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The weather is turning steadily chillier with each passing day, though Obi-Wan is still warm enough when he drapes his robes over his shoulders. It's a pleasant enough afternoon when he heads out, not with any particular destination in mind, but with the growing understanding that he's going to need to find something to do with himself at some point.

An idea may come to him eventually, but it may not. He's certainly not above asking for help, not when he's well aware this place is unlike any other he's ever been to. There is occasionally call for a Jedi, like there had been the evening in East Hallow, but otherwise, his skills aren't quite as necessary as they had once been.

It doesn't leave him at a loss exactly. He just knows eventually something will have to change.

He's thinking about it today and when he sees a familiar face, clearly mulling something over, Obi-Wan smiles and heads in Dan's direction.

"Hello, there," he says pleasantly when he's near enough.

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Dan's sitting at a table outside a coffee shop that's valiantly trying to pretend that patio seating isn't coming to an end. He's got coffee and a blueberry muffin, and a newspaper open to the employment section. Right there, at the center of the page, helpfully marked by the smallest of coffee stains, is the ad he already knows is there, even without looking.

He grabbed the paper from inside, knowing it'd be there.

After East Hallow, the thought won't go away, and he wants to spend some time with it before he talks to Marcus.

But if Obi-Wan Kenobi isn't the kind of guy that be be trusted for sage advice, Dan's not even going to think about how American cinema has failed him.

"Hey," he says. "I'm pretty sure if you're here right now, you might as well join me."

"Certainly," Obi-Wan answers, coming closer and taking the seat across from Dan. There's something on the other man's mind, something that feels significant, but also perhaps something he already has an answer for. Even if he doesn't know it yet.

Beyond that, Obi-Wan doesn't make any attempt to read anything further. That information is more than enough and he barely has to use the Force at all to feel it. It's clear enough simply in the way Dan is looking at the newspaper spread out before him.

Sitting with your doppelganger, Dan thinks, should be more unsettling than this.

Sitting with your Jedi doppelganger, he thinks, should probably be even more unsettling. But what he feels in terms of a reflection-- the image that comes to his mind again and again, is a lighthouse, shining on a calm sea. Which of them he thinks that is, that's not clear.

He doesn't mind it, though.

"I'm thinking of taking up a job I did at home," he says, because he doesn't imagine it will be a surprise to Obi-Wan. "It was difficult, and I don't think I could have done it right away here, but it's calling me again."

"What sort of job is it?" Obi-Wan asks.

If he were to reach out, he suspects he could get a fairly good idea of that answer without having to ask, but he doesn't. Dan has asked him to sit down with the intention of telling him anyway, so Obi-Wan thinks it's only fair to let him do so at his own pace.

Whatever it is, if Dan is feeling called to it, Obi-Wan has an idea it's something he needs to do instead of something he merely wants to do.

"Hospice care," Dan says, and then only because he's not certain that the word exists in other worlds, "people who are dying. Mostly elderly, though I've worked with younger people."

The ad for this particular hospice, a branch of Darrow's major hospital, stares at him in black and white, non-judgmental but seeing him nonetheless.

"It's more than just nursing work for me," he finally adds. "My-- my shine comes with a very specific skill that helps people when they die. I can make it easier, take away the pain and the fear."

it's just sleep

"That must be a difficult gift," Obi-Wan says sincerely. It's a gift that is utterly selfless, one that must be given freely and one that leaves Dan with the hardest parts once someone has been able to peacefully leave the world. He can't imagine having such a gift or even knowing what to do with it, but here is Dan, putting himself back to work in a place where he would likely be doing this over and over.

"Difficult, but so important," he continues. "I can understand why it is you'd want to go back to it. Why is it you're hesitant? Is it the toll it takes on you?"

"Would you believe it's not the difficult part?" Dan asks, but it's phrased to be rhetorical. "It never was. The difficult part was learning to deal with the spirits themselves. The people I helped, they didn't linger, but the world was still full of hungry ghosts."

