uncertain_dume | MCA #3, Tuesday Evening

It had been intended to be a night at the bar. Kitty had a free first round deal on, and Kanan had taken to going in on Tuesday nights from time to time to chat anyway. And after this weekend... well. To chat and probably to make bad life choices involving far too many of a drink named after him.

The chat had gone well, had gone better than expected without going too deeply into anything at all. And Kanan had been left with some weird combination of resolve and guilt only one drink in that saw him heading home far earlier than he'd intended to, in far better shape. He had gotten into the habit of running away, a habit that had started when he was only slightly older than Jacen, and had kept on with right up until tonight, when instead of actually ordering drink number two, he'd realized exactly what he was doing. Running again, from a talk that desperately needed to happen.

"Hera? You home?"

Maybe Jacen's present was their future. Maybe it wasn't. Either way, Kanan couldn't afford to run anymore.

[OOC: For one!]

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"Of course," Hera said. She squeezed his hand.

"Okay," Kanan replied, and he let that breath out slowly, carefully picking out words and putting them together. "Okay. Because you're going to see a lot more of it going forward. And some of it, you might not like. Because when it comes down to a choice between a Jedi's life and the greater good, it isn't a choice."

He looked down at their clasped hands and frowned.

"I've been running from it too long, you know. I cut myself off from the Force, learned how to live without letting myself think about it, and what I couldn't stop thinking about, I drank away. Master Kenobi likened it to cutting off a limb. I argued it was more like purging gangrene."

Master Kenobi hadn't cared for that.

"But the more we do this, the more I need to commit myself to it. The more clear it is that there isn't another path for me. It's what I am. The Force led me to you, led me to this for a reason. And if that reason is that there's some moment in time when my death could lead to lives saved, then that's the moment I need to be in." He looked back over to her. "Hera, you're stuck with me. Your rebellion is stuck with me. But if that time comes, if the Force guides me to that moment where I'm needed most, it won't be your choice to make. I need you to know that."

Hera looked at him, taking that all in for a while before she answered. It was a lot to think about, and Kanan deserved an honest answer.

"I'm not a Jedi, and I'll never be one. I think you know I'm willing to die if I have to, but I don't know if I have that same faith. I just need you to do everything you can to stay alive. Not to give up unless there's no other way."

Kanan nodded, shifting his weight around so that he could look her in the eye.

"I was going to be a Knight, you know," he said, though his words were coming out slowly. Carefully. "Not right away, of course. Some time after the war, my Master would have finished my training, and then I would have spent the rest of my days in service to the Force... to the galaxy."

He pursed his lips a little.

"Service doesn't mean throwing myself in front of every dangerous situation looking to die for it. I accepted it as a possibility back during the Clone Wars, but I've fought damn hard to keep alive. I don't intend to stop doing exactly that, either."

He gave her a brief grin, but it was lacking the usual edge, the brittle corners that it usually had when he got to talking about these things.

"I happen to be pretty good at it."

He was alive, after all. Ten thousand other Jedi were not.

Edited 2018-04-11 02:48 (UTC)

Hera softened a little. "I know you are. But the more Jedi you are, the harder it's going to be. You cut off that limb so the rest of you could live."

She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. "That sounds like I don't want you doing this, and I do, I really do. But I worry."

"Well, fortunately I'm not going to ever be completely Jedi," Kanan noted, airing one of a million little insecurities. "That's just not possible, anymore."

Kanan was possibly not counting on being knighted by the Force itself. But really, who would?

"I don't plan to start pulling Force leaps and levitating things at people or igniting my lightsaber in the middle of a firefight with an army of bucketheads. I can be what I am without being obvious about it. That's going to have to be how I go about it, isn't it?"

He leaned his own head sideways, so that his cheek was resting against the top of her head.

"We just have to be careful about it. That's not really any different from what we were already doing."

Hera nodded. "For what it's worth, I think you'd have made a great Jedi. But if the Force led you to me, I'm glad that it did."

"Can't think of anywhere I'd rather be," Kanan replied, giving her a little smile. "Things will work out, you know. One way or another. They won't be easy. But we knew that."

And if it cost him his secret or his eyes or his life, at least it wouldn't be a surprise. Maybe, at the very least, it would be worthwhile.

And if it wasn't, then what the hell did he survive this long for?

MCA #3, Tuesday Evening

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