Kenobi: Star Wars

by John Jackson Miller

  Annileen’s eyes goggled. They had an audience now, bystanders who had drifted away from the city’s attempts to trap the Kayven whistlers. Suddenly self-aware, she stepped back. “Are you looking for an answer now?”

  “Soon,” Orrin said. He looked back up the street in the direction of the town house. “Sure, why not now? I know you like Kerner Plaza. They have weddings there all the time. What do you think?”

  “I think you need to take one of your stress pills!”

  “No joke, Annie,” he said, sinking down on one knee. “I’m for real!”

  Shaken, she looked around again. At the landspeeder. At Ben. At the others, and then again at Ben. Her eyes back on Orrin, she spoke a little louder, partly for the benefit of the strangers. “I’ll need a little time to think about it,” she said.

  Smile wilting a little, Orrin rose from the ground and dusted off his trouser leg. He bowed to Annileen and turned back to his vehicle. The loiterers, sensing the moment had ended, drifted away.

  Seeing Orrin conferring with his children, Annileen spoke with hers. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  Kallie shook her head. “If Veeka Gault becomes my sister, I’m going to become one of those B’omarr monks.”

  “They cut your brains out,” Ben said.

  “Trust me,” Kallie said. “It’d be preferable.”

  Speaking quietly, Orrin finished the thirty-second summation of events in the town house for Mullen and Veeka.

  “We’re not going to get out of this by talking,” he said. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “It’s not unexpected. Always two plans, you know.”

  “I’m not so sure about Plan Two,” Mullen said.

  Orrin looked at his son, exhausted. “Great suns, what’s wrong with Zedd this time? Surely his ribs have healed by—”

  “He called from the clinic. He’s been taking the wrong painkillers,” Veeka said. “Zedd’s addicted to Wookiee meds.”

  Orrin shook his head. “He is incredibly fired.”

  “Do we have to go tonight?” Mullen asked. “I don’t think we can go without him.”

  “Tonight or nothing,” Orrin said. “We need a fourth, and fast. But I think I’ve found him.” Orrin looked at the Calwells, gathered between their LiteVan and Annileen’s swanky ride. Jabe nodded back to him, respectfully.

  Orrin had been bringing Jabe into his confidence a little at a time, and the boy seemed more than eager to be helpful. “Yeah, that’ll actually work pretty well,” Orrin said, walking toward the group.

  “Jabe,” he called out. “You want to ride back to the oasis with us?”

  Jabe looked surprised by the offer. Standing by the Gault vehicle, Veeka winked at him. Excited, Jabe looked to his mother.

  Annileen was skeptical. “Kallie has to take the LiteVan home now to get the animals fed. I didn’t want her going alone—”

  “We’ll drive along behind as far as my place,” Orrin said. “My cook droid will get Jabe fed and I’ll drop him at home tonight. Everyone will be safe.”

  Overwhelmed by the earlier attention, Annileen assented.

  “It’s settled,” Orrin said, waving the boy to his landspeeder. Turning, Orrin saw Ben standing in contemplation, hood shading his eyes. “I thought you had some repair work to pick up,” Orrin said, frostily.

  “That I do.” Ben nodded and turned to Annileen. “I can find my own way home.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll drop you and the cooling unit back at your place.” She looked over at Orrin, who seemed none too happy. “I’m still my own woman—I think.”

  “Fine,” Orrin said, the old smile returning. “Then I’ll see you tonight.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  SO THIS IS HOW A HERMIT LIVES, Annileen thought as she looked around Ben’s house. It was cleaner inside than outside, which was what she’d imagined, knowing Ben. But the furnishings were impossibly spare. She could not picture him living here in any kind of comfort at all. Every day must be like camping. Which might not be such a bad way to go, she thought, remembering the clutter of her own life.

  Annileen finished washing her hands in the basin and dried them quickly. It wouldn’t do to linger here, when she’d just come inside to freshen up—and she’d had to finagle that.

