uncertain_dume | The Hermit Shack in the Woods, Monday Morning

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The Hermit Shack in the Woods, Monday Morning

Unlike when Caleb had woken up in a strange bed on Friday night, there was no sudden jerk awake for Kanan this morning. There was no immediate onset of panic, no choking sense of fear of a strange place. Which didn't mean that Kanan didn't contemplate trying to exit through a window this morning too, granted. But here in Obi-Wan's shack, it would be a somewhat less dramatic, rather more undignified sort of escape route.

Anyway, the door was right over there. And he could be reasonably certain that there weren't any clones on the other side of it, waiting with blasters at ready to take him down.

He sat up, looking quietly at that door, and then sighed and slumped forward, scrubbing at his face with his hands.

He felt almost as exhausted as Caleb had the other evening. His reasons for that were only mostly the same.

[OOC: For that Kenobi guy, naturally!]

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Obi-Wan sat up as well. His was only the immediate concern for Dume's well-being; everything else was unchanged. He turned his head and looked towards Caleb-- Kanan.

"Good morning," he said quietly. "Would you like some tea?"

Kanan didn't look up. He didn't need to. He figured Master Kenobi would understand if he wasn't feeling up to doing terribly much at the moment, all things considered. He was silent for a couple of seconds, trying to ignore the way the Force was filling his senses, one more remnant of Caleb's time on the island.

The Force wasn't something that was so easily ignored. It never had been.

"Please," he said, just as quietly as Obi-Wan. "I think right now might be a good time for tea."

Obi-Wan nodded.

He slid quietly out of bed - still in his tunic, as he'd gone to sleep the night before - and walked to the other side of the shack. He poured water into the cooker and turned it on, then busied himself with cups and tea bags.

He did not speak. He thought Kanan might need some time.

Kanan took that opportunity to close his eyes again, to try to at least draw that distinction between himself and Caleb. It had been a line he'd drawn years ago, though it hadn't been so sudden as the months he'd spent without a name. It had been a wall, built brick by brick, over years. And Fandom had just blasted a large hole in it, big enough that he could look Caleb in the eye and see bits of himself staring back at him.

He pulled in a slow breath, and he quietly let himself acknowledge that boy, and that boy's pain. His fear.

"You keep doing this to me, Caleb," he muttered. "You couldn't have sat this one out?"

"Compartimentalizing?" Obi-Wan guessed.

He'd do Kanan the courtesy of not turning around to actually look him in the eye when he asked; he kept his tone loose.

Kanan's eyes opened again, and he stared down at his knees.

"Compartmentalizing."

He wouldn't insult Master Kenobi's intelligence by denying the obvious.

"Caleb Dume gets packed away in a neat little corner, along with all of his tells, his bad habits, his fears," and, ideally, his connection to the Force, "and Kanan Jarrus gets to live another day."

"Kanan Jarrus might be overestimating the threat to his life at this present moment," Obi-Wan said mildly.

He poured hot water into each cup. "Unless you fear I might throw your tea at you."

"Kanan Jarrus is beginning to think more and more that he's actually better off dodging bucketheads back home than he is letting this place get to him," Kanan countered, frowning and glancing up at Obi-Wan. "And if I knew how to get there again, I'd already be gone."

"And then what would Kanan Jarrus do with himself?" Obi-Wan asked, turning around. He was holding both mugs, and he walked towards Kanan as he spoke. "While away the time on the floor of a grimy cantina somewhere?"

"Knowing where he is and who he is? Absolutely," Kanan agreed, his expression pulled into a tight frown. "I don't know what those past few days were, but I don't intend to stick around long enough for a repeat performance. Caleb didn't get some miracle rescue. Caleb stole a ship and tried to go home. And then he heard you and went right back to Kaller."

Because where the hell else could Caleb have gone?

Obi-Wan held out a mug of tea for him.

"And Obi-Wan fled to Tatooine," he said, "Where he took a different name for expediency's sake and lived far into the desert where no one could find him. But Ben Kenobi did not erase Obi-Wan, nor was he foolish enough to try."

