We Made It Through The Night

by yellowcottondresses

For fifteen years, every dream of Depa Billaba has been of that night on Kaller with Caleb Dume. Now, three weeks, two days since Malachor, his Master is here, meeting the man named Kanan Jarrus. ONESHOT.

Author's Note: I just really, really, really, really, REALLY, really, really, REALLYYYYY want Kanan to have a vision of/speak to the Force Ghost of/have any type of interaction whatsoever in some way with Depa Billaba. Their relationship makes me emotional OKAY?

I don't own SWR. The quotes in this story are from Kanan: The Last Padawan comics and 1x14, "Fire Across The Galaxy.

I.

He hears familiar footsteps running towards him as soon as the Phantom docks, but that's about all he can make out before chaos descends.

"Where's that medic?" He'd recognize Hera's voice in the middle of a warzone, and he can hear it now, barking orders above the din in the small hanger bay. "Someone get that medic in here NOW!"

There's a thunder of footsteps to his right, and he can tell they're Zeb's. There's coughing coming from the Lasat's direction, rasping and powerful enough to make Kanan's own ribs feel sore, in a voice higher than Zeb's. He hears Zeb say something about needing to lie down, karabast, where the hell is that useless doctor, and then his own name.

"Kanan!"

He whirls toward the direction of Zeb's voice, then suddenly has something large and compact and wrapped in a scratchy blanket placed carefully in his arms.

"Hold her for me, will ya?"

Without waiting for a response, the Lasat takes off running, digitigrade footsteps disappearing into the rest of the noise.

The weight in his arms suddenly spasms as coughs shake it, the body arching uncontrollably in his grip. He kneels down on the sandy ground and brushes hair out of the place he knows the eyes are on the familiar face.

"Sabine," he says, when she finally stops coughing. "Sabine. Can you hear me?"

If she tries to speak or nod, he can't feel it; another round of coughs shake her body, and now he understands that whatever happened on Crucival, it was worse than Hera let on when they came out of hyperspace.

He can feel one of Sabine's hands weakly grabbing at the collar of his flight suit, and it makes his gut turn over. She's normally got an iron grip.

"Kay –" His name ends in a burst of coughing. "Wha…"

"Shhh," he says. "Don't talk."

He can feel her injuries through the Force; burns and blood and blasters, fragile bones and shredded skin. The heat of her is so much hotter than a human body should be, coupled with the unforgettable stench of burning flesh he remembers so well from Malachor, and he can feel the echoes of her pain shooting through him.

He grips Sabine's fingers and squeezes, feeling the slightest spike of calm in her through their touch.

"Stay still, okay?" he tells her. "Just try not to move."

Easier said than done for her, but this time he can feel her squeezing his hand back, even as another rib-cracking round of coughs has her writhing in his arms. He holds her as steady as possible, his senses tuned to Hera's voice yelling out commands and Zeb swearing and someone speaking a language other than Basic, the smell of smoke and the tangy copper of blood, the grip of Sabine's hand in his.

He still can't feel Ezra. He can't feel him anywhere.

II.

Three weeks, two days since Malachor.

In three weeks, two days, he's gotten better at looking through the Force, trusting its guidance to help him without eyesight. Not like he had much of a choice – he had to become as useful as possible in the shortest amount of time; the rest of the crew couldn't afford to pick up his slack, and he wouldn't let them wonder just now helpless he was now.

But three weeks, two days is not enough time to adjust to his blindness, Jedi or not. And unless the world around him is in a state of calm, he struggles to keep his focus. Kanan has learned quickly that if he's in dangerous, tight-knit situations where everyone's emotions are heightened, it's harder for him to get a sense of his surroundings. He's been trying to learn how to center himself in those moments – and it's kind of the default factory setting to his days, with his job description – and he knows he's improving, but…

He has to actively use the Force, and in order for him to do that every waking moment so he isn't stumbling around, it takes an incredible amount of concentration, focus, and stamina. None of which he has yet, though not for lack of trying. It is just going to take time, and that's alright for Kanan to tell himself when he's meditating in his silent bunk and trying to maintain his Force senses at their most heightened, but now –

Three weeks, two days can't fix everything.

It wasn't so hard on the Ghost – he'd been on it so long, the ship was almost like an extension of himself, and it wasn't long before he could confidently maneuver around without the walking stick the medic aboard Sato's vessel had given him when he first returned from Malachor. His balance is almost back to the way it was, and he doesn't need to walk with his arms reaching around him like he did the first few days. And the strength and focus he's built up through the Force has helped him get the feel of the layout of their base, so he's not bumping his shoulders into every doorframe and walking into other people in the halls.

But he's still learning, and that "still" part has never hit Kanan so hard as it does right now in this hanger, trying to stay focused amid the commotion, to sense his surroundings and stay out of the way and find his padawan somewhere in the middle of it all.

Plus, the doctor who had examined him after he and Ezra came back to Chopper Base told him that he needed to stay away from the front lines until the burns fully healed. If he charged into battle while they were still fresh, it wouldn't matter if he was blind or not, because infection would kill him all the same.

All of it is a sobering reminder that he is nowhere near where he should be with his Force abilities.

The nasty voice in the back of his mind – the one he rarely lets himself entertain, but has been there since Malachor – speaks to him, and Kanan doesn't resist its hissing voice, smooth as a shot of Corellian whiskey that burns all the way down.

It tells him: if he'd been on this mission, he would have been a liability.

It tells him: He probably would have gotten them all killed.

It tells him: He's a useless cripple, blind and broken and worthless –

No.

He can't think like that now.

He has to FOCUS, damn it. FOCUS.

Focus, and find Ezra.

Find Ezra.

Find –

III.

He sits in an uncomfortable chair next to Sabine's bed in the Chopper Base medbay. The girl is silent for now, put under sedation so the doctor could treat the worst of her injuries without coughing fits, and there's an image-ray scan Hera and the others are looking at somewhere to his right as they examine the bones of Sabine's chest.

