uncertain_dume | MCA #3, Friday Afternoon

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MCA #3, Friday Afternoon

... You know what? Kanan was an adventurous guy, sure. But not even having a magical raccoon tail that let him fly was enough incentive to go and stand in the park working on his lightsaber forms today. And so, after class, he made his way back home, avoiding the swooping sun and flying over the quicksand (thanks propeller butt) and just settling in on the floor in the living room to meditate.

With a dog in a frog suit jumping on him every so often, demanding playtime.

He took that in stride. Mostly, he was getting increasingly more worried about Rey. As the day wore on without another check-in, he was seriously edging toward getting Chopper to help slice his phone to see if he could pinpoint exactly which reality he was going to have to get himself a Portalocity ticket to. One week of silence, he could reason away with things being a little more exciting than usual on Jakku. Two weeks? That was unlike Rey.

If nothing else, maybe she just needed a new phone?

He could hope it was that.

Hell, it wasn't that, was it?

[OOC: Open for calls or if you have any reason to be visiting his apartment! CW: Thread with Jack contains frank talk of alcoholism and self-destructive behaviour.]

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After texting with Kaidan, Jack stomped down to Kanan's apartment and banged on his door.

Sorry if you're home, Hera. Jack's annoyed.

Yeah, that was one way to pull Kanan out of a meditation. He had felt the flare-up in Jack's mood from down here, and couldn't actually decide if he wanted to know why it had. So the pounding on the door... well....

He sighed, braced himself, and went to answer the door.

Raccoon onesie and all.

"Hey, Jack."

It was a cute onesie but she was way past being able to be charmed by it just then.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Jack scowled at him, punching him in the shoulder less than gently but not hard enough to dislocate his arm. "You were drinking after you lost a goddamn kidney?!"

Kanan blinked and swayed backwards a bit, the onesie just - poof - disappearing with that punch, leaving him standing there in his regular greens and grays.

"Buh?"

Look, he hadn't touched a drink in over a year now, and it had been a decade since his injuries during the war. This was unexpected on a few levels.

Edited 2019-08-02 19:34 (UTC)

"Take off your goddamn shirt," Jack demanded.

She sounded angry. In a way she was because that's what all of her emotions became. She didn't know how to really let them be anything else but under the anger was an amount of distress and worry.

Kanan stood there for a moment, a little wide-eyed, before, brain still working on catching up to the situation, he reached and unbuckled his armor, sliding off his pauldron and vambrace and letting it all clatter to the floor before pulling his shirt up over his head.

There was a lot behind that angry. He was still processing the situation, but he recognized enough of that to know that now wasn't a great time to argue.

Jack waited until the shirt was off to trace the scars. Finding the two Kaidan had mentioned. Reaching out and putting her hand on it and tracing it around to the exit, stepping partly around him to see it.

She wasn't Kaidan. She hadn't had anatomy classes and she didn't know surgery for shit. Wasn't any sort of medic.

She knew where to stab someone to kill them slow, though. Right where the blade should go to puncture the kidney and sever it from its blood source. It would take them ten minutes to die and it would hurt the entire time, but slow enough that they could feel death coming as their chest filled with blood and their blood pressure dropped so low the heart didn't have enough volume to continue pumping. Jack had done that more than a few times, caused that kind of wound and crouched to stare at them as they died so the last thing they'd see was her glaring hate at them.

The shot covered the same area. The scar was half the size of her hand. Some of it was age spread, sure. Kanan had massed up since he'd taken it. But it had never been a small wound.

"Kidney failure's a stupid, slow and ugly death. Why, Kanan?"

Not even really sure what that why was for. It was just there.

Kanan stood there quietly, reaching a hand up to scratch awkwardly at his left shoulder - there was another scar there, got it at the same time as the one through his abdomen.

Stupid mistake. Got ahead of himself. Got cocky. Wasn't dead by virtue of Stance refusing to back down and an almost immediate dunk in a bacta tank that had lasted two damn weeks.

"Didn't let myself think about it. Didn't care."

There wasn't much inflection to that, no. It came out more flat and matter-of-fact than anything.

"Found enough things to care about along the way. Eventually."

Edited 2019-08-02 19:59 (UTC)

"Never again." It was flat and completely toneless. Her palm pressed flatter, hiding the scar.

