The Alley Across from the CIC, Friday Evening

[uncertain_dume]

So, this was going to be it, probably. If that damn stone was going to pull something funny, it was going to be doing it tonight.

... Probably.

Which meant that Kanan, true to his word, had situated himself in the shadows across the street from Kaidan's business, where he was keeping an eye open for... well... John. He'd promised his friend that he'd give him a heads-up if Shepard showed up for this, given that there was no way in hell Kaidan was ready to face him just yet, and he was nothing if not true to his word.

He sighed and took a long pull from a thermos of caf he'd brought along. He just had to make it through the night. If he made it through tonight, they were probably in the clear.

This was going to be a long haul.


[OOC: For some in particular, can be open! Note for Squirrels: Okay to say visitors arrived and they went inside after a brief misunderstanding, specifics of the misunderstanding NFB, please!]

Comments

[random_encounters]

Ash's eyes narrowed. "That's none of your goddamn business. Beat it, scav, before you get hurt. I have no time for your macho posturing bullshit."

[uncertain_dume]

"... Scav?"

Kanan managed a split second of looking baffled before his brow furrowed a little and he shook his head.

"No, no, let's start over. I'm here on lookout for the guy that runs this place."

Kanan. Now it looked like you were stalking Kaidan.

[random_encounters]

"What do you want with him?" Ash fired back aggressively.

She had no idea who the owner was but if they were using that name they were Alliance.

[uncertain_dume]

"Want with him?" Kanan shook his head. "Look, a buddy of mine just wanted me to be absolutely certain he didn't get any unwanted visitors in there until he's done dealing with something, get it?"

Kanan, stop talking.

[random_encounters]

Ash nodded. Scavver syndicate, sounded like. Going for an officer or former officer.

Ash was done talking. Without telegraphing it she pitched her helmet at his face and dove for his legs.

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan... didn't see that coming. The island was crawling with new and he was still half preoccupied with his own concerns about what that meant, he barely had time to raise a hand to stop the helmet from breaking his face.

Which meant that he was going down, hard, his legs getting swept out from underneath him. He barely managed to turn enough to slam an arm down, taking the brunt of it that way rather than cracking his head open on the cobblestones.

"I don't have time for this," he complained, lips pulled back in a snarl as he tried to get back to his feet.

[random_encounters]

Ash wasn't about to let him up if she could help it. She aimed a rabbit punch at his solar plexus.

Snarling right back at him. "What does your friend want with an Alliance officer? Who are you? Who do you work for?"

[not_the_dog]

Stance had been following...

... You know, he wasn't completely sure what he'd been following. He'd come here with a call in his head, something insistent and quiet at the same time, and he'd followed that here just in time to see some lady beat some guy down to the ground.

It took him a moment to place the face. The voice was different now, an accent more Outer Rim than he remembered, a hell of a lot more height on him, no horrible robes...

"Lady, you're going to want to back away from the Jedi, there," he said, voice filtered almost mechanically through his helmet's speaker system. His blaster rifle was drawn and aimed without hesitation. "I've got some business with him I'm going to need him in one piece for."

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan heard the commotion downstairs. Vette!

He was down the stairs and in the CIC a moment later. Vette was nowhere to be seen. Fight was in the street outside.

He took in everything in a heartbeat. Kanan, down and snarling. On him.. ohgod.. Kaidan knew that armor. It was just as familiar as the woman wearing it.

A Trooper walked up and aimed his rifle.

Kaidan cleared the door and pulled his own gun in one motion. Trained it on the Trooper. "Put it down!" he snapped.

In a creepy moment of déjà vu, Kaidan took in the armor. He'd spent time at the station with Liam. He knew their armor. This..wasn't it.

"You're not one of ours. Put. The. Fucking. Gun. Down. Now!"

[uncertain_dume]

Wow. That woman hit like a sack of bricks, and Kanan suddenly found that his breath was... somewhere not in his lungs, which really was an inconvenient place for breath to be.

And he didn't bother trying to catch it as the commotion cut into his brain.

It wasn't Kaidan's yelling that got to him, though. It was that very particular voice, filtered that very particular way.

