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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"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."

Ben was shaking. "Here, I know," he said, touching his temple. "The rest of me is taking a little longer to figure that out. I'm fighting like hell to make sense out of this."

He decided right then that he would never mention the rest of what had happened. Ever.

"No, you and I will both try to make sense of it." She was still pale and a little queasy, but some of the old stubbornness was back in Tahiri's face. She was very resolutely not thinking of herself under Riina's influence, holding Anakin's lightsaber so close to his face she'd sheared a lock of his hair off. How close she'd come to doing more than that.

"In more ways than one this concerns me too, you know," she said, "and you're not working your way through it without me."

Ben shrugged, not feeling even a little better for having shared this. "Okay."

"Well, that's better than a no." Tahiri was trying really, really hard here to not get as frustrated with him as she wanted to, but she couldn't keep some of the snippiness out of her voice. "You're not the only one who's ever had things happen, and then had to try and figure out what was real."

"That's because our galaxy is really kriffing cruel," Ben mumbled.

"I'm trying to say I understand, dummy," she said as gently as she could.

Ben hunched his shoulders up. "I knew that."

He hadn't.

"No, you didn't," Tahiri said, "but now you do. That has to count for something, right?"

"It counts for a lot," Ben decided. "I'm sorry I'm being so...this...about this."

"I spent six months doing almost nothing but curling up in a ball and crying, after what they did to me." Tahiri tried to smile at him. "You're doing better than I did, that way."

"You gave me...a little less than a week," he said with a tiny smile.

She looked sheepish, and a little guilty, at that. "I said I'd try to be patient. I didn't say I'd always succeed at it."

"I noticed," Ben said a little dryly.

"Sorry," Tahiri mumbled, her cheeks turning a little red.

"I'm getting used to it," he said, smiling.

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