Chapter Text
It's hard to forgive yourself sometimes.
Depa knows that better than anyone. Even after her conversation with Obi-Wan, she still needed a lot of time to come to terms with what happened and what she did to the man who in many ways raised her. As much progress as she has made, she still had ways to go.
The mind healers have been helpful and sources of strength for her, but in the end it comes down to her. No one can fix her, no one can cure her. There is no simple cure that will fix it through the snap of fingers. It takes hard work, hard work that she needs to do. No one else can do it for her, they can only help her and give her tools to do it. If she does not put in the work, if she does not want to do it, there are no quick fixes or magic pills to do it. But she is not alone, there are people who can help her along and teach her to help herself.
She has walked the walk. She Fell, she clawed her way out, and she has worked through the trauma she suffered.
She feels great now. It's taken time and she knows she'll still need more time… But she is ready to see her former Master and ask him for his forgiveness. Obi-Wan said that Mace doesn't hold it against her—and she believes him, because she knows her Master better than anyone—but she still needs to do this properly and hear those words from Mace himself.
She knocks gently on the door and waits patiently for it to open.
She cannot be sure that he is in his rooms, but she knows that he’s on Coruscant right now. If he’s not in his rooms, she’ll simply have to come back again later.
She crosses her arms behind her back and breathes.
She focuses on that, on keeping her breaths slow and measured, steady in their length and rhythm, and soon she feels her nerves leave her. She is still nervous—how could she not be—but the jitters, and anxiety, has slowly melted away, leaving a far calmer sort of nervousness behind. It is rather surprising at times, how much one's breathing can affect how one feels.
The door slides open and for the first time in quite some time, Depa finds herself face-to-face with her former Master and surrogate father. She is, for the first time in many months, face to face with the man who saved her and her sister's lives, the man who raised her from Padawanship to a Knight and helped her become a Master in her own right.
Before her stands Mace Windu, the greatest Jedi she has ever known and a person she loves dearly.
Mace looks tired, she notes, but the signs of his exhaustion are soon swept away by astonishment. She can feel his surprise and his joy in the Force. As well shielded as he always is—as is appropriate for a Jedi past Knighthood—their close bond still lets her feel him in a way she knows few others can. She knows him so well, of course she can feel him this way. And yet, part of her relaxes, a part of her that had feared that she no longer knew him, that her Fall and return would have cost her this closeness.
“Depa,” Mace says gently, his facial expression soft.
“May I come in?” She doesn’t think she can hide her nerves from him, he’s always been good at reading her, even when it was just nerves because she was a padawan who had broken something and she didn’t want him to be disappointed in her. He never was, he only ever cautioned her to be more careful next time. She desperately hopes he won't be disappointed in her this time either, even though what she has broken is so much more than some simple replaceable object.
“I, yes, of course. Come in, Depa.” Mace steps aside in a hurry, and Depa steps inside the familiar rooms. They’re not the ones she shared with him, many years ago, but they are familiar to her nevertheless. She's been here many times before, but not recently. Not since... Since.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" Mace's voice is calm, but Depa thinks he may be as nervous as she is.
She nods mutely and watches as he immediately moves into the small kitchen to put a kettle of water on for their tea.
"Do sit down while I make the tea, make yourself comfortable."
"Thank you," she murmurs and takes a seat on the small sofa. She's been here before so many times, but it just feels different now. So very different.
She doesn't know how this will go, not at all. She doesn't know if she'll be able to properly say what she wants to, what she feels. She really does want to speak with him, but she cannot be sure that the words that she manages to say really will really be what she wants to express.
Perhaps he can tell what she wants to tell him through the Force and the bond they once had. They've known each other for so long, so perhaps not even this thing, her actions and what she forced him to do, is able to come between them.
She desperately hopes that it cannot. She really wants them to reach an understanding, she wants them to be better again and regain what they lost—if lost is even close to the right word for it. She doesn't think it is. But regardless of that, she wants them to regain the relationship they once had even though they haven't really lost it, not truly. They can't have, since she's sure neither of them ever wanted it to be lost.
But regardless, they have not seen each other. She has been too afraid to face him, she wonders if his guilt has stopped him from reaching out to her in turn. It is, she thinks, only fair that she be the one to reach out first. She is, after all, both the person who hurt them as well as the one who was ultimately in need of medical care.
Casting blame, however, is not productive. At this point, she doesn't care whose fault it was—even as she blames herself—she cannot keep focusing on the past. It cannot be changed, it is what it is. What happened, happened. All she can do is focus on the future and what she wants it to be. She looks at him where he stands in his little kitchen, preparing tea for them, humming the same song he used to sing to her for sleep sometimes when she was young. She knows that she wants her Master to be a part of her future, her life.
She misses him more than she can articulate in words.