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They might not let you go easily.

No need to bring additional tea. Thank you.

Got it, I think. Me and the mothcats will work it out.

I'm on my way!

***

Ok, so Ezra ends up spending more time than he expected, stroking mothcats and trying to detach himself enough that he can get into the library proper to meet up with Jon.

He brushes fur off his cloak as he comes through the door.

"So, Billy's world, not the best welcome back, huh?"

Is Ezra being followed by a few especially clingy felines? Of course he is. And has Jon observed the entire thing without bothering to step in? Certainly.

At least that means he has some fresh tea prepared and welcomes Ezra with a small gesture to follow him out the back of the building - where either more mothcats are lounging about, or the ones Ezra has left at the front have already moved in anticipation for more attention.

"Actually it was not half as bad than the welcome I had upon returning to my Earth." The Archivist admits with a small shrug.

Well, clingy feline are fine with Ezra as long as they let him go....eventually. He sets on the ground behind the library.

"Oh." Ezra mulls that over for a second. "So, is there anything you miss from home?"

Deep down even mothcats are cats and will curl up for their naps eventually. Ezra won't have to worry about them not letting him go anymore at all.

Jon picks a mug of tea from the small tray that has already been put outside and offers it down to Ezra. "Hmm." He makes a pensive noise. "That's not a question that is easily answered, Ezra. I may miss my friends. If they still are my friends. A lot happened while I was gone. A lot has changed. And not for the better."

"Thanks," Ezra murmurs as he takes the cups.

"Is someone actually being your friend the deciding factor for missing them?" he asks, genuinely curious.

That's never really been how it worked, for him.

"I mean, I don't miss the people that tried to kill me." Jon replies, then sits down as well. "But I killed them. They are gone." And if they are lucky, they will remain dead and not show up here.

"Uh. Can I ask how they went from friends to trying to kill you?" Ezra asks, tentatively.

That seems a little important.

Jon blinks at that. "O-oh, I mean- My friends didn't actually- I- ah- Not necessarily. I mean--" He struggles a little longer, then catches himself.

"I mean there were many others that wanted me dead. In the end... Yeah. I suppose my friends... Ended me? But they didn't know that I already had- I mean..." He takes another deep breath. "I ended my world, Ezra. In the end the apocalypse may have gotten undone again, but- That's not something I will ever know. I'm not even sure if I still belong into that world."

"You were trying to undo the...time no longer really existing, and all the terrible things that went with it, and your friends were too," Ezra says, slowly, trying to feel his way along what Jon was and was not saying.

"So that meant...taking you out of the equation?"

There is a silence settling over the Archivist as he watches his visitor trying to make sense of what little informaton he actually has.

Then he gives a small nod and closes his eyes.

"In a way. It wasn't the plan that had been agreed on. But at the same time no one knew what actually would happen. Especially to me. I- I was the catalyst that brought about the end of my Earth. And I was the one that could have- That was meant to focus and direct the Eye and its power." And for the short while he actually has been the Eye's Pupil it had felt right.

"The plan has been to release the Powers out into the multiverse. And I may have gotten dragged along with them."

"Well, I can't say that I haven't gotten caught up in some pretty...big and weird stuff and just hoped then I acted that it would go well," Ezra admits. "I totally have."

He likes to think that he was letting the Force guide him, but that actually means is a whole other long discussion.

"The hope was to...scatter the Powers and maybe make their effects more, uh-" He searches for a word. The gap in vocabulary between Ezra, orphan of Lothal, and the high school student studying for college entrance exams isn't one he can always smoothly navigate. "Diffuse?"

"About that..." Jon starts, a frown settling on his face and he looks down at his own tea. "I... Know... That the Powers can't be separated. They are connected. All part of the same being. That's why it wasn't possible to merely summon one of them, why the rituals kept failing. The Watcher's Crown... I summoned them all. Brought them all into my world under the jurisdiction of the Eye."

"...I hoped to trap them. The apocalypse couldn't go on eternally, not with people still dying in the domains ruled by the End. Eventually, the world would be empty and the Powers would starve and die themselves. Y-yes, it meant sacrificing my Earth, but- It would have dealt with the Fears once and for all. Kept the multiverse and all other worlds safe..." He sighs. "I know it wasn't an ideal solution. But it would have brought them to an end. My friends decided on casting the Entities out instead. Passing them on to some other world to deal with them. I don't know where exactly they are now. I can't see them any longer but- I believe I feel them. Somewhere. My powers are notably weaker here."

And he falls silent again, eyes stuck to his mug before attempting a weak little smirk. "...can you believe I was able to see the edge of reality? It was... A lot. So much I couldn't wrap my mind around at times."

"I'm not sure my connection to the Force isn't weaker here, too," Ezra offers. "Or the parts of that, um, correspond a little to your Seeing? My sense of things changing in significant ways. When there might be trouble. I'm prone to minorly prescient dreams and since I start my training as a Jedi, the occasional waking vision. But I haven't really had any of that here so far."

Then he's quiet a few seconds, sipping his tea, thinking through the rest of that what Jon had told him.

"For what it's worth, I think your plan sounds....better. Out of terrible options. But it's a horrifically tough call. Choosing the harm, right in front of you, to your own world. To people you care about, even."

