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Ahsoka opens her eyes to the Temple gardens and knows with utmost certainty that she is dreaming. The Temple is little more than rubble and ash ground into the earth by now. But her heart stills all the same. The greenery and shade, the sunlight and sound of trickling fountains, the gentle murmur of voices behind her in those long-lost, sacred halls, it is almost too much. Ahsoka aches.
Familiar fingers brush the stray tear from her cheek before she even knows she’s crying. Ahsoka blinks but lets her eyes remain closed, savoring the feeling of those rough pads and those calluses on the palm that cups her cheek. Her breath rasps in her lungs.
She can’t open her eyes now, not when she knows who is sitting across from her. Not when she’s back in the Temple but this is a dream and he isn’t really here and she’ll have to wake soon. Not when the cold of space travel has set into her bones and the tension in her shoulders keeps her awake at night and her gut roils so badly that she can’t stomach meals anymore. Ahsoka wants nothing, nothing, nothing as much as she wishes to pause this moment, between one sleeping heartbeat and the next, and dream on forever.
A thumb strokes across the apple of her cheek and Ahsoka stifles a sob. Loneliness twists through her.
“I thought this would soothe you, not ignite more strife,” he says softly. “I apologize.”
“No, no. It’s alright.” Ahsoka blurts. Her voice seems too loud in the semi-silence of the garden. His is whisper-soft in comparison. “It’s just--it’s--”
He lets her trail off. His hand is so warm against her face. Ahsoka takes a trembling breath. She lets it fill her lungs, push out her ribs, expand her chest like a balloon. She breathes out. Slowly, his touch drops away. Her hard-won control snaps and Ahsoka’s eyes fly open, wide and wild.
“Don’t go!” Ahsoka lurches forward, fingers clawing, reaching for someone she does not expect to be there. She nearly topples off her knees, scrambling, but is caught.
Obi-Wan’s smile is soft and kind. His face is more worn than it used to be, and tanned. His hair is graying now. His hands are strong where they hook around her elbows and he smells of sunlight and earth. “Hello, my dear.”
“Oh--oh--” Ahsoka gasps, heaving air in, and lunges again. Her grip is too tight when she locks her arms around Obi-Wan but he cradles her as if it does not matter. And so it doesn’t.
For a moment Ahsoka’s world is nothing but a mad scramble to get as close to her last remaining family member as possible. His robes are torn and ragged and far too large, and Obi-Wan has lost weight just as Ahsoka has. She fits herself into his chest anyway, ignoring the way bones have replaced where muscle and strength once was. Obi-Wan’s hands are the same though, large and welcoming as he rests them gently on her spine.
“Obi-Wan--”
“Hush now, Ahsoka.” He murmurs, a deep rumble against her ear. “Don’t fret, young one. I am with you.”
“I’m alone,” Ahsoka argues, only half-coherent. “I was so far away when they--they all died, and you were gone, and he --he’s-- he’s Ani-- ” Ahsoka chokes.
Fear and isolation tug at her mind. Ahsoka struggles, gags on them, fumbles to hold onto her slipping concentration. Her fingers clench on Obi-Wan’s shoulders as she heaves against the awareness that creeps at the edges of her perception; the real world always pulls at her, prodding for her attention. She has not slept long or well in many years. But she cannot leave, not now.
“I know.”
She sobs once more, cries her anguish into her gandmaster’s shoulder as he curls a palm carefully over the crown of Ahsoka’s head. His breath isn’t steady either; his chest rises and falls rapidly under her cheek before Obi-Wan seems to wrest himself under control.
“I know. Ahsoka, I know.” He trails fingers along her montrail, breathes in slowly, then out again. Almost unconsciously, Ahsoka breathes in too, much more shakily. “I know. I know.”
And he does, Ahsoka realizes, wondering. Almost awed, she breathes in sharply before matching the slow breath Obi-Wan lets out to guide her. He is perhaps the only being in existence who understands the pain that radiates through her very soul every second of every day.