Leaned her forehead against the back of his shoulder. Words fell out. She didn't even really realize what she was saying. "Never again, Kanan. Never a-fucking-gain, do you hear me, don't you fucking dare, I swear to god I will kick your ass so fucking hard, never again.."

Never.. what? Never drink? Never be in a place so dark you don't care? Never try to kill yourself?

All of that?

All of that.

Kanan exhaled, something soft and suddenly tired, and he nodded.

"Never again," he agreed. "I have too much to live for. Too much I need to do."

Too much he needed to be.

"Never again. You've got my word, Jack."

"You flew at a fucking Reaper, Kanan." It was also flat. Not an accusation. Just a statement.

Two, in fact. Two Reapers. Though only the one had he.. you know..

Torn apart.

With his brain. With the Force.

Felt it live, felt it die.

And hey, now you're getting her arms wrapping around your waist and putting your other kidney at risk. Jack didn't hug lightly when she could bring herself to do it at all.

To his credit, Kanan managed to only loose a small 'hnnf' as the life was half squashed out of him.

"Guess I did," he agreed, because there wasn't any denying that, either. He paused a moment, and then added, "Would've been a lot worse if I didn't."

Children. There had been children. Hollowed out and turned into--

His jaw tensed a little.

He exhaled.

Yet peace...

"There are going to be things I do that you're not going to like," he added. "The best I can offer is that they won't come from the same place the drinking did. They won't be because I've stopped caring."

Would be, in fact, because he'd come back around.

Had started caring maybe a little too much.

"I know. I remember when the news reports came through. That memory hasn't changed." Was pretty sure it wouldn't. Kaidan had been careful. They'd all been careful. A big change that nobody would know about yet.

She thought about the rest of it. No, she wasn't going to like it. She didn't like anything that put any of her boys in danger. Couldn't stop that. They were all do-gooder assholes and that was part and parcel with who they were. Telling them to stop would be akin to telling them to just not breathe.

Jack huffed a breath that might have been a silent laugh against his shoulder. 'Just don't breathe' would probably be an easier thing for Kanan to do. He didn't have to, not for a long time if he didn't need to.

"Good." She found a word again, look at her go. "If I have to care, so do you." A beat. "Caring sucks."

"Caring sucks," Kanan agreed. And then paused and amended, "caring is hard. Not caring completely is hard too, I don't think I ever managed to find a happy medium, there."

He'd gotten to 'mostly not caring,' but if he'd had that all figured out, he wouldn't have stood up for anything on Gorse. Maybe Cynda would just be glittery shrapnel drifting through space, now.

"Not caring completely was easy," Jack said, "Not giving a fuck about anything or anyone? Real easy. Caring sucks. It's hard. It's.." Terrifying. "It's dumb. All this shit, Kanan. All this stupid shit I never fucking thought about ever in my goddamn life. None of it mattered. Now it all does. Has to because I don't know what fucking should or shouldn't and what if that part I thought was some little nothing wasn't nothing? What if it hurts someone that I thought it was nothing? You can't take hurt away once it's there. Maybe you can not do it again. Doesn't make the one time hurt less. It's complicated and there's no rulebook and it sucks and I hate it. I'm bad at it."

Took a breath. More words. Didn't know where they were coming from. "Some guy in a galaxy I've never even heard of gets shot a decade ago, the fuck do I care? Except I know him, it's you, it's Kanan and suddenly that fucking blaster scar matters because I know what it means. I know what came after. I know where that shit came from and now it's all so much more fucking serious and I didn't even fucking know. It's not in the past, it's not ten fucking years ago, it's right now cuz that's when I knew and that's when it hit and.."

And the realization. That he hadn't just been drinking. It hadn't been self medication. It could have very easily killed him.

And he knew that. And hadn't cared. It had been so bad, so dark, that he hadn't cared.

It mattered.

It was a whole load of ugly that Kaidan had seen and she hadn't. And that mattered, too.

Deep breath.

Slow exhale. Breathe.

Kanan closed his eyes for a few seconds.

Nodded.

"And it was uglier than you realized," he surmised. "I... I don't pretend I don't have a lot of ugly in my past, Jack."

Didn't really pretend he didn't have a lot of ugly here in the present, either.

