lingering questions

Obi-Wan shut down the link to the council and waited in a corridor of the cold, antiseptically white innards of the ship.

As expected, his link beeped quietly to announce another caller.

"I'll see you shortly, Master," Anakin told him quietly. Obi-Wan was already nodding his dismissal.

"It was bad?" Afir asked him without preamble.

He nodded, silent.

She, too, let the silence continue. It was a moment of commune, with no comfort to be had. This mission had been a bad one. From the get-go it had been one of little hope. The outpost had either disappeared or come to some other bad end. The kit was too good to simply stop transmitting, the men too good not to be able to come up with some plan over the past two weeks. So even at its outset it was not to be easy.

Finding dead men never was.

Finally he spoke, his chest heaving with the emotion he struggled to clamp down.

"I followed an order I should not have obeyed."

Afir was quiet. She simply waited, sharing his grief and his pain and his rage. Inside she wondered if she was to lose another friend. Too many jedi were finding their mandates too counter-productive to continue. They were slipping away, slowly leaving an order whose leadership was left stuck between a growing darkness and a shadowy menace.

"The council's mandate?" she asked finally.

He shook his head. "I made contact with an intelligent and peaceful people who only wanted their planet left alone. Not separatists, not republicans. Just a quiet, simple people making a good life on a cold, hard moon." Afir watched him close his eyes. "Greed does this to us," he admitted. "You are right about that. You always have been. One man wants more, but that more has to come from somewhere else. So one man is left without. In this case the supreme ruler of a neighboring planet claimed dominion over the ice people. The Senator could do nothing to override him. He kicked us out - - saying that as a satellite of his planet this particular moon was his control and not a galactic republic affair."

"Which takes blame off of your shoulders, Obi-Wan. You are a reasonable, eloquent man. If you couldn't make peace it wasn't the will of the force."

"Six hours, Afir. Six hours would have made the difference. The Senator got hold of her Secretariat and he gave her approval to shut down the hostilities. But we'd lost so many by then. It wasn't until we were on the transport on our way back that I realized I should have just pulled our men and materials out. I'd already promised to abandon our base there, so it wasn't like I had to stay for that reason. If the Supreme Ruler wanted a war he could have come back any time he wanted with his machines and his blasters and the ice people could have rolled over them."

"To what end, Obi-Wan?"

"We lost fifteen men. Plus the original squad stationed at the base. I had to look men in the eye knowing that I was the one who gave the order to accompany the Supreme Ruler."

"Peace exists now."

"But a people who were once isolated and content with it are now under discussion. How long until some scientist decides to study them? Before they become anthropological subjects and their world is invaded again? Who makes these decisions?"

"You did the best you could in a quickly evolving situation-"

"You mean quickly deteriorating. Humanity has little humanity left in it. If this war continues we'll see a complete breakdown."

"I don't believe that, Obi-Wan," she argued honestly. "People harbor goodness. I pray each day for the war to be over, for our paths to become clearer and brighter again. But each opportunity for the dark side to roll over us is an opportunity for the force to speak clearly. And so often it does. Your troops didn't hesitate to follow your orders. Anakin didn't cause trouble or sow malcontent. A war which could have gone on for months or even years was ended in an afternoon. You ended a war the same day it broke out. There's balance somewhere, Obi-Wan. We just have to dig a little deeper and reach out to embrace it."

Obi-Wan watched her carefully as she spoke. He doubted she knew that she balanced the optimism and hope in her words with tears streaking down her cheeks. She often cried now. Her peace and serenity were slowly being eroded until she couldn't control the emotion swirling inside her.

He saw the cracks in her composure and sought to protect her. He knew that several members of the council saw the pressure she was under as well. They, too, loved her and wouldn't say anything to upset her further, but everyone noticed and took stock.

"I am grateful to have such a friend as you," Obi-Wan said carefully. "I shouldn't lay my burdens on your shoulders. I can almost predict what you're going to say, but I need to hear the sound of your voice. I need the truth in your eyes to make sense of the things in my path."

She smiled at him. "You need a cold muja juice and some warm soup."

He nodded. "That's the truth of it. Soup I might find here, but we're a long way from the muja fruit."

"Go find Anakin. If you're upset, so is he."

Obi-Wan nodded. "I actually felt little turmoil from my former apprentice during this mission. He seems steady as the stars."

Afir's expression almost flickered. Obi-Wan wouldn't have caught it if he hadn't been watching for it. Anakin frightened Afir in ways he would never understand. Sometimes he agreed with her assessments and sometimes he defended the younger man. And sometimes - - like this moment - - he was caught off-guard. He'd meant the words as a complement to the jedi. Now he heard them, aligned them with his qualms about the mission, and wondered - - as Afir obviously did - - why a jedi strong in the force would be calm and confident in the face of such inequity.

To his friend's credit she didn't point this out.

"I hope you, too, find your equilibrium, dear Obi-Wan. May the force be with you."

He nodded. "May the force be with you."