WOW, what a response! I am so thrilled beyond words at how many people like this! I'm afraid this chapter is a tiny bit filler-ish. I'm not thrilled with it, but I want to get it out there, especially with everybody eager to see more. Hope you enjoy!

3. Ethics and Logistics

Obi-Wan very quickly realized that there would be logistical problems to housing anyone else in his small house, let alone a child who owned nothing other than the clothes on her back. Clothing was a good start; until he went in to Anchorhead to buy her some new clothes, she would have to make due with his tunics, which fit like much-too-wide dresses on her. He would have to buy more food, too, which meant spending more money… no, leave those thoughts for the morning. There will be time in the morning.

And tonight, he would be sleeping on the floor, as there was only one bed.

"I can sleep on the floor," Mara protested. "I don't mind."

"My dear, I have slept in far worse places than on the floor of my own house, I assure you." The bed was none too comfortable anyway, as she'd soon discover.

Mara sighed in resignation and gingerly touched her red face. "Ow." On the way home, the suns had burned her very pale skin, but she hadn't begun to feel the effects until after supper.

"You can use the sonic shower—" he nodded at the closet-sized refresher in the back corner of the house—"and I believe I have some cream for that burn; we can do apply it after you shower." She nodded. "And I have a tunic you can wear to bed; it will be big on you, but you can wear it until I clean your clothes. That is, if you want them to be cleaned, and not get so dirty that they stand up on their own."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, please. I'm not an urchin, Ben—I'm used to changing my clothes three times a day."

"Yes, well, I'm afraid we don't have that luxury here. In the morning, I should probably go out to Anchorhead and see about buying you some new clothes. That is, unless you want to wear those for the rest of your life."

Mara shuddered and shook her head. "Yeah, no."

Obi-Wan chuckled, and handed her the tunic. "I'll go outside, and you can call when you're done." The house had partitions, but it was still all one room aside from the 'fresher, and she'd hardly have room to dress herself in there.

"Thanks," she said somewhat shyly.

He nodded, turned, and left the house, the door hissing shut behind him. Out here, Tatoo I and II hung low in the horizon, the desert that was mostly yellow and brown by day now bathed in orange and red. In the other direction, the moons were rising, crescent and pale. He took a deep breath of the blissfully cooling air.

I'm really doing this. I'm taking in a child. He smirked to himself. Qui-Gon must be so proud.

"I am," said a deep, gravelly, infinitely-familiar voice behind him.

Unsurprised, Obi-Wan turned and raised an eyebrow at the transparent blue form of his departed Master, who was smiling warmly. "I was wondering when you'd turn up."

"I thought it best not to alarm the child just yet."

Obi-Wan snorted. "What do you know about her?"

"No more than you, Obi-Wan. Don't forget that I'm not omniscient, not existing in the Force like this."

Obi-Wan sighed. "I remember, I remember."

Qui-Gon's eyes twinkled with mischief. "You'd best watch your step, my old Padawan. That one is a firecracker. Once she feels safe and comfortable with you, you'll have no end of trouble."

Obi-Wan groaned. "...I thought you said that you're not omniscient. How do you know she'll stay?"

"I don't know in any quantifiable way," Qui-Gon shrugged, "but I do feel very strongly that she will."

"Good," Obi-Wan murmured. She was just a child, absolutely no older than Anakin had been when they'd first met. She needed someone to take care of her.

"And train her, if she wants it," Qui-Gon added.

Obi-Wan frowned. "I wish you'd stop doing that. Reading my thoughts."

The ghost chuckled. "I'm sorry. It's just very easy."

Ob-Wan rolled his eyes. "Go bother someone else. Go bother Anakin." As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he hadn't said them. How could he have been so callous to his Master and the memory of his former Padawan?

Qui-Gon's craggy face had creased further with pain. "I do," he said softly. "He doesn't listen. He doesn't realize that I'm real, and not a dream."

For a moment, Obi-Wan's heart hurt so much that he could have clawed it out of him just to stop the pain. "I'm sorry."

