Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Of all the rescuers I expected,” Kenobi says, rubbing his wrists, “I admit, you weren’t at the top of the list.”

Ventress smiles, a brief flash of teeth. “So sorry to disappoint you.”

“Oh, I’m not disappointed. Just surprised.”

There’s something gratifying about Kenobi admitting to that. Saving his life might have been worth it for the pleasure of catching him off-balance alone. By most appearances, he’s found it again. He’s sitting in the back of the shuttle, one ankle crossed over his knee, hands folded, head tipped back. Not a Jedi meditative pose, perhaps, but not one that betrays any naughty un-Jedilike emotions. No fear, no anger, no guilt.

But Ventress sees the tension in his fingers, the set of his jaw. Your feelings betray you, her old master might have said. Well, let Kenobi pretend what he likes.

“I didn’t come there to rescue you,” she says. “It was convenient, that’s all.”

“Then far be it for me to look a gift eopie in the mouth.”

They lapse into silence. In the absence of any other pressing concerns, Ventress checks their hyperspace coordinates again. A pity the shuttle’s so small; there’s no space for her to run through forms, channel these churning feelings in her gut and hone them to an edge. She glances at Kenobi again. He, it seems, has chosen to watch her. She knows that look well enough, by now. Someone’s set a puzzle before him, and he intends to solve it.

“Why did you come?” he asks.

“Strictly business,” she says. “That empty lump of muscle has a pretty price on his head. I intended to collect it.”

“You’re a bounty hunter, then.”

She shrugs. “It pays well.”

“Certainly for someone with your skills, I’d imagine.”

She hardly needs the Force to sense what he’s going to ask next, and she’d rather pull out her teeth one by one than answer. “And how did you make such a charming pair of acquaintances?”

The lines around Kenobi’s mouth tighten. Interesting. “You overheard most of it, I’m sure.”

“You don’t want to talk? Now I’m surprised.”

“It’s been known to happen,” he says. “Are we going to keep deflecting this between us like a blaster bolt?”

“Most likely.” Ventress takes him in again, rakes her eyes over his mussed hair and the bruise purpling on his cheek and the scrapes on his knuckles. It’s a good look on him. A very good look. “Unless you have other suggestions on how to pass the time.”

“It seems as though you have a few ideas of your own,” Kenobi says, then before she can respond: “You haven’t mentioned where you’re planning to take me.”

From the quirk at the corner of his mouth, he’s inviting her to read into that. Well, all right. Is there more to the Negotiator than sweet words alone, or is anything further forbidden by his Code?

She remembers the splintering in the Force when they fought Maul and Opress, like a shield cracking under strain. Oh, she’s felt flashes of emotion from him before when they’ve crossed blades--amusement, frustration, even intoxicating flickers of anger--but that was something primal. Some response that bypassed that magnificent mind entirely. And she wants it, before he presses the edges of himself back together again and seals it away.

“Somewhere thoroughly disreputable,” she says. “Is that a problem?”

He chuckles, just the once. “Not as much as you might think.”

“Don’t tell me the Negotiator’s fond of slumming.”

Kenobi leans back, studies the ceiling of the shuttle. There’s a fetching glint in his eye. “I wouldn’t call it that. You meet the most fascinating people.”

“Like me, I suppose.”

“I don’t know if our meeting places have been disreputable, precisely. Turbulent, yes. Dangerous, certainly. But hardly disreputable.”

“We could change that,” she says.

“We could,” he agrees.

Ventress leaves the pilot’s seat and stretches. He’s watching, of course, eyeing the shift of her collarbones, the movement of her spine. “We could change that now.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t call a shuttle disreputable.”

“That would depend on what use we made of it, wouldn’t it?”

If she’s still enough, and listens well enough, she can hear his pulse quicken. She wants, very much, to map that rush of blood under his skin. So she leans in, braces her hands outside his thighs. They aren’t touching, quite, but she feels the heat rising from him, warming the air between them.

“It would be a terrible idea, you realize,” he says, his breath brushing her cheeks.

Ventress laughs--genuinely laughs. “Is that such a deterrent?”

“It ought to be.”

“That isn’t a no,” she points out.

“I’m aware.” He gives her a brief smile, thinner than what she’s used to from him. “Well, you did save my life. I suppose I owe you something in return.”

“That sounds almost mercenary of you.”

He’s leaning in, now. Their noses almost touch. “Have I surprised you?” he asks.