  But she had a good excuse. Rooh had found her way home, as Annileen had predicted, but she’d been wrong about how close the animal was to birth. Annileen and Ben had arrived just as the first sun touched the western Jundland mountains—and found mother and son right outside the trough. Annileen’s examination of the eopie and her kid found both healthy; the exertions of the morning must have brought on the early labor.

  With a last look around, Annileen stepped through the curtain and into the warm evening. Ben knelt beside Rooh, who was happily munching feed. Annileen lingered outside the door, not wanting to disturb the serene moment.

  But Ben noticed her presence. “Rooh’s quite energetic, given her ordeal,” he said, patting the new mother’s snout. “How long should she rest?”

  “Eopies are made out of elastic bands,” Annileen joked. “She’s probably ready to race.”

  Ben marveled. “So soon?”

  Annileen laughed. “Believe me, I envy her. Jabe knocked me off my feet for a month.”

  She walked into the yard. The repaired cooling unit sat amid the other junk outside. Ben had remained mostly quiet during the drive to fetch it and the journey here. He’d added little to his tale about Orrin’s absence, apart from a question about the man’s finances, which she found oddly timed. Ben hadn’t pried further. And he hadn’t asked at all about the one thing she most wanted an opinion about.

  “Well,” Ben said, rising. “I’d better get the equipment inside while there’s still light. It was a lovely day. Thanks for the help.” With that, he passed her and walked toward the coolant unit. Annileen stood frozen as he knelt beside it.

  Finally, she cracked. She marched into his field of view. “Ben,” she said. “Should I marry Orrin?”

  Ben paused. “Do you want to marry Orrin?”

  “Not especially,” she said. “A lot of people think I should.”

  Ben heaved the unit from the ground. “I’m sure your other friends would be more qualified to advise. Leelee—”

  “No,” Annileen said. “Not Leelee.” She walked after him and blocked him from the doorway. He looked at her, puzzled, as she tugged the coolant unit from his hands and set it down by the door. “I want to know what you want me to do.”

  Ben shrugged. “It’s your life. Every individual decides his or her own fate—”

  Annileen groaned. “Everything’s an adage with you. Ben, are you telling me you’ve never had to deal with a real-life situation? Where you had to make a decision about someone else?”

  Finally seeming to sense her frustration, Ben looked away. “I’m human,” he said. “There was someone, once. It wasn’t to be.”

  “And you gave up and moved to the Jundland Wastes?” She laughed. “I’d say you didn’t find the right person.”

  “Perhaps I did,” Ben said, looking back at her from beneath his hood. “But I wasn’t the right person.”

  “More double-talk from Crazy Ben,” Annileen said. Feeling her confidence grow, she took a step toward him, cutting the space between them in half. “Well, I don’t think you’re so crazy. I think you’ve found someone you didn’t expect to find. And that’s not a bad thing,” she said, reaching toward him.

  Ben put his hands before him to slow her advance. “Annileen—no. I can’t do this,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” She looked up into his eyes. “I think you can.”

  “No, I definitely can’t.”

  “Everyone loses the reins once in a while.”

  He gave an uncomfortable half c
huckle. “I said that, didn’t I?”

  “Yep.” She clasped his hands and pulled him closer …

  … and he drew back and turned away.

  “What is it?” She stared at his back. “Is it because of Orrin? Don’t worry about that. I’ve told you, I don’t feel that way about him.”

  “And I don’t think you feel that way about me, either,” Ben said, walking toward the eopies.

  “You’re the expert on what I think?” She smiled warmly. “Well, that’s proof right there that something’s happening between us. Orrin’s known me my whole life and doesn’t know what I think. You’ve met me a handful of times and you can read my mind.” Her eyes sparkled in the evening light. “Often. So either you’re superhumanly perceptive, Ben—or I’ve had your complete attention.”