"She's lucky," the doctor is saying. "Had she not been wearing that armor, her chest would have been crushed. Those ribs will take some time to heal, but otherwise, it's the least-complicated part of her recovery. No organ damage, no internal bleeding."

There's a pause, then the doctor says, "she's a lucky girl."

Not lucky, Kanan wants to say. Hard-headed and volatile as the explosives she favored, but ferocious. Luck had nothing to do with it.

Even in the chaotic hangar, while he knelt on the ground and tried to keep Sabine steady through her endless coughing fits, he could feel the emotions rolling off her like smoke curling off a fire. He didn't need the Force to feel her anger, her desire for revenge, her need to hurt the people who had done this to them. And the frustration she felt at herself, for letting herself get caught off-guard again, like she had at Concord Dawn.

And underneath all that simmering, barely-contained rage, he sensed what Sabine would never admit to feeling, what she refused to let herself say aloud:

The punishing thoughts about how she failed her crew, again. How she couldn't think quickly enough on her feet to keep them all from being hurt. The blame she feels for Ezra's condition and her own wounds. The feeling that all of this is her fault; if she'd just moved faster, done something different, none of it would have happened. And the pure, undiluted panic she'd felt when she'd watched Ezra disappear off the edge of the building, along with the horror that ran through her when she saw his body on the ground.

"It was a sniper," Zeb explains wearily. "Ezra was down before any of us knew what happened. And the blast pushed him over the edge."

"They had the ship rigged with explosives before we even got there," Hera says, her voice hard. "They knew what we were planning."

Sato exhales, sounding old and weary. "Every day, the Empire gets better at guessing our plans."

"I had him," the Lasat growls, his voice serrated with fury. "I had the damn trooper right there, and then I didn't."

There's a low sound from the back of Zeb's throat, dizzy with pain. "They were both right there – "

"Nobody blames you, Zeb," Hera says, her voice going soft. "It all happened so fast, none of us could react."

Kanan is silent. If there's a response from Zeb, he doesn't hear it. He's squeezing his hands into fists at his side, remembering vividly the afternoon on Lothal when Ezra plunged off the top of the Ghost and fell through the clouds.

When Kanan had been there to catch him.

He'd protected Ezra.

"You should get that looked at," Hera says, and Kanan wonders what she means, but then he hears Zeb groan and say, "it's not that bad, really."

"Well, either way," she replies, "you should get it bandaged, at least."

"Hera, I'm –"

"You need to let the doc look at you, Buddy," Kanan tells him, gently but firmly. "You won't be any good to the kids if you don't get help."

That gets Zeb's attention like he knew it would. Kanan can feel the hesitation and EZRA SABINE EZRA SABINE EZRA SABINE running through the Lasat like a drumbeat, but to his credit he sighs wearily, and the digitigrade footsteps echo down the medbay, away from them.

Kanan motions for Hera to follow him further down the hall, and he hears her footsteps following his. When they've turned down a deserted corner, he glances at where he knows Hera is standing, and he doesn't need sight to know she's looking right at him with pain and heartache in her eyes.

"How bad is it?" he asks.

He digs his feet into the ground, steeling himself for her answer.

IV.

Ezra is broken.

The shot from the sniper is just the beginning. Along with several broken ribs and a collapsed lung, he's got a broken arm, ankle, collarbone, and a fractured skull. The fall caused massive internal bleeding, and they almost lost him before they could get him off the Ghost. He's on a machine that breathes for him because he can't do it on his own.

Really, the doctor says, her voice losing its professional edge for the briefest moment, it's a miracle the boy's alive. The fall would have killed a normal person instantly, or at least shattered their spine like blown glass. But Ezra had the Force on his side.

What remains to be seen is if Ezra will survive the night.

The doctor can't give an exact prognosis; hesitantly, she points out that with the incredible internal damage he sustained, it's very likely he will never wake up. Then again, she's never treated a Jedi before, and she never would have bet money on Ezra surviving this long. If he makes it through the night – and that's a pretty big if, the doctor warns – then they can maybe give a more definite prognosis on what his chances are.

But he has to make it through the night.

The young Caleb Dume was twelve years old when he went to the front lines of the Clone Wars and had his first close-up experience with death, both of those he cared about and those he'd killed. He'd seen bodies blown to bits, dying in agony, begging for the mercy of a faster death. The boy had watched his friends die, seen his beloved master gunned down protecting him with everything she had left.

And as Kanan Jarrus, he's seen bodies in all states of life and death. He's seen plenty of blood and gore, those who were too destroyed to save. He's been by the side of people he cared about as they breathed their last.

Kanan isn't even seeing Ezra, and it's worse than the most gruesome images of blood-soaked war corpses he remembers.

He has the boy's hand in his, and it's freezing cold. Kanan tries to reach out through the Force and connect with his padawan, to soothe his hurt and bring him some measure of relief, but all he can get is a nebulous sense of Ezra beneath all the damage. It's almost as if his spirit's already decided to leave, and it's just taking its time ebbing out.

The body in this medbay bed is barely Ezra. Just a shattered, broken vessel that holds little traces of his padawan's signature within, barely detectable under the pain and heavy sedation.

You can't see, you can't fight, and you can't protect the people who need you the most.

That last thought sludges through his veins from the dark corners of his heart, the festering places that started weeping his fears and doubts as he sat on the exam table after Malachor, Hera's hand in his, waiting for the doctor to tell him what he already knew.

Hera already told him that the boy had been throwing himself into unnecessary risks lately; disobeying orders, making hasty choices, being too impulsive. Hera had tried forcing him to stay on the ship for some ops, but the brutal fact of the matter remained:

The Ghost is already down one member. They need all the help they can get.

