Obi-Wan had been granted a two-week reprieve from the tiresome business of war, but his respite was anything but peaceful. His dreams were haunted by a shadow, a dark presence he'd sensed before but couldn't place. The first few nights he'd simply attributed the discomfort to the delayed absorption of the horrors of war, all culminating in one great wave. He'd tried several times to stave off sleep after that, reciting mantras and utilizing meditation techniques he hadn't used in months. His body, however, refused to heed him and he often awoke with no memory of falling asleep. Always he'd sense that same shadow, always fleeing before waking. It didn't belong, and yet it did. It was malevolent, and yet it meant him no harm. He was very close to consulting Master Yoda on the matter when he learned the truth.

She'd kept an eye on him for weeks, even before he'd been granted temporary leave from the front lines of the senseless war that raged throughout the galaxy without end. She had nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. Her master had abandoned her and left her for dead. Her sisters had been massacred. Everyone and everything she had ever felt the slightest bit of affection for was long gone. There was nothing left for her.

But then she remembered this man she now observed from the shadows of his apartment in the Jedi Temple. This man who had comforted her in her supposed final moments despite their violent past. This man who had tried so hard to turn her soul to the Light until the very end. This man who had haunted her thoughts and dreams for years for various reasons. She had so many questions and she was sure he was the only one could answer them.

She tried every night to gather her courage to shake him awake and demand answers. She tried every dawn to leave him be, to never return to the Temple and simply work out everything on her own. She failed each time.

There was something different about tonight, however. Perhaps she was just tired of living in a constant state of confusion and exhaustion. Perhaps she was just too tired to care about much of anything anymore. She remained still as stone as the storm raged outside, thunder and lightning dancing together in an unheeded duet. Her focus was solely on the sleeping Jedi Knight just a few feet from where she sat in his chair. He stirred uneasily as the thunder intensified, a booming clap rattling the windows and jolting him from his slumber. She was unmoved by the suddenness. She sat with an air of arrogant disinterest, but her heart and mind roiled with anxiety as she quickly thought over what she should do now.

All thought of a playful taunt or condescending innuendo froze on her lips when his eyes locked on hers.

Obi-Wan didn't say anything for a moment. He couldn't. Everything suddenly made sense; why he couldn't sleep peacefully, why he'd felt as if something was just out of his reach. He should have known that she had something to do with it. He'd thought himself safe in the Temple, securely locked away from the war and anyone who sought his death. But here she was, just beyond arm's reach. She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, her head titled slightly to one side, arms and legs crossed. It was her eyes that struck him the most. "Ventress," he whispered above the falling rain. "Wh-"

"Why am I here?" she finished for him. "That's a good question." He didn't miss how hollow her voice was, nor the lack of spite in her tone. "Why am I here?"

He subconsciously reached for his lightsaber, but stilled his hand when the full impact of her words hit him. Something was wrong. "I saw you die…"

The former assassin lowered her eyes almost shyly. "I suppose I did, in a way." She was quiet for a moment, then snapped her head back up to look at him with unabashed confusion and fear. "Why am I here?"

"I don't understand…"

She stood abruptly and began pacing. Something was very wrong. "Why, after everything that's happened, everything I've done to you and you to me, why did I seek you out of all people?" Obi-Wan remained silent as she continued to rant. She seemed to be going through some sort of breakdown and needed to release several years' worth of anger and frustration. "I was a Sith apprentice. I was Sith! I've hated you from the moment we met. I'm supposed to hate you! So why do I continue to come here, to think that there would be some solace here for me? Why did you try so hard to find me? Why did you stay with me when I 'died'? Why, after all I've done, did you show me compassion and comfort? What have I done to deserve that from you?!" She slammed her hands against the windowsill and went silent.

The Jedi was still trying to process everything she'd said when he noticed how utterly defeated she looked. Her head hung low, her breath was sharp, and her voice had broken on her last word. No longer half-shrouded with sleep, he saw now just how confused and lost she truly was. Everything had been taken from her since childhood; her parents, her first master whom she'd loved like a father, and now Dooku had not only abandoned her but had ordered her execution. Her innocence had been cruelly stamped out in her youth and had never been given the opportunity to grow again. But now she was free from all connection to the Sith and the Jedi. Or so she had thought.