  Ben took Rooh’s lead and walked her to the corral. Her wobbly child followed. “Annileen, I think you have a good home, a lovely family, and a successful business. And I think you are bored out of your mind.”

  She looked at him, incredulous. “You think I’m that simple?”

  “No,” he said, lifting the kid over the fencing. “I think you’re that complicated.”

  Annileen crossed her arms. “You think poor little Annie gets bored with Tatooine, and the first time a stranger from offworld comes along, it’s off to the races?”

  “Others have done it.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  He looked back at her. “Honestly? You’re not bored?”

  Annileen turned and kicked the coolant unit with a clang. “I’m too tired to be bored! I’ve got a home that’s falling apart because I’m dead every evening. Half the time, I fall asleep at the kitchen table. My kids keep trying to find new ways to kill themselves, as if this place weren’t dangerous enough. And my business—” She sputtered as she stormed toward the corral. “My business is playing mother bantha to a herd of full-grown orphans! People are not flying to the Rim to trade places with old Annileen.”

  “I know some who would,” Ben said, his back leaning at the fence.

  She glared at him.

  He began to say something and stopped. For a moment, there was only the sound of the baby eopie, nuzzling his mother.

  At last, Ben spoke again. “Annileen … I think you’ve learned to live with these things. But you can’t pretend anymore that they challenge you. There’s too much to you.” Turning, he placed both hands on the fence railing and looked out onto the desert. “You’ve reached your limit, and you’re looking for a lifeline. And since you think you can’t move, you’re desperate for someone to come along and keep you company in that world. Someone who challenges you.”

  “I don’t know,” Annileen said, joining him at the fence. “Erbaly Nap’tee is pretty challenging.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She looked down at the eopies and sighed. She did know what he meant. “You’re telling me that you don’t escape a trap by luring someone else in.”

  “Every trap has multiple ways out,” Ben said. “I saw that just today.”

  Annileen thought that a strange comment, but he changed the subject. “Besides,” he said, “I’d make a terrible shopkeeper.”

  “You can barely shop right,” she said.

  They laughed.

  Ben started to move from the fence when she touched his arm—less insistently this time. “Wait,” she said. “You’re not going to get away that easily. This isn’t just about me,” she said. “This is about you.”

  He put up his hand again. “I told you, I not looking for a—”

  “No,” Annileen said. “Not that. I asked you outside the Claim that day if something bad had happened to you. You said it happened to someone else.”

  “Yes.”

  She grabbed his wrist. “You’re a liar.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re lying to yourself. This thing, this bad thing—it may have happened to someone else. Someone you cared about, I’m guessing. And that means it happened to you, too.”

  Ben resisted. “I don’t—”

  “Yes, you do. Something horrible happened, Ben, and it’s ripping you apart. Maybe it’s why you’re here. But you’re trying to go on like you didn’t care, like you weren’t—”

  She paused. His hands back on the railing, he looked up at her.

  “You were there,” Annileen whispered. “Weren’t you? When this bad thing happened,” she mouthed. “You were there.”

  Ben closed his eyes and nodded. “It didn’t just happen,” he said, hardly breathing. “I caused it.”

  Annileen’s mind raced. Raced and veered into dark imaginings that she wanted to dismiss. But Ben was serious about whatever it was, and she had to be, too. “You … you hurt someone?”

  “They hurt themselves,” Ben said. “I came along at the end—the very end. But I was also there at the beginning. I should have stopped it.”

  She shook her head. “You’re just one man.”

  “I should have stopped it!” The railing shook. “I failed! It was on me to stop it, and I didn’t. And I will have that on my conscience forever.”

  Annileen’s eyes looked left and right. The fence quaked so hard under his hands that she thought the very posts might fly out of the ground. “Ben, you can’t blame—”

  “You can’t know.” He turned and clutched at her shoulders, surprising her. “I failed everyone. Do you have any idea how many people have paid for that? Do you know how many people are paying, right now?”

  “I only know one,” she said.

  Ben let go of the fence. His arms wilted.