"Obi-Wan," Kanan said quietly, hesitating for a moment before reaching to take the mug, "wasn't a barely-trained terrified child who only ever felt like he belonged while he was fighting in the war."

"No, he was not," Obi-Wan said quietly, "But he was also not immune to sorrow, or fear, or loneliness."

Kanan heaved a sigh, and let his gaze fall out of focus, somewhere in the general direction of his tea.

Force, he was tired.

"Caleb wouldn't have survived," he said, softly. "He cared too much. So he kept the things the Jedi taught him that made it easier to run, and then he stopped being Caleb." He paused for a moment, and then sipped at his tea, gathering his thoughts. "I don't think I could have handled doing what you did. Becoming somebody else meant I didn't have to face what Caleb lost."

"I don't judge what Caleb did then," Obi-Wan said. "He was young, and scared, and powerless. But you are none of these things now."

He pulled up a chair by Kanan's bed and sat down. "This was an unfortunate confontation with your past," he said. "But perhaps it was one you were meant to have, now that you are strong enough to face it."

Funny, Kanan didn't feel all that strong just then.

"Meant to have," he echoed, a touch incredulously. "And to what end do you suppose I was meant to confront that, exactly?"

"The Force moves in interesting ways," Obi-Wan proposed mildly. (And wryly.) "You've stopped running for some time. It was inevitable you'd find yourself confronting the past."

Dammit, Kenobi. Kanan really wasn't feeling up to this... ever. He would never feel up to this.

"And this is why I keep running," he sighed. Then he sipped at his tea some more. Great. "Tell me again what's wrong with compartmentalising?"

"In your case?" Obi-Wan said mildly. "It saved you once. But now it is handicapping you."

He took a sip of his tea.

"Even if we disregard the way your running has cut you off from the Force, how it is hampering your ability to progress past your own defenses and accomplish something meaningful," he said, "Your unwillingness to accept your past is becoming a weakness. Something that could be exploited."

Right. Okay. Time for another deep breath, here. Kanan had asked Obi-Wan to teach him, this was what came of it.

"Exploited, assuming anybody knows who I was," he noted. "I didn't have that problem before I came here."

... He wasn't touching that bit about accomplishments for love or credits.

"They don't need to know who you are to trigger your memories," Obi-Wan said. Mildly, still, the cup back to being cradled between his hands. "Trauma never functions so neatly."

Kanan couldn't deny that one, dammit. Even though he desperately wanted to.

"What would you suggest I do about it, then?"

Because jumping into the cockpit of the Expedient and just traveling until he found an inhabitable planet was still pretty damn tempting. The only thing stopping him was fuel.

"You need to find a place for Caleb within yourself," Obi-Wan said. "Whether you like to admit it or not, he has shaped Kanan considerably."

Behind that wall was within him, though. Why couldn't that count?

Kanan fell silent, once again staring into his tea. He wasn't equipped for this. Which was, admittedly, part of the problem that Obi-Wan was talking about.

"Master Billaba didn't die just so that I could kill him?"

Damn, saying those words hurt like hell. Everything was so fresh all over again.

Obi-Wan actually blinked. He'd known Kanan had strong feelings about Master Billaba's death, of course... but this was something far more...

... He was too used to Anakin. Anakin did not do self-blame; he externalized everything.

"Master Billaba died so that she could save him," he said, as he steadied.

"She told him to run," Kanan murmured. It was too raw; he couldn't bring himself to put himself so intimately into Caleb's shoes right then. "She said she would be right behind him. And Caleb knew that she was lying, and he ran anyway."

He brought the tea to his lips, but didn't actually drink any. Just held it there. Breathed it in.

"Running was everything he had."

"But it isn't, any longer."

Obi-Wan brought up his own tea. He didn't drink it, either.

"If you let it. But I suppose that is the terrifying part, isn't it?"

"I never stopped regretting that I ran," Kanan said, quietly. "And now I don't have to run, and I don't know how to stop."

