hadthehighground | Folkmore Inbox

Satine smiles sadly. "Do you think I hadn't been considering what I might have done differently, for Mandalore, even before my sister's report of her time? And as you may recall, I was rather angry with you, for a while there, back during the war. High General Kenobi-"

She sucks in a breath. "It seemed so counter to everything we had both committed our lives to."

She rubs a thumb over the back of his hand. "Now I'm wondering if that wasn't rather the point. To tie much of the galaxy up in impossible choices."

He looks at her and nods, because of course she would likely think that after learning of Mandalore’s fate. He was still trying to process that. Wondering if he too should have done more when Bo-Katan called on him. But no, it had been out of his hands, especially after the purge.

“Oh yes, how could I forget?” His tone one of dry humor, but sobers quickly. “It was counter to everything we believed in as Jedi. Though we had little choice. We couldn’t not enter the war. It was an impossible choice as you say, and I absolutely believe it was by design.”

Their downfall had been planned well in advance. So how could they have possibly stood up against it? Though there was still one factor he hadn’t mentioned.

“Including my former Padawan’s involvement in all of it.”

Edited 2024-05-18 22:23 (UTC)

Satine frowns thoughtfully. "I assume you mean Knight Skywalker." And small pause. "Anakin."

Since Ezra seemed firm on Luke Skywalker being a Jedi Knight, as well?

“Yes.”

Obi-Wan’s tone is grim and sad.

“Palpatine manipulated him all those years, and I never knew it. So when he made his move, he used Anakin as well. He led the siege on our temple.”

Satine's jaw drops in genuine shock - even having seen Anakin kill in cold blood, she is having difficulty imagining such a direct betrayal. Something more subtle, perhaps, if the young knight, steeped in warfare, could be convinced it truly was necessary to end the war. To save lives. Yes, that she could believe.

"You said-" Her voice drops to a whisper. "Even the children?"

Surely she's misunderstanding.

Another solemn nod, his eyes becoming hollow and distant as he sinks into the memories of the event.

“I saw a recording of him killing younglings. He had no mercy for anyone.”

That was not the boy he had raised. He had trained Anakin to be better than that. And yet…

Satine grips his hand more tightly. "You did not teach him that, Obi-Wan," she says, certain. "I cannot believe that anything you, or the rest of the Jedi, taught him could be twisted in such a way."

Bo - Bo she could almost understand. It is the flaw of a world view that so strongly embraced martial prowess as a virtue in itself, as so many traditional Mandalorians did, that it can see easily become 'might makes right'.

But that, at least as she understands it, is not the Jedi way, at all.

He looks back at her as she grips his hand, his eyes clearing a bit.

“I know. I do know that,” he assures her.

“But it wasn’t enough.”

Anakin still made the decision to allow Palpatine to twist his mind. Something he admittedly still didn’t fully understand. He wasn’t sure he ever would.

"I tried to guide Mandalore to a different way. Nearly an entire generation raised in peace. And clearly it wasn't enough, either. Fear and some lies, a promise of security, those were all it took to unravel my people's trust in me," she replies.

She's not trying to one up him, truly she's not. And maybe she's over simplifying. But there is something there, in that parallel, she believes. They cannot control the lies other people told, or how easily they were believed.

She doesn’t need to worry about him feeling like she’s upstaging him. Obi-Wan understands what she means and sees the parallels. Yet there were some differences too.

“From what I’ve seen of politics, things can change quickly. But your people, they don’t know you the way I do. If they did, they never would fallen for those lies. With Anakin, I trained him, I raised him, I loved him. Yet there must have been something. Somewhere I must have fallen short.”

"It was that personal with Bo," she reminds him, gently. "To be very honest, neither she nor I have directly addressed any of our differences, here. I let myself believe Pre Viszla was an honorable guardian for her, even if we did not see eye to eye on many things," she tells his, her voice shaking a little with suppressed anger, and an edge of self loathing.

She takes a deep breath. "She was very young, when she stopped listening to me. I don't know if I should take that as a sign of how badly I failed her, or that our entire culture failed her, or that she truly is especially stubborn. Or if we simply delude ourselves about the level of control we have over children. The truth is somewhere in the middle of all that, I suspect."

Going quiet, Obi-Wan nods as he listens. Yes, she did have a point with Bo-Katan.

“Considering she’s your sister a certain level of stubbornness is a given,” he says with a bit of light humor.

“You have never really told me anything about her.”

He didn’t even know she had a sister until she brought it up during his botched rescue attempt. Only figuring out who the sister was after Bo-Katan rescued him and was sending him off.

"Our mother got her safely away from-" She waves a hand around, meaning the civil war, in general. "It seemed safer not to speak of her at all."

She laughs a little. "To the point, I think I was rather superstitious about it. As if, even if no one could have overheard it, if I reminded the universe she was still out there-"

She sighs. "But she was my baby sister. I'd have never forgiven myself if she'd gotten hurt because of me somehow. She idolized our father, and she was so young when he died. And after we were reunited, after you left. Oh, anything I did that didn't fit her memory of him, or sometimes even if she just didn't like it - I was dishonoring him, in her eyes."

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