"It… doesn't look so bad…"
Kanan frowned. His hair was hanging loose, freed from its usual ponytail. That alone felt strange. It moved with every tilt and turn of his head; he could feel the breeze shifting the individual strands in a way that he hadn't felt in years.
Experimentally, he reached up and touched his head, allowing his fingers to explore what remained of his hair. It covered his ears, and at the back it came down to just below his hairline. It felt a little uneven, hastily cut, the front was trying to hang down in bangs, but was a little too long to do so. He tilted his head backward and shook it, allowing the hair to fall into place at the sides of his face. Just because he couldn't see didn't mean he wanted hair in his eyes.
"It'll grow back," Sabine assured him. She sounded nervous, like she expected him to be angry, or upset.
Kanan smiled in her general direction, "I know. It's fine, Sabine. Thank you."
The lump of whatever-it-had-been still stank from down on the ground. Kanan attempted to kick a little dirt over it to disguise the stench, but it did little good. He took a few steps away from it, careful not to accidentally step into it. He'd already lost a perfectly good ponytail, he wasn't about to have to throw out his boots too.
He attempted to gather up what was left of his hair, just checking on how easy it would be to tie it back. The band he used had been contaminated, and lay on the ground with his hair. It didn't matter anyway, the remaining hair was just too short; it slipped from his fingers and fell back into place handing loose around his face and ears. Apparently, he was just going to have to get used to wearing it loose for a while.
"Sorry," Sabine told him. "I might've been able to get away with leaving it a bit longer, but I didn't want to get any of that stuff on my fingers. Most of it'll probably tie back in a couple of months."
The 'stuff' she was referring to had been the noxious smelling sticky substance that had been fired at him, according to Ezra, from the center of a plant as they walked past. It had stuck on contact, and resisted any and all attempts to get it out. In fact, anything that made contact with it had stuck too, resulting in a giant ball of stinking… something, on the back of his head.
"Honestly, Sabine, it's fine. I'd have happily let you shave it if you had to. I'm just grateful you were able to stand being close enough to me to cut it out. I have a feeling if I'd done it myself…" he tailed off, leaving the rest to her imagination.
"Yeah, good point. You're lucky I've got so much experience dealing with noxious chemicals. Some explosives are pretty stinky too, you know. Nothing like that, though. Honestly, if we could turn it into a weapon we defeat the Empire by this time next week." He heard a smile in her voice, then she sighed. "Ugh. I'm going to have to neaten that up when we get back to the Ghost. I just noticed, one side's longer than the other."
Kanan shrugged. "Doesn't bother me."
"Yeah, well you're not gonna have to look at it, are you? C'mon, lets get back."
She headed toward the Phantom. Kanan followed after her.
He was met by a collective gasp of surprise as he entered the ship, followed by a stream of binary laughter.
"Wow," Ezra said. "It's, uh… different."
From Sabine's direction, he felt a stab of anger through the Force. "I'm going to neaten it up when we get home," she said.
"Yeah, that's probably for the best," Ezra said. "But hey, at least you don't stink anymore." He sniffed the air deeply. "Much."
Zeb chuckled. "You kinda look like the kid," he said. "Well, a year or so ago, if he had a beard, and a different color hair, and…"
"Hey, I looked nothing like that!" Ezra said indignantly.
Kanan touched his hair again, feeling a little self-conscious.
"When do you think it'll grow back?" Ezra asked. "I mean, no offense, but you look kinda… I mean… Help me out here, Zeb."
"He looks fine," Hera supplied instead. She stepped a little closer, and ran her fingers through his new, shorter hair, combing it through to the ends, brushing it to one side, and then to the other, and then allowing her fingertips to briefly caress his scalp.
Kanan smiled. At least someone wasn't laughing at him, or apologizing for the cut.
"It will grow back though, won't it?" she asked, sounding oddly worried at the prospect that it might not.
Kanan frowned. Twi'leks didn't have hair, of course, but she had been around him long enough to know how it worked. It couldn't look so bad that she needed that reassurance, surely?
The first thing he was going to do when he got back to base was ask Rex for a slightly more objective opinion. He probably wasn't going to get one, but he could still ask. "Yes," he assured her through gritted teeth. "I promise it's going to grow back."
Next time they visited a world where he didn't know what to expect, he was going to wear a hood.