Qui-Gon smiled sadly. "I'll let you get back to your new charge. I'll go 'bother' Yoda, instead."

Obi-Wan smiled faintly for his master's sake. "Please give him my regards."

"Of course. Relax, young one, and trust the Force." Qui-Gon's image was already beginning to fade. "It is with you right now."

The tunic turned out to be huge on Mara's tiny frame. She seemed to enjoy it, however, all but nestling into its folds like luxuriating in a bathrobe. "I feel so clean," she said happily. "I don't even care that it wasn't a real shower."

Obi-Wan chuckled. "I'm afraid a real shower is too expensive on this planet." He went to his small medicine cabinet for the skin cream, one he hadn't needed to use in years as his skin had tanned enough to the point where it rarely burned anymore. He found the right tube and brought it out; Mara reached for it, but he said, "Allow me."

And she did, taking a seat on the bench again and folding her hands in her lap. Obi-Wan leaned down and began to gently smear white cream on her hot, chapped skin. "That is an impressive burn you've got," he teased.

She stuck her tongue out at him, and he chuckled. "I never got out much."

Obi-Wan nodded, lightly running his finger down her small nose, making her squirm reflexively. "I'd imagine."

"I've never had sunburn before in my life." She sounded so offended that Obi-Wan couldn't help chuckling again, and her resulting glare made him laugh harder. "You mock my pain," she said flatly, and he realized she was deadpanning.

He made himself sober instantly. "I would never do such a thing," he said solemnly.

She gave a slight laugh, and he smiled, basking in the warmth of the sound. He had lived alone for so long, after being a part of tight-knit communities—first the Jedi and then the GAR—all his life. And it felt so good to spend time with someone—anyone—without the secret of his being a Jedi between them.

She let him finish rubbing the cream, eyes closed in contentment, no doubt relieved at the cool freshness seeping into her skin. "Did you burn a lot when you first came here?"

"A little," Obi-Wan admitted. "My skin eventually tanned enough that the suns hardly burn it anymore."

Mara pouted. "Lucky."

He chuckled and put away the cream. "There we go. That should help you heal overnight."

"Thanks," she murmured, giving him a small smile.

He returned it, heart warmed by the knowledge that, whatever Palpatine had done to her, he hadn't stolen all her softness. "You're most welcome." He nodded at the bed, a shelf jutting out from the wall with a mattress atop it. "Are you ready for bed?"

She nodded and yawned. "I feel like I could sleep for a week."

His smile softened. "Then get some sleep, little one. You're safe tonight. And make sure to wrap up well with the blankets; the nights are cold."

Obi-Wan was not a lucid dreamer, but he could almost always distinguish his dreams from reality, and he had had versions of this dream many times.

Ahsoka had never left the Temple, never been accused of being a terrorist in the first place. She was a Knight now, and might take on a Padawan of her own soon, being much better and more experienced with children at as a young adult than Obi-Wan had ever been.

The Temple had never fallen. Anakin had never Fallen. Darth Sidious had been defeated, and Order 66 was a bad dream that had never come to pass.

Anakin was still a Jedi but openly married now. In the logic of dreams, that was never properly explained; Obi-Wan just accepted it. It was easy to, seeing how happy and Light it made his old Padawan… seeing Padme alive and happy again. Her heart had never been broken. She had served as Chancellor for the term after Palpatine, and then Bail Organa had been elected after, leaving her with much more time to raise the young, good-natured hellspawn that were Luke and Leia. The twins were running around the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and Anakin and Obi-Wan were lounging on a bench, watching them while Padme was off on some errand or other, no longer a Senator or Chancellor but instead the director of a relief program for victims of the Clone Wars.

"I don't know how you ever managed me, Obi-Wan," Anakin said wearily. "They're exhausting."

Obi-Wan snickered. "What goes around, comes around."

Anakin groaned and sighed. "What about you?" he said after a pause.

"What about me?"