Obi-Wan stood and slowly approached her, noting the tenseness of her spine and the tremble in her arms. Dangerous she always was, but now in her pain she was even more so. He let only the barest tendril of his Force signature reach out to her, a cautious attempt to break through the dark shadow that still lingered about her. She didn't recoil, which was a good sign, but she was as still as a vine cat about to pounce. He took a chance and lifted his hand to her shoulder. "Asajj…"

"Don't call me that!" she snapped suddenly, turning away from him quick as lightning. Her hands went to her face to wipe away the tears he knew had been falling.

He tried again. "Asajj." No objection that time. "Asajj, you came to me for help, but I don't know what you're expecting of me. What can I do?"

A harsh bark of laughter. "If I knew the answer to that I wouldn't be here, Kenobi."

"That doesn't make any sense, darling."

"Nothing does! Don't you get that?" She whirled on him, her tearful eyes burning with frustration. "I'm supposed to hate everything about you. I'm supposed to want nothing more than to kill you on sight! So…why don't I?" Even if Obi-Wan had been expecting that answer he still couldn't have concealed his shock. Asajj took advantage of his silence and pressed onward before she lost her nerve to express everything that had been building up inside of her for years. "In the past, before…everything happened, I looked at you and saw only an adversary, the personification of the Jedi Order and everything I loathe about it. At first I wanted you dead, but then you got away. Annoying as it was, I was grateful I didn't kill you then. You were too much fun. Somewhere along the way, something changed. I didn't just hate you because of your irritating condescension or your penchant for escaping me. I hated you because I saw in you everything I could have been, everything I should have been had my master not been killed."

"You could still become a Jedi, Asajj," he whispered hopefully. "That path is not closed to you, despite your past."

"You think I want to be a Jedi now? You think I want to become one of the arrogant 'peacekeepers' who abandoned my master?" The hardness that had been her characteristic for so long had returned to her voice, but it was not as solid as it once was. "I see now just how far your precious Order has fallen. You just can't see it yourself."

"I thought I was everything you hated about the Order."

"You are! You were." She turned away again, one hand pressing against her temple as if staving off a headache. "I don't know anymore." She was quiet for a moment, the thunder outside losing its strength as the storm rolled into the distance. Her next words were so soft he wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly: "Maybe…you understand me. Everyone else just saw an enemy to be neutralized. But you saw through that from day one. Maybe that's why I was always irritated with you: you saw through my mask when I didn't want anyone to." Obi-Wan resisted the urge to take a step back when she looked at him; the sadness and hope in her eyes were almost too much for him to bear seeing in her. "Was that why you fought so hard to bring me to the Light? Why you stayed with me on Boz Pity?"

The Knight could not respond immediately. His desire to see her redeemed had indeed been a major reason for his obsession with her towards the end, but there had always been something more to it than just that. Something that bubbled just beneath the surface like molten lava under a thin veneer of rock. He'd refused to give it a name, for to name it would make it real.

He tried to answer her, but it was then that he noticed the scars on her arm. They marked the places that Dooku had outfitted her with cybernetics. He lifted his hand to touch them out of morbid curiosity, but stopped when she flinched. "What happened here?" he said instead, his voice a low whisper in the dark.

"Mother Talzin," Asajj replied with an equally low tone. She looked down at the pale blemishes, her eyes taking on a faraway look. "She and the Nightsisters removed the implants after Dooku abandoned me. I had only just recovered from the procedure when Grievous massacred them." She said this with such disconnect and plainness that Obi-Wan began to worry all over again. "And I…well, I ran. I seem to be doing that a lot lately." She shuddered and grasped her scarred arm, looking away as if avoiding the harsh truth she had just seconds ago admitted.

"Asajj, have you properly grieved for them yet, Mother Talzin and your Sisters?" Her silence and hardened expression was all the answer he needed. "It's no sin to mourn for the loss of loved ones."

She snorted disdainfully at such an easy, simple statement. "And what would a Jedi know of grief? Isn't that against your precious Code?"

