If there was one thing Carolina hated in this world, it was losing. Specifically, losing to the likes of Dan Smith. Being married to the man (if only on paper) only seemed to make it worse. Dan was fifty shades of infuriating and while their arguments did make for some rather intense foreplay, their most recent musical argument had the unfortunate side effect of igniting her competitive side as well. Cook better than me, can he? Well, we’ll just see about that.
Now, Carolina was not an idiot. Nor was she so naive to believe that she could beat Dan by sheer force of will. It was going to take a lot of work and a lot of practice in order for her to get up to Dan’s culinary level. Food Network had nearly become permanent background noise when she was in the apartment, along with various other shows she had binged online. Masterchef in particular had been the perfect thing to watch while oiling her rifles and rope.
The third season of Masterchef had also given her an idea. That season happened to feature a woman who had gone blind five years before participating in the show. It was absolutely inspiring to watch the woman compete in timed challenges alongside sighted people and win. Carolina knew someone who could benefit from that same inspiration. Which was how she ended up at the door of Chateau Katou, a mess of reusable grocery bags hanging along one arm, a package and keys in the opposite hand.
Carolina knocked on the door before letting herself in. “Kanan? I’m coming in. With groceries.” She called out in greeting.
Kanan had spent the morning meditating. He’d never meditated a day in his life before moving to Orange County and discovering he was a Jedi. Even then, he’d kind of shrugged off the whole Zen thing, but these days he found that it helped center him and realign his focus if done once a day. That is, when Damien left him alone long enough to actually meditate. Usually the lothcat was wandering around the house yowling, or lurking behind some piece of furniture waiting to pounce and then taking off like a little hellion to hide again.
Damien had just finished attempting to gnaw off Kanan’s knee when Carolina announced herself. Kanan had sensed her arrive at the house. He was getting better at that and he thought the meditating was helping with that as well.
“Hey, Carolina,” he called back to her. He stumbled a bit as he got to his feet, Damien darted around his legs to find a place to hide. “Damien’s in one of his moods,” Kanan said with a sigh. He felt around the coffee table for his aviators.
“He’s a cat. He’s always in a mood.” Suda and Carolina had come to an agreement a while back. As long as the cat had food and water, the two would do their best to ignore one another. When Suda would take her pillows, Carolina would relocate the damn cat and claim her things again. A few close calls later, and she was fairly confident the cat had learned not to test the red-haired human too much. Probably. As much as a cat cared to learn anything that was not to its benefit.
Heading straight to the kitchen, Carolina set down the bags on the counter. Hn. It was probably best to put away the perishables before starting, right? Right. She fished around in one of the bags for the recipe she had copied from her phone. God, there were so many ingredients in marinara sauce. No wonder Prego could charge top dollar for the pre-made stuff.
Out of the corner of her eye, Carolina spotted the movement of his hand moving across the table and frowned. She understood why he felt more comfortable with the aviators on, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it. Well, then. If he was going to wear those now, she was going to make sure he had a damn good reason to do so.
“We’re making chicken parmesan tonight.” She announced, continuing to unpack even as she kept one eye on Kanan’s progress in the living room. Most people would have offered him help or at least given a hand to guide him to the room where she was, but Carolina was not most people. Kanan had been blind for over two months now and if there was anywhere he should feel comfortable navigating, it was his home. Lothcat interruptions notwithstanding. If he asked for help, she would give it without hesitation. Until then, it was business as usual. He deserved at least that much from her.
“We?” Kanan repeated. His hand had closed around the sunglasses and he slid them on over his eyes. Then, he started making his way towards Carolina’s voice and the sounds of rustling bags. He wasn’t going to ask for help. With Katou’s help, he had memorized the layout to the house. Katou “accidentally” allowing him to walk into a couple of walls had actually helped. Kanan knew where the doorways were, where hallways started and ended, how many steps it should take from point A to point B. How much space there was in a certain room.
“Wait. Isn’t chicken parm what Dan cooked for you and Wash a few days ago?” He asked as he made his way towards her. He still held a hand out slightly in front of him, feeling for the reassuring touch of the couch to confirm its presence, then the chair and finally the doorway to the kitchen, where he stopped. One hand on the door frame, his face sort of turned in the direction of Carolina’s voice, a smirk pulling on his lips. “Either it was so bad you wanna rub his face in it. Or it was so good you want to prove to him you could do better. Which is it?”
“We.” Carolina confirmed. The last of the perishables went into the refrigerator, leaving a variety of vegetables and cans littering the counter. That done, she began poking around the lower cabinets. Both Katou and Kanan cooked, which meant that somewhere they likely had a large pot, like a stock pot, or-- Found you. She set the deep pot on the stove. Perfect. It was just like the one that confounded man had used.
