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“You want to see Dooku,” Ahsoka said flatly, not bothering with preambles. “After everything he’s done, you want to go and talk to him.”
Obi-Wan considered remaining silent, focusing on the patterns in the steam rising from his tea, but that wouldn't work with Ahsoka. He blew softly on his cup.
“Hello to you too.”
She plopped down on the meditation pad next to his own and glared with all her might. Now a good head taller than she was as a padawan, with straight tunics and a new, bigger akul headdress, she would be intimidating to most. He sipped his hot tea with a quiet, weary smile.
“Why would you want to talk to him?” she asked, with the slightest shadow of the hint of a childish pout.
Obi-Wan delicately floated his cup onto the table in the corner of the room and steepled his fingers together. Knitting his brow, he allowed himself a few seconds to find the best answer.
“Why did you want to talk to me?” he asked back, inwardly smiling when the full force of her exasperation hit his senses.
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” she said with that forceful eyeroll from her teenage years. “You never slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. You aren’t evil.”
He could appreciate the intensity with which she jumped to his defense, even as she framed it like mere common sense. Of course she had given him a chance, after the war, after everything. She had come back, though he would never claim that he had in any way ‘deserved it.’ She had come back because she wanted to, and some part of her needed them all, and another longed for what was lost. He pushed those feelings to the surface, opened himself so that she could see it as he did.
“I just want to,” he said. “Building bridges is what we Jedi do.”
“Not with monsters like that,” she countered stubbornly, as though she was fourteen again, seeing everything in black and white.
She knew better now, but bitterness was a hard wall to bring down.
“It's just a talk,” he soothed. “Nothing more.”
Ahsoka would always be stubborn, but she was shaping up to be wise. She sighed and dropped it with an annoyed look. He waited a few moments, but he couldn't resist adding a little kindling to the fire.
“Yoda wants to see him too.”
Her brow twitched, and she visibly made an effort to swallow something curt. No matter everything that had happened, she had not lost her respect for Yoda, and she never would. He had taught them all from infancy, watched over their first attempts to grasp the Force as toddlers, beamed as they first lit up their lightsabers – and some, like Dooku, he had personally raised all the way to Knighthood. There was no forgetting that bond for any of them. There, of course, lay part of the issue.
“Master Yoda has more reasons than you,” she grumbled. “You never even knew him before.”
“Maybe not,” Obi-Wan acknowledged, “but I'm still not turning him away.”
“Because he was your Master's Master,” she sniffed. “Like that matters. He's a Sith.”
Obi-Wan nodded.
“And he does bear some of the blame for Qui-Gon's death, yes – as a Sith and as Sidious’ accomplice at the time. But no, I don’t want to see him because he taught my own Master.”
“Why then?”
“He was one of us, a long time ago,” Obi-Wan said softly, “and he lost himself completely. After everything he’s done, I can’t help but pity him.”
Ahsoka went quiet, weighing his words.
“What’d you think he wants to talk about?” she asked after a minute, picking lint off the cushion.
“I wouldn’t know,” he shrugged. “As you said, I don’t know really know him. He used to try and convince me to join him, but I don’t expect it this time.”
“Maybe he wants to have a philosophical debate,” she said dryly.
“Maybe,” he said, enjoying the banter.
Ahsoka gave him a quick side-glance, already more sober.
“Anakin wouldn’t talk to him, you know.”
That made him wince ever so slightly, their shared discomfort making the air feel tight around them.
“I know.”
Anakin had never been very good at affording leniency to those he deemed reprehensible. Obi-Wan hadn’t faulted him for it, though he had always hoped that Anakin would grow out of his rather rigid mindset regarding who to extend mercy to, but none of it felt very relevant now. Anakin wasn’t with them anymore.
Obi-Wan got up and straightened his tunics, calling to Ahsoka silently. She got to her feet as well, watching him curiously.
“You could come with me, you know,” he said. “Make sure Dooku doesn’t try to corrupt me with his Dark Side tricks.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Or you could just loom in the corner.”
That got her to smirk.
“That could be fun.”
In the end, Ahsoka didn’t come, and Obi-Wan entered the cell alone, quietly. Dooku was a mere shadow of his former self, stripped of his expensive clothes and dressed in the simple linen of the Order, his maimed arms unbound as he knelt on the mat. He looked older than he ever had, his face reflecting almost a century of life.
Obi-Wan knelt too.
When their eyes met, Dooku’s held an infinite sadness.
“Hello, Master,” Obi-Wan said softly.