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Kit hesitates outside the door to the medbay, hand halfway up to knock. Takes a steadying breath, collecting his emotions, dropping his hand back to his side. Takes a second, slow, deep, breath as he pieces himself back into Kit, from the worried specter that had floated through Kit’s life for the past week and a half. That specter had no purpose here, it wasn’t what Nahdar needed right now. Kit takes a third deep breath and knocks on the door.
The door slides open, and Kit steps into his padawan’s room. Splint nods to Kit as the head medic stepping out of the space to give them some privacy. Nahdar is propped up on the cot. He’s leaning on a pair of pillows, propped up against the wall, but he is upright, an improvement over when Kit had been here yesterday. A pair of IVs comes out of his left arm, each one connected to a different drip. Nahdar’s chest is wrapped in more bacta patches than Kit had seen on one person’s torso in a long time. Kit carefully schools his eyes on Nahdar’s face – the one part of the Mon Cala’s form that Kit could look at without feeling the weight of his failure.
“Master?” Nahdar croaks out, his voice hoarse.
“Water, Nahdar?” Kit responds, already moving to get a cup for him.
“Master, It’s ok. I’m alright.” Nahdar answers quickly and curtly, even as his whole body is wracked with shudders. Kit turns the tap on anyways, filling it up. Rex’s advice rings in his head as he did so, warning him that if he felt he was going to be needlessly cruel; the best option was a brief retreat. Kit takes another deep, if quick, breath, and turns back to face his padawan.
“Drink, Nahdar.” Kit offers the cup to the Mon Cala in a tone that made it clear Kit would stand next to his bed with the cup approximately until Nahdar drank the water, no matter how long that took. Nahdar’s hands shake as he attempts to bring the flimsy single-use cup to his mouth. Kit’s head-tresses twitch with concern as he leans forward and rested his hands around Nahdar’s, supporting and steadying them. Not unlike a master was supposed to support a padawan, supplies a traitorous portion of Kit’s mind, which sounds suspiciously like Obi-Wan on a bad day.
Nahdar tries to pull away from the touch, so Kit removes his hands away as soon as Nahdar had drained half the cup, moving it to the table on the side, just out of the spill zone for the monitor that steadily beeped out Nahdar’s heartbeat. Kit reaches out to Nahdar through the shell of their severed force bond to try to get a feel for his padawan, to connect the way they once did on missions, both dull and dangerous. Kit finds only Nahdar’s impressive yet frustrating shields and wonders who had taught him to make them so strong.
“There’s no need to coddle me, Master. I’m fine.” Nahdar grinds the words out, and Kit has to bite down on his initial reaction, beyond the brief release of pheromones into the air that would have had other Nautoleans giving him a wide berth. Instead, Kit silently asks himself what Rex would do.
“It’s alright to not be fine, Nahdar.” Rex-in-Kit’s-head probably would have stopped there, but Kit isn’t Rex. “Grievous injured you quite horribly, you are recovering far quicker than anyone expected you to. You worried me.”
“I’m sorry I let that happen, Master, but I’m going to get stronger, and I’ll be powerful enough to cut down any Separatist who tries to do something like that again!” It was clear that Nahdar tried to punctuate his worrying comment with some kind of physical motion, but he aborts it with a twinge of pain.
“To seek power to use against another is not the Jedi way, Padawan Mine.” Kit lightly scolds, resisting the urge to place his hand on Nahdar’s shoulder the way he once had when trying to teach a lesson to the younger Jedi.
“I’m not your padawan anymore!” Nahdar cries out, and the force around him hardens to push Kit away, separating them.
“Nahdar, even though you’ve been knighted, you’ll always be my padawan, no matter-”
“I haven’t been your padawan since you left me behind!” Nahdar cuts him off, and the force uncurls with rage, leaking out from Kit’s padawan, and Kit is taken aback for a moment before he feels the undercurrent of hurt powering it, and the Rex-in-Kit’s-head reminds him that the first thing to do is to figure out what caused this, but the words don’t come to Kit in any way that Nahdar would understand.