"This planet affects us all in strange ways." Jon agrees and takes a sip from his mug. "Back on Earth... That twisted version I made of it... I knew literally everything. Everything, everyone, their thoughts and what they felt. Now it's... Very different. But it hurts less. I don't have to witness all the misery taking place everywhere at any given moment anymore." Which, in a way, is freeing.

"I wish we had had other options. Coming here and meeting people from other worlds also has made me try to picture how things may have played out if there were actual heroes on my world to face those dark powers. But... I find it hard to picture." Creativity has never been his forte.

"Logically, if there's a way to strength the entities, it seems like there should be a way to weaken them? On the other hand, some sort of final defeat seems...far less likely, at least long as their beings around to have the emotions that they draw power from."

"Sentient beings within time that change and grow," he amends, after a little more thought.

"Precisely." Jon sighs and adds a small nod. "It would have taken time, but time.... It was different. It didn't work the same anymore. My Earth was divided up into these hellscapes, each dedicated to one of the powers and trapping a given amount of people each in their own personal hell. In these, they couldn't die. Children were permitted to grow up in special domains dedicated to the more child-like fears, but once they reached adulthood, they wouldn't die. Mankind only existed to produce fear for the powers to feast on. Indefinitely. And this could have worked, safe for one little detail: Terminus. The fear of the end. Death. In the domains dedicated to the End, people had to die. In these, the supply of people would eventually run out and they would draw in people from other domains until eventually no living being remained. And then the powers themselves would die as well."

Jon pauses there, eyes on his tea. He takes another breath. "My plan was to accelerate the process. Fast forward people to and through the domains of the End. It meant sacrificing my own world, but I didn't want to- I still don't- I... I'm sorry I failed."

He follows that logic easily enough, and he still can't really fault it.

"I told you right after you came back that I know what it's like to be manipulated, to have my mind used against me. A couple of years into my training, I asked one of the few remaining Jedi Masters, in my time, if he knew any way we could defeat the Sith. He..." Ezra smiles sadly.

"He had a lot to say about the nature of fear, actually. And I'm not saying he was wrong about any of it, but I think that he was 800 something years old and felt guilty about outliving pretty much everyone he'd ever taught has to be taken into account, too. I don't know exactly what he was thinking, when he gave me the name of a planet that was the site of an ancient Sith Temple. And a lot of bad things happened there on Malachor. I blamed myself for all of it. I asked for a chance to defeat the Sith. I trusted someone I met on Malachor, who used me, and kept trying to use me. We did come back with a Sith holocron, which I opened. If there's any way to use that sort of thing wisely, uh. Well, not the way I did it. But I was pretty deep in guilt and self-loathing, so for a while I didn't want to talk to anyone who actually cared about me about what I was feeling, or doing."

He puts down his empty tea cup. "I point is, guilt and fear can be pretty wrapped up in each other. And - I'm glad you're talking to me about it."

Jon patiently follows what Ezra shares with him, keeping his own tea between his hands and nodding his understanding. Malachor... He remembers only encountering faint details about that planet during his time in the Archives of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, but he had encountered its name. So Ezra has been there. And found a holocron different from the one that had been brought back to Agra 10. But this is less about that holocron, but about Ezra's own experience with guilt and, well.

"Hm. Right. I had- There was a period of time where I was too paranoid to trust anyone around me and suspected even those that genuinely cared about me to planning to kill me. I had to learn to trust again. To seek and accept help when I needed it. Which was a little ironic because my job was literally to have people come to me to tell me about their encounters and we often redirected them to places where they would find the help they needed. The Institute may have been serving a dark power, but to the regular person it encouraged taking the first step to reach out, find help." Which was why Jon has been convinced they actually did good work.

"It took me longer than I like to admit to truly trust again. I am thankful for everyone who put up with me while I was being overly unreasonable and quite frankly a massive pain for everyone involved. As I am thankful for you lending me your time now. I appreciate it as well as your input, Ezra. Thank you." He sighs after saying this. "I know what happened back on Earth was my fault, controlled or not, I did it. But I try to work through it. To at least move on as there is nothing more I can do there. Maybe, if I'm lucky, from here I can find a way to track down the Powers again, wherever they have fled to and maybe... Maybe I can get a second chance at dealing with them once and for all. With a little help."

"If -" Ezra hesitates, choosing his words carefully. "If, when all of this is over on Agra 10, however it falls out, and we're both here, and we get a choice about what happens to us next?"

That's a lot of ifs, he knows, but there's only so much he's willing to let himself get worked up over so much that he can't control here. "If we can face some of our problems together - I'd like to help with tracking those Powers down."

"Thank you, Ezra." Jon replies with a simple smile. "And I certainly hope that for once we will be given a choice."

Without a choice, Jon has no idea what sort of world he would even end up in. Or if he would simply wake up dead. Naturally he'd much rather go with Tony, get to see a different type of Earth. Find his place in it, hopefully.

Ezra smiles back.

"On something - well, it could be important, but less heavy. You've been trying to keep records since you got here, right?"

Jon raises his brows at that, clearly intrigued.

"I am, yes. Some are recorded on tape, others written down. Why?" He wonders.

"Because I think we could use more records. Data collection? I was thinking of starting to keep a journal."

The Archivist nods with a little chuckle. "Oh, we could definitely use more records. And I know a few people already do try to keep journals. It's a good idea to start one yourself, Ezra."

And maybe share certain parts of it with the library?

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