He should have tried to talk Ezra out of it. Sat down and let the kid vent his feelings, get out some of that frustration and guilt and blame Kanan would be able to feel on the other side of the galaxy. Or at least let him throw a good temper tantrum; maybe if he just screamed at Kanan a little, it would help release a little of the hurt that's eating the boy alive. The darkness of Malachor has been clouding his connection to Ezra, and Kanan couldn't break through.

Three weeks, two days since Malachor, but the boy has yet to say a word to him.

Even when he woke up with the nightmares, he wouldn't talk to Kanan. The one person who had been there; who understood what happened in that temple. Zeb and Sabine went out of their way to be nice to him, and Hera was always there with a comforting hand on his shoulder, but unless it directly involved a mission, Ezra had all but stopped speaking to them.

Three weeks, two days since Ezra had been the boy they remembered.

Three weeks, two days of Kanan feeling sorry for himself. Of feeling useless and pathetic and broken. Of trying his best to put on a brave face for Hera, because it broke his heart to feel what she was feeling, fear and love and hope and anguish so powerful it could knock him to his knees. Of trying to stay calm for Zeb, because the worry coming off the big guy dulled that sense of humor and knack for trouble the Lasat was known for, and it had been too long since Kanan heard Zeb tease Ezra or yell at Chopper or grumble an apology to Hera. Of trying to give Sabine the space she needed to deal with this, because that's how she processed things and Kanan knew her well enough to leave her alone, but also trying to be steady and unbreakable, the same calm, supportive presence he tried to be for the girl.

He should have tried harder. He ought to have demanded Ezra speak to him. He should have sat the boy down, locked him in a room, tied him to a chair…anything, if it made his apprentice open up and speak to him.

He never should have left Ezra alone.

He doesn't know he's said this out loud until Hera says, "Kanan, you couldn't have predicted this. Nobody could. And Ezra wasn't alone; he had Zeb and Sabine with him."

"I mean," he says, his voice sharp, "alone without a master."

"You let Ezra go because you trusted he knew how to handle himself," Hera replies, her voice equally hard. "You know when to trust Ezra's instincts; that's what makes you a great teacher. You aren't the type that would hold him back and make him doubt himself."

Kanan doesn't respond right away, because Hera doesn't understand what he meant by that comment and he is too exhausted to explain it to her completely.

So he bites his tongue and doesn't shout at her – No, I'm the type who sits uselessly out of the way while his padawan gets hurt. Because I'm too busy feeling useless, drowning in my own self-pity, and being too crippled to be the Jedi he needed me to be.

I'm a failure as a Master.

He tries not to, but all those feelings from the first few day immediately after Malachor come rushing back like a dam burst, and after a half-hearted attempt to hold them back he lets them in – the dread, the anger, the fear and blame and a little self-loathing.

He failed.

Again.

Ezra's hand is still in his. The cold fingers are limp against Kanan's rough palm, and when he tightens his grip on the boy, there's no response from the body in the bed.

V.

Hera needs to be debriefed, and she tsks angrily in the back of her throat when one of Sato's generals comes to remind her. But since Sabine is still in the medical wing, she and Zeb have to give their account of everything that happened, how everything managed to go wrong in the blink of an eye.

Kanan doesn't think she'll have much of an answer to that one. He's had fifteen years to mull that question over, and he still comes up blank.

How did you survive Order 66?

I'll be right behind you.

She leans into Kanan, and they stand like that for a moment over Ezra's motionless body, forehead to forehead, holding each other's hands, breathing in and out and in again. The smallest, sacred fraction of utter quiet.

Then she kisses him, and he hears the sound of her boots get farther and farther away.

VI.

Several hours later, there is no change in Ezra – which, the doctor says cautiously, is not a bad thing, but not necessarily a good one, either.

The moment Sato let Hera go, she'd run – literally – back to the medbay to check on Sabine. If Phoenix squadron had one available, the girl would go straight into a bacta tank, but with their limited resources, they'll have to do the best they can with antibiotics and pray there's no infection. And the doctor warned that if Sabine doesn't take proper precautions and let herself recover, she could be facing much worse injuries down the line.

"Good luck with that," Hera mutters as when the doctor leaves them at Ezra's bedside. "Sabine can't handle a papercut. There's no way she'll just sit still and stay in bed for months."

"We could cuff her," Kanan says, trying to keep his voice light. It's not really working. "I mean, I'd been saving those handcuffs for a special occasion…"

No response from Hera. Either she chose to ignore that, or hadn't heard him in the first place.

She's with Sabine now, along with Zeb. Kanan doesn't know how they kept her from crawling out of that hospital bed and knocking down the door to command central, demanding to find whoever did this to her and Ezra and making them suffer. Maybe it's the pain medication they gave her. Or maybe they just straight-up hit the girl over the head with something heavy.

Either way, she's asleep now, and Kanan swears he'll go to her the moment she wakes up and tell her everything he knows, even if it isn't much.

Kanan raises an arm and lets one hand hover over Ezra's body. If his apprentice could reach into the Force and feel his master all the way on Mustafar, then Kanan ought to be able to reach him from a half an inch away. Around him, he can hear the sounds of the various machines monitoring Ezra's vitals, the constant hum and tick and beep of everything trying to keep what's left of his padawan alive inside that shattered body.

Emotion, yet peace

It was the same mantra he'd murmured a thousand times – in his dreams, in his head, under his breath while he meditated – usually to keep himself centered, keep his mind focused. That way, he wouldn't be overwhelmed by whatever he was feeling. He would stay in the moment, stay present.

It was something Master Billaba had taught. She didn't believe in suppressing emotions or pretending they didn't exist. To her, they were valuable; you couldn't let them rule you, yet the only way to keep that from happening was to acknowledge them, channel them, and let them go through you. An odd paradox, one Caleb Dume had been too young and inexperienced to understand how unique that philosophy was to the Order.

