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Fandom Island Counseling Services and Psychiatry, Monday

Vacation had been lovely, but Hannibal was pleased to be back at home, too. His patients seemed glad to see him, too. Some of them far too enthusiastically. He'd blame it on the island, but some people seemed to just be like that. And there hadn't even been any invasions while he'd been gone!

Nevertheless, he was in his office, seeing people, working on another set of wedding invitations, and open to working in friends or colleagues who might want to see him.

[Open post; the doctor is in! No OCD.]

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Kanan frowned, but shrugged as he made himself comfortable.

"Wouldn't be the first place I've been where Basic is rare," he noted. "But point taken. I'm not here asking for travel suggestions, anyway. It's more... somebody who came to the island for one of the students the other weekend."

He frowned a bit more.

"Mostly."

"Mostly?" Hannibal prompted.

"Mostly," Kanan agreed, frowning and wrinkling his nose a little as he said so. "Him, and a few people who are already here."

Yeah, this was messy. It was great. And Kanan was used to messy.

Kanan was also used to being able to get up and leave when messy took over.

"Perhaps you'd better start from the beginning," Hannibal suggested.

Kanan heaved the sort of sigh generally reserved for a man who wasn't nearly drunk enough for a conversation like this, but he nodded, leaning back in his seat.

"There's a... confidentiality thing with doctors, on Earth, right?"

Before he got too into anything. Hannibal hadn't gone and told the whole island about his past, but this was one of those things that had shaken his confidence in the security of his current situation, and at the very least, he had to ask.

"Of course." Hannibal nodded. "Anything you tell me, I am legally bound to tell nobody else, unless you should inform me you are about to commit a crime. And even apart from the legalities, I take doctor-patient confidentiality very seriously."

"I don't have any crimes in mind, at least so far as I'm aware," Kanan sighed. "I'm still brushing up on local law. But aside from a strong urge to grab somebody and shake, which would mostly just end poorly for me, mostly I just find myself going barvy without a way to get back home."

He frowned, and then shook his head a little.

"As it turns out, one of the students is working directly for the Emperor," he said, and every syllable sounded like it had to be dragged out of him. This wasn't an easy topic. Especially not after his conversation with Skywalker. "For the man who ordered the elimination of the Jedi Order."

Hannibal winced. "That seems...awkward and uncomfortable would be putting it mildly, I'm guessing. Does this student know who you are?"

Kanan drew in a breath between his teeth and shook his head.

"Not exactly, I don't think," he settled on. "Though I've been... less than vigilant about hiding where I came from, over the past few months. It's possible they wouldn't know my real name, but might still have cause to suspect that I'm a survivor of Order 66. And they aren't entirely the one I'm worried about. I always did suspect there was more to them than they let on..."

"So what is it you're worried about, then?" Hannibal asked. "The fact that you let your guard down somewhat?"

"There's that," Kanan allowed. "And that their visitor was the Emperor's right-hand. A Jedi-killer in his own right. He might not have been here for us, but the idea that he was here to put the student in their place, to intimidate them into getting back to doing the Emperor's work, doesn't exactly fill me with confidence in the continued safety of the island for people like me."

"No, it wouldn't." Hannibal frowned. "And the fact that the Dean has allowed at least one student to be dragged back to your world to face judgement - albeit for opposing the Jedi - is no reassurance. How does that make you feel?"

Kanan's teeth ground together briefly for a moment at that, processing that information carefully.

"It's... complicated. I'm coming from a place where 'opposing the Jedi' means slaughtering them, and I don't know what charges were brought up against the student," he pointed out. "But the idea that he'd let it happen to one of our students at all makes me feel that much more sorry that I didn't try to drown the tuft-sucking son of a Hutt back when he was telling me to stop being a baby about Vader's visit to the island."

Look, he wasn't going to sing accolades to anybody who opposed the Jedi, but when it was a student...

He'd stood by Mara even though Vader had come for her. He wasn't thrilled with the idea that Skywalker might sell anybody out based on mistakes they made in the past.

"You can ask him yourself," Hannibal said, "Atton Rand; he's a teacher here now. I was never able to determine the precise charges, as that was when the Dean threw me out of his office for daring to question him."

He gave Kanan a somewhat grim smile. "Suffice it to say I'm appalled but unsurprised he remains unable to handle others in an adult manner. Your concerns certainly seem valid to me."

Kanan's mouth fell open a little. Skywalker kicked Rand off the island? For crimes against the Jedi? What?

THE JEDI HISTORY BOOKS WERE NOT IN YOUR FAVOR HERE, SKYWALKER.

Or, at least, they wouldn't be, if the temple and the library hadn't all burned.

"I... huh." Okay then. Rand was back, anyway, so apparently things had worked out either way. "Well, it's good to know that somebody thinks I'm not overreacting. It's easy for him to brush Vader off like no big deal. He's a Knight. I'm... I was going to be one, but I never made it that far. And I was fifteen when everything went to hell. That's a long time hiding from it."

It was weird just talking about it like this, without dancing around any of it, to somebody outside of the Order. But since his only other options were Master Kenobi and possibly Ahsoka, and since he didn't exactly want to drag Ahsoka through whatever poodoo came from being Skywalker's Padawan, and wasn't sure how to approach Obi-Wan because he was Skywalker's Master, it was this or explode.

And Doctor Lecter was outside of all of it. That was... weird. And refreshing.

Edited 2016-10-20 01:53 (UTC)

"Fears set when you're a child can be very difficult to overcome, even when they aren't rational," Hannibal said. "And from what you've told me, your fear is very real. I wonder if the Dean isn't so far removed from his past in your world that he has difficulty allowing for it. He seems to have a peculiar blindness toward it."

He shook his head. "But you didn't come here for me to analyze him, either."

Not that he wasn't happy to trash-talk the man.

And really, Kanan would be quite happy to spend all day doing the same. It was something to focus on that wasn't himself. But here he was, and that wasn't what he'd come here for, entirely.

"I suppose not," he sighed. "Though it's reassuring to know that wanting to get distance from a situation that might very well come back to kill me isn't childish, however cowardly it might ultimately be instead."

Oh yeah, Kanan had issues a mile deep.

"Neither childish nor cowardly, I should think," Hannibal said. "But rather, eminently sensible."

"You know, not many people ever really call me sensible, Doctor," Kanan mused. "Part of me feels like I should get that in writing. I don't think anybody would believe it."

"Well, I make no claims as to your general sensibility," Hannibal pointed out, "only to the validity of this decision."

"Well, since that's the decision I'm currently having trouble with, I'd still take it," Kanan decided. "I shouldn't be having trouble with it at all. Keeping on the move hasn't exactly played a small part in my still being alive today."

"What is it, then, that is giving you the trouble?" Hannibal asked. "Why is the decision any more difficult than usual?"

Kanan sighed. Admitting this was paining him, clearly.

"Because usually, it's just me," he said. "I've turned around and walked away from a lot of situations because I've come too close to being found out, or because I saw an opportunity that would serve me better elsewhere, or, hell, just because I got bored. But there was never somebody else in the situation, or if there was, my leaving could only stand to benefit them. There sure as hell weren't students, or other Jedi."

Or students who were other Jedi.

"Caring makes mobility difficult. Which do you prefer?" Hannibal asked.

"What, given the choice between caring or not? I'll take the one that isn't likely to get me killed," Kanan sighed. "Or, normally I would. Jedi aren't supposed to get wrapped up in connections with other people anyway. Not that I'm exactly a Jedi."

Not that he'd ever made it that far.

"It's made things simpler up until this point."

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