uncertain_dume | MCA #3, Thursday Evening

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MCA #3, Thursday Evening

Besides class, Kanan really hadn't done all that much this week. He had a bit of a mess in his head to sort through, and between his conversations with Ahsoka and with Master Kenobi earlier in the week, he was a bit torn as to how he wanted to tackle it. Using the person he used to be as an anchor to the Force as Master Kenobi had suggested was a solid plan... except that Kanan wanted very little to do with the person that he used to be. He wanted even less to find himself face-to-face with all of Caleb Dume's unresolved traumas and hurts, and the idea of willingly putting himself through those pains again left him feeling ill inside.

He frowned down at the lightsaber and the holocron that he'd set out on the coffee table in front of himself. He hadn't gotten around to dismantling the weapon and storing it away again after the weekend. He wasn't completely certain that doing so was the right thing to do, here. He sighed and reached to pick it up, frowning at the old, familiar weight in his hand.

What the hell was he doing?

[OOC: Idek. Open for visitors!]

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Kanan wasn't the only one trying to deal with things. Peter's had been less traumatic, but still - what the heck had that been?

So, he was here, at the door of the one friend he'd made on the island who hadn't flirted with him over the weekend (because awkward).

Knock knock!

Kanan's gaze snapped up from the lightsaber in his hand toward the door, and then back down at the weapon again.

"Oh, kark me," he muttered, shoving the hilt into his clothing and making a grab for his holocron. He had both hidden in the folds of his tunic by the time he opened the door, looking... tired. Still. It had been a good week for being exhausted, apparently. "Peter."

He reached a hand up to run through his-- still pulled back hair. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work out so well.

"Uh. Come in. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Hey." Peter paused, noticing Kanan's expression. "You okay?"

Not even a little bit, Peter. Not even remotely.

"Sure," Kanan replied, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm just doing a little bit of tidying. A few things I tend to leave packed away were pulled out over the weekend, and I've been too preoccupied to do much about it until tonight."

It was sort of the truth, if you squinted and leaned your head to the side a bit.

"This weekend." Peter huffed in laughter and shook his head. "I know you said this place was weird, but..."

"Trust me," Kanan replied, smiling wryly, "nobody was more surprised about that one than I was."

He'd been warned about the possibility of becoming a child again. Becoming a child again at exactly that point in his life, on the other hand...

"Holding up okay?"

"I guess. It was..." Weird really didn't begin to cover it. "I haven't been a teenager in fifteen hundred years. Roughly." He blew out a breath. "Haven't been human in nearly that long."

"So you're saying it was a bit of an adjustment, then?"

The power of understatement was truly a beautiful thing.

"What was it like, coming back from that?"

Peter, let Kanan focus on your issues so that he could thoroughly ignore his own, please.

Peter sighed. "It was...almost refreshing, having the worst thing to worry about being where I was. No nightmares, no memories of Hell. But...that isn't who I am anymore, you know what I mean?"

Peter had no problem with that. He was fortunately rather one-track-minded when he got stuck on something.

"I might not have a fifteen hundred year buffer between myself and who I was as a teenager," Kanan noted, "but I think I might have some idea of what that might be like."

Faint clue. Just a smidgen.

"Maybe that was the whole point. Show us who we used to be. Give us some perspective so that we can get right back to moving forward as the people we are."

Kanan was having difficulty figuring out why this might have happened otherwise.

"The boy I was has nothing in common with who I am now," Peter said. "He doesn't even have much in common with the man I was a thousand years ago." He smiled wryly. "The only thing I learned was that it's really hard to get around this place if you don't speak English."

"There are probably worse lessons to learn," Kanan offered. "At least you didn't do anything unbelievably stupid over the weekend? I'm sure people would be talking about it if you had."

Of course, the lack of squirrels on the island did make that one tricky.

"I think I unintentionally flirted back with someone," Peter answered. "But nothing else I can think of."

He grimaced. "I ate a Mooby burger. I wasn't sure where the food was, and someone felt bad for me. I think I'm glad I don't usually eat."

That actually startled a bit of a laugh out of Kanan.

"My first meal on the island was a Mooby burger too," he shared, conspiratorially. "It's not the worst thing I've ever put into my mouth, but I still couldn't tell you what animal actually died to make that thing."

Peter laughed in agreement. "Probably best not to ask."

