Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am not making any profit from this work of fanfiction.

Author's note: Well, I promised to work on my Kenobi. I did that, and some ... other things ... too. Reviews make me happy, and concrit makes me work harder! *excited puppy grin*

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The three of them stood in the anteroom outside the Council chambers after their report, waiting for the Council to finish its deliberations. Ryn stared out a window; Anakin alternately stared at the door to the Council chambers and at Ryn; Obi-Wan kept a watchful eye on Anakin.

He had a bad feeling that he'd let his Padawan down.

Since the affair with the Blades of Light, when the Force kept throwing Ryn and Anakin together, Obi-Wan had sensed that perhaps more could be at work here than friendly temperaments and teenage hormones. They were stronger together than apart, an exceptional team, and their friendship was deeply meaningful to both of them, but the very lure of that devotion - that attachment - could be a trial for Anakin to overcome.

The Force was testing him.

And even though Obi-Wan was concerned for his Padawan, even though he dreaded Anakin's pain ... Obi-Wan followed the will of the Force. So he had backed off, let them be what they were to each other, and then, when it became relevant, he had given Anakin some information about his own burgeoning sexuality.

That whole conversation had been a miserable experience for both of them, but Obi-Wan had thought they'd got through it all right.

But now, given their not-quite-nudity and emotionally charged states, Obi-Wan was beginning to harbor concerns that Anakin had decided to take his advice and been less than successful. Or, given their silences - Ryn's grim, Anakin's sullen - maybe disastrous would be a better word.

Not good.

He cast a glance at Ryn, staring morosely out the window, and decided to focus on Anakin first. It had to be less awkward than quizzing a teenage girl about her love life.

Not by much, as it turned out. Obi-Wan started with more general questions, about whether either of them had been scratched up during the fight - they were both find - before working up to his real point.

"So," he said cautiously, and almost gave himself away when he realized that he sounded like Ryn, beginning his sentence with a conjunction. "According to both of you, you were caught off-guard. I want you to know that I ... er ... fully understand the temptation, but ... Anakin, it is important for a Jedi to surrender his needs to the will of the Force. To not allow himself to be distracted from the duty at hand..."

"I know, Master," Anakin said miserably, head bowed, reeking of guilt and humiliation. "Believe me, I know."

Something was very wrong here. Where was Anakin's fierce pride, his resolution to always do better?"

"Anakin?" Obi-Wan asked uncertainly, putting a hand on his Padawan's shoulder. The combination of Anakin's abject misery and Ryn's self-contained distance offered a hint, boding nothing good. "What's wrong? Did - did something happen, between you and Ryn?" Way to approach it delicately, Kenobi. You sound like a character in some fourth-rate holodrama.

Anakin closed his eyes and nodded jerkily; Obi-Wan could see his throat work as he tried to swallow.

Definitely not good. Obi-Wan glanced over at Ryn again, felt her seething anger. "And now the two of you aren't speaking."

Anakin squeezed his eyes tighter. "I guess not."

Obi-Wan winced; Anakin's misery was raw in the Force. He needed to learn better control, but perhaps now wasn't the time for that particular lesson. "Anakin, did you - I mean, you did remember what I told you about consensuality, didn't you?"

"You mean like how you have to make sure what you're doing is okay with the other person? Yeah." Anakin opened his eyes; Obi-Wan thought he might have been blinking back tears. "But, Master ... I already knew that stuff."

Obi-Wan blinked. "You did?"

"Well ... yeah. It's just common sense."

"It is?"

Anakin frowned at him. "You don't hurt someone you care about."

That was Anakin: everything black and white, so clear. Either you were a friend or you weren't. Obi-Wan took another glance at Ryn's quarter-profile - he was going to give the poor girl a complex if he didn't rein that impulse in soon - and thought: Ryn is a friend. Which meant that Anakin would have walked through fire rather than hurt her, physically or emotionally. That didn't mean he couldn't make an egregious misstep by mistake. Obi-Wan could only imagine the breadth of the cultural disconnect between the two of them. "So," he said again, slowly, working his way through Anakin's reticence, "you suggested something to Ryn, and she ... said no?"

It was as good a place as any to begin feeling the situation out, but Obi-Wan knew as soon as he said it that it wasn't quite right. Obi-Wan knew how strongly Ryn felt toward Anakin; it didn't make sense that she would turn down an opportunity to see what she'd been missing.

"Uh," said Anakin, also stealing a look at Ryn. "Not - not exactly, Master."

Obi-Wan reminded himself that Jedi is never in a hurry. Patience, Padawan. "What do you mean, 'not exactly'? What was it, then?"

"I -" Anakin struggled against a wave of guilt and anger and bitter frustration. "Just let me handle it, Master, okay? Ryn is a good friend, we'll work it out."

Or you might just brood about it indefinitely.

"Anakin ..." Obi-Wan paused, searching for the words that could cut to the heart of the nagging worry he felt. "I have a bad feeling. If you want to make up with Ryn ... don't wait. Don't put it off."

