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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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"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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