A homecoming of sorts

[ezra_of_lothal]

WHO: Ezra, Luke, and anyone else around
WHERE: Temba Jedi Temple
WHAT: Ezra bringing Luke to the temple complex/mingle with residents and visitors
WHEN: Soon after Luke's arrival
WARNINGS: Discussion of canon levels of violence, maybe? Others added as needed

"We're pretty sure this used to be a museum," Ezra rambles as he leads Luke to the complex of bulidings Obi-wan had chosen to designate as the Jedi temple. "We packed up all the artifacts. And we're still working on actually making it, you know, nice. Obi-wan and I live here."

He pauses, debating his phrasing, but lands on going with how he'd describe the other Temple residents to anyone else.

"So does Padme and her twins, who are Force sensitive. Cal - he was a padawan at the end of the Clone Wars - has been here in Temba by far the longest, and he's pretty settled in his workshop, but he comes by to train and visit. Grogu's developmentally pretty young, so while Master Kenobi's taken him as a padawan - in front of the Council when we were on Coruscant and everything - he lives with his adoptive father."

***
Open Mingle

It felt good, bringing Luke here, but also really, really weird. They should be age mates, but they aren't, and besides, Ezra's gotten used to sharing living space with the infant version of Luke and Leia.

Still, he's glad that this version of Luke, who had talked about being alone, has a chance to meet more Jedi. To spend more time with some of his family, both of the Jedi variety and not. He's curious they'll all have to say to each other, but he resolves not to hover and eavesdrop.

Although as the afternoon goes on, he does try to make sure there's tea and snacks on hand.

Comments

[ezra_of_lothal]

He nods and folds himself into a sitting kneel, and yes, for the moment, closes his eyes to actually join her meditation.

He has no illusions that he's going to be able to sort through all the emotions that have swirled up since he spotted Luke's message to the network. And that's ok - for the most part they aren't what he'd call distressing feelings. (Although there have certainly been some of those, too; he's trying not to dwell whether Obi-wan here and now is fated to same end Luke reported.) Mostly they're just complicated.

Right now he's just trying to let it all wash over him and settle a little.

[thesepreciousthings]

Instead of closing her eyes right away, she watches him for a moment, studying his body language. She's not empathetic like him, but she can see the microexpressions that betray his inner tension as he tries to fold himself away into his mind: she was trained to spot them, after all, the tiny little tells people make whether they want to or not. Nodding a bit to herself, she finally settles into her own meditation, and tries to ground herself in the moment, in the reality around them. She thinks about the new city, the startling amount of new folks who'll need help and homes, how so much is happening at once. It's probably a lot for someone sensitive to the Force. She wonders if there's a way she can help ... and how.

[ezra_of_lothal]

Eventually, feeling a little calmer, Ezra opens his eyes.

He waits until he can feel Clarice's attention on him again before he asks, "So, have you met Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, yet?" he asks, smiling faintly.

[thesepreciousthings]

Another name she knows. This place just keeps getting stranger and stranger, but she keeps her homeworld secret to herself, the same as she did with Obi-Wan. Clarice raises her eyebrows.

"We have another Jedi? No, honey, I haven't. That must be exciting for you."

[ezra_of_lothal]

"It is," he agrees, because exciting is true enough, just not complete. "Also - weird."

He shifts to turn more towards her. "I'd already figured out that people coming here means that even if all evidence points towards people coming from the same, um, universe? Timeline? That coming here must do something to complicate that. And let's just say Luke being here is more evidence of complication. What that means for any of us that ever go...back, I don't know."

[thesepreciousthings]

"Wait -"

She finally realizes why the name had sounded so familiar to her. Of course. The children are very sensitive to the Force, the old Jedi Master on Coruscant had said, as they had all huddled outside the --

"Luke. You don't mean Padme's Luke."

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Yeah, I do," Ezra replies, gives her a wry half-smile. "Except, he was raised by an aunt and uncle. That's why Master Kenobi was so worried while the twins were being born. He'd lived through that before, and Padme-"

He grimaces. "She'd been...injured. She didn't make it past their birth. They split the twins up because, well, twice as bright together in the Force would be easier to find."

He makes a face at that, too. He gets the reasoning, but he's also not sure that it was the only or best option.

"I've actually met Leia before. One of Padme's friends in the Senate adopted her."

[thesepreciousthings]

"Oh my God," she said softly. Of course it was different here: she and Hannibal had spent so many evenings over wine and good music talking about time and the universe that it made perfect, immediate sense to her. But to think that things had gone so differently was one thing, but realizing that Padme had been brought here so close to her own death was ...

"Does she know?" Starling frowned, wondering if she would want to know, had she been in the same situation. She also wondered how different her own life in Temba would be if the Agrii had chosen her earlier in her life, when she was still young and so very angry and damaged.

