A/N
For Kanera JediPrompts Week on Day 1 & 2, the two themes were "Truth" and "Wary." I combined them. There is an existing first copy existing on Archive of Our Own though it has now been revised to match this one.
Wary Truths
She suspected that the manner in which this "stranger" slinked down his brown hood was staged as conventional Jedi dramatic mythic flare. But when the light caressed his countenance, there was not the expected traditional placid stoicness on the Jedi during the Clone Wars, but sorrowful cloudedness, one she had been accustomed to in their years of their bygone partnership.
Restraining all temptation of an embrace, they stood across from each other, neither of them stepping forward to bridge the gap.
"Captain Syndulla." He flashed her a salute.
"Jedi Knight, Kanan Jarrus." Her eyes skimmed down his fresh monastic tunic, amused that he had abandoned his jade-shaded smuggler-esque outfit.
"Do you like this new me?" His managed a wiry grin. He'd clarify later that he wore the robe only for ceremonial purposes and he did typically attire himself his smuggler-esque tunic (with the addition of brown jedi robes to supplement). Maybe he just wanted to dignify himself of the probability of encountering her father.
"New Kanan, old Kanan, I hope this New Kanan is less pestering than the Old Kanan." She teased. She allowed herself to smile. "What Jedi business do you have on Ryloth?"
"To assist as a Jedi does." Ryloth recuperated from the shards of the Empire. "And to talk. There is... something I've been meeting to tell you." He formulated his tone as as a clinical mission debriefing, but the waver in "something" suggested something else.
"Oh really." She had missed the mellowness in his voice.
"Hera, the War is long over, even if we're still repairing its damage… but I've been holding back on talking about my… feelings… feelings concerning us."
"Kanan, I think I know what you want to tell me. I know that's nothing new." But it would be something to hear out of his lips. "Speak away," she droned, maintaining a playful imitation of a protocol command.
He began running his hand over his hair-which amused her because, of all things, he never surrendered his ponytail. For a moment, she assumed he had reverted to his old swagger-prone persona of a womanizer slicking back his hair, until the tremor of his hand divulged that this was a nervous tic.
"It's a bit difficult to pinpoint when it all started, Hera."
The beginning where she regarded him as an incidental passing stranger? "The moment where I first asked you for directions on Gorse?"
"Nah, that was an... abrupt infatuation." Though he had clarified once to her that it was her voice that allured him to her.
"The moment where I recruited you for the... cause?" She enunciated "cause" in a feeble emulation of his old youthful skeptical inflection when she familiarized with young Kanan's reluctance to involve himself in the War.
"Nah, that was a... crush then I suppose. I was superficial then."
She remembered the brush of his fingertips. "The moment where I bought you a cup of caf?" She held a steaming cup of Spiran caf toward him on the Rion moon, and she recalled the sly manner his finger lingered on her gloved hands when he received it.
He rubbed his goatee. "That was one moment I knew then, my crush grew into something else, I suppose, but I don't think that was the first moment. Honestly, I can list many moments."
Suspecting that he was postponing the inevitable, she cut to the chase, or rather, skipped over what hadn't been said.
"Kanan, I'll always be your friend and ally. Even if we have to live with being haunted by what could have been." She kept the smile on her face even as the heartache welled in her chest. She had always been trained to staunch her sorrows to focus on priorities.
His brows lifted. "You call this, you call us, a what-could-have-been situation?"
"The solution would be to have me anyway and still be a Jedi, but as you implied months ago, a Jedi cannot afford this compromise."
He swallowed a heavy inhale.
"Hera, I accept... I would accept that proposal."
Her eyes grew round like saucers. "Woah, Kanan... I didn't think..." She halted, gluing her fist to her mouth.
What would he say next, his argument, his self-justification, his case for this?
"Hera, I'll tell you what-could-have-been. I could have said this and figured it out earlier from the moment the Empire fell. I thought I should fall back to the Old Code when this was all done. I even contacted the spirit of an old Master. He talked me-advised me-against it. I naturally deferred to him, because I was taught a Master knew better than me. But then I meditated on this on my own and dug into some truths. The Master made his judgment but I realized that the Force wasn't against me going to you. The Force allowed me to choose between two fears. I drew you away in fear of my own Jedihood. But now I face this fear. I know that choosing you will mean new fears, but these are fears I choose to face, fears I've also been experienced with in our time together during the War."
Her fist lingered at her mouth, contemplatively. She loosened that fist to say, "Kanan, I do have to ask, what would this mean for you, as a Jedi?" It would be his decision, but she hated to think that he would sacrifice his Jedihood for her.
"Leave me to do the grappling with my Jedi ways, I'm not going back and I'm not casting off my identity and duties as a Jedi." He stepped forward. "Leave me to debate this with the old Master."
Hera Syndulla, who had anchored her feet from stepping forward and considered it protocol to not get too close to Kanan, felt magnetized as her feet willed themselves to move her toward the twinkle in his blue eyes.
But as his breath veered closer to her shaded cheeks, a rapid beep-beep-beep cut through.
Her comlink flickered at her belt.
Recoiling wasn't rejection but a reflex. She relished his warm proximity and the fuzz of his robe cotton, but she had to answer the call. "I'm needed elsewhere. A village needs a ration delivery."
She half-expected him to beg her to stay a few seconds.
His wink relieved her. She recognized that slyness at his lips, a signal that he was turned on by her devotion to work.
"Go to em', Captain."
She flew off, her hands brushing his fingertips, knowing that they will continue where they left off.