"You could take on another Padawan. It's been—what? Thirteen years? Fourteen? You have to have recovered from me by now."

"Sadly, I do believe the trauma has scarred me for life."

Anakin snorted lightly. "You could take on the little redheaded girl. What's her name… Mara." Obi-Wan started, nearly jerking himself out of the dream, which had lulled, by now, his grasp on reality. "Always hanging out with the twins," Anakin continued, unperturbed by Obi-Wan's reaction. "She seems like she'd be a good fit for you."

Obi-Wan looked, and, sure enough, there was a flash of red-gold hair and a pale face, running around with Luke and the less-defined image of Leia (who looked exactly like a young Padme when she stood still, though Obi-Wan somehow felt sure that image wasn't correct). "A good fit?"

Anakin shrugged. "She reminds me of you. Pragmatic, sarcastic, stubborn…" Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and elbowed Anakin in the arm, and the younger man doubled over giggling. Giggling. One would have thought a grown man and father would have picked up some dignity by now.

"I don't know," Obi-Wan sighed. "I… did not do so well with you. I would not like to give a repeat performance."

Out of the corner of his eye, the image of Anakin flashed. Flashed into the form of the man—the thing—who'd replaced him. The black helmet and ensemble that he had only seen in HoloNet images.

"You can't do better," Anakin said quietly, "if you don't know what you did wrong in the first place."

Obi-Wan woke feeling more stiff and sore than usual, and why was he on the floor—oh. On the bed above him, a small form was snuggled up inside the blankets. Sighing, he cast aside his spare blanket and pushed himself up with difficulty; apparently, he was not as young as he once was. A glance at his chrono told him it was well after sunrise, and Mara showed no signs of waking. Well, he'd leave her to her sleep and see about fixing breakfast.

The kitchen light did not disturb her, nor did the sounds of his making tea or cereal. By the time, though, he had finished eating, she was beginning to stir. "Good morning, Mara," he said genially.

She jerked upright in bed, eyes wide, body tense, then relaxed as memory came to her. "Morning," she said sheepishly, stretching and pushing the blankets off her.

"Did you sleep well?"

Mara padded slowly into the kitchen, yawned, and nodded. "I don't think I've slept that deeply since Imperial Center."

"Coruscant," Obi-Wan corrected with a twinkle in his eye. He got up and handed her a bowl and the cereal box.

"Insurgent," she grumbled, lips twitching.

Obi-Wan chuckled, also producing a cup of water for her.

"Thanks," she said softly.

"You're welcome. I'm afraid, however, I don't have anything for you to amuse yourself with while I'm gone; not unless you're willing to read my notes."

"Your notes?" Mara said around bites of cereal.

"I've been writing down notes for the past few years about the Jedi Order," Obi-Wan explained. He'd been thinking about it in the silence before Mara had awoken; he had written down no secrets that he felt he couldn't share with her. "What the Temple was like, what the Order was like, the lessons we taught and the philosophies we held, how to build a lightsaber, what individual members were like…"

"Anything that you can remember," she murmured.

He nodded, a lump having risen inconveniently in his throat.

She frowned. "You'd be willing to share that with me?"

He shrugged and smiled faintly. "Can't very well have you sitting here in boredom for hours."

She smiled fleetingly. "Yeah, I guess."

It was his turn to frown. "Mara, is something wrong?"

She shook her head slowly; he could see her try and discard different ways to say whatever it was she was thinking. "I still don't understand why you're doing all this for me," she said at last.

Ah. "Because you need help," Obi-Wan said gently. "Because it's the right thing to do." Her face twisted—oh, a misstep. Of course she would have been raised with a very different set of ethics. "Because it's… kind." She looked up, brow furrowed. "And everyone needs a little kindness in their lives."

She seemed to turn that over in her head. "You must have made a very bad Jedi," she said after a minute, clearly trying to lighten the mood.

He couldn't respond in kind. "I'm afraid I was a very good Jedi," he said, rising from his chair to prepare for the trip. "And that was probably the problem."