He lets the pad of his finger brush the black letters of the ad.

"I nearly ruined myself, trying to keep them out of my head. The hospice work was steady. If I was sober, no place cared to get rid of me."

Looking up at Obi-Wan, at his own not-quite face, he says, "I don't think that answers the question."

"I believe it answers it better than you might think," Obi-Wan replies. "It sounds as if you're worried if you go back to one thing, the others might follow. The bad parts as well as the good."

Dan has mentioned sobriety and Obi-Wan can only assume he means an addiction to alcohol. He's far from the first person Obi-Wan has met with a similar problem.

"But you have support here," he says. "A different kind than you did before."

His sort-of double has the right of it, Dan knows, as soon as he says it. Probably something he knows himself, if he's willing to take it out and look at it.

He makes himself do it, acknowledge those times and compare them to this.

"You're right on both counts. Even after I got sober at home, the other way to stay sane was to keep myself distant from others, to keep their thoughts, all of the noise and the ghosts-- away. But things are different here."

The ring on his hand seems to flash at him.

"I meant to ask, how much you can feel about me."

"I try not to feel much without invitation or need," Obi-Wan answers with a slight inclination of his head. "I'm lucky in that it doesn't just happen until I'm around someone who's also Force sensitive or someone who is... otherwise mystically inclined as you are, but even then I do my best to keep an appropriate distance."

He pauses, then asks, "Do you want me to try?" There is much Obi-Wan thinks he would be able to learn about Dan, believes any connection between them would likely be very open due to their respective abilities. But he truly does not want to try without permission. There is no need for him to pry inside Dan's head.

Dan considers this.

"I would be interested in trying," he says. "I only ever really knew two people that had a-- a significant shine. The man who saved my life growing up, and then my niece, Abra. Abra-- she's young, but she's going to shine so brightly, she already does. I have to hope that I'm still there for her, maybe keep her from getting swallowed up."

He laughs. "Which is a long way of saying, I'm curious how different it would be."

"Well, let's see," Obi-Wan says thoughtfully. "The Force isn't an ability, really, so much as it is an energy that exists in all things. What I can do is use that energy to my advantage. I can gather it, use it to physically move objects, I can sense other Force sensitive people when they're nearby. Some Jedi have prophetic dreams or visions, though I'm not one of them."

He pauses, then smiles and says, "Some of us have a particular connection to animals, including other people. It's difficult to find an animal that doesn't like me and I can use my ability to help calm them. I can't read thoughts, however, but I can sense and share emotions."

Dan listens, and of course, he knows a little bit of this.

Not as much as he could have, maybe, but he'd been trying to keep his shine quiet and out of the way most of his life, and maybe that's why those movies had always made him feel a bit uncomfortable, even when they entertained.

"I see the dead," he says after a moment. "We can communicate. Sometimes it goes better than it does others. I would expect that, uh, if we tried this, they'll be interested. Other stuff, too, but sometimes it seems like it has to do with what someone's already got in them."

He holds out his hand, palm up, letting it rest on the table-- an offer.

"A friend of mine sees the dead as well," Obi-Wan offers, though he makes no mention of Klaus's name. It isn't his story to tell, after all, and if Klaus and Dan wish to meet, he'd of course facilitate such a thing, but only with permission from them both.

He smiles faintly at the offered hand, uncertain if Dan requires the touch to do what he does, but then places his hand on top of Dan's. Obi-Wan doesn't require it, but he'll do whatever it is Dan is asking of him. And then he reaches out with the Force.

Almost immediately he can feel things about Dan's life. The love of a good, if troubled man, a darkness in his past that feels almost as if it hunts him. Kindness, too. Wonderful, warm, love from someone much stronger than the darkness, even if she'd never known it.

"Klaus," Dan murmurs, which is a connection born from logic as much as his abilities, but it's the shine that makes him sure.