“You’ve never made such a blatant offer,” she says, and trails a fingernail down his chest. He doesn’t flinch away; oh, his shoulders hitch, and his hands tighten, but if anything he presses himself closer.

“Well, I don’t have any credits on me,” he says, “and I doubt you’d want to claim a reward from the Jedi Temple, so I haven’t got much else to offer. A Jedi has no possessions, and all that.”

Ventress’s lip curls. “Now you sound like a tawdry holodrama.”

“Ah. Then perhaps I should stop talking.”

“Yes,” she agrees, and grabs his groin. Why not get straight to the point? And the choked gasp he makes at the back of his throat is wholly worth hearing. She presses her nails in, and that gasp becomes a stuttered moan. How lovely.

He cups the back of her head and pulls her in for a kiss. It’s more insistent than she expected, not that she minds. She even catches a hint of his teeth as he presses his mouth to hers. Well, that’s an invitation to bite back. She draws his lower lip between her teeth and pulls; drops of blood well to the surface. How fragile human skin is. But from the way Kenobi’s stroking her scalp, he doesn’t seem to mind that aspect of his anatomy.

And other parts of his anatomy seem quite appreciative.

While she coaxes him to full hardness, he divests her of her clothing quickly enough that she’d swear he’s using the Force to help. Maybe the Temple does teach the Jedi some more practical tricks, after all. His fingers scrabble at her back, not hard enough to claw. Still holding back, is he? She nips the hollow of his throat, strings bruises around his neck like a collar. He curses, nails tightening on her spine, and Ventress chuckles into his skin.

“Must you?” he asks.

“Is it so unpleasant?” She rolls her hips against his, and whatever he meant to say gets lost in a groan. “Apparently not.”

“I don’t know what Dathomiri custom is,” he says, “but humans typically don’t consume their mates during copulation.”

She lets him see the points of her teeth when she smiles. His throat bobs. “Then enlighten me. What do humans do?”

Kenobi’s hand slides up her thigh, his knuckles just brushing her groin. The frisson of their contact spreads, sends a slow thrill up her spine. “Shall I tell you, or show you?”

In response, Ventress yanks his pants down his thighs. His hands settle around her hips, and for all his earlier protests about her and biting, the pads of his fingers are leaving marks on her flesh, shadows to show where he’s lingered. She decides not to mention it; if she did, he might stop. There’s a faint smile at the corner of his mouth, for now, but harsh hot gasps break its shape more and more.

Before he has the chance to catch his breath, she sinks onto him. His lips move, and sound comes out, but if any actual words form they aren’t in any language she knows. Well, now isn’t the time for questions. Now is the time to trust instinct, to move her hips with his, to brace her palms on his shoulders and push so she can rock down harder. She can’t tell if he’s panting into her cheek or trying to kiss it. As long as he keeps this rhythm up, she doesn’t much care either way. He does his best to anchor her hips in place as his thrusts become faster, more erratic. Ah, yes, that’s far too nice--let him know, and he’d be insufferable, or worse, stop. They finish with their foreheads pressed together -- and through cracks in their shields, the Force begins to slip in and link them.

Ventress jerks back, draws the walls around herself higher. Kenobi’s less obvious about it, but he does the same. They stare at each other. Kenobi’s eyes are faintly glassy, and his mouth is flushed as red as Ventress’s sabers. He blinks and breathes in. She knows that breathing pattern from however many lifetimes ago: empty your mind of everything but the Force, she remembers Ky Narec telling her, his hands steady and solid on her shoulders.

She shakes that memory off. Kenobi is watching her now. If she hears any sentimentality in his voice, she’s locking herself in the cockpit for the rest of this flight.

“Now will you tell me where we’re going?” he asks, instead. Ventress’s shoulders ease, barely.

“Tatooine,” she says. “I can get a reward for information, even if I can’t bring in that brute’s head.”

She climbs off Kenobi and begins to gather her clothes. Behind her, he clears his throat. “Yes, well. I have to make my own report back.”

“And will this report include me?”

Kenobi looks pensive. It’s impressive that he manages, as he hasn’t put his pants back on yet. “The Jedi Council is looking for a Separatist general. They’ve said nothing about a bounty hunter.”

“You Jedi think you’re so clever.”

“If only we were half as clever as we thought we were,” he says.

***

It’s half a standard year before he sees Ventress again. Fortunately, he sees her in time to yell, “Get down!” and throw himself on top of the Mining Guild representative for good measure.

