“You think I don’t remember,” he said to both of them. “I remember how you fought for me. I remember everything.”
He walked out of the cockpit. Obi-Wan gave a quick glance at Siri.
And you, Siri - do you remember everything?
She was keeping her face from him. They had buried this for so long. But how could they keep forgetting, when the reminders were so real?
“I promised you once never to remind you,” Obi-Wan said.
“It’s not you who is reminding me, though, is it?” A smile touched Siri’s lips. “So much time has passed.”
“And so little.”
“And we’ve changed so much.”
“Yes. You’re more beautiful.” The words left Obi-Wan before he could stop them. “And smarter, and stronger.”
“And you,” Siri said, “you’ve grown sadder.”
“You can see that?”
“Forgive me if I still think I know you better than anybody else.”
“You do.”
“I don’t regret our decision,” Siri said. “I wouldn’t want to go back and change it. Would you?”
“No,” Obi-Wan said. “It was the right one. But…”
“Yes,” Siri said. “It doesn’t prevent you from regrets, does it? Regrets you can live with. It took me awhile, but I realized that Yoda and Qui-Gon were right. I would have regretted leaving the Jedi Order every day of my life. And that is not a life I would want to live. I’ve lived the life I wanted to live.”
“I’m glad.” Obi-Wan felt the same. But was it that simple for him? He wasn’t sure. Somehow, on this trip, he was fully understanding, for the first time, how many regrets he did have. And secrets.
“What I regret,” he said, “was not so much the decision we made, but what happened to us afterward. When we made the decision to part, it made our friendship become something else. Something that couldn’t be quite as close as it should have been.”
“Comrades, not best friends,” Siri said.
He nodded. His other deep friendships - with Garen and Bant - were different. With them, he felt no barriers. With Siri, there was always a barrier. He did not think of it or speak of it, but it was always there. He wished it hadn’t been. In some way he couldn’t quite define, he felt like he had lost her twice.
“Well, it’s not too late, is it?” Siri asked. “It took us almost twenty years to talk to each other about the past. Maybe now we can be the friends we were meant to be. I would like that. I’m tired of pushing away the past.”
“Best friends, then.”
Siri smiled, and the years fell away. Obi-Wan felt it then, the pain in his heart he had put away with his memories. It was as vivid as Siri’s grin.
“Best friends,” she agreed.
CHAPTER 28
“You’re going to tell me to live in the present moment,” Padme said to Anakin. “But I can’t help it. We have the codebreaker. We have a chance now to end it all, a real chance.”
They were in her stateroom, the one they had insisted on giving Padme, the largest and most comfortable. She of course had tried to refuse. She could sleep in the cargo hold, or in a chair, she didn’t care. They knew this was true, but something about Padme made beings want to give to her.
He wanted to give her everything, but of course, she would not want it. Navigating his marriage with Padme was like stumbling through a dark room sometimes, Anakin thought. He had believed on their wedding day that love would see them through any difficulty. What they felt was so huge that it would crash through every barrier.
He still believed that with all his heart. But he had not imagined, on the day of his wedding, that some of those barriers would lie within his wife herself. He did not think that he wouldn’t be able to talk her out of putting herself in danger. He had secretly hoped that, in time, she would resign her Senate seat. As the wars went on, she would see how ridiculous it was to try to talk planets out of something that would bring them more power or more wealth.
Now he saw how naŻve he’d been. She would never quit the Senate. She would keep talking about justice with the last breath in her body. She believed that words mattered.
He accepted that. He was even proud of her reputation as a sharp-tongued orator. In the Senate, held together somehow by the strength of Palpatine, she had made enemies. He feared for her. It was a nameless dread that sometimes could clutch him by the throat and drive the air from his lungs.
“We’re not at Azure yet,” he said. “And it won’t he long before the Separatists come after us. Did you see how Magus targeted Taly? Now they know that Taly has contacted us, and that means he cannot be allowed to live. If he throws his knowledge on the side of the Republic, they’ll do anything to stop him. His life is not safe until the Clone Wars are over.”