Obi-Wan took offense to that. He had lost many friends, teachers, and brothers-in-arms to the war, along with the few he had inadvertently fallen in love with. He knew perfectly well what grief was and how devastating it could be. "It may surprise you to know that I'm not completely without emotion, dearest. When my master died…" He looked away when she turned conflicted eyes towards him. "It was the first time I'd truly felt the pull of the Dark Side. Had he not assigned me with training Anakin as a Jedi, I very easily could have fallen to my despair and anger."

"And that is where we differ, my darling Obi-Wan." He turned back at the slight mocking in her voice. "My master's death was what sent me into the Dark. I had no one to tell me what to do otherwise."

"You could have thought about what your master would have thought had he seen how you'd reacted to his death."

"I was a child! I had just watched the only person who had treated me with kindness, the only father I had ever known die in front of me! What was I supposed to do?"

Obi-Wan took a deep breath to calm his surging emotions; she always managed to have that effect on him. He didn't want to argue, not when she was in such a fragile state, not when he was still exhausted from sleepless nights and haunting nightmares. "Let's not do this, Asajj."

"Stop calling me that."

"It's your name, isn't it? 'Ventress' is not who you are now. She was someone who was so lost in her own anguish and bitterness that she didn't care who she hurt or killed." He stepped forward and put his hands on her bare shoulders, ignoring her half-hearted attempt to evade him. "I can see that 'Ventress' is gone now. She died on Boz Pity. Right now and, I hope, forevermore you are 'Asajj'."

His words and the warmth of his touch found their way inside her cracked defenses. Her eyes shone with unshed tears in the dim light, the thunder and lightning having long since departed to allow the artificial light from the surrounding spacescrapers and advertscreens to reign once again. "How can you be so certain of that? How do you know I'm not tricking you right now?"

"Because there is no lie in your eyes, darling." He brushed his thumb over one pale cheek as if to prove his point. "And because I have faith in you."

That was all it took for the tears to fall. No one other than Ky and Mother Talzin had ever truly believed in her (and even Talzin's faith had more often than not been debatable). Dooku had seen her as nothing more than a shadow and a lapdog; she knew that now. Her hatred of the Jedi had driven her to accept his promise to train her in the Sith arts, and while he had done so he had never intended to induct her into the Sith Order (if there even was such a thing). He had used her just like everyone else in her life. She was no saint either, but at least she'd been mildly conflicted about her treatment of others.

Asajj didn't remember falling against her longtime enemy, nor when he had enveloped her in his arms as she sobbed out a lifetime's worth of pain and betrayal. All she knew was that his warmth was her balm, his soft words her comfort. For once she didn't fear showing momentary weakness. This man wouldn't use it against her, not like this, not this kind of pain.

Obi-Wan held her until her tears slowed and her choking sobs quieted. She had fallen asleep against him. She had been so mentally and emotionally drained that her body had simply shut down. Not that he could blame her, all things considered. Without a second though he lifted her into his arms and gently laid her on his bed; a chair or the floor would hardly be the least comfortable place he'd ever slept. The Force only knew what she had called a bed in the months since he'd last seen her, so he was more than willing to let her have it for the night.

Of course, she would have to let go of him before he could move to either location.

She was most certainly asleep (he could feel it in her Force signature as well as see it as plain as day on her face), but her grip was as strong as ever. Her arms refused to loosen from around his neck, and he feared if he struggled she might wake. Letting out a sigh of endearment, he took the moment to study her, to really see her.

She seemed thinner than she had been on Boz Pity, something that mildly alarmed him given her already slender physique. Her skin held an abnormally grayish tone, her eyes appeared sunken, and her brow held a permanent furrow deeper than he'd ever seen. And of course the scars. Dooku's cybernetic implants had been extensive and their removal certainly had to have been excruciating. He suppressed a shudder at the thought.

Well, I certainly can't stay like this all night. Taking care not to jostle his unexpected companion, Obi-Wan settled onto the thin mattress at her side. Although he would never admit it aloud, he was quite pleased when she instinctively moved closer to him. With the weight of her arms around his neck and the gentle rhythm of her breath lulling his mind into a haze, the Jedi slept contentedly for the first time in weeks.