They'd taken everything from her for the last time.
Ava stood at the steps to Pad 42A, the only off-world transport landing pad in Quadrant P-98. The noises of Coruscant buzzed all around her, speeding transports, proprietors spouting announcements of their merchandise and, this far away from the city center, plenty of miscreants winding their way through the crowds, hawking their drugs and illegal wares. The smell assaulted her senses. In this area of the city, basically anywhere was 'down wind' of the garbage pits.
She wouldn't miss any of it.
"Are you kidding me with this?" she heard his low voice grumble behind her, and she sighed deeply.
She recognized that tone. It was his annoyed voice, like she was being a petulant child. She was only five years his junior, where did he get off acting like some kind of entitled progenitor? Just because he was a Knight now, with some powerful "Chosen One" Padawan? As children, he'd always treated her like an equal. She didn't know when the dynamic had changed.
"How did you even know I was here?" she asked, not turning to face him, but crossing her arms to show her annoyance. She'd taken three taxis, two mass-transit shuttles and traveled six districts away from the city center for the sole purpose of avoiding this exact confrontation. "You have people watching me?"
"People? You act like I'm some kind of spy master."
"I don't know what you are anymore," she said callously.
"I don't need this right now," he growled. "We need to go back. Now."
"How many times have I tried to give this up? This is it, just let me leave this time," she insisted.
"I know what you're feeling—"
"You know what I'm feeling?" she asked, and she knew her tone was full of cruel skepticism, and was probably unfair.
"I lost a father too," he said harshly.
Her heart raced. She hated fighting with him, she hated when he tried to control what she did, and she hated that he was there in her father's last days and she wasn't. She didn't blame him, she wasn't that delusional. But if she would have been there too - if they both could have been there to protect him… maybe he'd still be alive. She and Obi-Wan had always made a good team, when it came to battle, at least.
"You think Qui-Gon would have wanted this for you? For you to just run away? You need to come back with me before someone else notices you're gone. How do you plan to explain this to Syrna, or the Council, if they discover you've left the Temple?"
"Syrna is dead," she said flatly.
That shut him up. Good.
He stepped forward slowly until he was standing next to her, his hood drawn up to obscure his face.
"What are you talking about?" he asked quietly.
She couldn't turn to look at him, she knew what expression awaited her there. He'd be so sympathetic, so compassionate, so understanding. It'd make her sick.
"This is strike three, Ben," she said, unable to stop her voice from wavering.
"Don't call me that," he warned. He had never liked her childhood nickname for him. Good natured Obi-Wan, always so tranquil, always so benevolent. It was utter crap, obviously. He was just as stubborn, petulant, and stormy as she was. He was just better at hiding it from everyone else.
"Sorry, Master Obi-Wan," she grumbled. "My mother, my father and now my master. I'm over it. Spira is supposed to be nice this time of year."
"Stop joking around, Ava," he said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. An errant tear escaped from the corner of her eye but she ignored it, letting it run down her cheek and onto the ground.
"It's ok to grieve," he said, seeming surprised by her display of emotion, however small. If how she'd acted after losing her parents had been any indication, he probably thought she wasn't even capable of crying. "I had no idea. Does the Council even know?"
"I left Master Adi a message on her comm."
"Please tell me you're joking," he said gravely, though by his tone he already knew she wasn't.
"I know it's not regulation. But then they'd want to talk, which means interrogate; then they'd want an account of it, which means reports," she finally looked up to meet his eye. His brow was furled, his ice blue eyes pained. He'd started to grow a beard, apparently. "She was my Master," she continued in a dangerous tone, "She was my friend. She was all I had left. They'll want to turn it into paperwork."
"She's not all you have left," he said quietly. She felt a lump form in her throat. How did he always manage to simultaneously comfort and infuriate her?
"I can't do it again, I can't have to train under another master," she growled. She wasn't giving up on getting on this ship and high-tailing it out of the Galactic Center. She could keep her old friend talking for long enough for the transport to show up, and after that he wouldn't have enough guts to start a physical altercation in the middle of a busy landing pad.
"I know it'll be difficult, but you're not old enough to be a Knight," he explained.
"Neither are you," she said flatly.
"It'll only be a few years. They'll select someone great for you to train under. You'll be better off for it, more well-rounded."
She turned and leveled a glare at him, "You think that's what I want? To be more well-rounded?"
"That's not what I meant…" he said with a sigh.
"All I want is Syrna back. But she's gone now, just like the rest of them. She understood me, at least. She got me better than father ever did, that's for certain."
"You were both too stubborn for your own good," he said. "It's going to get you killed."
"If it's so inevitable, then just let me go. Let me self-destruct somewhere on my own, where the Council can't poke and prod me back into submission." She felt like she was pleading with a captor to please just go ahead and kill her instead of submitting her to more torture.
"It's only been a few months since we lost Qui-Gon. I can't believe Syrna was taken from you too," he said, his voice dripping with sympathy and regret, and she didn't want any of it. "I get it, Ava, I do. Give me some credit. You're afraid you're going to get close to another master and then lose them as well."
"And we all know what fear leads to," she said dryly, turning back to face the landing pad.
Where did he get off acting like he knew her motivations inside and out? He hadn't spoken with her in months before her father's death, and had been pulling slowly away from their friendship for years before that.
"What if I ask the Council to let me train you during the interim? You can take your time to grieve your father and Syrna… and when you're ready you can transition to a new master."
She was quiet for a long time. Was he being serious? The suggestion was so… reasonable… she could hardly believe he'd been the one to utter it.
His tone shifted from authoritative wisdom into a desperate petition, "I just want you back at the Temple, where your safe. You think I could sleep at night if I knew you were out in the galaxy somewhere getting yourself killed? And your father would never forgive me."
"You're so certain of my demise?" she asked. This "older brother knows what's best" act was getting old.
"You're angry, you're upset, you're tired… which makes you dangerous. You feel betrayed by the Order because you keep losing the people you love… I understand that, I really do. But when you've lost someone, you need to grieve them and move past it, and the best place to do that is at the Temple, surrounded by the people who care about you. Running away from your duties as a Jedi won't accomplish anything good."
She knew her training, she knew these feelings of loss were exactly why the Order forbid emotional attachment, romantic or otherwise. As if stopping people from caring about one another was as easy as claiming it to be a rule.
She'd always thought that was a special degree of hypocritical, because in the same breath they turned around and paired you, as a very young child, with a skilled mentor who you're to spend every day with from then on until one of you dies. You never really had a chance to not get attached, to not see them as a parent. She couldn't speak for the other species… but it was just human nature.
Without knowing she'd given up, she realized she was following Obi-Wan as he led her away from the landing pad, back down the street toward the taxi stand. His cloak billowed out behind him as he marched down the street, the mass of bodies, carts and animals giving way in front of him, clearing a path like a knife through butter.
When had he become such a commanding presence? Ava dragged her feet as she followed, then finally uncrossed her arms, making a mental note that if she wanted to stop being treated like a child… she'd need to stop acting like one.