[ezra_of_lothal]

He sighs. "I don't know. Obi-wan asked me to leave telling her...a bunch of stuff to him, which makes sense, but I'm not sure what he's actually gotten around to saying. I mean, I think it's just been easy - for both of them - to try to not think about most of the bad stuff that's not here and now and focus on raising the babies."

That's not even a bad thing, he doesn't believe. It's just not an easy position for him to be in, while he knows the pieces of so many secrets and possibilities.

[thesepreciousthings]

"Which is important, yeah, but ..." She shook her head, wincing a little, feeling bad to even be thinking what she was about to say inside a fledgling Jedi temple. It felt almost sacreligious to criticize a Jedi here.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not sayin' they shouldn't be taking care of Luke and Leia, or that Padme shouldn't have help. But there're all sorts of other folks who volunteered to help with that. Myself included. On Coruscant, Obi-Wan gave me the impression Jedi didn't shy away from tough subjects. From where I sit, he shouldn't have waited for somethin' like this to tell her ... but then again, I don't know everything goin' on in his head, either."

[ezra_of_lothal]

Ezra's quiet a second while he wrestles with his gut reaction to what he has had time not interpreting as the implication that Obi-wan shouldn't be involved in raising the twins. Part of him wants to argue that Obi-wan has every right. That they're family, even if not by blood.

But well, for one thing, he can't be completely sure Padme would agree, when she knows the full truth of what happened to Anakin. And for another, Ezra knows he's falling pretty short of perfect Jedi equanimity on any of this.

"Guilt and grief and love and fear can make a big tangled mess, can't they?" is what he says out loud, offering Clarice a tremulous smile. "There's reasons a lot of Jedi try to avoid winding up in the position of getting caught up in all these emotions as much as they can, while still being, you know, people."

[thesepreciousthings]

"They sure can." She reached out and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Her own, on all four counts, had held her back from her full potential and strength for decades. She knew the cost all too well - which was why she was perhaps a bit more neutral to the situation than Ezra. "I guess Obi-Wan would be more concerned with the people he could still help, all things considered. I'm sorry if I sounded like I didn't think he should be helpin' at all. I didn't mean it that way."

[ezra_of_lothal]

He relaxes a little, under her hand.

"Yes. He could have just tried to...avoid us all, who remind him of everything he's grieving, and he's not. He's trying really hard. And I think being here is better for him than, um, where he was. But no, I do know that his judgement isn't necessarily-" He searches for the right word.

"Clear," he lands on. "Especially about Padme and her children."

[thesepreciousthings]

She smiled a little, reassuring him just as much as she was reassured to feel the tension starting to go out of him.

"He wants to do right by her, especially seein's how this is a second chance in a lot of ways for everyone involved. And that sort of thing can put a lot of pressure on someone, even if it isn't comin' from anyone but himself. Hopefully in time that wisdom of his will kick in and he'll realize he can take it easy. Meanwhile, all we can do is be patient, I guess. ... No one ever changed without wantin' to."

[ezra_of_lothal]

He's not sure that this isn't taking it easy by Obi-wan standards, but that doesn't make any of what Clarice said about pressure less true.

He clears his throat and flips to the other set of implications stemming from Luke's arrival that's been weighing most on his mind. "Luke was pretty sure, when he got here, that he was the last living Jedi in the galaxy. He's definitely a few years past me. Or maybe sideways and past me? Hard to know."

[thesepreciousthings]

"The very last?" Her face crinkles with something like dismay dipped in grief. She may not have been a Jedi, or worthy or capable of it, but she had a great amount of admiration for the Order, given what she had seen on Coruscant and the friends she'd come to know on Temba. There was a nobility in the concept, if not entirely in the practice, and she wondered if the politics of it all had been what finally caused it to crumble. Wondered if some day she could have been the last FBI agent.

"That's a heavy thing to hear. Especially comin' from your time."

[ezra_of_lothal]

"That he didn't know me...makes sense. It follows from the choices I made," he admits, grimly stoic.

"I mean, my first thought when I got here was this that this was a really unexpected afterlife. Master Kenobi and Master Yoda - Luke witnessed their deaths." And what blows those were, to lose probably the last full masters under the old Order.

"Cal's from like a decade and half before me, and that's long time to try to stay alive and be an active Jedi under the Empire. I'm actually not sure when exactly Grogu is from."

[thesepreciousthings]

"Oh, hell, Ezra."

She doesn't know what else to say to all of this, but she pulls him into a hug anyway. Sometimes the best way to help someone grieve is to just be there, no matter how strange and unorthodox the circumstances of that grief are.

"I'm sorry, darlin'. And I'm sure Luke's sorry y' had to find all this out from him, too."

[ezra_of_lothal]

"He had good news, too," Ezra says, weakly. And with the Emperor and Vader gone, maybe some of those losses could be counted as worth it.

But then he just shuts up and lets himself be hugged.