Obi-Wan waits until she calms before stroking her montrails more firmly. She feels him turn his head until his chin rests on her scalp. Her family surrounds her and Ahsoka violently tamps down on the wish that there were more people in this dream, that there be more family to hold her.
“But you are wrong, Ahsoka. You are not alone.” Obi-Wan whispers above her. Ashoka shivers, clutching closer for a brief--too brief--moment before raising herself away. It feels like peeling her own flesh from her bones to leave his grasp, but Ahsoka misses his face too much not to glimpse it again before this dream is ripped from her too.
Obi-Wan does not smile at her now, but his eyes are tender. Ahsoka swallows against the lump in her throat. “The Force--it’s so empty, Master. I can’t feel the Jedi anymore. It’s--it’s--”
“Like a chasm in space,” Obi-Wan supplies.
“Like a tear rent inside me.” Ahsoka agrees.
He nods. “But just because we do not feel each other anymore, just because we cannot see each other, does not mean we are gone, my heart. Lost is not forgotten. Beaten is not destroyed.”
Cold spills down her spine. “This is--you know about him.”
Obi-Wan’s face contorts for the barest of seconds and Ahsoka catches her breath at the sight; pain and regret and something so much more than words, something ripping and sharp and cold as a desolated temple tears across his face. In a flash Obi-Wan shuts it out, shuts it away, but she sees. She knows. “Yes. He searches for us both now, Ahsoka. I needed to see you--I felt your turmoil in the Force, I knew you must have faced him. I worried--”
It is Obi-Wan’s turn to trail off now, but Ahsoka hears his unspoken words. I worried you did not survive. I worried he had found you and killed you.
“He won’t ever stop,” she whispers. Obi-Wan grips her shoulders. “Will he?”
“No. Never.”
“How can I keep going without you?” Because it is obvious now, what this is.
This is not a dream. This is a goodbye.
“I am always with you.” Obi-Wan tells her. Her heart thumps painfully in her chest as her grandmaster rests his palm over it. The organ betrays her, beats away like it can crack her ribs apart and slip between them to leap into Obi-Wan’s chest and stay there with him, always. Slowly, tentatively, Ahsoka lets Obi-Wan guide her to rest her own palm over his heart. It pulses under her fingers, reminding Ahsoka at least one Jedi still lives on. “You are always with me.”
“The Jedi hold each other in our hearts,” Ahsoka recites. An old creche saying, something they taught every youngling to come through the Temple. Obi-Wan smiles, a brittle, sweet thing. Ahsoka sniffles, shoving away the sting in her eyes to smile back. “But--but I’m not a Jedi anymore, Master.”
“The Jedi are not councils and temples and codes, my heart.” he admonishes gently. He wipes away her tears and lets her breathe. “Do you follow the Force?”
Ahsoka nods, not trusting her voice.
“Do you cherish life above all else?”
Again, Ahsoka nods. Her tears carve hot furrows into her cheeks. Still, something like calm covers her.
“Do you value peace over violence?”
“Yes.” It is tremulous and weak, but it is there. She breathes through the sorrow and tries again, stronger. “Yes.”
“Do you trust your sabers to protect you from danger?”
“More than any other weapon.”
Obi-Wan cups her face between his palms. Ahsoka grins through the tears, feeling her muscles stretch painfully as they move in ways they haven’t in months. He touches their foreheads lightly together and Ahsoka breathes the same air as her grandmaster for the very last time. “Ahsoka, you are a Jedi. Always.”
When she wakes, Ahsoka wipes the tears away. She meditates for the first time since Vader. The cold is still there, and the ache in her heart, and the tear rent inside of her. But still Ahsoka reaches for the Force, letting it hold her in ways she hasn’t allowed since leaving the Temple. She plunges her mind into the Force, lets its silence wash over her, mourns and rejoices and prays that wherever Obi-Wan is, he does the same.
The chasm in space seems to close, if only just.