It was that one phrase.

From the Jedi.

"Clone!"

His eyes went wide and his assailant was completely forgotten. Let her beat on him, he didn't care. One hand reached for his lightsaber, reflex forgetting that it was in pieces on his belt. Another moment and he was course correcting, pulling his blaster and taking aim.

There was nothing in the world right then but himself and that Trooper and a rising, choking swell of panic.

[spectre_alenko]

"Williams! Get back! You're on a friendly," Kaidan snapped an order. Not looking at her. Not able to look at her. He'd go to pieces if he took the time to look at her and Ash wasn't a threat.

He took two steps to the side to take up a flanking position, his aim unwavering and pointed at the Trooper's head.

[random_encounters]

Ash scrambled back, staying low and hopefully below the line of fire. "Some friends you got, L-T!" she snapped back at him.

She didn't stop moving until she was behind Kaidan. His barrier could stop bullets.

Reached to undock her own gun and swore. Dock was empty.

[not_the_dog]

Funny enough, this wasn't how Stance had pictured this reunion at all. But now there were two guns trained on him to his one, and one of them happened to belong to the guy he was trying to save.

He held up his hands, and then, ever so carefully, crouched down to deposit his rifle on the ground before straightening up again.

"I see we started this reunion on the wrong foot. Caleb...? You in there?"

... Caleb did not seem to be in there. That blaster simply took better aim.

[spectre_alenko]

Reunion. Caleb.

Ash behind him. Back from the dead.

Kids. We were both just kids.

Hadn't said his name. Kaidan took a risk.

"What's your name?"

[not_the_dog]

Stance didn't know what branch of military this man was from; likely not his own. But that woman had given him a rank, and he'd called Caleb a friendly, which meant that there was nothing for it but for him to straighten up, raise a hand in a salute, and reply.

"CT-1157, Lieutenant." A pause. It was new, but so help him, he'd earned his name. "Stance, Sir."

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan hadn't quite managed to come home, yet, eyes still wide, blaster trained on the Trooper.

Until he straightened.

Until he replied. And then it hit him like a second hit to the guts, knocking the wind out of him all over again. He lowered his blaster.

It slipped out of his hands.

And the only reaction he could think to have as it hit the cobblestones at his knees was a laugh. An ugly, incredulous laugh while his mind tried desperately to process the difference between panic and pain and hope and the familiar feeling in the Force of the trooper who was standing in front of him, wearing his first friend's armor and using his first friend's name.

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan heard the name and blinked. Didn't have time to process more than that because of the sound that came out of Kanan.

Kaidan docked his gun. "At ease. Take the helmet off, son," he said in a quiet voice of command, "He's going to need a minute and it's probably best if he can see your eyes." Clone - the face would be the same as the others, but the eyes of a friend were always different.

And then he walked over to Kanan and knelt in front of him. "Buddy, look at me. You know what this is. You're the one who warned me about this weekend. That's why you were out here tonight getting your ass kicked by my friend. You must've touched that damned rock too. C'mon, buddy. Focus."

Ash watched all of this with a brow puckered in confusion. Kaidan ignored her for the moment. His priority was the living.

[uncertain_dume]

Stance reached up and pulled his helmet off, revealing that same damn face, and Kanan struggled to tear his eyes off of him, turning a look that was still halfway to panic toward Kaidan.

"No, they all-- He wasn't--" His head was spinning. His heart was beating in his ears. "But I..."

He had no idea how words worked anymore.

He had known this was coming.

That's why he was out here.

He'd known.

"I can't do this. Not a clone."

It was Stance's turn to recoil as though he'd been slapped.

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan locked that gaze and held it.

Pieces fell into place. Several conversations over the last few months filled in the blanks that Kanan couldn't finish saying.

"Clone Trooper One Thousand One Hundred Fifty Seven. That's what he was to them. That's not who he was to you," Kaidan began intently, "If you ever thought of him as 'CT-1157', it wasn't for long. This kid isn't 'a clone' to you. I doubt he ever was."