The touch hasn't always been necessary, but it makes things easier, the pictures stronger. He wonders if Mrs. Massey had been so stronger with him because she had touched him, but she's long gone, dried up and flaked to the wind.

"You fought side by side in East Hallow," Dan says, after another moment of consideration. "That's good. For both of you. You're not sure what you're doing, but it's right." He can feel himself smiling.

And then a small, damp hand rests on Obi-Wan's wrist, a bead of water trickling from the arm of a bright yellow rain jacket.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Dan can pull Klaus so easily from his mind when he's been thinking about him, but the rest of it is. The way Dan so easily accesses that part Obi-Wan does his best to keep set aside, the part of him he'd tried to ignore after he and Satine had parted ways. Klaus makes it more difficult to ignore by far, always at the edge of Obi-Wan's thoughts.

He gets a sense of something from Dan, a dark, cold place. It makes him shiver, as if he's experiencing it himself, but before he can say a word, there's another hand.

He turns, looking at the boy, then says, "Well, hello there."

Dan feels the shifting of the Overlook toward the front of his thoughts, as if the ghost of the place that won't ever entirely leave him, takes an interest in Obi-Wan. He's about to shut that down, push it back, when the ghost appears.

"Hey there, Ben," he says to the drowned boy, whose white, sunken face is mostly hidden by the yellow hood, save the puffy blue mouth. "No worries. He's a good one, and that place is gone. You'll never have to see it."

They're drawing attention, though, the weight of spectral eyes slowly turning toward the pair of them, and the connection shimmering out of sight.

He wishes he could do something for the boy, but expects if there was something to be done, Dan would have by now.

"There are others?" he asks. "Ones that aren't good."

It isn't quite a question. The way Dan says it makes it pretty clear there are and while Obi-Wan can't sense them the way he knows Dan can or see them the way Klaus can, there's still a sense of shifting within the Force.

Dan laughs gently.

"Actually, I was telling him that he doesn't have to worry about you. Or East Hallow." But the question remains, and it's a good one. "But you're right. There are ones that aren't good. The world's a hungry place. Doesn't matter which world. And there are hungry creatures in it. I guess that's how I've always thought of the bad ones. Hungry. And when you have something to offer them, they want to swallow you right up."

He's not sure where he's pulling these threads from, but the words come, and he feels comfortable enough to say them. "For me, it was my shine, and all the hungry creatures that wanted it. Looks different where you're from, but the darkness still gets hungry for the light. The big darkness, the one that swallows your kind whole, but also all the little dark parts of people that pick and pick at a bright light."

The one that swallows your kind whole.

The words reverberate, they make Obi-Wan's chest ache, and he thinks again of all the dead Jedi. All the thousands of souls that were lost with one horrific act at the hands of the men they had trusted and fought beside. Obi-Wan had loved Cody, loves him still, thinks of him as his team, but Cody had tried to shoot him. Tried to kill him.

"Yes, I know that darkness," he agrees with an exhale. "But I also know no one is one or the other. We're all both. It's our choices that make one or the other stronger."

"Yeah, funny how it's everywhere," Dan murmurs, feeling a phantom ache in his own chest, feeling his own mind supply an image of a mallet crashing into a wall.

He finds his head cocking to one side, even as he offers Obi-Wan's had a companionable squeeze before pulling away, letting the flood of whatever they're going to call it, lets it trickle away. "That's true," he says, not ready to open his eyes and let the light hit his pupils just yet. "But we don't all start on even ground with that. We're not all equipped the same, either."

Obi-Wan isn't sure if he agrees with that, but he also knows he comes from a different place than most everyone here. And further to the point, not being sure if he agrees is not the same as disagreeing, and so for now he only nods. It's something he will have to meditate upon further.

He wonders if he and Maul started in similar places. Probably not, he realizes. Dathomir and Coruscant could hardly be compared, especially when Obi-Wan knows the Nightbrothers were subservient to the Witches of Dathomir. A different start with much different chances, to be certain.

"I suppose you're not wrong about that," he says.

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