“Pada- Nahdar, what?” Kit corrects himself because it’s clear that referring to him as his padawan is upsetting the Mon Cala. Kit subconsciously punctuates his words pheromones for affection and worry before he even realizes he’s doing so and clamps down on that evolved instinct which has rarely done him any good, as rare as Nautolean Jedi are.
“We haven’t done a mission together since you left for Geonosis! You didn’t even bring me there, you left me in the temple because I wasn’t strong enough, and no matter what I did you kept going back out without me! You left me in the temple alone until my knighting because you didn’t want me around anymore!” Nahdar spills out, and there is an accusation in his eyes. Kit wants desperately to interrupt, to tell his padawan that no, that was never what had happened, but the force is still a physical barrier between the two of them, and Kit has spent little time with Bacara, but it is enough time to recognize when someone has something they’ve been carrying around far longer than anyone should have to and that Nahdar has to get this off his chest now or he never will. So, Kit stays quiet. “You passed me off to whatever Masters were laid up in the temple that week, and I stopped being your padawan!” Nahdar stops his tirade to breathe and then looks at Kit, something burning behind his eyes. Kit had thought it was anger. Now, he thinks it’s loneliness.
“I didn’t pass you off – I didn’t want to drag my Padawan to the front lines of a war zone!” Kit cries out before he can stop himself but clamps down on his anger before he can carry on. Nahdar straightens in front of him.
“I see how it is.” He spits at Kit, with a venom in his anger that wasn’t there before. “You didn’t want me. You’ve never wanted me. You just assigned me to every other Master like I was assigned to you.” Nahdar’s voice cracks, going from blustering anger to a cold, icy rage.
“Nahdar, from the first day you were my padawan, I have wanted you.” Kit gets out, quiet. How had he never noticed his padawan felt this way?
“Don’t lie. You never cared about me.” Nahdar spits back, firey angry again. Kit knows Nahdar is just lashing out, but he feels a strike of hurt at that – he has seven years of memories where he knows he loved Nahdar, and he knows Nahdar knows that too. This would be what Rex meant about saying deliberately cruel things, though. Kit lets the comment slide off, and lets it take his anger with it.
“I may not have planned to take a second padawan, Nahdar, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to remain your Master, or that I didn’t love you and every moment I spent with you.” Kit says, and Nahdar stops short in the face of the love that Kit pours into the force, the pheromones he punctuates it with. Every way he can to show Nahdar how much he means to him, even if Nahdar won’t let him close. Kit takes the opportunity to keep talking. “I arranged for you to stay in the temple because I needed to know you where safe. I arranged for my old teachers to teach you so that if the time came for you to come out to the front, you would be as ready as you could be.” Nahdar goes to say something, but Kit raises a hand, gesturing that now it’s his turn to speak and Nahdar’s turn to listen. “I am sorry if you felt otherwise, but I swear that’s what I meant.” Kit finishes, and he feels the force keeping them apart loosen up. Despite that, a wave of anger rises in Nahdar, filling the previously emptying well.
“Master, how can you say that?” He hisses out when Kit’s com goes off. They both swivel to look at it, and as much as Nahdar needs to have this conversation, Kit can’t help but be grateful for the distraction. He grabs his com and clicks it on, accepting the call.
“Commander Fil!” Kit greets him with a smile. He can feel Nahdar’s affection for the man, and it’s relieving, somehow, to know that it’s just him that Nahdar can’t stand right now.
“Sorry to interrupt, Sir, but there’s a bit of a situation and we need you on the bridge.” Commander Fil responds, before turning to face Nahdar, and grinning at Kit’s padawan. “Glad to see you up and about, General. The men and I have been worried about you.” Nahdar goes to respond, and Kit hands him the com with a smile.
“Keep it. And Nahdar, I promise we will finish this conversation soon, padawan mine.” Kit says with a fond grin before he makes his way to the bridge.