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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"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."

"It was longer than anybody should have had," Kanan pointed out, some of that wryness settling back into his tone. "He... I... was one of those people who had big dreams. I'd passed my initiate trials, had a master on the High Council take me under her wing. I was going to help end the Clone Wars and go on to be a great Knight, fighting Sith and bringing peace to the Galaxy."

He had the Clone Wars thing under his belt. Marginally.

He didn't like his odds of the rest.

"You know, completely reasonable goals."

"Typical kid goals," Hera pointed out. "I was going to bring down all the Separatists and kick them off Ryloth for good. Nothing wrong with big dreams."

"They shatter a hell of a lot harder when you realize it's impossible," Kanan replied, wryly. "I found a place I belonged in the Galaxy during the war, and then there was no place at all."

"That doesn't mean there was anything wrong with the dreams," Hera answered softly. "There's something wrong with the galaxy."

She leaned her head back against his. "I wish I'd known you at that age. We would've been terrors."

Kanan huffed out something resembling a laugh, once again closing his eyes and... kind of curling into her a little bit more. Tentatively, ready to lean back again if she seemed at all uncomfortable with it.

"You and me, we would have ended the war on our own and saved the galaxy in a week," he decided. "Dreams like those, how could we not?"

Hera wasn't leaning back, no. She was smiling. "In a week with time to spare. They'd have never known what hit them. And we'd have had Chopper, too."

Okay, that did get a little laugh.

"Think Chopper would have tolerated a shorter, more enthusiastic me? I probably would've shorted his processors just asking questions all the time."

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