The shot sizzles over his head; Obi-Wan has scant seconds to roll to his feet and gauge where she’s gone before he loses her trail entirely. There she is, hopping from the roof to a nearby balcony. He has time for only the briefest of apologies before he takes off at a run. There’s a rather ostentatious speeder parked in front of the building. The owner probably won’t be thrilled that Obi-Wan’s used it as a springboard to leap two storeys up, but at least he’s done his part for the Republic.

The balcony groans when he lands. By then, Ventress is two rooftops away. Fortunately, the building next to him has more decorations than a Naboo wedding cake, and the moulding makes good hand- and footholds. He clambers up the buttress and clips a wing off the crested plaster sauravian at the top, which frankly improves the building’s appearance. The architectural landscape itself is less important than Ventress’s proximity to aspects of it, though. Currently, she’s running past a spire with a golden orb on top. Obi-Wan grits his teeth, trusts the Force, and takes off at full speed after her.

Retirement from the Separatist forces hasn’t slowed her down, it seems. If anything, she’s even faster. Or he’s slower. He’d rather not think too hard about the answer to that. His chest is beginning to twinge in protest, but after he clears a half-collapsed chimney, Ventress is only meters ahead. If he pushes himself just a little farther--

Ahead of him, Ventress drops down flat. Obi-Wan doesn’t register the fact until the speeder nearly knocks him off the roof. He regains his balance and breath in time to glance up. Ventress, naturally, has managed to cling to the underside of the vehicle, and is in the process of wrestling the pilot off his seat.

Obi-Wan sighs and flicks his lightsaber on. He throws it high, and uses the Force to propel it further. Under the Force’s guidance, his lightsaber slices a clean arc through the speeder’s engine before returning to his hand. Ventress’s cursing is audible over the engine’s snaps and sparks; she flings herself to the roof before the contraption crashes. The same roof Obi-Wan’s standing on, in fact.

She dusts her knees off and gets to her feet, glaring, her hands on her saber hilts. A rifle is strapped to her back, though she certainly hasn’t been moving like she’s encumbered.

“You idiot,” she says.

“I don’t know what the bounty on Aracto’s head is, but I assure you, I can make it more worthwhile for you to leave him alive. He’s a key part of the Republic’s negotiations with the Mining Guild--“

“The Mining Guild expelled him two days ago,” she says. “They’re the ones who placed the bounty on him.”

“Ah,” Obi-Wan says, then closes his mouth.

She eases her hands off her hilts, folds her arms over her chest instead. “I intercepted a transmission from the Separatists. They were only too happy to offer sanctuary to your dear friend, provided he brought his guest with him.”

No need to ask who “his guest” was. A fierce headache begins to cluster at Obi-Wan’s temples. He tries a couple of controlled breaths, experimentally, but the oil-and-metal stench from the crashed speeder distracts him.

“I should have known,” he says.

Ventress shrugs, neither confirmation or denial. “The only way to get into a Toydarian’s head with the Force is throwing one into a wall skull-first. You’re hardly the first to fail at reading them.”

“I should have known even without the Force,” Obi-Wan counters. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Stars, he never should have told the Council that this mission sounded simple enough. The Force just delights in proving him wrong on such counts.

“Well,” Ventress says, “now you do.”

His legs have finally realized just how much use he made of them in the last few minutes, and they’re making their complaints known. Obi-Wan does his best not to wince at the cramps. “I should thank you.”

She arches an eyebrow. “And is that how you thank people? Hardly seems up to Negotiator standards.”

Every day this war drags on, he detests that name more and more. “I was hoping to thank you by buying you dinner.”

Ah, it seems he’s caught Ventress off-guard, if her double-take is any indication. “You want to buy me dinner.”

“Would it be so strange?”

She snorts. “Yes.”

“Too strange?”

She shakes her head, but there’s the faintest trace of a smile slipping through. “Make it drinks, and you’ve got a deal.”

***

Obi-Wan doesn’t remember how many glasses of the house specialty he consumed last night, but he does remember several other things.

First, Asajj Ventress has an alcohol tolerance that would put a Besalisk to shame.

Second, the bartenders in this sector of the galaxy are rather more generous than the one on Coruscant.

Third, Ventress and Anakin could probably have a rather in-depth conversation about the intricacies of pod-racing, assuming they didn’t kill one another first.

