Healing:

D15/1 BBY, World Between Worlds

Kanan's sense of time was long gone by the time he finally had a breakthrough within himself.

For hours, or maybe it was days, he knelt in his comforting meditation pose and ran through the usual meditation routines, letting the Force fill him with its presence. It was very soothing, to be sure, but he also felt like he wasn't accomplishing anything he couldn't be doing in any other place other than this one.

This place was special. Kanan knew it. He could feel it. It was a gateway land. The Force played here like a happy child with the wisdom of an ancient grandmother. It was free, but restrained. Joyful, but resigned. Light, but contained within the Dark. The Force was everything. In everything. Of everything.

And the longer he meditated, the more he felt like the Force was chiding him for not SEEING. Not HEARING. Not UNDERSTANDING.

Ripping the mask off his face, Kanan slammed it into the wave of light he was kneeling on and stood abruptly. "What do you want from me?!" Kanan called out into the vast space that was empty and yet not. "Why am I here?!"

His voice echoed and bounced, taunting him. "What do you want? Do you want? You want? Want? Want? Want?"

That gave Kanan pause, and he froze, barely breathing. Was it only a coincidence that only those words echoed back? He doubted it very much.

What did he want? Well, that list was probably a truly long one. But there were a few that stood out.

Kanan wanted peace for the galaxy.

He wanted to SEE Hera again.

He wanted to change the past so that the Jedi Order never fell and his Master didn't die.

He wanted to raise a family with Hera and live happily ever after with her and the rest of his Spectre family.

But of all of those options, there was only one that Kanan had promised to do and had broken his word on. "I want to see my Hera again," Kanan whispered in a torn voice, eyes stinging with the tears that rose at how hopeless he felt in that moment.

As the minutes dragged on with no earth shattering event happening in the quiet space, he sank back down to his knees and bowed his head. Mocking laughter escaped him for thinking the echoes had meant anything. It was just a trick of the space.

"Listen with your heart, young one," a gentle female voice said softly nearby, making Kanan's head snap up and point towards the sound.

He focused on one of the portal entrances only a metre or so to his right and felt the extra energy in it. Was the voice coming from there?

"Like this?" a young sounding male voice asked.

"Exactly." The female praised. "Now focus on the patient and tell me where he hurts."

Kanan waited with bated breath for the youngling's answer. It sounded like he was hearing a lesson between a Force Healer and her Padawan. Even when the Temple was still in existence, gifted Force Healers had stopped being born long ago. No one knew why, and the art of healing with the Force had been essentially lost, with the exception of what amounted to first aid. Perhaps it was because they'd become so dependent on bacta tanks and med droids, the Force had removed the gift from the Jedi.

"He has a concussion. His brain is whimpering," the youngling whispered.

"Very good," the Healer said. "Now focus with your mind and picture the injured area. Sooth it with the Force. Picture the individual brain cells repairing themselves one at a time. You don't want to rush and miss any."

"Yes, Master," the padawan whispered.

Kanan was so focused on their conversation he could even hear their breathing and ended up smiling in shared triumph with the youngling when he gave a little cheer of completion some ten minutes later.

"I did it! His brain feels happy again."

"Yes, you did," the Master replied, her tone warm.

"Shouldn't he wake up now?" the padawan's voice trembled with worry all of a sudden.

"He will when he's ready," she reassured. "His brain has gone through a traumatic experience. It's resting and rebooting now, you can feel it if you listen with your heart again."

There was a pause again, and then the padawan's voice was much happier. "Yes, yes I can. He really is all right."

"You did very well today, my little Padawan," the Master praised. "Come now, it's time for our dinner."

"Thank you, Master."

Snapping out of his wonderment of what he was hearing, Kanan realized this was the opportunity he'd been asking for. "Wait!" he cried, surging to his feet once again and stumbling towards the portal, hand reaching helplessly. But he was too late. The energy in the portal snapped away and it felt dormant again.

Feeling defeated and cruelly teased, Kanan sank to his knees for the third time.

So close. He'd been so close to someone who could heal his eyes. Kanan had thought he'd worked through all the grief and angst of his injury, but that one moment of hope had brought it all rushing back and now he felt just as despairing as ever.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to bawl like an infant. He wanted to curl up in a ball and hide from the world.

And he almost did all of those things, but his last instinct stuck a heavy cord and made him think.

He'd already done his stint of hiding from the world; and trapped in here, he was cut off from his family again, whether voluntarily or not. And if he didn't get his act together, Kanan would be hiding from the world for the rest of his life. (However long that would be in a space that didn't seem like it was meant to sustain life.) That would be terribly unfair to Hera and their unborn child. Unfair to Ezra and everyone else who was counting on him. Unfair to even himself for just giving up.

Kanan now had the vague idea that he might be able to influence the portals in some fashion, but he wasn't counting on it. He might have to find another way out of here.

But first... He needed to try something.

No.

Kanan took that thought back.

He needed to DO something. There is no try, after all, when it comes to the Force.

Settling more comfortably into his meditation pose, he listened to the Force with his heart and followed it to where he hurt the most.