They were the same words he'd repeated over and over again when he'd been newly blinded. His lips formed the words soundlessly in the worst moments, when the pain of removing seared skin was overwhelming, the sting from smearing antibiotics on the charred flesh almost unbearable, the smell of his burned face making him nauseous. He'd repeated Master Billaba's words as he stayed a knife's edge away from despair, feeling useless and broken as the ugly thoughts spilled over –

He was no good to the people who believed in him.

He couldn't protect his family.

He'd failed them all, both as a Jedi and a friend.

They were better off without him.

Then he grits his teeth, and bites down so hard his jaw aches from the effort. He can't dwell there. Just like he did in the hangar, he banishes the thoughts from his mind. That ugly, black void isn't going to help anybody, least of all Ezra.

And Ezra needs him now.

Ezra had given him what Kanan didn't realize he needed; how to be a Jedi in this new world. The boy gave him a renewed sense of purpose. He'd brought Kanan back to a part of himself that died half a lifetime ago. He helped his master find his faith again.

The boy woke up a part of him Kanan hadn't even realized had been there. He'd only felt that connection once before in his life, when the boy who had once been Caleb peered into a bacta tank to see the floating body of a young woman he'd never seen before, yet was drawn to her by the strange feeling that he had known her forever.

He reaches into the Force once more, this time grasping at the slightest thread he can find of his apprentice, the boy who is too small for his age and too mouthy by half and too stubborn to listen, and takes up so much of Kanan that he doesn't want to live without this attachment, without this boy that needed his help and his guidance and his love, just as much as Kanan needed the boy to guide him back to his identity, to his path as a Jedi, to the Force.

Emotion, yet peace

He murmurs the words like an incantation. They ground him, soothe him, center him – to this room, to this bed, to the Force, to every living thing – and he repeats them until they run together in a tuneless melody.

Emotion, yet peace

VII.

Kanan doesn't remember falling asleep, but when he wakes up it takes him a moment to reorient himself to his surroundings – medbay, Ezra's bedside, holding his padawan's cold hand in his.

He can't sense the presence of anyone else in the room, and figures it must be late. The machines hooked into Ezra's body are beeping in their steady, syncopated pattern. The air in the room has the same dusty scent as the rest of the base, except this time there's the tang of bacta and bleach and antiseptic that instantly brings on a headache.

It's what the medbay smelled like right after Malachor.

Three weeks, three days. And who knows how many hours ago.

He sighs, putting a hand to his aching forehead. Can't go there. Not now.

With the hand not holding Ezra's, he runs his fingers tentatively through the boy's matted hair. A damp feeling clings to his hand, and he doesn't want to think about whether it's sweat or grease or blood, or something else entirely. He just threads his fingers through the lanky strands, running his fingers as gently as he can over the snarls.

Ezra is always calmed by touch. More than that; he craves it. Eight years surviving on the streets made the boy reserved and skittish when they first met, but it didn't take Kanan long to feel the way Ezra's whole body loosened when he'd rest a hand on his shoulder, or when he'd reach out and put a hand on his padawan's back to steady him. The few times Kanan had ruffled Ezra's shaggy hair – a spark of fondness he wanted to let out, a show of pride in the boy's abilities, just because he could – Ezra practically glowed under the attention.

And the moments when he hadn't – when they rescued Kanan from Mustafar, when he finally learned his parents' deaths, when they left Ahsoka to her fate with Darth Vader – his apprentice leaned into him like there was nothing else in the world keeping him steady, and Kanan took hold. There was no shame in letting go, in purging himself of the grief and fear and loneliness, because he had a steady force to ground him, and Ezra could let the emotions pass through him while Kanan fit the boy in his arms, against his chest, on his shoulder, holding and murmuring and staying in the hurt right along with Ezra.

He held on until the boy was finally calm, and not a moment before. He wouldn't leave him alone; not after Ezra had been that way for so long.

Not when Kanan knew what it was like to be left alone.

He rests his palm on the boy's head, the long waves of his hair tickling the skin between Kanan's fingers. Despite everything, he has to smile a little bit. The boy needs a haircut.

Then he remembers Ezra might not survive long enough to need one, and an icy numbness surrounds his heart, squeezing it like a fist.

VIII.

"The Force is so alive in him."

The murmur startles Kanan out of another fit of sleep he hadn't realized he'd slipped into. His head jerks up at the sound, trying to pinpoint where he thinks he heard it coming from, but his head is still fogged with just-waking-up, and he can't get a steady hold of everything around him just yet.

Then the voice speaks again, and this time, Kanan feels like it's coming from somewhere deep inside himself.

"So strong. Powerful."

There's a pause, and Kanan's breathing hitches at the accented cadence he's only ever heard one place in his life. It used to be the way his own tongue formed language.

The voice he hears in his nightmares.

"But uncertain."

The echo of millennia of legacy; a shadow of the person he once was.

His Master is here.

His dead Master, his murdered Master, the one he watched saw be ruthlessly gunned down by the same men she'd fought beside for years. His Master, who has been gone for so long.

She is here.

And he can hear her.

It might be a hallucination. It could be that he's dreaming. It could be a message from the Force itself.

Or maybe he's finally lost his shit once and for all.

Kanan has no idea which option it could be. But where there ought to be shock, wonder, questions, even a little fear, all he can find it in himself to do is get on his knees and bow as the image overcomes his thoughts:

A woman with a round, dark face, studded with the ceremonial jewels from her native culture. Earth-colored robes and all-purpose boots that left footprints big enough to cover his own. Ropes of black hair tied into braids. Familiar brown hands he had once loved to watch twisting that long hair in a fluid motion that seemed impossibly complicated.

Those warm brown eyes that were not just wise, but playful.

"Master…"

The word is barely a breath. He can hardly gather enough air in his lungs to form the word on his lips, much less speak it.

It has to be a dream. It has to. He never hears her voice anywhere else, except there.