Fourth, Ventress thinks kissing and biting are synonymous.

Well, he already knew that, he supposes. When he thinks of their previous encounter, though, there’s still something not-quite-real about it all, as though that Obi-Wan lived in a universe just parallel to his own. So when he undresses her again, it feels as though he’s seeing her naked for the first time. Perhaps he simply has time to appreciate the fact, now, rather than noting it and filing it away.

Enough of Ventress is recognizably human that the differences stand out. The chill of her skin, for one, when compared to his own. There’s a roughness inherent to her skin, like the underside of real nerfhide. And she darkens to blue, not red, when she flushes. Her heartbeat seems slower than his, but perhaps that’s a difference in temperament rather than species.

He makes the mistake of voicing some of these observations to her. Ventress asks him, crossly, whether it’s human custom to use one’s mouths for nothing other than talking during sex. He endeavors to show her otherwise and rests his head between her legs, tracing her folds with his tongue. She seems appreciative, if the indent of her fingernails in his scalp is any indication. Entering her is easy, a slick swift slide. She hooks her heels around the small of his back to pull him in deeper, and he’s happy to follow her lead.

He thinks she’s going to claw his back off when she comes, but she doesn’t flay him badly enough to delay his release. By the time he’s caught his breath, she’s leveraged herself out from underneath him, and is sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Do you have a place to stay?” he asks.

“My ship’s not far from here.” She looks at him over her shoulder, smirking. “Why, were you going to ask me to stay the night?”

He rubs the back of his head, where the lesions from her fingernails haven’t entirely gone down yet. “That would be an exceptionally bad idea.”

She laughs. “And this wasn’t?”

“You have a point,” he admits. “Did you--do you want to stay?”

“Absolutely not.”

At least that’s expected, even if the rest of this hasn’t been. “Well, you’re welcome to the fresher before you leave.”

“I’ll take you up on that.” She springs to her feet just as quickly now as she does when she fights. “Is this real water?”

“I was just as pleased to see it as you were,” he says. The door to the fresher clicks shut, but he can hear her well enough, even over the hiss of water and steam. “You must not have seen much of it on Tatooine. Are you still operating out of there?”

“Kenobi?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

He chuckles. “No.”

She scoffs. “Next you’ll ask me how the weather’s been. I think we’re past the point of small talk in our acquaintance, Kenobi.”

“Our previous encounters tended to get straight to the point, yes. The point of a lightsaber, usually.”

“I assume you’ve been told how insufferable you are.”

“Oh, Anakin tells me at least once a day.”

Ventress is silent. The water plinks against the floor of the fresher.

“Is something wrong?”

The water shuts off, and Ventress pries the fresher door open. The sight of her naked and dripping is, ah, inspiring. Her scowl isn’t hindering matters. “Kenobi, I may no longer be your enemy in war, but I will kill you if you don’t let me clean up in peace.”

“Point taken,” he says. Ventress slams the door shut. Obi-Wan can’t quite bring himself to leave, though. He’s gotten himself into strange situations, to be sure, but this still has to rank among the stranger ones. Honestly, her using the fresher is what really makes the strangeness of it stick. It’s such a trivial sort of sharing, the type of thing that has no place in any chronicle of war, and yet here they are.

She stays in the fresher for a good half hour, at least. He doesn’t interrupt again.

***

Given all the visitors she's had recently, Ventress is less than surprised by the knock at her door. It might be time to leave Coruscant, frankly, if she continues to be this popular. She nudges the door open with one hand, and readies her blaster with the other.

"Hello to you, too," Kenobi says.

More Jedi. And this Jedi, in specific. Wonderful. Ventress doesn't lower her blaster. It won't do anything against his lightsaber, of course, but better to face him with something than nothing at all. "What do you want?"

"I'm just here to talk."

"To talk," she echoes. "In your official or unofficial capacity, Negotiator?"

He holds up his hands. "Unofficially, I promise. May I come in, or are we putting on a show for your neighbors?"

"You assume my neighbors are sober enough to care." She sighs. "Fine. Come in."

Kenobi sweeps in and surveys her apartment. She waits for a pithy comment or two about the shabbiness of its furnishings or the scarcity of its light. Then again, compared to some of the places they’ve fought, this apartment is the height of luxury.

“I believe these are yours,” he says, and extends his hand. She stares. In his palm are her lightsabers, their hilts polished and glittering.

“What,” she begins, and isn’t quite sure how to finish.

