fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

Back at home in Maryland, the weather was awful and raining and gross, just like it had been all week. Thankfully, Fandom's current locale was providing the island with much nicer weather to welcome the new students. It was warm, and sunny, and just about everything the administration could ask for on picnic day.

The tables and chairs had been dragged out and set up around the lawn, and there was the usual buffet table of delectable foods, along with the table of nametags and lists to help folks find their siblings and roommates. With everything set up, it was time to welcome the new folks!

[OCD is up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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And now Obi-Wan was looking. Great. Of course he was. It wasn't as if Kanan didn't know he would be aware of the staring, after all. But it also left no doubt in his mind that he wasn't mistaken about who it was he had been looking at.

He took a few moments to busy himself with grabbing one of the drinks that he'd seen some of the other people at this gathering helping themselves to, and was even halfway to deciding that the sweetness was maybe not entirely to his taste, before another whim had him looking Obi-Wan's way again, a bit more openly now.

Maybe he wouldn't recognize him. It had been years, after all, and while Obi-Wan didn't seem to have changed much in the least, Kanan had still been just a kid the last time he'd seen any Jedi.

He wasn't making his way over just yet. He was still trying to figure out if that was a stupid idea or not. But at least he wasn't being subtle, now.

And as the subtlety vanished, so did any trouble Obi-Wan had with finding him, funnily enough. His eyes locked on Kanan, wondering for a moment.

There was something vaguely familiar about the eyes, and the slant of his nose. A former contact? No. Certainly not a relative, thank the Force.

Kanan mat Obi-Wan's eyes with his chin raised and a strangely blank expression on his face for a couple of seconds before, all at once, he was wearing a little grin and raising his... plastic cup... in a frivolous sort of throwaway greeting.

There was nothing genuine about the frivolity, really, but it was better than what he wanted to do, some confusing cross between running over to hug Obi-Wan out of relief that he was still alive, or stalking over to punch him in the face for disappearing. And the hell of it was, he knew he couldn't blame anybody for disappearing.

It wasn't as though he hadn't done so himself.

... and then Obi-Wan felt suddenly inclined to kick himself for sticking to old thought patterns. If anything, Anakin had proven that no one familiar here was likely to show up from the exact same time period as he was.

Yes, he remembered the eyes and the nose in a much smaller capacity in a much smaller person.

Since the-- what had been his name? Padawan... Dume. ... Since Dume, clearly a Padawan no longer, seemed uninclined to come his way, he'd simply have to cover the distance.

"It appears the Force is not done playing tricks on me just yet," he observed, as soon as he was within earshot.

"Well, what is it they say? It works in mysterious ways?" Kanan looked deceptively casual right then, leaning back against the nearest table and giving Obi-Wan a nod.

He'd gone from 'hug or punch' to 'run far and fast and pretend this never happened' in roughly two seconds flat. Maybe he had some alcohol on the Expedient, something Okadiah hadn't drank yet himself, and he could just bury himself in that until he felt a little less like Caleb and a lot more like Kanan again. He wasn't letting himself do that, either.

"You're looking... good."

There was a note in his voice that suggested that 'good' was the equivalent of 'not dead.' He was looking not dead. Which was a great deal more than he'd expected.

"Rumors of my poor health are rather exaggerated," Obi-Wan said mildly, "Though I hope you'll understand if I prefer to keep them that way."

He studied Dume's face again, though this time more for the tell-tale signs of age and damage. "I see it's much the same for you," he said. "I thought... well, I suppose it doesn't matter."

The last thing he'd heard, Master Billaba and her Padawan had died during the execution of Order 66.

Kanan was holding his breath again, wondering what in the world it was that Obi-Wan would see, looking at his face now. He'd spent a long time wondering what any one of the Jedi Masters would have thought to see what he'd become, had half tortured himself over what Master Billaba herself would have made of him.

He sighed before speaking again. He had a million things he wanted to say, and here wasn't the place for any of them.

"Today is just full of surprises, I guess," he said, and downed the rest of his syrupy fizzy drink just to get it out of the way before offering Obi-Wan his hand. "It's Kanan. Jarrus."

Which would hopefully say a great deal all on its own.

"Kanan," Obi-Wan echoed. "Well."

He took Dume-- Kanan's hand and shook it. "Ben Kenobi, in some regions of the greater multiverse," he said. "Though not this one."

Yes, that said it all. And while Dume looked nothing like the Jedi he had once been, well-- none of them did, these days. It was hardly Obi-Wan's place to judge.

Obi-Wan, you really needed to work on your whole 'assumed identity' thing. Though maybe there were a billion Ben Kenobis out there, who happened to wear robes. Kanan wasn't going to judge.

He was just going to be a little bit grateful that Kasmir had basically snarked the Jedi out of him at a glance, back then.

