fandomhigh | Laying Low for Beginners, Thursday, Period 1

"Okay," Kanan said breezily, leaning against the control panel in the Danger Shop and grinning a little, "now that we've all seen more macramé than any of us ever wanted to see in our entire lives, we can get back to the fun stuff that doesn't involve gremlin wrangling."

He flipped a switch on the panel, and suddenly he was behind a bar, the entire room taking on the appearance of a dirty, somewhat crowded cantina. Behind the bar there was a hallway that probably led to storage rooms, restrooms, and the like. There was also meant to be a set of stairs leading to an upstairs apartment at the end of the hall, but this simulation didn't really need one, so he'd left it out.

"Welcome to the Asteroid Belt. In its day it was, by a very scant margin, probably the cleanest Cantina on all of Gorse. We'd actually wipe out the drinking glasses." Gorse was a charming planet, really, and they were parked smack-dab in the perpetual night side. Because the day side was a molten inferno not even hospitable to most droids. "Most of the clientele consists of miners and freighter pilots coming over from Cynda to wind down after a long, hard day working the moon, and if that doesn't tell you how rowdy it can get in here, nothing will. Of course, rowdiness leads to the occasional brawl, because what would a good cantina be without the occasional brawl."

He raised his eyebrows as a trio of Stormtroopers, armored and dressed in white, came in through the front door and started looking around the room. Kanan had changed up the sim slightly since the last time he'd taught this class, yes. No reason.

"These guys," Kanan continued, "are the Empire's Stormtroopers. You'll have to trust me when I say they're a little more driven than the clones here in town, and while you're not entirely sure if it's you that they're here for, you'd probably rather not find out. The Empire's got a bad track record for disappearing the people it's looking for. You've got a back exit, which they might or might not have another Trooper posted at. You've got a supply closet down that hallway. There are plenty of other delightfully inebriated patrons to get lost in or around. Hell, if you're really smooth, you might even be able to talk them down. Judging by the way they're asking questions around the room, they might not even know what you look like. But you can't get arrested and you can't fight 'em. Fighting 'em is just going to bring hell down on your heads, and there won't be any more coming back for anybody, then."

A beat.

"And besides, it's kind of against the spirit of the whole class."

Please don't be Dante. If Kanan ever had to teach another Dante again, he would be very put out.

[OOC: OCD is up, class is in session!]

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"Okay, you don't have to look that relieved," Sabine said. "What kind of history?"

Considering things like this class, she didn't think she was pushing by asking that.

Kanan looked at her quietly for a moment, and then just sighed and reached behind himself, pulling out one half of his disassembled lightsaber. On its own, it didn't look like much of anything, really. Scrap metal, perhaps, unless you knew what to look for.

He held it up for her to see.

"Do you know what this is?"

Sabine peered at it, and shook her head. "Spare parts? For some reason?"

Kanan shook his head, unclipped the other half of his lightsaber from his belt, held both halves up, and screwed them together.

"And now?"

Now it was probably a little more obvious. And he was doing an impressive job of not crawling out of his own skin while an old fear tried to force its way up from somewhere deep in his chest.

Yeah, that she recognized. Because history.

"That's a lightsaber. Where did you get a lightsaber?"

"I built it."

So, that. And everything that entailed.

"...When are you from, again?"

She was trying not to have to ask how he was alive then.

"After the clone wars ended. Several years after."

And everything THAT entailed.

"Huh," she said, studying him. And then she looked around, and said, "Guess I don't need to ask how you've lasted this long."

Maybe she was a little impressed.

"You don't need to ask," Kanan agreed. "It's basically my syllabus."

He twisted his lightsaber's hilt, breaking it apart again, putting the two pieces away.

"So." And now he was left feeling relieved and awkward in about equal measures. "There's that."

Sabine had a few questions, some of which she decided she dhdbt really need to ask, but the one she went with was, "Why do you have that in two pieces if you tell people?"

She wasn't about to think she was somehow special there.

"Old habit," Kanan sighed. "I don't tell people back home, that's the point. Here... it doesn't matter as much. Nobody cares. Hell, I assemble it and train with it in the park on Fridays. But you never can be sure who'll show up."

He wasn't going to ever get over that surprise visit from Vader that one Parents Weekend.

Ever.

"Like me?" Which, to be honest, she kind of got.

"Like... anyone," Kanan sighed. "There was a Sith wandering around here for a few days a while back. He didn't stay long, but considering he was here to keep tabs on one of our former students..."

He shrugged. Fandom was complicated. And Skywalker basically calling him an overreacting idiot after the Vader thing hadn't helped restore his faith in the safety of the island, either.

"Not just like you."

Sabine didn't know what that was, but apparently it was enough to worry about. "And the different timelines and universes can't help any."

"The different timelines and universes get confusing fast," he agreed. "I've met people from decades in our future, talking about things I've never heard of in my life. And people from thousands of years in our past. It's impossible to keep it all straight. Best to just exercise caution whenever somebody new shows up. You just happen to be the first from anywhere near my own time that I don't know already."

Well. There was Aphra, but... what to even make of Aphra?

"Oh, there's the Twi'lek," she pointed out. "Hera?"

Yeah, he knew her.

Oh hey! Look at Kanan's stupid goofy grin!

"Yeah, Hera and I have met."

Somewhere between now and actually catching up to Sabine's point in the timeline, he'd probably get to be at least slightly less of an obviously smitten dumbass about it.

"I mean, uh. I met her on Gorse. She came back to the island with me. We're roommates?"

Also rebels together. Also that.

"Oh." And she noted the goofiness, But was just going to leave that alone right now, since he was her teacher she'd known for two weeks. "Is she... like you?"

"No," Kanan replied, shaking his head a little, sobering up just as quickly. "But she knew about it, before she came back here. The first person in years to find out."

He looked around the room again and sighed. Things really had gotten interesting on Gorse. Sort of the beginning of the end of his running away.

"There aren't many people in the multiverse that I can trust quite the same way I trust Hera."

"You're lucky," she said. And while that was about the same time she'd use to say the sky was blue, she meant it, as someone who'd had the rug pulled out from under her by literally everyone she'd ever trusted.

"Believe me, I know."

Until Hera, literally everyone he'd ever trusted had wound up dead. Except for his current namesake, who he'd left behind, not looking back, after finally coming to terms with just how close he'd come to getting Kasmir killed.

"She seemed nice," Sabine said with a shrug. "Easy to talk to."

Which was saying something.

"Her head's in the right place," Kanan replied, nodding a little. "And she knows what it is she wants in life. It's not every day you meet someone quite so... driven... as Hera."

"That sounds intense.," she noted.

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