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 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."

"As long as you didn't try to get him in a fighter, he'd have been fine. He still doesn't like them, but he's gotten better. And if you were my friend, he'd have shocked anyone who looked at you funny. He was a bit more protective and less grumpy at first."

She poked his side gently. "We're supposed to be talking about you, though. Or rather, I'm supposed to be listening, and you're supposed to be talking."

"We were talking about me," Kanan replied. "In a roundabout sort of way..."

Of course, it was the sort of roundabout that was fully intended to break orbit. Which, Kanan allowed, was kind of counter to the point.

He sighed a little. Still bad at this.

"I took a hell of a path to get from where I was as a Padawan to where I am now," he said, finally. "I'm not proud of most of it, either."

Hera nodded. "You survived, though. You can be proud of that, even if not of the things you had to do. Or the things you didn't have to but did anyway."

Hey, she'd met him on Gorse.

She settled in against him. "Tell me about it, then. Whatever you can."

"Most of it probably isn't difficult to guess," Kanan noted. She had met him on Gorse, after all. "Travel world to world, take off when the work dries up or I get bored or restless. I was on Gorse for five months. That's the longest I'd been in any one place since the war."

He frowned a little.

"I can't imagine the smuggler thing is a shock. I took any job I could get my hands on. Even a few bounties from time to time, if the pay was right and I needed the work."

Hera nodded along. "Pretty much what I figured. A lot of it the same things I've been doing, so I'm not exactly going to judge you about them. Must've been quite a change, though."

"It's nothing shy of a miracle I didn't blow my cover in the first year," Kanan agreed. "All I ever knew was the life of a Jedi. Lying about who I was, hiding my identity? I had no clue."

"You've mentioned you had a friend to help you out?" Hera asked. "Or, well, a sort-of friend?"

"Yeah, some pirate sleemo who mostly kept me around so that he could collect my bounty and then bust me out again," Kanan replied, a touch vaguely.

That wasn't entirely the case. Kasmir had been a friend. But Kanan wasn't entirely certain he was ready to talk about him more than was necessary.

There was a lot of guilt there, too.

Hera rolled her eyes. "Sounds like a fun guy. As long as he got you out okay."

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