Except in his dreams – nightmares, always they are nightmares – things are different.

For fifteen years, every dream of Depa Billaba has been of that night on Kaller with Caleb Dume. Master and padawan under the stars, their faces in firelight, his round with pre-adolescent softness and hers lined with a weariness that had been there long before he became her padawan.

For fifteen years, he has relived that night moment-by-moment. The moon. The shadowed treetops. Grey. Styles. The holocron. The moment before Master Billaba grabbed his arm, when he'd been feeling as if his whole life was finally coming together…

For fifteen years, these were Kanan's dreams of his Master. The image of a wise, strong woman he'd worshipped and adored with childhood wonder, the image of who he wanted to become, a shadow that swallowed his own. She was the centerpoint of his world, the dividing line that cracked his world into BEFORE and AFTER.

But Kanan has grown up without her. He is no longer her round-faced padawan.

Now, he is the adult that time without her has made him. Now, he is the Jedi she never got to train.

Now, he is the man she has never known.

He is taller and older than she will ever be. And already, the short amount of time he's taken Ezra as his apprentice has outstripped every minute he spent under the tutelage of Depa Billaba.

Caleb's tutelage. Kanan gives his head a firm shake. Caleb Dume was Depa Billaba's apprentice, and Caleb Dume died with Depa Billaba. She has never met Kanan Jarrus.

Yet the image he has in his mind of his master is the smile he remembers so well; that small twist of her mouth that never quite turned itself into a full grin – those were seldom seen on any Jedi during the war – but still took away some of the shadows in her weary face.

Caleb remembers, he recites to himself. Caleb remembers. These are Caleb's memories.

"Your hair is so long."

Her voice echoes in his head.

"It wasn't what I used to picture you would look like, but it suits you." He thinks he can hear a smile still pulling at the corners of her lips. "Very handsome."

His hands fiddle with the back of his ponytail. For the first time, his shoulder feels naked without the trail of the padawan braid he severed so long ago.

It had been such a simple, perfunctory snip. Like cutting an irritating tag off the back of a shirt, or clipping a fingernail.

"I don't know why I'm surprised you're so tall," she says, as Kanan kneels in gaping silence. "You weren't a small child. And boys grow up."

Did he imagine it, or is there a flash of sadness in those words?

Is he imagining this whole thing?

"But those features are still the same," she continues. "Although I must say, it does look like you've finally grown into them!"

She laughs a little, and the sound astonishes him.

"I'm blind," are the first words he says to his dead Master, intelligently.

In his mind, he can picture the exact expression on her face; the same sly look she used to give Caleb Dume when he was pelting her with question after question.

"I have questions, master…"

"Yes, that seems to be the natural state of your mind."

"Yes, I believe I read that somewhere." Her voice is mild but threaded with the light teasing that used to make Caleb Dume scowl, for fear he wasn't being taken seriously. "But as you know, Master Jarrus, one does not have to be sighted to experience the Force."

His head snaps up at the use of the title, as if he's facing her right before him.

"How are you here?" he asks, without his lips forming a single word. "Is this a vision? This can't be real, can it?"

"Still full of questions, I see," she says, and the wryness there hurts more than he though it could. Fifteen years of hearing Master Billaba's final words in his head, and they never cut him as badly as the gentle tone of her sarcasm. "I did hope you would keep that trait when you became a master yourself."

It stings, even in her playful voice.

"You…" He has to wet his lips with his tongue, his mouth suddenly desert-dry. "You don't need to call me that."

"You are a Master, are you not?" Master Billaba's voice doesn't frame this as a question. "Surely you remember that much from your training. Always there are two – a master and an apprentice."

He suddenly remembers that Ezra's in the room, and makes a movement to grab the edge of the medbay cot so he can climb to his feet. But his master's voice is still in his ears, and he remains on the ground, kneeling before the empty space in front of him as if she were standing right there.

"You were knighted by the Force itself, if I recall." The syllables roll smooth as river water in her clipped Coruscanti accent. "Back in the temple on Lothal?"

"Yes, but –"

"The Force made its decision," Master Billaba says, ignoring his interruption. "If that does not make you a Jedi Master, Kanan, I fail to understand what would."

For some reason, it's the use of the name she never knew that makes him feel more like lost, helpless little Caleb than he has in over a decade.

"And I believe," she continues, "that I once told you the galaxy is not static. That you should never settle too comfortably into the way things are, because they always change."

Of course he remembers that.

"Tell me, Jedi. What was her last word to you?"

The silence that follows is waiting for his response, and Kanan finds himself wilting. He puts his forehead to the ground, takes a few deep, ragged breaths. Not exactly calming, but it's enough for him to clear his mind of the paralyzing emotional tide that keeps crashing over him.

"He is very strong in the ways of the Force," she says after a moment, breaking the absolute stillness between them. "Your young apprentice has learned a great deal from you, Master Jarrus. So much respect and admiration. And much determination."

He hears a soft sigh from her lips. "He cares for you so much, he considers failing you to be the worst offense he can commit. That fear colors his judgment."

He thinks of his broken padawan, the iciness of Ezra's hand in his. The way he tried to feel the boy's Force signature, and could barely touch the echo of Ezra inside his shattered form.

The way he wears Malachor like an anchor around his neck. The guilt he feels for Ahsoka, for Kanan.

The shame.

You didn't have to be Force-sensitive to feel it.

"I'm sorry, Master," he says, and the voice that forms the words reminds him of young Caleb Dume instead of Kanan Jarrus. "I've tried to teach him as you taught me. I tried to steer him right, I know I didn't do enough, but – "

As if she can read his mind – and maybe she can, Kanan doesn't really know – Master Billaba tells him, "I don't stand here in judgment of your teachings, Master. It's just an observation – a bit obvious, though. The child's Force signature cries out for you. He is deeply attached to you, and you to him."

