Was it a little too forward for Kanan to groan and bury his face in her shoulder for a moment? Because that was what he was doing, here.
"Right."
This part was still hard, dammit.
"What I was circling around to was that I lost my footing this month, Hera," he finally managed. "World after world of bad feelings and the Dark Side running wild, and then being faced with Rey vanishing and coming back again holding a broken lightsaber and admitting she's strong in the Force. Being walked to more-or-less certain death by clones, not even for the first time in my life... I spent the last decade of my life with my back turned to all of this. And now here it is, battering me from every angle, and the doubts that any one aspect of it give to me? They feed my uncertainty about the rest."
And here Summer hadn't even told him about her plans to go to Coruscant yet.
"What if I'm not strong enough against the Dark, if I'm this tired now? What if I train Rey, only for her to end up dead just like everybody else? Being a good person doesn't save you from whatever the Clone-equivalent-of-the-week is in the First Order. It sure as hell didn't help the Jedi." It was easy to lay out these points in an almost clinical way. He had to. If he let even a scrap of emotion in while he did, he'd crack. "I can't teach her to hide, Hera. And that's the one thing I've learned to do best."
This was also much easier than talking more candidly about the complicated mess of emotions that came when realizing that Caleb Dume was about to die a second time, lightsaber in hand whether he wanted it to be or not, by Clones who would, eventually, be able to turn around and say that it wasn't their fault. They were brainwashed.
no subject
"Right."
This part was still hard, dammit.
"What I was circling around to was that I lost my footing this month, Hera," he finally managed. "World after world of bad feelings and the Dark Side running wild, and then being faced with Rey vanishing and coming back again holding a broken lightsaber and admitting she's strong in the Force. Being walked to more-or-less certain death by clones, not even for the first time in my life... I spent the last decade of my life with my back turned to all of this. And now here it is, battering me from every angle, and the doubts that any one aspect of it give to me? They feed my uncertainty about the rest."
And here Summer hadn't even told him about her plans to go to Coruscant yet.
"What if I'm not strong enough against the Dark, if I'm this tired now? What if I train Rey, only for her to end up dead just like everybody else? Being a good person doesn't save you from whatever the Clone-equivalent-of-the-week is in the First Order. It sure as hell didn't help the Jedi." It was easy to lay out these points in an almost clinical way. He had to. If he let even a scrap of emotion in while he did, he'd crack. "I can't teach her to hide, Hera. And that's the one thing I've learned to do best."
This was also much easier than talking more candidly about the complicated mess of emotions that came when realizing that Caleb Dume was about to die a second time, lightsaber in hand whether he wanted it to be or not, by Clones who would, eventually, be able to turn around and say that it wasn't their fault. They were brainwashed.
Chips in their heads.
They didn't mean to...