2_old_for_this | From the Preserve to MCA, Saturday

Entry tags:

kanan jarrus,
magic

From the Preserve to MCA, Saturday

It was fairly quiet out here in the preserve; the odd animals seemed uninterested in Peter, which was fine with him. He wasn't out here to animal-watch.

It had gotten oppressive in his apartment, the walls seeming to press on him along with the memories. He still needed to do more, though. The magic was coming back to him, and he needed to remember more.

The air crackled slightly around him as he sank to his knees and took a deep breath. He cupped his hands together, channeling the excess energy into a ball, then pushing it away to dissipate in the air. He took another breath and sank back into the memories of Hell, searching for what he needed. From the outside, it might look like meditation, if you ignored the expression on his face.

[Expecting one!]

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"I..." Peter blew out a breath. "I never know where to start." He thought about it for a while as they walked, then decided to start with, "You're from somewhere else. Do you have the concept of demons? Of Hell?"

"We've got both," Kanan confirmed. "I have no idea how similar it might be in my neck of reality, but Hell, the Void, Chaos... supposedly, they're a dark place, the final destination for the spirits of the darkest sentient beings after they die."

He tilted his head curiously and regarded Peter in silence for a moment.

"Demons - and angels for that matter - so far as I'm aware, are only myth. But my... that is, a teacher of mine used to tell me that there was some truth in stories. I take it you've got a little more than myth to contend with."

"Yeah." Peter nodded jerkily. "On Earth, Hell is the underworld, full of fire and torment, ruled by demons, where the souls of the evil are punished. According to myths."

He paused a bit longer, taking a few deep breaths. "Yeah. There's some truth in stories."

Kanan paused mid-step, turning a look toward Peter that was somewhere between curious and cautious.

"And you've got experience." He hesitated a moment more, and then started walking again. "It's funny. You really didn't strike me as the 'damned for all eternity' sort when we met."

Did Dark Lords of the Sith buy people coffee?

"Thanks." Peter chuckled, strained but real. "There was...a battle." He started trying to think of a way to explain it, then just shook his head. "It'd take too long to go into it all. But this sorcerer summoned a demon lord from Hell. If he'd made it through the portal, he could have killed thousands, millions, hell, everything, I don't know."

He scrubbed his hands over his face again. "We had to stop him. The sorcerer had summoned him, so he was coming to the sorcerer. The demon lord was halfway through the portal. There wasn't even much time to think. I grabbed the sorcerer and dove back through it."

Kanan was quiet as Peter spoke, listening intently, chewing on every word. When it seemed as though Peter was done, he blew out a soft breath.

Well then.

"I suppose that explains a lot of it," he allowed. "I'd be doing my best Terrelian Jango Jumper impression, too."

He imagined so, anyway. He was paranoid enough about things that didn't involve throwing himself into the mouth of Hell in an act of selfless heroism.

"There was a lot of..." Kanan fell silent for a moment, and then, finding some resolve, pushed forward all the same. "... of darkness around you. Fear and hate and power, things that I was taught to be wary of, growing up."

For totally normal reasons that had nothing to do with the Force, honest.

"You could feel that?" Peter asked, a little worried. How much of that had bled off from him?

"Like a punch to the guts," Kanan admitted, and then drew in a slow breath. "But only because I went looking. I doubt most people would have noticed unless they were sensitive to that sort of thing."

Here he was taking a huge damn risk. If Peter actually was an agent of the Sith, confessing Force sensitivity was practically suicide. Kanan wasn't being obvious about it at all, but his right hand was hovering near enough to his blaster that he could draw it in a heartbeat if need be.

His was a healthy paranoia.

Peter looked at Kanan with interest, but nodded. They could talk about that later, maybe. Right now, he still owed Kanan an explanation.

"I've learned a lot of magic over the years. If I can remember enough, I think I can open a portal home."

Kanan resumed breathing. Okay, there was no immediate attack incoming. No wicked cackle declaring that he was a fool for sharing his secret, or anything like that. He could probably afford to relax at least a little bit.

"So... that's what you were doing, then? Trying to get home?"

He could appreciate that.

"It's...taking a while," Peter said. "There's a lot to remember before I get that far. And I don't always know where the memories will take me."

