MCA #3, Friday Evening, After Dark

[uncertain_dume]

It had been all too easy for Kanan Jarrus to fall asleep on the couch that night after the sun had set, with a dog curled up at his hip, feeling, if not secure, at least relatively comfortable in his surroundings. It had been a long, long while since he'd been afraid to sleep, after all.

It had been all too easy for Caleb Dume to jerk awake with a start to find himself in a strange room, on a strange couch, with a strange animal curled up at his hip. He was on his feet a moment later, eyes wide, heart pounding in his ears, looking wildly around the room.

This wasn't Kaller. He'd been sleeping - a luxury he hadn't been able to afford in days - and this wasn't Kaller. He was hungry, Force help him he was exhausted, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out where he was or how he got here. He hadn't been restrained, though... there didn't seem to be any barrier between himself and the outside that he needed any real amount of effort to get past. So he hadn't been captured. Had he? He didn't know. He didn't know.

He was so, so tired.

The animal that had been sleeping beside him whined and looked up at him in concern, and Caleb crouched down low, reaching to scratch behind its floppy ears. Wherever he was, he couldn't stay here, couldn't afford to be found. So now, the question was whether he wanted to leave through the door, or through the window.

He was a Jedi, and the door was the obvious way out. This one was really a no-brainer.

[OOC: I WANT A TEENY JEDI OKAY HI. Open for the roomie or anybody who might notice a tiny Jedi trying to sneak out a third floor window after dark.]

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[snipsnspecks]

Ahsoka was trying to get used tot he idea of opening wearing lightsabers again headed back to the dorms after spending the afternoon working on her ship when a nudge from the Force, had her frowning and looking up (and up) at the side of the apartment building, an unlit lightsaber in one hand.

[uncertain_dume]

A foothold there, and a handhold there, and... Caleb sighed and thumped his forehead against the outside wall of the building. He was too tired to just climb all the way down. And that animal he'd woken up beside was hanging out the window, whining at him. At this rate, if him just hanging off the side of a building didn't give away the fact that he was here, the creature sounding loud and pathetic just above his head probably would.

Caleb gritted his teeth, and then, with a deep breath, planted one foot on the wall and pushed himself off of it, landing in a seemingly effortless crouch on the ground.

And then he looked up to see... the lightsaber, first and foremost.

Caleb blinked.

"What...?"

[snipsnspecks]

He wasn't the only one caught off guard, though Ahsoka was at least slightly better at concealing her surprise at appearance of a vaguely familiar youngling.

"I know you," she said, trying to place the face and Force presence. "From the Temple."

[uncertain_dume]

Caleb's gaze went from the lightsaber to the hand that was holding it. Then up to the face of the person who was speaking to him. A familiar face, if not one that he'd ever really spoken to, before.

"I... I know you, too." He pulled himself to his feet, swayed a little, and then reached up to run a hand through his hair. "You're..."

He hesitated, not sure if he wanted to go with 'Master Skywalker's Padawan,' or the much simpler, 'alive.'

"I'm awake, right?"

It had been a very, very long few days.

[snipsnspecks]

Ahsoka clipped her lightsaber back on her belt and reached out to steady him, loosening her shields so he could feel her reassurance.

"You're awake," she said, then, more importantly, "And safe."

[uncertain_dume]

"Safe," Caleb echoed, leaning on her a little, both physically and clinging to that reassurance like a lifeline. "Where are we? Last I remember, I was on Kaller." A beat. "Hiding."

This didn't feel like Kaller. Kaller... didn't have any other Jedi on it. He'd been there when that had happened, after all.

[snipsnspecks]

There were a surprising number of Jedi here, but it was probably better to ease him into that. It'd been shocking enough and she was pretty sure she'd been in better shape than he was right now, and his master wasn't here to cushion the blow by being, well, here.

If he'd even had a master. His name was still giving her the slip, but she did remember he hadn't gone through the Initiate Trials yet when she'd left.

"Earth, it's kind of a weird place." Ahsoka had no idea how much of an understatement that was. "Technically, it's not even part of our galaxy."

[uncertain_dume]

Caleb had been about to muse that he'd never heard of a planet Earth before, and to ask what system it was in, maybe he'd missed something somewhere, when she added that other part.

