Kanan Jarrus (spectre01) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-06-01 17:56:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, agent york, kanan jarrus |
Who: Kanan and York
When: Mid May
Where: Chateau Katou
What: Kanan is adjusting to life without sight
Rating/Warnings: Lowish
Status: Complete when posted!
Kanan had not been away from the house since losing his sight. He couldn’t even get through the living room without running into the couch or the corner of the wall and those didn’t even move. Leaving the house into a world full of unknown variables? Yeah. No thanks.
Kanan was angry. He was angry at his Dreams for taunting him, for allowing him to believe he had escaped this fate when it had happened to his Dream Self. He was angry at Orange County for bringing Maul to Orange County. It wasn’t even the real former Sith Lord. And finally, Kanan was absolutely furious with himself for not being aware of enough or quick enough to get out of the damn way.
York and Kanan were buddies now, strange as that may seem. York was worried when he’d heard about Kanan’s injury--and man, did he know about eye injuries. At least York had one working eye left. Poor Kanan. Still, he could have a great life without his sight. Even if it was too soon to insist upon telling him that.
York showed up to the door, knocked, and tried the handle. It might be easier for his friend if he could let himself in.
The door was open. Not all of Kanan’s friends had keys and even though Kanan’s paranoia usually made him lock the door behind him, it had been easier to just let people come and go than attempt to navigate to the door every time someone knocked.
Even before he heard the door open, he felt someone come up to the house. Once the initial shock had worn off, Kanan was more aware of how the Force felt and people’s effect on it. He wasn’t able to use that to distinguish one person from another, but he was staring to. The presence outside was not just benign, but seemingly sympathetic, reaching out, wanting to help. Kanan thought it felt familiar to him, even if he didn’t know who it was.
He was already training his ears towards the front door, listening for whoever came in. He heard the door open and then close again. “Hello?” He called out. “Who’s there?”
“Strippergram.” York replied in his deepest, roughest voice. He was grinning, and it was probably apparent through his tone, the stretching of his syllables. Hopefully his friend would be able to tell who he was by the sound of his voice.
York closed the door behind himself, then started singing a beat to a pretend strip tease as he made his way toward where Kanan was sitting. “Dun-ch-ch-dun-ch-ch-dunnn…”
Kanan recognized York’s voice and he clearly heard the grin in it. It was good to hear, though Kanan still wasn’t in much of a mood to return the grin. A pair of sunglasses were on the coffee table in front of him, a pair Carolina had gotten for him to protect his healing eyes from the bright light of the sun. There was really no need to wear them inside, but they also hid how terrible the still healing wound across his face looked. Kanan couldn’t see it, but Carolina had described it to him and he felt it. He could picture the angry scorch that started at one temple and scorched an angry path around his eyes like a racoon mask and over to the other temple.
Sunglasses covering his eyes, Kanan got to his feet and turned towards the sound of York’s voice. “Yeah, don’t quit your day job, York,” he managed to quip in response.
York gave a little scoff. “You wish you could see these mooooves,” he teased, moving closer. Then he plopped down in a chair nearby. The scars across the right side of his--York’s--face were pretty terrible. He could understand if Kanan was feeling pretty self-conscious, maybe even self-loathing right now. On top of losing his sight? The poor guy was having a really, really rough time. York wanted to do everything he could to help.
“You doin’ okay?” York asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.
Kanan listened to York’s footsteps, following them as they crossed the living room and then stopped. He then heard the shift of fabric and soft moan of the chair as the other man had a seat. His voice let Kanan know where in the room he had gone. Kanan tried to picture the layout of the living room, the way Carolina had said, and later Katou had reinforced. He could almost picture the chair York was in. Almost could see him in it, but not quite.
Carefully, as though afraid the couch had somehow moved in the two minutes he’d been on his feet, he reached out a tentative hand and felt for the couch before he sat down again. “I’ve been better,” he answered trying to mask the bitterness he could feel in his own voice, “but I’ll live.”
York watched the other man reach out a hand to find the couch before sitting down. He knew how that felt. Things had been hard when he’d first had his eye injury. Actually, the sight in his uninjured eye was affected at first, so he was nearly blind. But slowly, as his body healed, he’d regained full use of his left eye. The right, however, was still milky and clouded, completely useless in his head.
“I have no doubt of that.” York had complete faith that Kanan would pull through this. He was a strong man, and York couldn’t imagine something like this getting him down. “Is there anything I can do?”
Kanan didn’t have much choice but to pull through. He had lost his sight, but not his life, although he wondered if maybe the latter wouldn’t have been better. What good was he without his sight? Carolina said he was more than that -- that instinct didn’t require that he see. But Kanan wasn’t at the point where he understood that. He couldn’t drive, he couldn’t go out into space, he wasn’t able to work his legit job, let alone smuggling. Hell, he didn’t even trust himself to hold his own lightsaber. It was as if everything he knew and had had been yanked away from him. And York had no way of giving any of that back.