He continued, "One of the first friends you made outside the temple. The friend who saved your life twice. The first friend you ever lost. The only one of the three you lost while he was still your friend. He has a name. You've been thinking about him all week. You were telling me about him on Tuesday."

The friend whose death Kanan blamed himself for. He said he'd distracted him.

Oh god, Kanan, I'm so sorry.

Kaidan took a breath and repeated Kanan's own words back to him.

"Acknowledge the pain, Jedi. Tell me his name."

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan stared up at Kaidan with wide eyes, hands falling limply to his sides. Not ready for this. He couldn't.

He couldn't.

Acknowledge the pain, Jedi.

His gaze fell, and he struggled to move past the rising panic ripping at his mind. To for once in his damn life actually act like the Jedi he had been raised to be. To live by that code, anchor himself to it. Emotion, yet peace.

They slaughtered us!

Ignorance, yet knowledge.

But not him. He died for you.

Passion, yet serenity.

He said it himself. His last words. 'I've got your back.'

Chaos, yet harmony.

'Don't call me kid. Not anymore. Not after today.' Act like it, Caleb. Act like the Jedi you're supposed to be.

"Death, yet the Force," Kanan murmured. "Stance. His name is Stance."

[spectre_alenko]

"A good man, you called him," Kaidan continued, "Kept you from dying on Kardoa. Stood over you and held the droids off. Stance. This is your friend Stance."

"You've carried him with you for a decade. I get why you're freaked out," because it all made an awful, horrible sort of sense now that the pieces were in place, "but this is Stance. Not any of the others. This is Stance."

"Acknowledge the pain, don't let it take the best of you away. Don't see them when you look at him. You know he's different. You can feel it."

More firmly, "You can do this. You need to look at him and see him, buddy." Again, repeating Kanan's own words back to him, "Look to the Force. Then open your eyes and look at him and tell me who he is."

[uncertain_dume]

"They were all different," Kanan noted softly, closing his eyes and reaching out through the Force all the same. "Each and every one of them. Styles, Big-Mouth, Grey..."

He pulled in a slow breath.

"Remo and Mixx. Soot. Kaylon. Every single one of them was different." He exhaled that breath, making a soft 'tch' sound between his teeth. "Stance was just gone before that changed."

He didn't need to reach far or look hard. Of course it was Stance standing there. Of course. Who the hell else could it be?

He opened his eyes and looked at the clone, looked at the armored man just beyond Kaidan, who was looking right back at him, expression troubled.

"But... he's Stance. Same as he ever was."

[spectre_alenko]

"And now he's back and he still hasn't changed," Kaidan said. "He saw Ash take you down and he put a gun on her and ordered her off you. It wasn't pointed at you, buddy. He was trying to defend you. Like he always did."

Kaidan picked up Ash's helmet and Kanan's blaster, popping it inside the helmet for ease of transport, and stood. Taking a step back, he reached to give Kanan an arm up. He didn't need it. Kanan was perfectly capable of standing on his own. "Come on. Let's take this inside and get it off the streets, yeah? CIC's right there, couches and everything."

[uncertain_dume]

He didn't need to take that arm up, no, but that wasn't stopping Kanan from reaching for it. It was an anchor. It was something here and now, something that made sense when Fandom was hell-bent on making none at all. He wasn't about to turn that down.

"Inside," he agreed, turning an uneasy smile toward Kaidan before looking back at the other two. "... You, uh. You've got company."

She wasn't Shepard. That was good, right?

[spectre_alenko]

"Yeah, I noticed that when I saw her kicking your ass," Kaidan teased him.

His turn to face the dead. He offered her a lopsided smile. "It's good to see you again, Ash." He introduced her to the other two, "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, crew of the Normandy, died guarding the evac of the Salarian Special Task Group that had been stationed on Virmire."

He handed Kanan back his blaster, Ash her helmet. "Ash, this is.." Uh. Yeah. About that. "Well, the kid's Stance, I'm sure we all gathered that by now." He looked at Kanan and arched a brow as he headed for the CIC.

Kaidan paused when he opened the door. "If there are any of our fine furry journalists outside or inside, there will be two bottles of rum waiting if nothing but 'visitors arrived' makes it into the radio notes."