughter, or possibly his little sister. He cares deeply about you."

"Why did you turn on me? Why did the Jedi?"

He wasn't even sure if she knew she was speaking in Mandalorian again. For a Jedi who'd spent three years around clone troopers, it was virtually a second language anyway.

"Because, Ahsoka, even the Jedi Council makes serious mistakes. And not trusting you was the second most serious mistake we ever made."

"What was the first?" She asked, in basic.

"Allowing Sheev Palpatine to cause the Clone Wars." Obi-Wan admitted to her. "Since his death... we've found a lot of answers to questions we didn't realise we hadn't been asking."

"Such as?"

"Why the Clone Wars took place. The tactics are classic Sith, when you look closely. Palpatine took advantage of existing divisions within the Senate to gradually drive wedges between those that would become the Confederacy and those who would remain loyal to the Republic. I'll be the first to admit that the system was corrupt, and that something needed to change. But only a Sith could take those fractures, and then, through drips of poison, create a war, and it took him decades to create those cracks, and drive them open."

"And his goals?"

Obi-Wan gave Ahsoka a very stern look. "Anakin taught you better than that, Ahsoka. Can I let you up, yet?"

Ahsoka nodded, sullenly, clambering to her feet when Obi-Wan released the lock. "I know that he kept being voted more emergency powers as the war went on... he was creating those crises, wasn't he?" she suddenly asked, crossing the room and sitting next to Lux, on the bed.

"We believe that he was." Obi-Wan confirmed. "He was controlling both sides of the war. He knew everything that the senate did, and everything that the Confederacy did."

"And the Jedi?"

Obi-Wan nodded. "We found evidence. Nothing that anyone should have noticed. There was a mis-aligned security camera on a spacescraper on the far side of the traffic lane that overlooked his office. We're not sure what it was intended to look at, but it ended up looking at his office window. No-one knew it was there. And then, after what happened to Fives... Rex talked to Anakin. And Anakin asked some quiet questions in the 501st. It wasn't long before he had a volunteer. And after that, with what we found out during the Siege of Coruscant... we weren't going to take any chances. Taking him out directly was risky. The evidence from the camera was the final straw. Having caught him on camera talking to Dooku..."

Ahsoka nodded, slightly sick to her stomach. "We're Jedi." She objected.

"And we didn't feel we had any other options. So, we lied. We cheated. We used the Force to help us eliminate dozens of his conspirators in a single night. We were all parties to the cold-blooded murder of our head of state. But the most damning thing of all... I think that the Jedi Order will live with it. And if they had to do it all over again, they would. Bariss was right about one thing, a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Republic."

Ahsoka looked at him, absolutely aghast. "No." she whispered. "No. No Jedi would do all of that."

"Do you know why, when you walked through a clone barracks during a sleep-cycle, you always heard whimpering?" Obi-Wan asked a wide-eyed Ahsoka, who shook her head. "That wasn't just dreams of the war. Shortly before he died, Fives claimed to have discovered some sort of conspiracy involving a chip in their brains, that was officially there to supress their aggression. It had another purpose as well. It was there so that when a specific order was given by the Chancellor, the clones, even our friends, would turn on us immediately and slaughter us."

"So..."

"So, we defended ourselves."

"Was everyone who died..."

"Yes." Obi-Wan stated, as if he was carrying the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. "We made sure of that, before they died."

Ahsoka just sat there, stunned, staring out of the window. She knew the Order had made compromises during the Clone Wars, but knowing they were party to... that... made her sick to her stomach.

"Will she be OK?" Obi-Wan looked at Lux as he spoke.

"Eventually." Lux responded. "Why were you on Maika?"

Obi-Wan looked at Ahsoka for a moment, before tapping his commlink three times. "If there's anything the Order can do..."

"I'll let you know, Master Kenobi."

"Oh, and by the way..." He handed Lux a small folder. "Anakin wanted me to give her these."

"Are he and Senator Amidala sleeping at night again yet?" Although it wasn't precisely public knowledge, anyone who frequented the senate knew full well who the father of Senator Amidala's children was.

Obi-Wan tilted his head. "I have no idea what is in the folder." He declared, solemnly. "Just give it to Ahsoka."

"I will."

Putting up the hood of his robe, Obi-Wan exited, with a nod to the pair on the bed.