His throat felt tight. He probably couldn't drink the tea if he wanted to; he'd just choke on it.

"Perhaps it's time you turn your meditation inwards, as well as out," Obi-Wan said. He did take a sip of it now. "Find something steady to anchor yourself to, within the Force."

"Through Caleb."

Please forgive Kanan for sounding less than enthusiastic about that plan, Obi-Wan. Tethers and anchors and the Force had all been somewhat anathema to him, what with his plan to go on existing and all.

"Yes," Obi-Wan said. He did not flinch at Kanan's tone in any capacity. "If you wish to learn to stop running."

From a man who was absolutely terrible at it. He'd run all the way to Anakin's birth planet, where he had accidentally made himself part of a community he'd then had to pull himself out of.

Took one to know one, huh?

But it was almost - almost - tempting. Kanan sighed, and then finally took another sip of his tea.

"So I tether myself to the Force, using a damaged child as an anchor," he said, fatigue slipping back into his voice. "What kind of anchor is that supposed to be?"

"Something true," Obi-Wan said. "And something that must be healed before you can move on."

Which hopefully Kanan could, as opposed to Obi-Wan, with the eternal Anakin-shaped hole in his heart.

"You're asking me to lance the wound," Kanan observed, looking at Obi-Wan tiredly. "Open it up again, bleed some more."

"It didn't heal properly the first time," Obi-Wan said, his tone not unkindly. "You were in no circumstances to let it."

"And now I am."

Safe. What was it that Obi-Wan had said to Caleb the other day? Among family? If ever there was a time to claw open old wounds and actually let himself nurse them back to health, now would, theoretically, be it.

Kanan lowered the mug in his hands and shut his eyes, sighing.

"That terrifies me."

"Why?" Obi-Wan asked.

He could guess, but he preferred not to.

Kanan's grip tightened on the mug, and he inhaled. Held his breath. Exhaled again.

"Because I'll be just as vulnerable as I was when the wounds were new," he said, finally. "I can't just slap a bacta patch on it and be on my way."

It terrified him because it would hurt. Because there was no way for it to not.

"No," Obi-Wan agreed, "You cannot."

He set his cup aside. "But you will not be alone," he said. "Better to do it with care now than open up the wound while you are running into blaster fire."

Kanan had no intentions of running into blaster fire. Ever.

He was also well aware that intentions didn't mean a hell of a lot when it came to things like that. Especially if the Jedi were going to be a part of his life again. Even before he'd found them, he was prone to finding himself in trouble. There was a reason he carried a blaster at his own hip, after all.

He looked down at himself. Somewhere over the course of the night, Caleb's robes had become his own tunic again. Maybe the island even had the decency to put his lightsaber back where it had been stored, in two pieces, on his ship. But then again, the island was a tuft-sucking pile of meddling poodoo, and odds were better that a quick pat-down would reveal the saber and his holocron both tucked away into his clothing, as Caleb had hidden them away in the folds of his robes before.

He frowned.

He wished that Master Billaba was here. Wondered what she'd tell him to do. Suspected that she'd be with Master Kenobi on this one. After all, she'd been considered damaged goods herself. She knew the subject intimately.

"You'll be here?"

"I've been here for several years now," Obi-Wan said dryly, "I do not forsee that situation changing over the next few years, at least."

Taking down an Empire would take a bit more time than that. As did waiting for Luke to grow older.

Edited 2016-09-12 19:05 (UTC)

Well, in his own defense, Kanan didn't know about Luke. Or much of anything about what was going on in the Galaxy at large unless it was an immediate threat to him.

"... You know what I mean, Master Kenobi."

"Yes," Obi-Wan said, his mouth twitching. "Kanan."

Kanan gave Obi-Wan a look that mostly consisted of a wrinkled nose and one raised eyebrow, and then he sighed and reached to set his drink down.

"Alright," he said, a little extra backbone in his voice that he wasn't entirely feeling. "I'll give it a try."

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The Hermit Shack in the Woods, Monday Morning

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