The smirking words rankled her more than they likely should have. Carolina scowled at the cutting board as she set up a station for Kanan. He obviously knew her too well. Damn him. “Dan’s dish was.... Good.” She finally ground out. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t cook; she simply had never considered going out of her way to learn more than absolutely necessary. That was about to change.
“Come here. To the counter to the left of the stove.” Carolina left her hand against the edge of the counter, ready to stop Kanan in case he went too far. Banging a knee on a cabinet was not the best way to start a night of cooking. “You’re going to earn your supper.”
Kanan listened to what Carolina was doing. He heard her in his refrigerator, even felt the slight chill from it when she opened and closed the door. He also heard her rummaging around in his cabinets, though he couldn’t quite figure out what she was looking for, that is until he heard the sound of a large pot being placed on the stove.
Kanan had cooked. These days his meals mostly consisted of things that didn’t require him to turn on the stove. Deconstructed sandwiches and meals ordered to be delivered to the house. Pots and pans, and plates and silverware all rested disused in the cabinets and drawers. He had no idea what to do with them. He didn’t mind letting Carolina use them to practise her cooking. Better they get used then sit and gather dust.
His hand tightened around the door frame when Carolina asked him to step towards her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “I haven’t spent a lot of time in the kitchen.”
Not one to be deterred, Carolina was patient enough to give him one more verbal push. “Then this is the perfect time to start.” Her eyes narrowed as his knuckles whitened along the doorframe. In many ways, she could understand his trepidation. This was not simply a case of ‘getting back on the horse’ after an accident. This was like riding supermarket ponies your entire life and then being told to grip tightly to the pommel of a bronco’s saddle for the next eleven seconds. Oh, and don’t forget to wave to the crowd.
Still, Carolina was not about to let Kanan out of the gate without some guidance. Turning, she leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms. “Have you ever heard of Christine Ha?”
The sounds of movement around the kitchen had stopped. Kanan had no way of being sure, but it seemed to him as though she was looking at him, leveling that classic Carolina look in his direction. He forced his hand to relax against the door frame. “No,” he answered, “who is she?”
“She was a contestant on Masterchef.” Carolina had been skeptical of the show at first, but as it turned out, it had been exactly what she was looking for. “It’s a cooking competition where home chefs have to both create and replicate complex dishes, sometimes given nothing but a plate to look at. The challenges were difficult for even an experienced chef. Ha, though. I liked her style. There were even a few challenges where she was the only one out of all the contestants to nail the dish in both looks and taste.”
Pushing off of the counter, Carolina made sure her footsteps were audible as she crossed over to the door. “She was also blind.” Gently, she pried Kanan’s fingers off of the door frame and wrapped them around hers instead. “A disease took her sight five years before she even sent in her application to be on the show. Yet there she was, competing in a damned cooking competition with no additional help but someone to tell her whether she was grabbing salt or sugar. She had to do all the cutting, frying, baking, arranging - everything herself. Do you want to guess how far she got?”
Kanan followed the sounds of Carolina’s steps coming towards him, his head tilted down as he listened. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five steps was apparently how far it took her to go from the kitchen counter to where he stood at the door. Five steps and then her hand was on his, fingers intertwining with his.
He didn’t resist her. He didn’t try to pull away. “I take it since you’re telling me about her, she did pretty good,” he answered. “If you tell me she won, though, I’m calling shenanigans.”
It wasn’t as if he didn’t want to try, but he was afraid. He didn’t want to admit that either. Through his entire adult life he had gone by the motto and belief that problems fell into one of two categories: the ones you could change and the ones you could not. He used to tell Katou when the kid would worry: “is this something you can change? Can you do something about it?” If the answer was yes, then Kanan helped him figure what he needed or wanted to do (the two not always being the same thing). If the answer was no, then Kanan had to help the kid channel his energy into something else more productive. It was a waste of time.
Being blind had challenged that belief and in a way had challenged a lot of what Kanan was. He couldn’t change what had happened to him. There wasn’t anything he could do to get his sight back. It was a problem he couldn’t do anything about, but effected his every waking moment.
He hung on to Carolina’s hand. “How?” he asked her. “How did she do it?”
Carolina couldn’t help a small half-smirk. “No shenanigans. She won fair and square. Even has her own cookbook now.” She’d even get it for him, in audiobook or braille, but right now he needed to get in the door first. Baby steps.
“She kept trying.” Sure, Ha had had a person to tell her what something looked like, but in Carolina’s opinion, sighted people had one too: they were called eyes. “And she took things slow. Luckily, this dish is supposed to cook for a long time, so you’ll have plenty of time to cut up all the garlic and onions I brought.” Knife skills were a key component of cooking and probably the most dangerous after dealing with the flames themselves. If Kanan could get comfortable with the knife, then the rest would be cake.
