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"Master Unduli." Anakin was too exhausted to even try to hide his displeasure. This was the worst possible time for a confrontation. Multiple days of battle, little sleep, and an hour spent on large scale force use to dig their padawans out of the rubble, and he could barely think. Luminara couldn't be much better off, despite how much she played at composure. Why did she have to choose this moment to walk in?
"Knight Skywalker." Luminara's tone was as impossible for him to interpret as usual.
Not only was this the worst time for an argument, the medbay was also the worst possible place to have it. The last thing Anakin wanted was for Barriss and Ahsoka to wake up to hear their masters yelling at each other.
"It seems," Luminara continued, "that what I considered to be a lapse in judgment has saved the life of my padawan." She paused, clearly intending to continue, but Anakin interjected before she could continue.
"With all due respect, Master Unduli, your detachment would have gotten Jedi killed."
"Your delay could have gotten people killed to no benefit, had there been a counterattack. They knew their duty. I will forever be grateful for the result of your insubordination, but it does not change the fact that you need to learn to let go ."
"They knew their duty?!" Anakin shrieked. He realized that it wasn't exactly an intelligent tone of voice to take with a Jedi Master, paused to collect himself. "Ahsoka is my padawan. I have a duty of care. So do you."
"Yes," Luminara said, "we have a duty, but we also have a duty to the troops. One life cannot take precedence over the potential lives of hundreds. This is a war! Difficult choices must be made! Do you think I don't care about my padawan just because I have the decency to not break down and mourn in the middle of a war zone?! "
Anakin had never heard Luminara sound anything other than serene. He slumped, his anger draining out of him.
"I'm well aware that I'm fighting a war. I don't risk the lives of my men lightly." He said.
There was a pause, as both of them processed that things weren't as black and white as they had thought. Anakin found his voice first.
"Luminara. You know as well as I do that Jedi aren't as perfect as we want to think they are. We're not unbreakable."
He wasn't entirely sure what had changed in her face. but Luminara was definitely looking at him differently. "Are you apologizing?"
"There are so few things in this war that are guaranteed. There's… It's…" Anakin fumbled for words for a moment. A half-remembered snippet of advice he’d gotten from the chancellor came to him, and he looked Luminara straight in the eyes. "If there's nothing you can be sure of, it will break you. So Ahsoka will always be sure that I will come for her. Luminara, you know how to let go. You need to learn how to hold on."
"Attachment is not the Jedi way." Luminara wasn’t typically one for eye contact. If Anakin didn’t know better he’d think she had hearing difficulties, the way her gaze was always zeroed in on the mouth of whoever was talking. He was surprised, then, when she met his gaze with more poise than he’d ever seen from someone he was trying to stare down. After enough time that Anakin was starting to struggle to not look away himself, she continued. “Look at us. We’re having a staring contest like initiates . I honestly believe you might have a point but I am far too tired to determine anything more than the fact that you sound convincing . We need to sleep. ”
"Yeah,” Anakin conceded, “okay.”
⁂
Anakin, Luminara reflected, after she’d had a chance to meditate on their confrontation, was a very passionate individual, who fell prey to the common trap of not realizing that not everyone thought in the same way he did.
It was a way of thinking that the Jedi Order were supposed to be above.
(A small voice in the back of her head acknowledged that she’d fallen into the exact same trap of assuming that Barris thought in the same way she did. Luminara was quite happy to explain what she felt, but she’d never been one to show emotion in the way others did, and she knew, intellectually, that that made some people see her as emotionally dishonest, or uncaring.)
(She was also aware that she was ignoring the actual point. That Anakin’s emotionally driven judgement call had saved the life of someone who, despite what Anakin might think, she cared about a good deal. Because that wasn’t really the argument. Of course they’d disagree about decisions in the field. Anakin wasn’t angry with her about her decision, really, he was angry because he thought she didn’t care.)
(Of course she cared.)
Of course she cared.
But that wasn’t how she made decisions.
And she couldn’t show it the way Anakin thought she should, and he really shouldn’t be casting judgement on Barriss’ behalf, but..
(She absentmindedly shifted position. Republic cruisers weren’t ideal, as far as meditation location went, and the presence of so many clones, unique in the Force and yet so alike in so many ways, was seriously distracting her from sinking into the Force as deeply as she could in the temple.)
As confident as she was that Barriss knew that she cared, a part of her acknowledged that appearances were important. That if it appeared to others that she didn’t care about her padawan, it could hurt almost as much as if it appeared that way to Barriss herself.
(And then she put that thought aside, because coming to a conclusion, in and of itself, doesn’t help if it’s not one you can act on. And the way emotions showed on other people wasn’t something she understood, not enough to replicate.)
(So she made a note to bring this up with Barriss, and then immersed herself deeper into the Force, and let her worries flow away along its currents.)