fandomhigh | Flight Club [Flight Shed]

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Flight Club [Flight Shed]

The last few weeks of Flight Club had been a little shaky and, for that, Gavin was going to do his best to try and make this one a little better. After all, his gremlin bite had mostly been forgotten due to the kids arrival. He could show his face without wanting to die.

"Welcome back," he greeted, nodding. "I hope everyone survived the weekend okay. My kid was kickass but a really bad troublemaker. Gets that from his other father."

He'd just leave his name out. John knew who he was.

"Anyway, today, we're going to be sticking with the kid theme," Gavin said because he wanted amusement. "We're all going to be driving landspeeders...and you're going to have four kids with you. Four crying, screaming, messy, restless kids in the back. Your job will be to drive the landspeeder while making sure the kids don't fall out, don't hurt each other and don't hurt you. You may laugh but children are a HUGE distraction and if you can deal with them, you'll be able to deal with just about any distraction thrown at you when you're flying. You can't throw the kids out of the speeder, either."

Not looking anyone specific, nope.

"Have fun."

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Talk to each other, eat food, gaze off into space!

Ben had food that he was shoving around on his plate disinterestedly. Every now and then he would glance around the room, then go back to poking at his food.

Oh, this was going to be a fun day, Tahiri could tell.

She'd just be over there, as far into the corner as she could get.

Ben walked closer. "What's wrong?" he murmured. "Wronger?"

"Jaina's furious with me," Tahiri said in a low voice, "and you're going to be too, I bet."

Tahiri was kind of not counting on anything going in her favor by this point in the day.

"What happened?" Ben asked, his Force-sense going wary.

There was a very distinct wave of guilt rolling off Tahiri, who swallowed and looked away. "She asked me yesterday, you know. About us."

Ben pressed his lips together. Fantastic. "Oh."

"Yeah." Even more guilt now, yay, especially since it hadn't been so much outright asking as Tahiri just failing at sneaky. "I'm sorry, I just -- sorry."

Well, the school was still standing...

"It wasn't going to stay secret forever," he said.

Tahiri blinked at him in mild surprise. "That's not the reaction I was expecting somehow."

"I'm tired," Ben said, anger sparking in his eyes. "I'm tired of remembering who can hear what, who knows what and worrying about how everyone will react if they hear something they shouldn't. I'm tired of having to make sure more than one Jaina is happy, or remembering which Luke can't find out that there even will be a Mara, or which Tahiri is mine and not some--" he snapped his mouth shut and yanked hard at his braid.

"I need something to hit, or to shoot, or to break that isn't someone I care about," he said. "I'm tired of breaking people. And if Jaina is angry, she can be angry at me, too."

"You have enough to deal with, without her being mad at you," Tahiri said, taking a reflexive step toward him and pulling up short, and then being frustrated that the pulling up short was getting to be habit. "And I think she's more hurt than just mad, and that makes it worse. And Ben . . ."

She took a deep breath. "Sooner or later, you and I really, really need to talk."

There was absolutely no way she'd failed to notice just what he was saying when he cut off midsentence.

"I can handle Jaina," Ben said. Yes, he was completely skipping the last part of what she'd said. Ignoring things he didn't want to deal with was practically a family tradition.

"Yeah, that's not going to work, Ben," Tahiri said. "Don't think I don't notice you ignoring everything else I just said, because I've been doing that a lot lately too. You're tired of keeping secrets? So am I. Even if it's harder for you, knowing stuff we won't for a long time yet. Jaina's not the only one who can figure stuff out from what isn't being said, you know."

Ben disappeared completely in the Force and looked away from her. "Then you should guess why I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh, I can guess. And I guess you have no idea how much it's scaring me," she said quietly.

He chewed on his lower lip. "Always in motion is the future," he murmured. "If my saying something makes it happen, I'd never forgive myself. I hate scaring you, but knowing won't make anything better."

Tahiri shut her eyes and rubbed a hand across her forehead; she could feel a tension headache coming on. "You think I don't already worry about something like that every day, Ben? You know what's in my head. And my being freaked out doesn't make that any easier to handle."

Ben didn't think that telling her that her fears came true, at least in one dimension, would help anything.

He crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. "I'm protecting you," he insisted stubbornly.

"Keeping me at arm's length isn't protecting me," Tahiri burst out. She wasn't going to cry, dammit, she wasn't. "Neither is pulling away from me like there's some kind of monster inside me that might burst out any second. People at home look at me that way enough. All it does is hurt more. Don't you get that?"

The muscles in Ben's jaw clenched and he stepped in a little closer to her. "I have a lightsaber scar the size of my forearm across my back," he said, voice shaking despite his best efforts, "and I didn't get it from Jacen. I got it from someone who feels a lot like you."

Tahiri looked absolutely stunned, and she felt as sick as the emotions pouring off of her. Being kept at arm's length wasn't the only thing that could hurt like hell. "I knew there was something wrong with your version of me," she managed in a whisper. Then, a little more desperately, "But I'm not her."

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