"Attachments were forbidden by the Jedi Order," Kanan says, almost as a reflex.

"But the Jedi Order," Master Billaba replies, "is no more."

He has no answer for that.

Kanan reaches for the edge of Ezra's bed and pulls himself upright, taking back his old seat next to his padawan's motionless body. The air around him crackles with something electric, pulsing, alive; a warmth that could ignite the sky. With the back of one hand he reaches out and touches the boy's cold cheek, the one that was scarred on Mustafar.

They're nothing but small lines raised against clammy skin. They tell nothing of the devastation of that night.

Watching Ezra fall was like someone had ripped his soul out. The grief was beyond words, beyond explanation. He would have traded places with the boy in a second if it meant Ezra would have the smallest chance of surviving this.

Had Master Billaba felt the same way about Caleb, when she told him to run? Or had she expected her padawan to save her, only to be disappointed in the end?

"I get it," he tells her. "Why you told me to run."

"Really?"

The question was not posed in surprise. It was gentle, but firm.

Kanan blinks. "What do you mean?"

He waits for her to elaborate.

"You say you understand why I did what I did that night," Master Billaba replies. "Why I gave my life for yours."

"Yes," Kanan says, hesitating a moment before adding, "I understand it's what a master does. What any Jedi does. That selflessness and duty to protect."

"That's the Jedi response," she says. "But it is not your response."

His eyebrows shoot up. "What?"

"The padawan I knew would know the Jedi answer you just gave me," she says. "But he never would have just accepted it as the truth, because it wouldn't have satisfied him. He would keep asking for the truth – multiple times, if he had to," she adds drily.

"I don't –" He stammers out a response, flustered her answer has thrown him so much. "Master, I don't understand what you're saying."

"I'm saying that my padawan always sought answers," she says. "He would not lie to himself."

"And that's what you believe I'm doing?" There's a sharpness in his voice he's surprised to hear. The boy Caleb would never dream of using such a tone with Master Billaba. Kanan can hardly believe it himself. "Lying to myself?"

"You aren't telling the whole story," she says, calm as ever. "Perhaps you aren't telling it to yourself."

He grits his teeth. "Maybe I'm giving the Jedi answer because I'm not a padawan anymore."

"Your thoughts betray you, Master Jedi," she chides.

"I'm not a master!" he shouts.

Kanan's voice rings throughout the deserted medbay, echoing off the walls.

He balls his hands into fists at his side. "Did you ever think that he HAD to stop questioning, or else he would have been wiped out with the rest of the Order?"

Fury rolls over him, unstoppable as a storm.

"That Caleb no longer exists! Caleb Dume no longer exists! He died with his Master on Kaller."

A long silence, and then Kanan feels a blush burning his face. Suddenly, he feels very much like the padawan he was.

No, younger than that. Most padawans had more sense than to outburst like that.

"I'm sorry, Master." His whole body burns with shame and contrition. "I didn't –"

He pulls the words back, remembering what she'd just said to him:

He would not lie to himself.

The medbay is silent for so long, save the sound of Ezra's life support machines. Kanan tenses, flooded with an instant of panic at the idea of losing her once more. Then he makes himself take a deep breath and focus, and he is relieved to find he can still sense Master Billaba near, a distinct trace in the Force that lets him know he isn't alone.

"Do you remember," she says finally, "the vision you had on Mygeeto? The one that showed you the night on Kaller?"

Kanan reaches back into the memory of Caleb Dume for the moment. He's there on Mygeeto. And his master has lost her robes. She calls it "a sacrifice" from the battle.

Then –

Then a moment. A flash of…something. A second in time, a moment he feels with perfect clarity, as if it has already happened. His master, standing in the middle of a dusty ridge, turning to him with her eyes on fire and her mouth forming his name on her lips. Behind her, a clone trooper stands with a blaster pointed at her head, but she's entirely focused on her padawan, screaming an order he does not hear.

Then it's over.

"I didn't understand it back then," he murmurs. "I didn't know what I was seeing."

"But do you remember what I told you, right before the vision came?"

Remember, Padawan, not all sacrifice is as easy to dismiss.

"You told me about loss", Kanan says. "That it would be painful, and you couldn't stop it from happening. But just because it hurt, didn't mean we shouldn't do it anyway."

"And why is that?" she prompts.

Kanan goes back into Caleb Dume's shoved-back memories; the ones Kanan usually treated like a parasite trapped inside his brain, infesting his thoughts with unending grief.

"Because we were surrendering ourselves to a higher purpose." Kanan shakes his head. "I remember being confused by that answer, when you told me."

"And what about now?" Master Billaba asks. "Are you still confused by it?"

The night on Mygeeto feels so vivid in his memory, Kanan swears for a moment he can hear the sound of Fenn Rau's air support flying off into the distance; smell the burning metal of destroyed battle droids; see the bloodred sky above him, thick with ash and smoke.

"No," Kanan says. "I think I understand."

He lifts his head up. "You – you felt something, too, didn't you, Master? The night I had my vision. You were trying to tell me, and I was too young to understand. But…you knew, didn't you?"

There's a sound that could almost be a sigh, and Kanan remembers the night he asked her if she was "damaged goods". She had never lied to him.

Except that night on Kaller.

"I knew enough" she says, after a long pause, "I could sense something was up ahead. Something that would spin the axis of our world. Which direction, I couldn't tell, but I knew it was coming. And I knew that our fates would be bound together when the time came."

Kanan tries to parse out what she means.

"So when you told me about the robes," he says, turning the pieces over his mind, "when you were telling me about sacrifice, it's because you wanted me to understand the nature of it. How it was bound to the will of the Force. And so long as our decisions helped contribute to that, then they would be worth it."

"And do you believe it?" she asks softly. "Do you think sacrifice is always worth it, if it is made in the will of the Force?"

"It was your Master Billaba, who laid down her life for yours."

