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Of Sith And Street Rats

Between thinking it best to steer as far away from the Core as possible given the current regime, and needing repairs to his ship, he finds himself on some backwater planet in the middle of nowhere. Not only that, but so far as he could tell, there were only a handful of cities worth the name with one of them being the capital city. Which was also oh-so-imaginatively named Capital City. It seemed to be his best bet, so it was the one he chose to land at.

While his ship was undergoing repairs, he heads out into the city. The workers don't need him breathing down their necks, so he may as well see what, if anything, was of interest. So lightsaber firmly hidden in his jacket, and anything the mechanics didn't need access to firmly locked, he heads out. May as well start with the market. Wherever it is.

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Garth'zel gives Ezra another patient look. "They don't care, per se. But these things tend to get noticed by people whose jobs it is to notice. Like security. Stormtroopers are also supposed to be on the lookout for anything odd. It's why they get stationed places."

Along with being there to deal with civil unrest if it happens. Among other things.

That... that's actually an answer that makes Ezra go quiet as the implications sink in. He hadn't thought of it like that - as something that people would notice not just as an excuse to look down on him, but as something odd to question. And that? That's not good. That's something he doesn't want at all.

Slowly, his fingers in Garth'zel's shirt loosen. He's still reluctant to let go. But to keep the Empire from noticing him...

(noticing him, noticing Garth'zel, maybe taking him away someday, too...)

"I can go back, I guess... You'll... you'll wait for me again?"

Garth'zel ruffles Ezra's hair again, figuring the kid could use it. "I will. I need to go put the groceries away then figure something out for a quick lunch. Do you want me to put Dev on your bed for you?"

Then Ezra can go retrieve his clothes sooner without needing to worry about the toy.

He'd almost forgotten he was holding Dev, so caught up had his mind been with other things. At the mention of the doll, he curls it a little closer. The little cat doll has always represented something warm and comfortable, a time when he was loved, and he's protective of it, especially in the last year. Even if he'd left it in his house instead of keeping it with him for comfort, he'd felt better knowing it was there and safe, and that no one was likely to take it. He could take it with him, to keep it safe, but.

But.

But maybe he might drop Dev because his arms will be full. Or maybe someone might take him from him. And he'd be safe here, wouldn't he? Garth'zel wouldn't do anything to him, and... and he promised he wouldn't leave. Not without Ezra.

A long few seconds of hesitation pass before Ezra nods and holds his doll out to Garth'zel. "You gotta be nice to him, okay? He doesn't like it if you throw him or... or get him wet."

...the topic of washing Ezra's toy should probably be a topic for another day.

"I can honestly say that neither of those options were on my to-do list for the day," Garth'zel assures Ezra, accepting the toy. "If you need more than one trip to get your clothes, that's fine. Just leave them in the laundry room and I'll sort through and wash them when you're done."

And then comes the sorting of the cleaned clothes. But that's an hour or two from now. At least.

He makes a shooing motion at Ezra with his empty hand. "Off with you. The sooner you're done, the sooner we can eat."

Garth'zel gets one last anxious look before Ezra lets himself get shooed out. It takes a lot for Ezra to trust him with Dev. But this is so they won't attract stormtrooper attention. It's important.

That's the only reason Ezra bothers to make the two trips it'll take to get all his clothes back to the ship. The more clothes he has, the more chance they have of no one noticing them.

He still only ends up with two meager piles, because over the course of the past year some of his clothes just hadn't survived. True to his word, all of them are filthy, too, reeking of garbage and who knows what else. Hopefully Garth'zel has gloves...

It doesn't take Garth'zel long to put Dev where he needed to be and the groceries where they also belonged. In the end, he decided to make a plate of three or four sandwiches to pile up in the middle of the table for them to take from as needed.

Although given the state of the clothes Ezra had been carrying, a certain item takes priority. "Considering the clothes you brought back has who-knows-what on them, I'm going to need you to wash your hands at the very least. A shower would probably be better."

Yes, very good thing Dev had been left with him in his opinion. Garth'zel surveys the clothes piles and is glad washers on board ships were meant to be able to stand up to a hell of a lot. "Need to borrow a shirt?"

Not that he intends to do Ezra's current set in whatever loads the other clothes wind up divided into.

"I tol' you they were dirty," Ezra mumbles, embarrassed. Really, it's not his fault he couldn't wash his clothes, or get new ones. "...I'll borrow a shirt." He wouldn't worry about how dirty his shirt is normally, since it's still cleaner than what he's used to wearing, but... well. Some of the stuff on his dirty clothes smelled pretty bad, and it had gotten onto him.

"At least it's not like the time I had to go into a vault that had toxic waste to get something," Garth'zel says philosophically. "All of those clothes were burned."

Because no. There was no saving them. Better to just start over, only keeping his lightsaber.

He goes to get Ezra that shirt before he starts actually stuffing clothes in the wash and putting everything at their highest setting.

With a shirt to change into in hand, Ezra takes his cue to go get cleaned up. He even takes a shower willingly, because the grime from his clothes didn't just get on his hands. Once he's done, he comes back out to find Garth'zel. A question's been tugging at him since Garth'zel brought it up.