"I figure that's probably the safest way to be," Kanan agreed. "Especially since I still go there to eat from time to time. Mostly when I'm drunk enough to not care."

Which was still somewhat frequently, admittedly. Kanan was still very much a work in progress.

Which unfortunately meant he'd brought the attention back to himself.

"How was your weekend?" Peter asked.

Kanan made a face.

It was not the face of a man who had enjoyed his weekend in any way, shape, or form.

"I started it by throwing myself out a window," he offered. Because that more or less summed up the state of what the rest of the weekend was going to be like, right there.

"A jarring change?" Peter asked.

"Something like that," Kanan sighed, gesturing toward the sofa before moving to take a seat himself. "While everybody else was experimenting with alcohol for the first time in their life all over again, I got to live out the fallout of what was easily the worst thing I ever lived through. Jumping out the window seemed safer than just trying the door, at the time."

Peter sat down. "If I'd been only a few years older..." He sighed. "My city was overrun, and everyone I knew was killed or captured. Just as well the boy I was hadn't been through that yet."

Sorry, Kanan.

Sorry for what? It meant that Kanan could nice and neatly deflect the conversation right back to Peter!

"Yeah, dealing with that a second time doesn't exactly sound like it would have been a great weekend," he noted. "Unintentionally flirting sounds leaps and bounds better."

"Much," Peter agreed. "Though I wish I'd been able to enjoy better food. So, are most of the weird things I've been warned about like this?"

"Well, on the list of weird things I've been through since coming here at the start of the summer, I've become a teenager, a Loth-cat, and a version of myself twenty years in the future," Kanan offered. "Though I don't remember much about that last one. I couldn't tell you what I looked like in the mirror or anything."

... This was just too painful.

"How does any of this work?" Peter asked. "How do I go back to being a Byzantine boy in this place, and others go back to their childhoods? How do you become another version of yourself?"

"The best answer I have for that so far is that this island has a mind of its own, and thinks that it's funny," Kanan sighed. "How else do I end up teaching a teenage student that happens to be three years older than I am? Or bumping into a human hero from my galaxy who lived thousands of years before my time?"

He hiked his shoulders up a little.

"I think the trick to surviving Fandom is just accepting that nothing is ever going to make sense again. So far it hasn't convinced me that I want to stick around here if I ever get the opportunity to leave, but keeping it in mind makes for fewer headaches, at the very least."

"But there has to be some way it works." Peter spread his hands. "Even magic has logic."

"And I'm sure there is some sort of logic somewhere," Kanan agreed, shrugging his shoulders. "But I haven't been here long enough to learn what it is, and I'm not about to try to ask the island what it thinks it's doing."

Though he almost had to wonder if he could...

Peter sighed. He had no idea how he'd go about asking the island anything. "I don't like not knowing."

"You and me both," Kanan allowed. "I especially don't like not knowing how the hell to get away from here. Or what to expect next."

This was really his own fault for asking for the bars first, but he wasn't going to mention that bit.

"I suppose there might be something in the library, but I wouldn't know where to start looking. Maybe there's a section about the island in particular."

Maybe he had other things on his mind.

"It might be worth checking," Peter said. "But I've got other things to worry about before getting into things I can't help yet."

"Well, then I guess we're both going to have to live with the mystery," Kanan replied, shrugging. "So far, it's been mostly harmless, at any rate."

... Kanan had a funny idea of harmless. Or maybe he just didn't want to talk about his own trauma. One of those.

"Mostly," Peter agreed. "At least I got some sleep."

"See, always a bonus." Kanan smiled, something strained, kind of tired. He'd slept plenty that weekend himself. Caleb had been exhausted. "How have you been sleeping, anyway?"

"I don't sleep much at the best of times." Peter shrugged. "But when I do...it depends. On what, I couldn't really say. Good days don't always mean good nights." Or the other way around, but saying it that way tended to confuse people.

Considering the fact that Kanan had spent several months before Fandom living on a planet that was only hospitable on the perpetual night side, he could probably figure it out.

"Fair enough," he replied, nodding. "It mostly just depends on when your brain catches up to the things that keep you awake, I suppose."

"Yeah." Peter smiled wryly. "Speaking from experience?"

"Unfortunately," Kanan confirmed. "This week's been bad for it, but I'll survive."

Surviving was something he was exceptionally good at.

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MCA #3, Thursday Evening

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