From the Preserve to MCA, Saturday

[2_old_for_this]

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!]

Comments

[2_old_for_this]

He'd done that for a time. Been insane for a time, too. Now, he just shrugged.

"There was a battle. Another one. I couldn't let myself just lie there. I shoved the memories down and just kept going."

And then he'd been here, with Sparkle pulling him off the ground.

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan pulled in a slow inhale. And then exhaled, just as slowly. And then looked up at the ceiling as though maybe it would tell him what he was supposed to say in a situation like this.

"And now you're dredging them up again in the hopes that it'll get you home. Home must be something special, if you're willing to face that darkness again just for the chance to get back there."

[2_old_for_this]

"It's home," Peter answered. "My friends and family are there. It's my world."

[uncertain_dume]

Yeah.

That was... ouch.

"I guess it would be, huh?" Kanan heaved a sigh, and then jerked a thumb up toward the ceiling. "If I thought I could even make it there, I'd offer to at least get you to the right planet in my ship. As it stands, the Expedient hasn't been refueled since I got here, and that still doesn't solve the universe issue."

He tapped out a little tattoo on the sides of his cup with the fingers of his free hand, and then sighed.

"That said, if there's anything at all I can do to help..."

Look, Peter. He hadn't been damned to hell for a thousand years or anything, but he could understand that ache for home.

[2_old_for_this]

"Thanks. I don't think there's anything you can, but thanks. If I think of something..." Peter shrugged.

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan shrugged.

"Hey, there's always tea. Or if you think you might need somebody to spot you..."

So that there would be no more incidents like that thing that had happened in the preserve.

[2_old_for_this]

"That...might actually be a good idea," Peter said. "What did you have in mind? The spotting, not the tea."

[uncertain_dume]

"Well, for a start, somebody who can keep an eye out, make sure nobody's going to startle you while you're in the thick of it can't hurt," Kanan said reasonably. "Even if the safety and comfort of your own apartment, you're still in a building full of people, and it's pretty clear that their physical presence isn't all that sets you off. You don't know who might come to investigate all of that darkness that's roiling off of you when you're doing your thing, and some people here don't have to leave the safety of their own homes to do it."

[2_old_for_this]

"I hadn't thought of that," Peter confessed. "Are there a lot of folks sensitive to magic around?"

[uncertain_dume]

"I can think of at least four off the top of my head," Kanan shared, "and I haven't even met all that many people since I arrived here. I can guarantee you that you'll catch the attention of at least one or two, and I don't think all of them will be willing to overlook having lightning thrown at them."

Not to mention that seething aura. It still had Kanan on edge, and he sort of knew Peter.

Well, Peter had bought him a coffee that one time, and Stance seemed to like him. That was something, right?

[2_old_for_this]

Dogs were great judges of character!

"I think...I should remember enough now to put up a bit of a barrier in my apartment. At least help block out a bit." Peter turned his head to look at Kanan. "How much magic do you know?"

[uncertain_dume]

"Magic in the same sense as you'd know it?" Kanan shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. "Probably none. I..."

He tapered off, eyeing Peter for a few moments, and then heaved a sigh. His hand reached up to run through his hair. Usually pulling his hair back stopped him from making that stupid gaffe, but there he was, with his fingers to the knuckles in chestnut hair, and nowhere to go because of the hair-tie.

Damn it.

"I have other things I can fall back on. No fancy lightning fingers, though."

[2_old_for_this]

"Things like what?" Peter asked. "You can feel magic, you said?"

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan blew out a breath, then made a face and tugged his fingers free. Right. Fine. Master Kenobi was going to swear up and down that this was a safe place to be a Jedi? Then Kanan was going to take him at his word.

"I can feel a lot of things. I could see the power that was gathering around you in the preserve. Not half as well as some people could, but I'm... working on that."

Probably against his better judgment, mind.

[2_old_for_this]

"So you're a natural talent, but not really trained?" Peter asked.

[uncertain_dume]

Eesh, that part was complicated, wasn't it?

"I'm a natural talent, and I was trained for the first fourteen years of my life," Kanan replied, frowning. "And then I quit. Completely. I only picked it up again after coming here. It's a long story."

It wasn't that long a story.

[2_old_for_this]

"Longer than mine?" Peter asked, giving Kanan a crooked smile.

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan made at least a cursory attempt to give Peter a stinkeye for that one.

It was fairly halfhearted. Kanan definitely couldn't compete with a thousand years, no.

"Everyone in my Order was betrayed, hunted down, and systematically murdered in cold blood by the people we marched into war alongside." There was a rough edge to his voice that wasn't usually there. This wasn't something he talked about. Ever. "So I stopped being what they were hunting for."

[2_old_for_this]

Peter winced. "Sorry." Sure, shadows had been hunted down and murdered, but they'd never thought the church were their allies. "I've had to hide too, but it's probably not the same thing."

[uncertain_dume]

"Who knows?" Kanan shrugged, a gesture of dismissal meant to signal that he'd really had enough of talking about that for the time being. "Either way, I'm a bit rusty. But it's still there. It never did completely go away, no matter how much I tried to will it to."

[2_old_for_this]

"Your enemies could feel the magic, too?" Peter guessed. That, he'd experienced.

[uncertain_dume]

"Some could," Kanan allowed with a sigh. "The ones who couldn't had been working alongside us for long enough that they knew us to see us. No Force sensitivity required."

[2_old_for_this]

"And if you used magic to look different, the feel would give you away?" Peter grimaced. He made a note of the different terminology, but didn't think much of it.

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan considered that for a moment. He supposed that could be done, at that, though it was a trick that he'd never learned. Maybe he would, someday.

Maybe not.

"Not to the troopers, it wouldn't have," he acknowledged. "But my training hadn't come far enough for me to have the slightest clue where to start with something like that. Some kind of Force persuasion, but not my strong point. There's tech that could have done it. Not all holos are blue and flickery, but I didn't exactly have the resources to scrape something like that up."

Hell, he'd spent weeks eating garbage on Kaller, afraid to sleep. He would have loved to have some kind of holo disguise, back then.

[2_old_for_this]

Only about half of that made sense to Peter, but he could figure it out.

"I knew people who could do that, but I never needed to learn it, or I'd show you." He'd just shapeshift if he needed to. "Sorry."