"Why'd you have to go in that stuff if it was that bad?"

"Hmm?" A moment later, Garth'zel's brain catches up. "Oh. Because it would have taken far too long to wait for things to get cleaned up properly, given basically the entire planet was a war zone. So I needed to go in and get what I was sent for despite all the toxic sludge. At least I did get help from someone in the form of something I could take to counter the effects of that garbage."

Sure, he'd had to go track the man down and have him dragged back to Sobrik since he had defected, but he also kept his word to let him go after, providing authorization for the man to take a shuttle out of there to go wherever he wanted. Which was likely a planet without an Imperial presence.

"Why'd you have to get that thing at all? What was it?"

Does Garth'zel realize what he's signed himself up for yet? He's going to be answering so many questions for so many years to come.

Though at least there's one good way to shut Ezra up temporarily, and that's to offer him food. He's going to help himself to one of the sandwiches that Garth'zel made for them, and he's going to eat every bit of it with relish.

(Though maybe it helps that he has no pockets to hide bits in.)

Garth'zel takes a moment to think of how to explain this to Ezra. "I needed to get something called a holocron. It's something that both the Jedi and the Sith used to store information. I'm not sure which group started using them first. If a friend of mine was here, he'd probably know and be able to tell us."

He's perfectly aware that he's left himself open to questions about the Sith although he'd rather wait until Ezra was older to properly explain them. He can at least give him a very basic simplified version.

Own hands washed, he helps himself to a sandwich as well after having gotten them their respective drinks. Answering anything further can wait until he's gotten some food in himself; he's hungry.

"What's the Sith?" Really, Garth'zel has no one to blame but himself for the question that pops out of Ezra's mouth predictably. "Are they like Jedi?" That's the inference Ezra's drawing from that statement, since Garth'zel talked about both of them doing the same thing.

As for food, well, he can talk and eat at the same time.

"Only in terms of also using the Force. They're basically the Jedi's polar opposites and aren't people to mess with, because they are dangerous," Garth'zel cautions. "I think it would be best for me to save stories of them for when you're older. Right now, I'd probably just give you nightmares."

"Are they bad?" Ezra asks. Telling a kid "when you're older" just isn't enough to satisfy curiosity.

Edited 2018-09-29 23:49 (UTC)

"Yes, they're bad," Garth'zel says with a nod. "There's a few who weren't so bad, but they're heavily outnumbered by the ones who do--or did--terrible things to hurt people."

That's going to be a fun conversation they'll have when Ezra finds out Garth'zel is a Sith. For now, though, that's enough of an answer for him.

Well, except for one more thing.

"But they're not here, right? They can't get me?"

Maybe he will just... preemptively scoot into the seat next to Garth'zel. You know, just close enough to feel safe.

That is a conversation that can wait a few years. Maybe even several. By then, it very well may be an 'I used to be...' one.

Garth'zel shakes his head after finishing his bite of food. "There was a big battle between the Jedi and Sith at least a thousand years ago that resulted in the Jedi thinking the Sith had been wiped out. The Sith didn't make their reappearance until sometime within the last twenty years. The amount can basically be counted on one hand, so the odds of meeting one of them are... low."

Yet here he is.

He takes another bite of food before adding "I only know of one by name who's likely to be a problem. There's another I suspect of being so, but if he is, he's hiding it. But so long as we keep quiet and don't advertise our presence or what we can do, there's no reason for them to take notice of us."

"How do we hide it? Just don't... don't do stuff with it?" That might be harder than it sounds. Jumping too high, moving stuff with your mind, things like that, it would be easy to just not do (especially since he doesn't know how to do some of them yet), but how does he turn his instincts off? Ezra bites his lip with worry, then hides it with the drink in his cup.

"Mmm, depends on what some of it is. There's the obvious ones like, say, not making objects go fly around in public. But there's others that are still fine to do since they're not extremely obvious."

"Others..." Garth'zel tilts his hand from side to side in a 'depends' gesture. "Depends on what's being done in what context around how many people."

"How do I know what to do if it depends?" Why can't Garth'zel have an easy answer for him? "And... an' does that mean you can't teach me how to use it?" Disappointment builds up at the thought.

Garth'zel calls his glass to his hand to take a sip, raising an eyebrow at Ezra. Not that he'd do so normally, just making a point. "Being able to do things like that will come in handy and it'll be stupid not to teach you. Like when you're old enough to help with certain repairs around the ship, trying to get a tool that got dropped somewhere tricky would be much more annoying to retrieve the hard way."

"As for the other, common sense often has the answer," he says with a shrug as he sets his glass back down to go back to focusing on his sandwich.

Despite the tug of longing Ezra feels at seeing Garth'zel move his cup with the Force, the little boy scowls, hard and fierce. "But I have common sense!" he protests. "But I don't know! I've never had'a hide it before!"

"The things you've been doing aren't things that people are generally going to notice as anything out of the usual," Garth'zel says patiently. "The ones that require common sense are things you don't even know how to do yet. Not consciously, at least."

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