“We confiscated these from the real culprit behind the bombing of the Jedi Temple,” he says. “As they were not, in fact, her own, I thought I’d return them to their rightful owner.”

“Did you.” The light filtering through the cracks in her window shifts; the hilts give off a cool glow in Kenobi’s hand. She reaches to their crystals with the Force, and they chime softly in recognition. The hum reminds her of a limb regaining feeling after it’s gone numb. And with that slow trickle of returning awareness, Ventress’s reflexes return to her, too. She snatches the lightsabers from Kenobi before he can -- well, do whatever he planned to do. Currently, that’s staring at her with his chin down and mouth drawn. She snaps the sabers on, then off again. He doesn’t flinch. This is too strange.

“Why did you give these back to me?” she asks.

Kenobi hesitates. “It only seemed fair.”

“Fair,” she repeats, and leans against the wall. “Oh, yes, the Jedi Council is so concerned with fairness.”

His jaw twitches. Good. “We’re not infallible, Ventress. But we do strive to do the right thing.”

“Like you did right by Tano?”

Another visible flinch from Kenobi. She wishes she found it more satisfying. “I meant to return these as thanks.” He clears his throat, stares at a point just past her shoulder. “For everything you did for her.”

“Well, I certainly did more than you.”

He’s had time to steel himself, unfortunately; she doesn’t get much more from him than a faint line between his brows. “And your motives for helping were purely altruistic, I’m sure.”

“Just as altruistic as yours were for throwing Tano to the Senate,” she fires back. “I’m glad to have my sabers back, but if you want to hear that you’ve done something right, something good--” She spits the word with as much condescension as she can. “Then go somewhere else.”

Kenobi closes his eyes, gives that annoying pointed sigh of his. “Why did you help Ahsoka?”

“Ask Skywalker. I already told him, and I hate repeating myself.”

“Yes, well, Anakin’s about as forthcoming on some matters as you are.” His breathing has evened out, and the tautness in his face has eased. He looks like such a good Jedi, untouched by the smoke and muck and grime of lower Corsucant. Oh no, the neat creases in his robes proclaim, he’s above such things, made of a higher grade of matter than the beings that dwell here.

And oh, she wants to blast that clean, calm layer away.

“My former master left me to die, once I was no longer useful. Once I’d -- what was it? Ah, yes.” Ventress’s nails bite deep into her palm. “Failed him for the last time.”

“Ventress,” Kenobi begins, his voice soft.

“Be silent,” she snaps, and activates her lightsaber. For once, he obeys. “I don’t need your pity, not when you Jedi did the same to Tano. At least I knew I served the Sith. Poor Tano. She thought she served the protectors of the galaxy. The defenders of the weak.”

“Ventress --”

“Such noble heroes, who threw a scared little girl to the Senate the moment she was too troublesome to keep around. And you expected the Separatists to believe in the Jedi’s promises of mercy?” Her laugh is a harsh dark thing taking flight, almost an entity of its own. “How could they, if that’s the kind of mercy they show their own?”

“You’re right,” Kenobi says.

“...what?”

“When we judged Ahsoka, we listened to the will of the Senate, not the will of the Force. But she remembered her teachings, even if her teachers forgot them.” Kenobi’s gaze falls. “If those were her Trials, I daresay she made it through them with more grace and courage than most Jedi have.”

“Her Trials?” she repeats. “First you cast her out, then you make her a Knight?”

He smiles, briefly, a corner of his mouth tugging up. “Not quite. We offered her knighthood. She’d more than earned it. Ahsoka -- chose not to return.”

Some of Ventress’s colleagues have suggested she’s incapable of restraint. She, however, knows she can exercise a great deal of it. For instance, she hasn’t hurled any furniture at Kenobi this evening, no matter how much he’s prattled on about Trials and the will of the Force and all those convenient Jedi abstractions. She shakes her head; if the floor were Kenobi’s and not her own, she’d be tempted to spit on it. “Tano wouldn’t have needed to earn anything if you hadn’t left her to die. You didn’t make her face down simulacra in the Trials Chamber, Kenobi, you made her face down Senators, alone, in full view of the entire Republic.”

“You know of the Trials,” he says.

She shrugs, a sharp jerk of her shoulders. “I’ve had more than one master in my lifetime.”

