sith_happened | Office hours [all day]

So for Kennedy, it had been a pretty kickback day in her office-- checking in on the Cleveland contingent, brainstorming training ideas, planning a trip to track down a couple of newly-located Slayers in the area over the weekend, all that. Then Andrew had started bombarding her with questions about Fandom and alternate realities, which had only been mildly annoying until it turned into one-sided (guess whose side) speculation about knowing other people's futures.

That had touched a nerve and also reminded her of something she'd been meaning to do, so she stopped responding to his emails, got up, and headed down the hallway.

"I think I might kind of get the weirdness that is being a Skywalker in Fandom now," she said without preamble, standing in the doorway.

Anakin glanced up with a small smile. "How so?" he asked.

"Timelines," Kennedy answered shortly. "Remember that whole lesson you did about what to do if you know someone's future? Turned out to be way relevant."

Anakin winced despite himself. "How so?"

Someone saying those words in that tone generally didn't follow up with, "And they married the idiot anyway."

"Oh, more ways than one," Kennedy said in a light tone, the lack-of-weight-ness of which sounded like it took some effort. "Like the Xander from Fandom asking me to warn himself, when I met him, about crazy priests going after his eye."

She leaned against the doorframe. "Which he still has, by the way. One hand, not so much."

"Ouch," Anakin said sympathetically. "Been there."

"You--" Kennedy glanced toward his hands, assuming he meant he had a prosthetic now, and raised both eyebrows. "Wow, they don't make replacements anywhere near as good in my world."

Anakin decided to skip the whole "and also I'm a clone" thing. "Well, lightsabers," he said instead. "There's a lot of amputations."

"Kinda figured," Kennedy replied. "Which is why I was going to ask if you knew who I could hit up to get him a decent replacement."

She didn't say it was because it was basically her fault, but the sense of guilt was fairly readable.

"Of course," Anakin said. "I'll put you in touch with my son, who has his own prosthetic hand."

And whose fault was that, Anakin?

"Thanks... oh my god, it runs in the family?" So not the most tactful thing Kennedy could've said, but at least she realized it and looked apologetic.

For a moment, anyway.

"I remember," she went on, because she'd been thinking this over for a while, "you asking us what we'd do if we knew how someone's future was going to turn out. And I remember you asking me if I'd try to save Tara's life with that knowledge, if I knew something was gonna happen to her. So now I gotta ask if you picked that example at random."

Anakin looked slightly abashed. "It might not have been the most hypothetical of scenarios, no."

"You knew." Safe to say Kennedy didn't sound happy about that. "When you asked me that, you knew. I thought it was harsh hypothetically, but man."

"It got you thinking about it without me having to be explicit," Anakin said. "But I'm very sorry it happened in your timeline."

"Yeah, finding that out was..." Kennedy's jaw tightened for a moment as she looked down at her feet, then back up stubbornly. "Doesn't change my answer, you know. Actually I feel kinda validated."

"Good," Anakin said. "I don't try to judge the answers unless it was along the lines of putting babies on spikes. I just wanted you to be able to think before reacting to some of life's more challenging situations."

As it happens Kennedy had no ambitions to put babies on spikes. Nor did she have any burning desire to work in a shoe shop and discover shoes no one had ever discovered before.

"You know, the whole time I was stuck in Sunnydale, and I was wondering if you knew for real, I really wanted to bitch you out for not telling me. But-- hell of a lot of good that would've done by then, huh?"

Now Anakin looked truly regretful. "Exactly. It's the real bitch about knowing all of the possibilities."

"All of them? Just a couple of them is bad enough. And then explaining to her friends that the version I know is still alive..." Kennedy ran a hand through her hair. "How do you guys do it all the time?"

"A lot of pushing it aside and not thinking about it," Anakin replied. "My grandson Anakin is here now...and it's complicated and heartbreaking to meet him."

Good thing she was starting to learn all about the Scooby repression method of coping, then. "I didn't know you had another--" Kennedy began, and trailed off.

"Oh," she said much more quietly. "Yeah. God, that sucks. My girlfriend now... they were together. Before. When it happened. I didn't find that out until after I was already..." She waved a hand over her head as if to symbolize 'in too deep.'

Anakin winced. "I think you've just set a new standard for awkward," he said sympathetically.

"One achievement I wasn't aiming for," Kennedy said dryly. "But it is what it is, and my head hasn't exploded yet."

She snorted, and half smiled. "I thought about your class a lot during that whole apocalypse deal, you know."

"In that it was helpful for you or that you wanted to track me down later and smack me?" Anakin wondered.

"Yes," Kennedy replied. "Also, all the times I was pretty sure you'd be telling me 'I told you so.'"

Like giving in to her temper. And hubris.

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