uncertain_dume | MCA #3, Thursday Night

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MCA #3, Thursday Night

Kanan had been doing... impressively well, all things considered. Trip to Coruscant, re-treading old trauma, wrapping his head around the possibility of actually continuing his training.

Staying up all hours of the night, afraid to close his eyes.

Okay. Some things weren't going as well as others. Tonight was one of those nights, Kanan laying on the flat of his back, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep seemed to be evading him, taking a back seat to the shadows in his head, instead. And for not the first time this month, he tried to ignore it for as long as he could, tried to center himself, push beyond the pain so that he could at least get some rest, whether it would ultimately be restful or not.

However, after a good, long while of just sitting with his own thoughts tonight, he did something he hadn't done before.

"Hera...? You awake?"

[OOC: For one!]

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Hera nodded back. "That part, I know. It's just one of the reasons I'm happy to have you along. It's a hard road to be on alone."

She shook her head. "You've been even more alone. Don't worry about lines. The line here is wherever you want it to be."

Kanan was silent for a long moment, thinking that over. Mulling on it. Trying to pick out what he was ready to share, and what he had been running from since forever, what he had simply convinced himself he never could.

"I saw," he said, his voice dropping low. His tone getting heavier. He pulled in a slow breath. "When it happened. Across the galaxy. I saw. I felt it, and I saw."

"All of it?" Hera couldn't quite keep the horror from her voice. She'd known on some level that the Jedi were connected, but that, especially for a boy, seemed catastrophic.

"Much of it," Kanan replied quietly. "Enough of it. My Master had taken me by the arm, before her own troopers turned on us, and I just... saw. Everywhere, across the galaxy, Jedi being cut down by the army we'd served alongside. Clones, murdering their commanders."

Master Plo Koon. Master Aayla Secura. Master Ki-Adi-Mundi, one by one and all at once, flooding into his awareness and then gone.

He blew out a little breath. Swallowed.

"Never really dealt with that. Never really knew how."

"How could you have?" Hera scooted even closer, leaning her head against his. "That's not something that anyone should have to deal with, and it's not like anyone else ever had."

"Yeah," Kanan said vaguely, closing his eyes, sighing, leaning into that contact.

That was nice. Her warmth, right there, tangible. Comforting. It would be a shame to lean away, later.

"Saw it all over again the other week. Couldn't get away from it. Once Master Mical started calling me Padawan, once I set foot in the temple again, trying to keep my distance was a lost cause."

"Oh, Kanan." Hera wasn't going to make him lean away any time soon. She couldn't really think of anything to say, so she was just going to be there for him.

"Kept taking wrong turns," he muttered softly. "Kept heading to places I remembered, not the places I knew were there. The only thing worse than wondering where everybody had gone was the remembering. And I never... never dealt with that. I'm still working my way up to accepting that I'm allowed to."

Words were hard. It felt like fingers were closing around his throat and his lungs, trying to crush his attempts at speaking away.

"I'm allowed to feel it now. It's safe. And I don't even know how."

"There's no right or wrong way to feel things," Hera said. "You just do. You already are. Just because it's overwhelming doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It wouldn't hurt like this if you weren't feeling it."

Kanan breathed out a breath that came out maybe a bit more ragged than he would have liked.

Not doing it wrong.

No right or wrong way...

He reached a hand up for hers and nodded his head, just slightly.

"Feels like the ground keeps crumbling underfoot," he muttered. "I wish that would stop, already."

Hera held his hand. And maybe draped her lekku over the pillow to cradle his head, hush.

"All you can do is build it up again." She paused. "I don't know much about how Jedi do things, but could you try meditating?" She tried to remember how Master Kiwiiks did things, that one weekend. "Just...acknowledge it and let it go, isn't that how it goes?"

Kanan swallowed at that. It was... it was very Jedi advice. He appreciated it. Hell, maybe he needed to hear it.

Acknowledge it.

"Haven't been very good at acknowledging it," he allowed. "Just getting to that point, letting myself recognize pain, has been..." He frowned. Exhaled again. "I'm afraid."

Afraid that recognizing his scars would open floodgates that he couldn't just let go of.

"I'd be more worried if you weren't," Hera said. "But you're safe now, if you want to try."

Kanan closed his eyes, and nodded his head, and took a moment to compose himself.

Right.

Right. Safe now. And it wasn't hard to believe it, with Hera there saying so. He wasn't sure if it was that he had it that bad, or she was just that good. Maybe both. Probably both.

"I'm bad at this," he murmured. "But yeah. I think I need to try."

"What can I do to help?" Hera asked.

"... It's not weird if I..." Kanan frowned a little. Opened his eyes again to look at her. Squirmed a bit. Looked up at the ceiling again. "I don't know. Break down...? I might not. Maybe I won't. I haven't, really, since. I probably won't, nevermind."

Kanan wasn't kidding when he said he was bad at this.

Hera huffed in laughter. "It's not weird. Whether you do or you don't. Why don't you just start talking? Say whatever you need to. If you break down a little, you do. If not, maybe just getting it out there will help."

"Told you I was bad at this," Kanan muttered, wryly. "I have a standing invitation to the temple."

He paused, and then shook his head and scrubbed a hand over his face.

"I have two standing invitations. One to the temple, four thousand years ago. One to... probably not the temple, but fifty years in our future. Both from Masters in times where they're picking up the Order from the ashes."

"Master Solo, the one with the cool ship?" Hera asked, grinning. "I met her. Might have some new ideas about cloaking for the Ghost."

"Which is not what we're talking about; sorry." She shook her head. "Will you go back, do you think? To either?"

"I've been given not one, but two opportunities to embrace the impossible," Kanan replied. "To learn from Jedi. To further my training. To take back a destiny that was robbed from me. I'd be crazy not to."

"You also know it'll hurt to go back. It'll remind you of what you've lost, and it might make hiding more difficult."

Hera squeezed his hand. "I'm not saying you shouldn't, but I'd understand if you didn't."

"It would make hiding impossible," Kanan said, after a long pause. "Wearing my lightsaber in the open? Every time I ignite it, that's a target on my back. And sooner or later, somebody is going to make a note of the face to go with the blade. Maybe even come up with a name."

He sighed.

"I'm not ready for that, I know that much. But even just the opportunity to sit in the temple listening to the lessons with the younglings... That was..." His brow furrowed. "... I lost myself in it, for a while."

"Good while it lasted, but really hard to leave behind?" Hera guessed.

"Partly," Kanan replied, and then leaned his head back a little. "Partly that I just... lost myself. Sat in that lesson and... was Caleb, in there."

"Tell me about it," Hera prompted. "About him. I only met him for so long, and that wasn't exactly under normal circumstances."

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