Just... marginally less.

"You don't pretend," she agreed, "At least, not to me you don't. But it matters, Kanan. New Years, you ordered a fucking drink."

Which she'd stolen. Which she still hated Tino for, for serving it to him. Kanan practically lived there on Tuesdays, he had to have known he was dry and he didn't so much as fucking ask before he served the whiskey. Yeah, it was a bar and it was their job to serve alcohol but when someone is teetering on the back of a wagon you don't put a hand between their shoulders and push. She could carry hate a real long way for far less reason. This wasn't a little reason and it had just become a whole lot less little.

There was a long silence, then.

"I did," he agreed. Wasn't going to deny it. "Wasn't to try to hurt myself. Not really."

Could have. He wouldn't deny that, either.

"Wasn't a great life choice, either."

No kidding.

"Why?"

One word, hanging there in the air. So many things it could have meant and Jack meant pretty much all of them summed into just one word.

There were lots of reasons to drink. God knew Jack drank plenty. For her it was more or less self medicating. She'd never fallen down the bottle though. Couldn't; couldn't stay drunk long enough. Her system burned it out of her and left her far too sober. Never really tried to kill herself. Hadn't cared if she died. Still didn't, not really, but she also wasn't throwing herself at possibly lethal danger because she was bored or because she needed the adrenaline high. It would hurt her boys - it would hurt her family - and that mattered so she checked herself.

But..

Why? Kanan, why?

"Few reasons. They're all poodoo."

Also true. Kanan sighed.

"I was tired. There was too much to cope with. Drinking shut that down. I was on the run. The Force was a death sentence. Drinking helped blot that out. I cut myself off from everything that made me Jedi. The Force, the image, caring. For all we weren't supposed to form attachments, we were never meant to not care. Not completely."

And then, after a long moment, "Everybody's dead. Apparently I was attached, because losing them damn near killed me anyway. I was terrified of dying, but that doesn't mean I had anything to live for." Another long pause. "New Year's was simpler. The discussion got hard. Drinks made things less hard. There were drinks right there. I wanted a drink."

"You were alone," Jack summarized. For all he'd said, that's what she heard underneath it all. He hadn't even had himself. Caleb had to die. Everything about him had to be erased so that Kanan would even have a chance. Couldn't get close to anyone in case he slipped up and wasn't Kanan enough. Had to be Kanan when he didn't know how to be anybody.

She understood that part all too well. That was kind of her daily life. Trying to be like everyone around her when she didn't know how. She got it wrong all the time. She could afford to. Screwing up and getting it wrong didn't mean getting shot - or worse.

"You're not alone anymore." He knew that. She still had to say it. "It doesn't, you know," Jack added after a minute, "Alcohol doesn't make things less hard. It just makes you care less for a little while. Until you're sober again and you have to face it. The things you said or did when you didn't care enough, when emotional shit was dull enough you could pretend it wasn't sharp enough to cut and that the bleeding didn't matter. And then the only way to feel less stupid and to dull the hurt again is to take another fucking drink."

Silent for a second.

"No more drinking. Not for you. That's not who you are. It would fuck you up again."

"It would," Kanan agreed. Inhaled, exhaled. Just remembered how to breathe.

Wasn't alone anymore. Hadn't been. Not for a while, now.

"It never did help," he added. "But I could pretend it did for a while." He shook his head a bit. "You're right. That isn't who I am now." A pause. "Who that is, though, that's a work in progress."

"Okay." Because.. okay. "Whoever you become," Jack began, deliberately lightening the tone, "try not to be a too-solemn joykilling shithead. Two of them in the family already is one too fucking many. Three and I'd have to kill to all in case it was catching."

"Don't worry, Jack. No matter who I become, I'll still happily join you on trips to the corner store to get weird Earth candy."

Once a trash man, always a trash man, apparently.

Had to lean into the lighter tone. Was beginning to fidget, to pass his shirt from hand to hand.

"Oh goody," she said dryly, "Because I don't think we've introduced you to circus peanuts yet." She was able to let go and step back. Actually noticed the clothing and gave a quiet snort of amusement. "Shit. I think I owe Kaidan money. Put your shirt on and stop showing off your quarter-bounce belly, Kanan."

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