Squeezing Kanan’s hand, she hoped he could hear the smirk in her voice. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you harm those talented fingers of yours. I have plans for them later.” She tugged him in the direction of the sink. “C’mon. Let’s get those hands washed. We’ll make a sous chef out of you yet.”
She wanted him to cut things? With a knife?! This was a terrible idea! Kanan was convinced someone was going to be losing the tip of a finger, if not the whole thing. But apparently Carolina had faith in him. No one had ever had that kind of faith in him. Ever.
He didn’t pull away when she pulled him into the kitchen. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Six steps between the doorframe and the kitchen sink. He kept a hand extended slightly in front of him to feel for the counter.
More so than cutting off a digit, Kanan was more worried about disappointing the red-headed marine. There were some pretty amazing people in the world who could do some pretty amazing things, but just because Christina Ha had won a rigorous cooking competition while not being able to see didn’t mean that Kanan should pick up a knife. Christina may have been cooking her whole life. Kanan wasn’t that good of a cook even when he could see. What he’d made was decent, more like survival cooking than anything gourmet. Got a bag of rice, some soy sauce and chicken? Then he could do fried rice. Or had been able to. He barely felt comfortable picking up his own lightsaber now.
But Carolina had so much faith in him. She was so convinced that he could do this. Kanan had learned very quickly that arguing with Carolina was pointless, especially when she had her mind made up about something.
His hands found the counter and eventually the kitchen sink. He felt around for the faucet. “Are you sure about this?”
“You’re stalling.” The key to being a good squad leader was knowing exactly what her people were capable of and pushing them to meet and exceed those limits. It had only been when she had stopped trusting her team that her entire world had fallen apart. Carolina knew better than to make that same mistake twice.
Judging by his hesitation in the kitchen compared to the checking that he had been doing in the living room, Carolina figured that Kanan had spent as little time in the kitchen as possible. Likely only to the refrigerator and back. If that. She handed Kanan a paper towel to dry his hands and waited for him to finish before turning around. “The counter where I set up the cutting board is two steps across and one to the left of the sink.” She kept one hand on his, prepared to guide him if need be. Still, it would be better if he made the journey himself so that he could get a better idea in his head where things were as opposed to being guided to and from things.
He almost snapped at her. He wasn’t stalling. He was fucking blind! The hand still on the faucet tightened gripped tighter and the muscles under the scarring at his temple flexed hard as he bit back the words that had sprang into his mouth. It would have been easy to lash out at her and release all the pent up anger at his sudden disability, but he refused to give in to that urge. He told himself he was better than that. Carolina was helping him, in her very unique Carolina way.
Appreciate that someone is making the effort, Caleb.
Kanan took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He took the moment to refocus his mind on the instructions Carolina had given him. He turned and moved to the left, his hand sliding out of Carolina’s as he moved. If he was going to do this, then dammit, he was going to do this.
He moved with more caution than he had in the living room. His feet tentative when placed, perhaps a bit shuffling in case there was something on the floor looking to trip him up, but he took full steps nonetheless. He had to in order to count the precise number Carolina had given him. One step to the left. One. Two across from the sink. Both hands were out in front him, at about the height he figured the counter on the other side of the kitchen to be. His fingers twitched in anticipation until their tips finally came into contact with the opposite counter. Then it was just a matter of sliding his hands cautiously in search of the cutting board.
Carolina would not have minded if he had lashed out at her. She knew she was asking a lot and not asking in a very gentle way, especially when those expectations did not seem to take into account the very real reason he was taking his time. But she would rather he snap at her, get angry, or even kick her out because she demanded too much than resent her for not believing he could do it in the first place.
“Good.” She smiled slightly as Kanan found the cutting board. “Now, I know you’re familiar with a knife and how to cut an onion, but we’re going to practice something that might be a bit different.” Truth be told, she had needed to relearn how to cut with a kitchen knife a few weeks ago after watching an episode of Good Eats. Not that she was about to admit that to anyone outside of this kitchen.
Carolina placed her hands over his. It was a little awkward getting her other hand around to his other side, but she managed. Sometimes she forgot just how damn tall he was. “We’re going to use the big knife. Believe it or not, it’s going to be easier for you to handle.” She guided his hand to the handle of the knife, then up so that he could distinguish the spine from the edge. From there she curled his hand around the hilt in a pinch grip. “Good.” She encouraged. “Now, keeping the tip of the blade on the board, try moving the knife in smooth, circular strokes.”
His first thought was how the hell was he going to know whether or not the tip of the knife was against the cutting board, much less if he was making circular strokes? He couldn’t see! That was the damn point! “Carolina…” he sighed.