“No,” Kanan shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t think there is. Thank you, though.”
If York could have, he would have given it all back to his friend. He would have done almost anything, really. Because that was the kind of guy York was--and the kind of guy Kanan was. As it stood, however, all York could do was keep his friend company. They could play memory games, or York could read to him, or play music.
“You know what we need to do? Get you one of those Alexa things. The Amazon thing? You can just talk, and it’ll talk back to you. Tell you the weather and play music… I hear they even make phone calls now.” York said, drawing his phone from his pocket. It might have been a little pricey, but he was gonna get one for Kanan.
Kanan wasn’t sure how having an Alexa was a good idea. He could already hear Katou telling it to do the most random things, or ordering the weirdest shit -- like pizza at 1 am, just to see if it would work. But it might be helpful. He could order groceries and have them delivered to the house. Not that he could cook anymore. Katou could cook, and the kid was actually damn good at it, but Kanan needed to feel as though he was still good for something. But the more he tried to find that something, the more he found that he needed his sight to do anything.
He heard the tell-tale clicking of York on his phone. “Are you ordering one?” He asked.
York didn't think too hard about it. He just ordered the thing to be delivered here in a couple days. “Yep.” He glanced up from the phone to try and gauge the look on his friend’s face. “Was that not the right thing to do? I mean, if you hate it, I'll take it back.”
He may have not had his sight anymore, but certain habits were hard to break, such as staring in the direction of York’s voice. The man was really something else. Kanan had never ever met anyone like him, so willing to literally give the shirt off his back. He hadn’t even thought twice about getting Kanan something he thought would help.
Kanan couldn’t help but a snorted chuckle as he shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I’m just a little surprised, I guess. Someone is gonna have to help me set it up.”
Well, if that was the only problem, York could do that, too. “That’s not a problem, man. I’ll help you with that. The good news about the thing is that you just talk to it, and it does what you ask it to.” York had set one up before for his brother and sister-in-law, though he didn’t have one himself. Thankfully, the little one hadn’t figured out how to talk to Alexa yet, though York figured that Roger would pick it up soon.
“Does it respond to anyone who talks to it?” Kanan asked. Again he was thinking of the things Katou might try to get Alexa to do just to see if it’d work. Pizza at one am seemed like the tip of a very large and dangerous iceberg.
But York was trying to help him, and it wasn’t as if Kanan didn’t appreciate him trying. Under different circumstances, Kanan probably would have been all over getting an Alexa, even kicking himself for not getting one sooner. However, the circumstance was what it was.
“I appreciate what you’re doing, James,” Kanan said. “I do. It's just I’m having a hard time adjusting.”
“Yes.” York tucked the phone into his pocket and wiped his palms on his knees. It was warming up a little in Orange County, but it wasn’t nearly as hot as he’d experienced in the past. Just thinking about that, though, was bound to make it the hottest summer ever. He leaned back a little and looked over at his friend. “I mean, it’s kind of like Big Brother in that it’s always listening. I dunno how much trouble you can really get into with it, though.”
York let those words linger in the air between them for a while, then sighed as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I know. I wish there was something I could say or do to make this easy, but I don’t think that thing exists.”
Kanan let out a breath. He reached up to adjust the sunglasses on his nose so they weren’t resting on the burn, but that they still continued to hide it. “I wish there was too,” he said. He didn’t murmur or mumble, but his voice was slightly muted. “I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to do now. Everything I did before...I keep thinking if there’s anything I can do now, and there’s nothing. I lost a part of me. A part of who I am and I’m never going to get that part back.”
After a quick sigh and a nod, York went quiet. He brought his thumb up to rub against his lip. It was the world’s shittiest situation--at least, the shittiest situation of the moment. York would literally have done anything in his power (or several things outside his power, even) to fix this. But there was literally nothing that could be done. “Yeah,” he said, softly. “But it doesn’t change who you are. Inside. You know? It affects what you can do, maybe, though I’m sure you’ll find other ways to do the things you want and need to do… but it doesn’t change what you believe in, what you care about, what your morals are. Your true nature.”
That all sounded like shit, York thought. He almost regretted saying it.
But it didn’t sound like shit. Kanan as angry, yes, but he was still the same man he’d been before he and Ahsoka had fought Maul. He cared about the same people, still had the same moral code he’d always had. His philosophy had been shaken a bit and had been restructured, but he still had one. What York said reminded him of that. He may have lost a part of him, a part that was gone forever, but it was just a part.
Kanan was quiet a moment. Then a slight grin cracked the lower part of his face. “You should write inspirational speeches, James,” he said. “You’d make a killing.”