"... Wait, multiverse?"

Welcome back to the conversation, Kanan.

He was a single Ben Kenobi on a planet trillions and trillions of miles away from anywhere anyone would expect a cosmopolitan Jedi hero to hole up. Obi-Wan liked his chances.

~~It was still dumb.~~

"Multiverse," he agreed. "All sorts of times and places line up here. Don't ask me how-- well, as you said. The Force and mysterious ways."

"Apparently so," Kanan allowed, actually frowning thoughtfully for the first time since the conversation had started. "I'm guessing we're nowhere near anything I might actually recognize, then?"

He'd already established the 'not the Inner Rim' part on his own.

"As far as I can determine, we are so far away from our own galaxy, I can't even figure out where we are in relation to it," Obi-Wan said. "Which is both convenient and rather inconvenient..."

"Depending on what you're aiming for," Kanan allowed. "Good for laying low, I'm guessing?"

Good for laying low, he was hoping. Okadiah would be unhappy about the missing ship, but if he was so far out that there was no telling where exactly he was, maybe they'd assume the ship had exploded or something. There had been quite the light show back there.

"But not so great for...?"

Something? Help him out here, Master Kenobi.

"Doing anything that isn't laying low," Obi-Wan said dryly.

He looked towards some of the new students. "Never mind what mischief this place can get up to."

Kanan followed Obi-Wan's look, silently taking in the faces of the students that were milling about. Some looked fairly at ease, some looked just about as confused as he was. Most of them, an almost startling number of them, in fact, looked human.

Huh.

"The place gets up to mischief?"

"To put it mildly," Obi-Wan said.

Mildly, yes.

"Since I've arrived here, there's been no small amount of transformations, invasions, and... well, recently, we discovered the entire island is a starship."

"The what is a what?"

Kanan had seen big starships. Of course he had. An Imperial Star Destroyer alone was basically a city unto itself, after all. But there was a definite difference between a Star Destroyer and... well...

He was squinting down at the ground underfoot, now, just a touch warily.

"Invasions, I can wrap my head around," he said, finally. "And transformations... I'm going to pretend, just for a minute, that you mean in a metaphorical sense." Because anything besides that was going to take some time to swallow. "What do you mean, the island is a ship?"

"I mean that this is not the planet the island usually rests on," Obi-Wan said. Was he visibly repressing amusement behind that beard? All signs pointed to yes. "Several weeks ago, we suffered an invasion, and the island decided to... launch itself into space."

Kanan could see that amusement, Obi-Wan. Damn it, he could see it, and there was some part of him that felt like he was the fourteen-year-old padawan asking too many silly questions again. He hadn't felt that way in years.

It was a bit unsettling. And Kanan's go-to when things were unsettling was to try to replace that feeling with something... that wasn't. Patent disbelief was going to have to be that thing, then.

"So, what you're telling me is that I'm on an island, that is a ship, that is on a planet that isn't its usual planet, that happens to be located in some galaxy that isn't anywhere near to our own."

That seemed to pretty much sum it up.

"Where conveniently, here you also are."

And this was weird, even for Kanan.

"How?"

Yeah, Kanan wanted to ask that particular question every bit as much as Caleb would have, right then.

"If I knew that," Obi-Wan said dryly, "My life on this island would be so much easier, you've no idea."

He paused.

"Have you seen... Anakin... yet?"

He didn't think their falling out had been public knowledge, but...

"He's here, too?"

Kanan shouldn't have been surprised by that. Maybe? Actually, surprise seemed like just about the right way to react.

"How many of..." He caught himself. He was far from home, but if there were other Jedi here, there was a chance that there were people he'd be less inclined to be open with, too. And not all of them conveniently had the same face. "... How many people we know made their way out here?"

"There have been many Jedi on this island," Obi-Wan said carefully, "But I believe Anakin and I are the only ones who were in the Order when you were."

Dume had been edging around it. Obi-Wan supposed he didn't want to say that out loud. But still.

(Of course, he hadn't seen Ahsoka yet.)

Kanan sighed. Right, he supposed there was no pretending it hadn't happened, then. Not with Obi-Wan standing right there. Still, old habits died hard, and survival was the strongest habit he had, these days.

"I didn't think there were any others left."

He'd hoped there were. But he'd only ever met dead ends and blaster fire. And after a while, he'd given up.

"I can hardly blame you for it," Obi-Wan said. "Those of us who hope to live must hide very far indeed."

Kanan was quiet at that, mulling over this and all of the implications that it had before finally, just this once, embracing that little bit of Caleb again. The one who asked questions, consequences be damned, because he needed to know.

"Do you know about any others who might have survived?"

He didn't want the answer.

He needed the answer.

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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