“Then you know that not all Trials take place under such, ah, controlled circumstances. Sometimes the Force itself sees fit to administer them. It happened to me.” He curls his fingers through the roots of his hair. “And to Anakin. Runs down the line, it seems. I daresay something similar may have happened to you.”

Perhaps. Although no one offered her a knighthood for it. “I’d ask, but you’d never answer.”

That startles Kenobi into a puff of almost-laughter. “Am I that transparent?”

“Yes.”

“Funny, because I sometimes find you inscrutable.” He glances at the sofa. “May I sit? It was rather a long walk.”

Ventress blasts him into the seat. The cushions shriek in protest. The sofa remains upright for now, but it won’t if he decides to offer any smart remarks about her hospitality.

“Oof,” he says.

“I never asked you to make it,” she snaps. Kenobi shifts to stand. This time, she pins him in place with the Force and her knee in concert. “If coming here was such a hardship, you could have sent a courier, or a droid.”

“You’re suggesting I send a lightsaber by package? Have you met any postal droids?”

“Shut up.”

He gestures at the couch, nonplussed. “And what?”

He can’t talk if he’s kissing her, she decides, and hauls him closer by the collar. She seals her mouth over his until she’s desperate for air, red lining the edges of her sight. He gasps when they break apart. Before her head clears, he pulls her back in for another kiss. This time, when she breathes, she breathes with him, her chest rising and falling against his.

She carves evidence of herself into his skin, scrapes her nails down his stubble and bruises his collarbones. Her hands fan around his throat. Such a soft, vulnerable thing, and yet he leaves it so unguarded. She traces the straining veins in his neck, and his eyes fly open, locked onto hers.

Maul is mirrored in his eyes, his hand outstretched in victory, his fingers closing tight.

“Oh no you don’t,” she growls, “Kenobi, look at me,” and bites the corner of his lip. He cries out; she captures the sound in her mouth, savors it. Their hands tangle together on the fastenings of his trousers, her skirt. Other things tangle, too: their tongues, their legs, their senses. Images flash behind her eyes, fast and flickering. Ventress remembers her shields, and reaches for them, but the current linking her and Kenobi flows around whatever defenses she can half-raise.

Her hand closes around him, and the world tilts.

She is falling, or he is, in some endless gray reactor. No, not a reactor, a city, this city, past spires and stone and steel. He crashes and his hand hits the floor first. Someone else’s is cut off. The pain from both explodes behind his eyes, and in that burst of red Maul appears, stalking closer. The landscape shifts: not a city but a desert, dry where Dathomir was sodden but teeming with the same kind of dark energy. The desert is blown away, and only a man remains. Human, nearly old.

“Oh,” Kenobi, the real Kenobi, breathes into her ear. His cheek scrapes hers. It’s wet.

A man with a hole in his chest. Kenobi screams. Perhaps Ventress does as well. Darkness swells up in him, moves his limbs, makes him fly. He calls a saber to his hand and cleaves Maul in half at the waist. Pieces fall, and Kenobi doesn’t.

She shudders, and comes back to herself. Kenobi is wide- and wild-eyed underneath her, lips parted and barely breathing. She doesn’t want to ask what he saw.

“Kenobi,” she says.

He blinks, draws in a deep shuddering breath. “I don’t suppose I’m alone in not wanting to continue this.”

“You aren’t,” she assures him.

“I also don’t suppose you can point me to where the bacta is.”

She gestures to the side table. Kenobi staggers from the couch to get it. He doesn’t want to call on the Force, it seems, for which Ventress can’t blame him. He takes his time returning, and patches up his neck in near-silence. Ventress surprises herself by cutting in.

“What was his name?” she asks.

Kenobi’s hand stills. “Qui-Gon,” he says softly, then turning to look at her: “Qui-Gon Jinn. Yours?”

There’s no use in feigning ignorance. “Ky Narec.”

“I remember him.” Kenobi pauses. “I thought he’d died.”

“He did,” she says. “It was a long time ago.”

She refuses to elaborate further. She doesn’t need to. Kenobi’s hand curls around the back of the sofa. He isn’t gripping her by the shoulder, he’s not a complete fool, but her shoulder blade is aligned with his knuckles. If she chose to lean back, they’d press against her skin.

“Now you know how I met Maul,” he says. “I never did answer, when you asked me the first time.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“Neither of us has lived up to expectations, then.”

“Neither of us?”

She isn’t sure whether she leaned into his arm or not, but his hand is on her shoulder now, guiding her closer. As their lips meet, there is silence.