Work Text:
It had been a long time since Ahsoka had last been on Tattooine, but she still remembered the way a teeth-chattering chill had settled into her bones as soon as the twin suns dipped below the horizon. In a way, it was reassuring to know that even though everything else had changed, the days here were still punishingly hot, the nights bitterly cold. She threw another piece of wood on the fire and pulled her cloak tighter around herself, drawing her knees up to her chest as she watched the flames eat away at her offering to them.
She could still vividly recall the words Anakin had spoken to her as they had crossed the Dune Sea, could still hear the note of urgency in his voice as he warned her, “The desert’s a killer. It takes everything from you in the end.”
But in the end, it was Anakin who took everything from her, and the desert who gave something back.
Ahsoka felt Obi-Wan’s gaze shift toward her, and stared into the glowing coals until her eyes began to burn.
“You’re thinking about Anakin,” Obi-Wan finally said, his voice barely audible over the crackle of the fire, and she nodded tightly.
A part of her wished that Anakin had been right. Though the desert may have been a merciless killer, it was nothing like the ones she had grown up fighting. It posed no immediate threat. It was patient. Just as nightfall offered no reprieve from the ghost of him that clung to them both as oppressively as the heat of the twin suns, the quiet dunes offered no distractions.
She knew that Obi-Wan wanted to press her for more, to ask what in particular she had been thinking about, and she resented herself for not being able to indulge him. After years alone on Tattooine, he could talk about Anakin aloud as though he had been doing so this entire time, and maybe he had. But she had only just begun to allow herself to privately reminisce about him, and she wasn’t sure if she could force herself to speak about him, no matter how badly Obi-Wan may have needed her to.
The silence stretched on between them, and she drew in a deep breath, inhaling the woodsmoke, underlaid by the herbaceous scent of the withered, knotted shrubs scattered by their hut. The sunbleached pieces of wood on the fire reminded her of bones, and she closed her eyes, pretending for a moment that they were. Then she opened them and asked,
“Did you know Tattooine has four moons?”
Obi-Wan’s gaze snapped back to hers, and she met it this time, a corner of her mouth twitching up at the frown forming on his face.
“No, that isn’t right. Tattooine only has three,” he said, a crease forming between her brows at the noncommittal hum she let out in response. “Did Anakin tell you that? Because if so—”
He broke off when he saw the grin break across her face.
“No,” she replied, tucking her chin back down on her knees. “But he did tell me that if I ever wanted to get away from a particular subject with you, all I had to do was say something inaccurate enough that you’d have to change it in order to correct me.”
“Well, that explains why he suddenly felt the need to share arbitrary details about whatever planet happened to be closest whenever he sensed a lecture coming on,” Obi-Wan said dryly after a moment, his mouth shifting into something akin to a smile. “And here I just thought his temple education had been severely lacking when it came to astronomy.”
Ahsoka let out a quiet huff of laughter, hugging her knees closer to her chest. She still wasn’t ready to talk about Anakin in anything but past-tense anecdotes, and she wasn’t sure when she would be, but that was okay.
The desert was patient. And so was Obi-Wan.