Do you remember her last word to you? Her last, final breath, before she died? You do, don't you? You hear it in your sleep. You hear her voice when you wake."

The master/padawan bond Caleb felt brutally torn from him – one Kanan Jarrus has never felt – suddenly tugs at his heart. The long-lost pull is the sharp, searing pain of a knife between his ribs. His throat closes up, and it takes a couple of swallows before he can speak again.

"He's never going to know you," is the only answer he can find to give his Master. "He needs guidance, if he's ever going to become the Jedi I know he can be."

He bows his head. "You would have been so good for him. And instead, all he has is me. He needs you."

Then, as almost an afterthought, he breathes out, "I need you."

Something inside him snaps, and before he can stop himself, he says everything he's held back for fifteen years. Everything he wished he could have said.

"For so many years, I didn't think about you. I couldn't, because I didn't want you to see what I was. I was so ashamed of myself for running. You gave everything for me, and I left you there in the dirt. I wish every single day that I didn't listen to you. Every day, I wish things had been different."

"I know now what you did for me…it's what I would do for Ezra. Or any of my friends. I understand that. But I still left you."

His throat is on fire, and his ears are ringing. There's a small voice inside his head telling him to take a breath and refocus himself, to not let everything he's feeling overwhelm him, but it's quickly silenced.

"I lost my way, Master. I disgraced you. I needed you, and I just…left you there. I betrayed you. I betrayed everything you taught me as a Jedi."

Kanan feels like he's floating somewhere far away from his body, his voice echoing through an empty canyon.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the years I was lost. I'm sorry for the years I dishonored your memory. I can't ask you to forgive me, but I'm still so sorry I failed you."

He drops his head into his hands, gasping for breath. His chest is on fire, his throat burning. Every moment he ever lived as Caleb Dume races through him, from the moment he saw a mysterious woman floating in a bacta tank; to the moment she caught his eye in the temple training dojo; to the look on her face right before he was shut in the darkness to find his kyber crystal; to the first night he spent in her quarters, trying to contain his enthusiasm for his first mission in the Clone Wars; to the night on Kaller.

To every moment Kanan Jarrus had ever felt the tendrils of Caleb's being try to slip back into his mind, and shoved it away because he'd locked that door and refused to go back through it. To every moment he couldn't stop himself from wishing his Master were with him so he could seek her guidance, then cursed himself for his own weak betrayal.

It all rushes past in a blur of light and color, like hurtling through hyperspace.

He thought he would cry if he ever let the memories in like this, but strangely, there are no tears. Kanan just keeps his head bowed, his mouth dry like it's stuffed with ashes.

A moment later, there's a touch on the top of his head. It's warm and heavy and feels so real, and pure instinct tells him it isn't Hera.

"My young knight," she says, and Kanan knows that if he could see his Master's face, it would be so filled with the compassion and grace and serenity he has denied himself for fifteen years that he would come apart entirely, "you asked so many questions. So ask yourself this one – if you can forgive your padawan for the events on Malachor, why can you not forgive yourself?"

He doesn't trust himself to answer.

IX

"You have not yet answered my question, Master Jedi."

He's collected himself enough to lift his head at the sound of her voice.

"Do you believe," his Master asks, "that sacrifices made for the will of the Force are ultimately for the best?"

Believe.

Hera had been using that word a lot lately. They all had to believe.

Believe that they could survive this. Believe they would find a way to work with their new circumstances. Believe everything hadn't changed in the span of a few seconds.

Kanan had to believe he was worth more than just his skill with a lightsaber. Believe he was still the Jedi he had been; that he was not diminished by his blindness, and he could protect them just as much now as he could when he still had his sight. Believe he was strong enough to come back from Malachor.

Hera wanted him to believe in all of that.

He's been trying, for her sake, but then he has moments like he had earlier in the hangar, when believing feels impossible. Those are the times he felt every inch blind lost and useless, gripping Chopper's small mechanical arm so the old droid could guide him towards Ezra.

He's been so afraid – he's still afraid, if he is being honest with himself. He's so afraid that he'll never learn how to fully use the Force abilities he'd briefly tapped into with Maul, that he'll never be able to call upon them at will, that he can't defend his family or learn new ways to take care of them now that he's blind.

He hates the way he can sense how afraid and worried the crew is, their minds running over the same questions of will he still be able to fight and is he ever going to be like his old self again and is he going to be okay. It makes him sick with dread and fear, their overwhelming love and concern, their desperate need for him to be okay.

And he needs to be okay.

For Ezra. For Hera. For their whole family.

For himself.

But does he think he would? Does he believe?

"I believe I know how much your sacrifice means," he says quietly, almost like an prayer, the same calm, even voice he remembered hearing from the masters who taught him to meditate twenty years and a lifetime ago, "because you taught me that emotions weren't a weakness."

He believes that the years he spent drifting like dust from planet to planet, never settling and always on the move, trying to purge his soul of anything that resembled attachment and staying free of anyone who could be taken from him, did nothing but leave him empty and tired. Compared to the life he had now, it was nothing, because he had nothing to want, nothing to live for.

"I didn't understand that before," he says. "Now I do."

The Jedi Order would have not been happy with that reply, he figures. The absence of passion, of attachment, of want.

This was what Caleb Dume had learned for the first fourteen years of his life: a Jedi was supposed to be free of want; they had to surrender themselves entirely to the greater good of others.

Then again. The Jedi were no more.

Kanan Jarrus had roots in an old vessel he'd loved since the moment he saw it. In a woman he'd loved before he'd even seen her face. In an apprentice who depended on him. In this whole base full of beings– not just the ones he loved, but the ones he respected – who depended on him. Even blind, they needed him to be Kanan Jarrus.

And Kanan Jarrus was a man who had learned that wanting things gave him life.