"Which is why you were so easily startled," Kanan offered, not unkindly. "You had demons and darkness closing in on you, and then here I come, poking at you out of nowhere."

Well, not nowhere. But it isn't as though Peter had heard him calling his name, either.

"Pretty much," Peter agreed. There was a bit more to it, but that was close enough. "I'm still sorry."

"Well..." Kanan huffed a sigh, looked up toward the leaves of the trees towering above them. They were almost out of the preserve now, and he could see fits and starts of sky above them as they went. "You missed, anyway. No harm done. Except to that tree back there."

And once again, Kanan was thankful that it had been him, and not some well-meaning student, or anybody else who didn't have a history of Jedi training and a sixth sense for when to move.

"So." He glanced back at Peter again. "Getting home is worth dragging your mind through Hell again, is it?"

Peter was silent for a while.

"I blocked out a lot of it," he eventually answered. "It was the only way I could survive. But if I want to remember how to use the magic, I have to remember how and when I learned it."

Well.

Frack.

"Yeah," Kanan said, and he huffed out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. Wasn't even really meant to be. "Sometimes you have to do things like that to get by. Cut out pieces of yourself so that you can live to see another day."

He frowned and walked in silence for a few more steps.

"How long were you stuck there?"

How much of himself had he carved away to survive?

"I...stopped paying much attention," Peter hedged. It was somehow harder to just come out and say it, with the memories of the flames still hot at his back. "I don't know an exact number."

"Time and trauma have a funny way of doing that," Kanan replied, leading Peter down the street, back toward the MCA. "You can guess at it, if you want. Or just... don't."

He fished his keys from his pocket as they walked up to the front doors.

"It's your nightmares, Peter. If it's none of my business, just say so. I'll back the hell off."

Well. So long as nobody else was going to get hurt.

Nobody but Peter, really. And sometimes people who got too close.

In either meaning of the word.

He used the door and elevator as an excuse to keep quiet on the way up to Kanan's place. Used the time for a chance to work himself up to it. He wasn't sure how Kanan might react. Or if he was ready to open that can of worms. He stared distractedly around the apartment, picking a large pink feather off the couch as he sat down.

The feather, of course, wasn't Kanan's doing. The dog that was tailing behind Kanan on his way to the kitchen to put on hot water for tea absolutely was, waggling tail and all. Of course, Stance only tailed Kanan long enough for him to bend down and give him an affectionate ruffle behind the ears, and then trotted over to make himself comfortable on the couch beside Peter, tongue lolling out as he did so.

A few minutes later, Kanan emerged from the kitchen with two cups of tea, a plastic container with sugar in it, a small carton of milk, and some spoons, all balanced with the sort of ease that would make most serving droids jealous.

"Didn't know what you wanted in it, so I just brought it all out."

He gave Stance a glance and a raised eyebrow, and then he just sighed and made himself comfortable on the end of the coffee table that wasn't now having tea and the fixings set out on top of it.

Pushover.

"Thanks." Peter took his cup and just held it for a bit. The dog's weight next to him was comforting. So was the warmth of the tea. Finally he managed, staring blankly into the cup, "It was around a thousand years."

Kanan damn near dropped his cup. He didn't. By some miracle of the Force, he managed to keep his cup in his hands.

He didn't, however, manage to keep from burning his tongue and pulling a bit of a spit-take as a result. Fortunately, it wasn't aimed at anybody in particular. Especially since he couldn't have been bothered to care about that minor thing at just that moment.

"A thousand years?" His eyes were wide as he brought his sleeve up to wipe as his chin. "You... you're serious."

He wasn't lying. That was the thing that was leaving Kanan the most stunned. That estimate wasn't hyperbole, wasn't just a figure of speech. Peter was telling him that he'd been in hell for a millennium. And Kanan believed him.

Peter nodded and leaned back, closing his eyes. He smiled faintly at Kanan's reaction. "Should I apologize again?"

"Nope, the spit's on me," Kanan sighed.

Literally, at that.

"Anyway, I asked." He frowned thoughtfully for a moment, and then lowered his damp sleeve from his face and ventured, "And you've only been out of there for... how long?"

"Maybe an hour before I ended up here," Peter said. "So, about three weeks."

Kanan's dog pushed his head up against Peter's side and wiggled at him, and Peter dropped a hand down to pet him gently.

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