The knife felt very large in his hands. Large and dangerous. It was one thing to say he could do this, to even believe that he could. It was an entirely different thing for him to actually do it. And, yeah, he was scared. He was scared of the large and dangerous knife in his hand and he was scared about what it meant for him if it turned out that he really couldn’t do this the way Carolina so earnestly believed that he could.
He didn’t do anything for a long few moments. The muscles in his arms pulled tight and the muscles at his temple were working so hard they threatened to give him a headache.
You won’t cut yourself. Finally Kanan gave in. He pressed the tip of the blade downward against the cutting board, getting an idea how it felt so he would know should the tip come off, or moved. Then in a very deliberate and slow motion, made (what he hoped) were circular strokes.
Carolina’s smile was small but real as she watched Kanan move the knife along the board. “That’s it. Good.” If he had given her a reason other than being unable to see, she might have considered rescheduling the lesson. As it was, she was glad he had not. Cutting empty air might not have seemed like a big deal, but it was a big step in the right direction.
She let him continue the strokes for a few more seconds before placing her hand on top of his to stop the motions. “Alright, now I’m going to show you how you’re going to hold the vegetables you’re cutting.” Carolina carefully reached over to curl the fingers of Kanan’s hand and tuck his thumb behind them. “You’re going to put the flat of your knuckles against the blade so that you know exactly where the knife will be. Your thumb is going to stay in back, and it’s going to be the one moving the vegetables forward. The knife shouldn’t move at all when you’re cutting.”
God, she hoped she was explaining this correctly. Carolina was more of a hands-on learner and teacher. Mimicking and repeating until it was muscle memory. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option right now. So she hoped her adjusting his hands would work just as well. Or at least well enough so that he didn’t cut himself.
Kanan let Carolina guide his hands. The knife blade was cool and solid against his knuckles and he was a little weary of having it so close to his knuckles. Again he didn’t move for several moments and familiarized himself with how it was supposed to feel so that the moment it went wrong he could stop and not draw blood. He didn’t want Carolina’s attempt at cooking to turn into a hospital visit for stitches.
Then, with her hand still on his as guidance he started moving again. He noted the resistance from the vegetable against the blade of the knife. Noted how different it was to slicing thin air. He listened to the sound the knife made when it sliced through the vegetable. If Carolina was hoping for evenly sliced pieces, she was going to be disappointed, but at least he was doing it. Sort of. It was painfully slow going and the Jedi was concentrating hard on this simple task. What should have taken only a few moments took several. Kanan stopped when it felt as though the vegetable in his hand had gotten too small to continue.
While she would never admit it to Kanan, Carolina’s shoulders were tense as he began cutting the vegetables. The last thing she wanted was for him to cut himself. Especially when it would likely turn him from the entire experience of cooking altogether. Luckily, it seemed to work out just fine. She let out a silent breath and nodded. He could do this.
“Very good.” She praised. While most of the encouragement she gave to her squad usually came in the form of yelling and sometimes literally kicking their asses, Carolina knew that some sort of encouragement was always necessary, even if it was merely confirmation that they weren’t doing anything wrong. Peering over the side of the knife, she inspected the slices. They were rough, uneven, and looked as if a toddler had done them. Again, baby steps.
“Just get used to this way of cutting. Even cuts can come later. There’s an onion to the right of the cutting board. Grab that one next.” Carolina kept the hand above Kanan’s cutting hand steady. She had promised that he wasn’t going to cut himself and while she was letting him direct the movements, her hand would be his safety net, ready to stop him if anything slipped or got out of hand. Once there were enough slices on the board, she would direct him to slide them into the pot.
Kanan let go of what remained of the vegetable he was slicing and moved his hand to the right of the cutting board. His fingers searched for a moment before finally touching the smooth, but brittle skin of an onion. He closed his hand around it, feeling the roundness and committing that to memory before bringing it back to the board.
He hadn’t cut himself yet. Though she wasn’t touching him, he could feel the presence of her hand above his on the knife, steady and reassuring, prepared to stop him if he cut the wrong way, or threatened to cut something he wasn’t supposed to. He was relaxing a little bit now that he’d managed to cut something already. He didn’t think this would be something he’d do on his own, but Carolina’s goading and stubborn persistence had paid off.
“Are you going to tell your husband that your blind friend helped you make this?” He asked with a slight smirk when he believed the onion was in place.
“If we manage to beat him? You bet your ass I will.” Carolina’s smirk mirrored Kanan’s. Hell, she was looking forward to seeing the look on Dan’s face when he was eventually forced to eat his words. She glanced at the pot and the smirk twisted into a bit of a wince. They had a ways to go, but she knew that they would make it there eventually. She just hoped that eventually came sooner rather than later.