"Master?" Anakin sounded worried.

"I can't explain. Just ... this situation with Omega. I have a feeling we're all going to be pretty busy for a while." He pushed aside the memory of Qui-Gon's face, slack in death, and all the things they'd never said. "Some things can't wait."

Anakin approached Ryn slowly, trying not to stare at all her bare skin, flaunting in the soft light. Dressed like that - skimpy black underpants and bandeau, a bulky utility belt, knee-high boots - she looked like the spread in some particularly kinked holozine. Any minute now, she was bound to turn around and warn him that he'd been a very naughty boy and deserved a spanking.

She'd probably be right.

He cleared his throat. "Uh, Ryn?"

She turned to look at him, her green eyes wary, her shields locked down tight. The rose of Coruscant's dawn lit one side of her face with a pale clear blush and left the other in shadow, her skin white and cold as marble under the gold-and-pink-tinged light. "Yes?"

That was Ryn's company voice, husky but cool and precise: not a good sign.

Anakin forged ahead. "I feel there is an apology in order -"

"I know," Ryn said miserably, her cool facade crumpling. "I am so sorry, Anakin. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn't. I can't believe I did that." She pressed the heels of both hands into her eyes, trying to rub away what might have been tears. "I know it doesn't change anything, but I am so sorry, I really am. And I don't know if there is anything I can do, to - to make it up to you, but ..."

She stopped, because Anakin had wrapped his fingers around her wrists and was dragging her hands away from her face so he could see.

Obi-Wan always said that if you got lost in a situation, the best thing to do was to back up to the last place where you knew where you stood.

He tried to smile, didn't quite make it. "Let's start over, okay?" he suggested, trying to keep his voice light. "My name is Anakin Skywalker, and I'm trying to apologize, here." Ryn stared at him, mouth working. Anakin tightened his grip on her wrists and met her eyes honestly, no shields at all, willing her to feel everything he couldn't put into words. "I'm sorry, Ryn."

"What?" Ryn jerked in his hands. "What for?"

Her heartbeat fluttered against his fingertips; Anakin shifted his grip minutely to stroke his thumbs over the pulse-points in time to her inner rhythm, immeasurably grateful to feel her alive and strong and not hating him.

"For running away instead of explaining. For not treating you with the respect you deserve." The last part was the hardest, but he made himself say it: "For not being there when you needed me." He closed his eyes, briefly, against the memory of her standing in the swirling smoke, screaming for him. "You could have died, Ryn."

"That's true every day," Ryn said. She'd gone very still in his grip, her eyes searching. "Anakin, I -"

But he never got to hear what she might have said, because the door to the Council chambers opened and Mace Windu summoned them inside.

Years later, scholars would call what happened in the Jedi Council chambers that morning a defining moment, a watershed in the history of the Jedi Order, a leap into the future, sowing the seeds of salvation for generations to come.

At the time, Ryn Orun called it a mess.

She shook her head at the Council and said, "You can't do that."

Mace Windu regarded her over his steepled fingertips. "Why not?"

Intimidating was just Windu's style. Ryn tried not to take it personally. "Because it is in violation of interstellar law," she said steadily. "Loreth isn't in Republic space, so you have no jurisdiction. You can't bring the Republic into the internal power struggles of a foreign government without a directive from the Senate. And even if you had such a mandate - which you won't get until it's too late, if I know anything about the way the Senate works - sending agents of the Republic to disrupt the affairs of an independent system is an act of war under the Treaty of Veremais."

"The Treaty of Veremais has to be eight hundred years old, at least," said Adi Gallia. "It's long outdated."

"Eight hundred and fifty-three," Ryn said. "But it has never been repealed by the Senate. And it's keeping the Hutts bottled up in the Outer Room for now, so I wouldn't be in any hurry to discard it."

"I don't understand," said Ki-Adi-Mundi, mild as ever. "Surely Loreth would want our help?"

"After nearly a thousand years of avoiding your Republic like the plague?" Ryn said. "I don't think so."

The Council gave her a collectively aggrieved look. Even Anakin was eying her with some exasperation.

"All right," Windu said with heavy patience. "What do you suggest?"

For a long, slow heartbeat, Ryn held her breath in silence, pretty sure she was about to do the wrong thing, really sure she was running out of options, feeling the weight of the choice as though the galaxy were waiting with her, for the words that would shore up the old order or begin the slide toward chaos.

Ryn spoke, and the fall began. "The easy way."

Ryn felt it in the room, in the Force: like a chill wind across her soul, the sigh of the universe as some long-held tension snapped, a feeling that was both relief and the first taste of doom.

She shivered.

Yoda tapped his gimer stick on the floor, breaking her reverie. "A plan, have you?"

A plan? Ryn thought, finding her way back to the conversation. Oh. Right. "Yeah," she said slowly. "But you're not going to like it."

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. "Here we go again."