That very much got his attention, and he blinked up to look at her with wide eyes.

"What? How? Did somebody find us? Are you sure it's safe here? Grey and Styles, they were looking for me." He chewed the inside of his cheek for a few moments. "I don't know what's going on. Everything's wrong."

[snipsnspecks]

Ahsoka sent another, more focused, burst of reassurance at him.

"Caleb, slow down. Breathe." Because it turned out asking that many questions in that short a time was exactly what was needed to jog that memory loose. " We are safe here. It's hard to explain, especially since I don't really understand the why, but time works differently here."

She was going to have to make a more deliberate effort than usual to for them to avoid the troopers, running into them would likely end in something worse than awkwardness tonight.

[uncertain_dume]

Okay. Breathing. Caleb could handle breathing. Just so long as it didn't turn into yawning, he was fine. He couldn't afford to...

Or, wait, maybe he could. It was safe. Ahsoka said so. And she felt right, like comfort and something familiar. He pulled in a breath, then exhaled again.

Okay. Okay.

"Time? How do you mean?"

Yeah, there were going to be more questions where those had come from.

[snipsnspecks]

Questions weren't the problem, it was figuring out answers that were true but wouldn't mess him up further.

"This place, well, more technically, this island, doesn't seem to connect to our galaxy in a strictly linear order time wise." Or even necessarily to the same versions of their galaxy, but that was a sit-down conversation, possibly involving Obi-Wan and Anakin.

"For example I've been here several months already." She bit her lip. "And even without that, I think I'm from slightly later... after."

Which meant even if she could get to Kaller tomorrow (or did something desperate like find a way to ask Hondo to go check), there was no guarantee any version of Caleb would still be there.

[uncertain_dume]

Caleb couldn't quite stop himself from shuddering, wrapping his arms around himself and slumping forward a little. It really didn't take a round of twenty questions to figure out what after was referring to. Not today. Not with it still so fresh in his memory.

"How did you stay safe?"

He was tired enough, and Ahsoka seemed sincere enough, he was willing to roll with the idea of a time disparity. Anyway, the past few days had felt like months.

[snipsnspecks]

It was the only after they had in common, at least of that kind yet. Ahsoka rubbed a hand between his shoulders as she choose her words.

"When it happened, I got lucky." If you could call it that. Like what she'd told Obi-Wan when they'd talked after she'd arrived here, it was the truth, just not the whole truth. "After, they didn't seem to be looking for me in particular, just... us, so I headed for the rim and tried to keep my head down."

With mixed success. Then she'd ended up here.

[uncertain_dume]

"Maybe I should do that, then," Caleb said, softly. "If I can figure out how to get there. Or... no... we're here, and here's safe, and..."

Force, his head was muddled. He hadn't slept or had a proper meal since the Clones had turned on them, and it was very much catching up with him now.

"Master Billaba told me to run," he murmured, and tried to bite back that choking, burning feeling in his throat and in his eyes. Ahsoka probably didn't need him crying all over her. "She said she'd be right behind me."

And he'd known she was lying when he ran.

[snipsnspecks]

Ahsoka was not going to stop him or judge if he did, especially as she suspected she might have gotten snot all over Anakin's robes in addition to the tears.

"You don't need to decide right away," she said softly as she started walking him towards the dorms, there was food in the common rooms and she could probably talk Peridot into temporarily giving up that bed she didn't sleep in. "You've got time now. And, Caleb, my master would've done the same thing if he'd been there."

She was blissfully unaware that that would not actually have been the case, or of the reasons why it wouldn't.

[uncertain_dume]

Caleb nodded a little and shuffled along, head down.

"I'm sure he would have," he agreed, and ran a hand through his hair again. Gave a tired sigh that was really more of a yawn. Tried not to stumble over his own feet too much. "I'm glad you're alright, Ahsoka."

For a million reasons including but not limited to 'Yay somebody else is alive' and 'I was probably going to just faceplant into the street and die there otherwise.'

[snipsnspecks]

Oh, kriff he was tiny, had she ever been that young? (Yes, yes she had.) Ahsoka was going to have to comm Obi-Wan or Anakin once she'd got him sorted.

"I'm glad you're alright too, Caleb." For many of the same reasons.

Maybe not the faceplanting one.