What Stays and What Fades Away

Chapter 1

The Braid and the Vision

Ezra was right on time.

He hadn't been late since Kanan took him to the Jedi temple on Lothal. Kanan had remarked this once, telling the padawan he was glad to see he was finally taking his training seriously. Ezra smiled and nodded, though privately thinking it was more a case of his master no doubt having more "Mysterious Caves of Evil" to lock him in to teach him a lesson.

"So what's on today's agenda?" Ezra asked as he entered the cabin. "Soresu? Shii Cho? Making connections with the Force?"

Kanan smiled "Perhaps later. Come here." He patted a spot next to him on the cot where he was sitting. "I've been wanting to this for a while. Since you went through the initiation, really."

Ezra sat down dutifully but confused. Kanan reached out, straightening out the hair at the back of his head. The Jedi was grateful his apprentice hadn't cut his hair in the months since he joined the Ghost's crew. He could only imagine how it hard this would be if the boy's hair was any shorter.

"Are you braiding my hair?" Ezra asked, his face the very definition of skeptical.

"This braid is symbolic of your rank as a Padawan. Before the fall of the Temple anyone who saw this would know you were a Padawan. My Padawan"

"My Padawan." The words felt right. Yet, not enough.

He remembered the feel of his own master's hands weaving his hair. She used to sing this nonsensical little tune when she focused, he remembered. It was sweet and melancholy. He started to sing it now.

Save our sons from war, we pray…

Soothe the wrath and tame the fury…

Teach us all a kinder way …

"A Padawan braid?" Ezra's voice broke through his thoughts like they were so much fog melting away in the morning sun. "Did you have one?"

"A long time ago." He smiled ruefully, "there was a whole ceremony to go with it. But I don't quite remember it." Besides what good were those silly little rituals in times like this? Just braiding the boy's hair made him feel ridiculously sappy.

As he weaved the blue tufts together he sent up a little prayer that he might live long enough to sever his Padawan's braid. That Ezra need never see the day he where he would be forced cut it off himself.

He could only hope.

Ezra managed to close his eyes, just sinking into the sensation of Kanan's fingers in his hair. It reminded him of when he was a child and his folks would comb his hair.

"Dad?"

But I'm doing the same thing you did!

Ezra…

Star destroyer factory

Bright orange prison uniforms.

"We should be in and out in less than a month."

Ephraim Bridger sitting in a cell

Ezra!

Strong callused hands undoing the braid he had been so proud of scant weeks ago

If you want to progress as a Jedi, you have to leave him behind.

Best for me, Kanan? Or Best for you?

Your mother would be so very proud…

EZRA!

Ezra opened his eyes to see Kanan hovering over him. "You passed out."

"I think I had another vision." He said faintly.

His master helped him sit up. "What did you see?"

"I saw my father." His eyes met Kanan's.

"My dad's alive!"