  She had never seen such anguish in anyone’s eyes before. What had he been through? What had he done? What did he think he had done? So many theories about his past had coalesced and dispersed since she’d known him. Annileen struggled to run through them now. Had there been a domestic tragedy? Had he been a soldier, whose actions cost his platoon? An executive, whose negligence had wiped out his corporation?

  Her thoughts ranged from the small to the improbably large, before determining that it didn’t matter. Hurt was hurt. And whether Ben had harmed someone before, she judged him to be no danger now. Except, perhaps to his own happiness.

  Every human instinct told her to embrace him. But something else, somewhere, told her to step back.

  Which she did.

  “Ben, I think I understand. You’re out here, I guess, to atone. Maybe more than that—I don’t know. But that’s part of it. If talking about things would help—”

  Ben shook his head. “It won’t.” He glanced at the setting suns, then took a deep breath. His body straightened. “I’m sorry. I do thank you for the day out, but you should get home while there’s still light.”

  Annileen watched as he turned back to his house. The familiar reserve had returned. She had gotten in for a moment; she could tell that for sure. But she saw she would get no farther. Not today.

  Hands hanging at her sides, Annileen walked back to her landspeeder, which gleamed crimson in the sunset. At its side, she turned back and looked at Ben. “All right,” she said. “I’m not going to hide outside your door, waiting for you to tell me. You can do it in your own time.”

  He stopped in his path and looked away to the east, melancholy. “Time, I have.”

  “Well, I have it, too,” Annileen said, slipping behind the controls of the vehicle. “I’m not going anywhere.” She started the engine. “Did you hear that, Ben? I am not going anywhere. So when you’re ready … you know what the sign says.”

  She drove away into the dusk, leaving behind a contemplative Ben. Who, she suspected, remembered very well what she meant.

  FIND WHAT YOU NEED AT DANNAR’S CLAIM.

  Meditation

  Annileen.

  This is
becoming a problem. For her—and that makes it a problem for me.

  No, I know what you’re thinking. I’ve been tested on this score before—and I’ve seen what it means to get too close to someone. Years ago, with Siri Tachi—you were there for part of that.

  And then there was Satine … I’ve vowed never to put anyone else in similar jeopardy.

  And that’s just it: I’m not some moon-eyed Padawan. Not anymore. I know personal ties can work against us. We endanger them, sometimes, because of the nature of our duties. And worse, they become possessions, to be protected and obsessed over.

  I admit, I do wonder sometimes if that sells Jedi short. Not everyone is Anakin. And if the simple act of caring deeply for a person—especially someone as good as Padmé—is destructive in principle, then the Force has a peculiar view of what constitutes good and evil. You told me yourself that the Jedi weren’t always against relationships. And consider: families are strong in the Force. Does the Force really understand what it wants?

  No matter—I understand myself. I can give up love. I have given up love. But I wasn’t prepared to give up the thing that I had instead.

  Community.

  I’ve lived my life in the structure of the Jedi Order. Yes, it was an organization with a goal—but it was also a family. I said it myself: Anakin was my brother. I had many brothers and sisters. And fathers and mothers. And even a strange little green uncle.

  I don’t have that home now. I don’t have that family.

  Almost every friend I’ve ever had is dead.

  I … I’ve never thought about it in exactly those terms, before. It nearly took my breath away, just now. Almost every friend I’ve ever had is dead. Most killed by Sith evil.

  And I’ve never lived without the Jedi Order to fall back on, to help me when things went badly. What does it mean to be a Jedi alone?

  I think you tried to tell me, more than once. Your stories about other Jedi who lived without the trappings of the Order—but who still followed the Code. Kerra Holt, back in Bane’s time, cut off from the Republic. And who was that half Jedi? Zayne something? Zayne Carrick. He wasn’t a part of the Jedi Order, and yet he did good deeds anyway, on his own. He relied on his friends and didn’t need some official imprimatur to do the right thing.