He loves his family like he didn't know it was possible to love anyone. Hera. Ezra. Sabine. Zeb. Even Chopper. And he'd sacrifice himself for their lives, just as Master Billaba had done for him, if the time ever came.

Hell, he'd already done it once before. And they had been there to rescue him, because that's what they did for each other.

"I may not be the Jedi I could have been." Kanan bows his head, tucking his chin to his chest. "But the Jedi also valued unconditional love and connection to every living thing. I can't do that without letting myself open up. It's made me strong – strong for the people who depend on me. For the people who can't fight this alone."

His breath hitches only a little when he adds, "and for my apprentice."

Once again, Kanan thinks back to that night on Malachor, facing the Grand Inquisitor. When he thought he lost Ezra, time slammed into a motionless void as he knelt on the space where the boy had fallen. He'd tried so hard to protect him. He'd given all his strength to defend Ezra.

But the boy was gone, and the last thing he was afraid of disappeared into a well of bleak, unending despair that he let in –

And then let out.

Kanan knelt and took all in – every agonizing emotion he felt watching Ezra disappear – and then let it go. And he rose, because there was no more pain, no more fear, no more grief.

He could fight past it. He could fight through it.

"Now I know there's something stronger than fear. Far stronger. The Force."

All at once it, hits Kanan:

He's going to get through this.

And so is Ezra.

The boy will live. It will take time, but he will come out from this on the other side. Damaged, sure, and scarred in ways Kanan will be able to see, and others he won't. He'll be different, and he will have to adapt his life around the ways everything has changed.

But he'll survive. He'll come back to the Rebellion, and not stop fighting until his last heartbeat. Because the Ezra Bridger Kanan has spent all these months training and learning and loving would never run away when people needed him.

He could connect with the world in a way Kanan couldn't fully understand. He fought for everyone who couldn't. He fought for the ones he loved. He fought for everyone who had ever lost anyone to the Empire, because he had compassion and empathy and a willing heart.

Like a true Jedi.

Kanan will, too. He knows this now.

Letting his mind go to dark places will only going to push away the ones he loves. The ones he came home to after losing his sight. And if he lost them, then he was nothing. He wouldn't be worthy of calling himself a Jedi, or a member of their crew. He wouldn't be worthy of the trust they put in him.

He isn't a worthless, broken cripple. He isn't a failure or a liability or a danger.

He is Kanan Jarrus.

And the former padawan of a Master who surrendered her own life to give him his.

He'll never accept her death. Not completely. He's learned to compartmentalize it, to momentarily push away the guilt and shame and loneliness and grief because they do him no good. He can stop himself from thinking of her. But he doesn't think there will be a time when he won't remember Depa Billaba and not, at least for a fraction of a second, feel an unbelievable, cruel sadness that envelopes him, the childish idea that he could have saved her. That leaving her to die is the biggest mistake he's ever made.

But Kanan was taught that everything that lives and dies is connected within the Force. And they will remain in the Force long after every being who ever knew them has turned to dust.

He isn't going to give up now. He has the Force, their family, a mission to live and die for.

Kanan still feels the sensation of fingers on his scalp. Of a smooth, warm hand brushing back the greasy strands that have come loose from his ponytail. The tenderness in the motions.

"You have grown so strong on your own."

His Master's voice is softer than a lullaby in the dark. It could break him in half.

"Because of your teachings, Master," he says. "Because of your sacrifice."

"No, my young knight," she says. "Because you chose to keep them alive."

X.

"Kanan?"

He jolts awake.

It hasn't gotten any easier, waking up in darkness, and there's always that heartbeat of a moment where Kanan feels the tightening of panic in his chest, wondering why the world is still black around him. Then he remembers himself, and the disorientation fades into clarity. He reaches into his developing Force senses to try and to connect the parts of the world around him.

This time, he focuses on the weight of Hera's hand on his shoulder, and brings himself back to the present.

Phoenix squadron. Medbay. Ezra.

Master Billaba.

He presses a hand to his forehead, massaging his temples. He has no idea how long he'd been sleeping.

Had he dreamed her? Everything she'd told him?

Was any of it real?

Hera leans closer to him, her warm breath on his cheek.

"Sabine's coming around," she murmurs. "She's pretty out of it, but she knows where she is and what happened. Whatever the doc used on her burns helped a lot. She doesn't think there's going to be permanent damage."

Kanan rests his head in his hands, pressing his palms to his forehead.

"That's good news," he says. Relief seeps through his fingers, and he slumps against Hera, suddenly more exhausted than he can remember being in a long time.

She mmhmms in agreement. "Now we just have to make sure she doesn't hurt herself trying to do something stupid."

Kanan almost smiles. "I still have those handcuffs."

He can tell she's rolling her eyes. "I'm not even going to ask."

A small chuckle escapes him, and Hera's hand squeezes his tightly, their fingers lacing together.

"How's he doing?" she says softly.

Kanan rests his free hand on Ezra's forehead. The boy is still motionless in the bed, and Kanan can hear the machines chirping away, efficient and steady as ever. But he can feel it – the thrum in the Force, a current he'd know anywhere, one that's linked to a part of him Kanan didn't know existed until he stopped in the middle of a street on Lothal and felt something tug inside him, telling him to look up.

"He's going to make it," he says.

And he knows it's true.

Hera settles into the hard-backed seat next to his, resting her head against his shoulder.

"The doctor told you that?"

He shakes his head. "No."

"Then what?" Hera asks. "The Force?"

He leans into her, smelling engine grease and sweat and the harsh soap they all use. The headache he felt moments ago disappears, and she bends down to meet his face, cheek to cheek, smelling the exhaustion and sweat and old caf-breath of each other.

"He's a tough kid," he tells her. "I know he'll pull through."

A soft sigh rumbles through Hera as she molds to his side, and he wraps his arms around her. He holds her against his chest, heart beating into her ears, and she breathes into the shape his body makes for hers in his arms.

Together, they keep watch.