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It was hard to avoid her. The latest passionate exhortation to choose neutrality, and prevent the war from escalating was all over the HoloNet. It was in a report prepared for the Council. Not just the text, as was the usual custom, but an audio and video recording, as well. He consoled himself in that Yoda chose to only display the speech’s text. He could paint her so clearly in his mind’s eye, though, as he read it. The blonde hair that would escape whatever coiffure she’d twisted it into just to fall in wisps around her face. The color of her eyes that shifted from the crystalline blue waters of Scarif to the rich shade of the lapis mined on Draboon depending on her mood. The tiny line between her brows that would deepen during their frequent bickering arguments. The small, private smile she had just for him. The one that warmed him from the tips of his ears to the soles of his boots. Would she wear a dress in blue, her favorite color? Or would she wear something in dark pink? Or purple? He’d once relented on his birthday to look up images of her at some school opening she’d attended earlier in the day. She had worn a dress in the green of cedar trees, his favorite color. He entertained the idea that she’d done it for him, because it was a color she rarely wore on its own. Perhaps it was her subtle way of saying hello from across the stars.
The question still haunted him. What if he’d done what was good for his soul, and bent the Code? Perhaps then, he could function as though he didn’t share a single brain cell with Anakin. Like a ginger tooka or lothcat.
‘Master Obi-wan, insights you have on the Duchess?’ Yoda’s warble startled him from his uncharacteristic reverie.
Obi-wan took a moment to reposition himself in the chair, crossing his ankle over his opposite knee. ‘I’m afraid anything I might have to add is sadly outdated.’ He spread his hands apart in mute apology. ‘I haven’t seen or spoken to the Duchess in sixteen years.’
Sixteen years, eight months, and twenty-five days to be exact. But who was counting?
‘Know her best on the Council, you do,’ persisted Yoda.
Obi-wan resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. Yoda wouldn’t give up so easily. It was just good policy to keep a place as potentially volatile as Mandalore in the back of one’s mind. Unbidden, the memory of dozens of tiny, seemingly inconsequential intimacies arose. The scent of her perfume, faded after a long day, whispering in the hollow of her throat. The touch of her hand against his cheek. The way she twirled a lock of hair around her index finger while she read. Even how she bit her lip just before her head fell back as she… He twitched his robes to drape over his hips a little more securely, and tried with all his might to let it go. ‘She is a committed pacifist. Trying to persuade her to aid the side of the Republic would only waste our time and hers. It would be a futile endeavour.’
‘Even for the Great Negotiator?’ Kit Fisto grinned slyly.
‘Especially for the Great Negotiator,’ Obi-wan said firmly. Satine would see it as a personal challenge to find a hundred ways to call him a pompous ass in the most diplomatic language possible, if not the tone.
'Perhaps you should reacquaint yourself with the Duchess.' Mace eyed him over his steepled fingers. 'If it becomes necessary to send an emissary, it might be best to send someone with whom the Duchess already has a relationship.' Obi-wan raised a brow at that. The last meaningful interaction he'd had with Satine had been a tearful farewell in her bedroom, that served to reaffirm their commitment to their respective duties.
'Agree with Master Windu, I do.,' Yoda proclaimed. And that was that.
Obi-wan felt the Force thrumming with a sense of apprehension and anticipation. Did the others feel it, too, or was it merely a figment of his imagination? He tried to release the sense of heightened expectation into the Force, and let it drift away on the tranquil currents of the Light, but it was to no avail. Yoda mercifully adjourned the Council soon after, but Obi-wan was barely conscious of the discussion that danced around him. He waved off invitations to join the others in the refectory for dinner, and walked with his measured, sedate pace to his quarters. Once inside, and the door locked behind him, he divested himself of his boots, socks, and outermost layers of clothing, then settled onto a meditation platform, sitting cross-legged, hands on his knees, trying to find the peace that had eluded him since Geonosis.
For some time after he and Qui-gon had left Mandalore, Obi-wan resisted the urge to see how she fared. Doing so only made him feel things that prodded him to question his decision to stay in the Order. Until a breathless update about the young Duchess on the HoloNet on one of the public displays near Dex's caught the corner of his eye. There she was. On a balcony in Sundari, a swaddled baby in her arms. At first glance, he thought it was some official event, celebrating the opening of a maternity or pediatric hospital. Then he saw the chyron racing across the bottom of the screen, blaring that the young Duchess of Mandalore recently adopted her orphaned newborn nephew. He couldn’t see much of the baby, just the curve of a round cheek and a wisp of reddish-gold hair. Obi-wan frowned, calculating the days and weeks since he’d left Satine, then shook his head. Of course the baby wasn't theirs. They'd been so careful, that conceiving a child, while possible, was highly unlikely. Qui-gon called after him, a mild rejoinder to stop dawdling. As he walked away, she looked away from the camera, and down at the baby, an expression of a deep and pure love radiating from her. His vivid imagination wasted no time in creating a vision where he stood with her, cupping the warm weight of their child’s head in the palm of his hand.
The dreams began in earnest that night.
The ones where he lived another life. Where he'd chosen to stay with her, to build a life with her that didn't carry this overwhelming sense of anxiety. He'd been prepared to renounce the Jedi and perform the ancient rituals to become a Mandalorian, practicing the vows in secret until he could recite them near-perfect Mando’a. Even though Obi-wan had ultimately decided to stay in the Order, the tantalizing prospect of living out his life with Satine Kryze filled his dreams for the next several weeks.
They gradually petered out until they ceased all together.
Until the next time he saw an image of her.
His dreams of her rose, crested, and crashed on his shore, then receded like the ocean tides. He learned to accept their presence, and welcome their absence. Not seeing her face seemed to increase the intervals between the episodes, so he assiduously avoided the image of her, if he could. But he never really needed one. His memory could readily produce one on its own in such meticulous detail, it might as well have been a good-quality hologram.
Obi-wan let his eyes open, giving up the attempt to meditate. He fished the datacard from his pocket as he slid from the platform, and slipped it into the holotransmitter, then stood back. 'It's only research,' he told himself sternly, in an effort to convince his psyche that there was nothing special about the blonde woman in the blue dress, speaking most passionately about neutrality during this time of turmoil.
The dreams would come. And he would let them wash over him, where the scent of her perfume lingered in the air as she passed, and their child's warm weight slumbered in his arms.