And it wasn't his eyes like you'd expect.

The first place within him that hurt was his essential self, his soul, his psyche, whatever you wanted to call it.

Being left here had reopened a wound that he'd thought he'd truly sealed closed after talking with the Bendu. Losing his sight had done such a number on his confidence that it had taken months to come back to something resembling normal. And even more months to learn to deal with it. He'd thought the Bendu had helped him past the final hurdle, which was to open his mind to truly see with the Force, but now he knew that hadn't been the end of it.

This experience had shown him that.

Kanan thought he'd learned how to let go of what he loved. Whether it be his vision, or Hera, or his Padawan; he thought he'd already come to terms with these things being taken away from him at any given time. But being thrown in this endless space with no clear path out had brought a disturbing amount of panic and despair that no true Jedi Master should ever feel. Not that he claimed to be a Master, but he did strive towards being one.

He needed to do more than just resign himself to the possibility that he may never see Hera or his family again; he needed to truly accept it as the possible will of the Force, just like losing his sight had been the will of the Force. And even if he made it back to them today or tomorrow, the Force might see fit to take him away from them again the next week.

All he could do was his very best for them to see that they were as prepared as possible for life without him in it.

Which, he realized, was already done.

He'd taught Ezra everything he could possibly teach him about the Force, combat, life, family, and love. And the boy wasn't really a boy anymore. Not at eighteen years old. Not with the title of Lieutenant Commander attached to his name. And definitely not if he'd grown up enough that Sabine had finally seen past the childish flirting Ezra had subjected her to so many years ago and found the man within him to fall in love with. Ezra didn't need Kanan anymore. Not really. In fact, Ezra was ready to take the final trial to become a Jedi Knight. And it was a bittersweet realization, as it brought home the fact that Ezra had accomplished in just three and a half years what most Jedi took at least sixteen years to accomplish but was more like an average of eighteen.

Kanan was so proud of his Padawan.

Technically, Kanan was above average as well, because, despite only being Knighted two years ago, he had been fourteen when the Order was exterminated, and had only truly become a Jedi again after Ezra joined the crew, so that made it roughly fifteen years of learning to become a Knight for him. It would have been a noteworthy accomplishment if he hadn't spent a good portion of his life being as un Jedi like as he could manage. He figured it balanced out to the point where he was just a so-so Jedi; nothing special or worth remembering.

But Ezra... He was special. He was just so genuinely good and caring that everyone he met was drawn to him, sometimes without even realizing it. Force, he wished he could introduce him to Master Depa. She would have loved Ezra too.

And as far as Hera and their child was concerned, there wasn't much more he could do to ensure them a safe and happy future. As he'd learned long ago, Hera was fiercely independent and scoffed at the idea of settling down in one place as long as there were people that needed help. He'd never been able to provide her with a home or the financial stability of a 9-5 job, but she hadn't wanted him to. He was pretty sure she would have hated him eventually if he'd tried. What Hera did have was a very strong circle of friends and family that would stand by her to the very end. And she had built that all on her own.

Technically, aside from being an asset to her missions, Hera didn't really need him. At least not logically. But he knew that she loved him unconditionally, just as he did her, and that together they were stronger than alone.

Force, he missed her. He reached for their bond out of habit for comfort and found it to be a miniscule fraction of what he normally felt from her. Concerned, even though he knew she'd made it past the blockade and had jumped to hyperspace successfully in the sketchy, patched together old U-Wing, he tried Ezra and found the same thing.

That reassured him that it was this place that was interfering with his connections to Hera and Ezra and not that she was floating in space somewhere, on the verge of expiring. Maybe he was just that far from them, as mind boggling as that thought was.

As Kanan felt the last vestiges of an invisible weight lift from his shoulders, he felt whole again for the first time in much too long. He had finally, after too many trials to think about, learned to let go. The Force gave him a little nudge of congratulations, making him smile slightly. As a youngling, he'd never quite believed that the Force was an entity into and of itself; that it was just a supply of power to tap into. But after too many years of avoiding it, and more years relearning it, Kanan truly understood what it meant to be one with the Force. it was like having another family member that you could always count on to be there for you. It was also like the wise old grandparent that knew too much and earned your respect despite yourself for the knowledge they contained. Even when that knowledge didn't seem like it was to your advantage.

Kanan sighed as a hint of humour rippled through the Force. "What do you want?" echoed through his mind again, planted there by the Force, helping him to get back on track to his original purpose. Now that he'd settled the wound in his soul once and for all, he went after the more physical.

His eyes.

In Kanan's mind, a picture formed of the orbs that used to let him see, and he saw the burnt and frazzled nerve endings that had never healed properly. He saw the clouded over lenses that had formed in a last ditch effort to protect his eyes. He saw the scar tissue in each individual skin cell around those eyes.

One cell at a time, one fried nerve ending at a time, taking painstaking care, Kanan sent a bit of Force to the injured areas and watched them bloom and glow within his mind. He was pretty sure it took hours, but he was determined to get this right so he didn't care. A Master Healer could probably have fixed him in a fraction of the time.

Kriff, even the padawan could have fixed him faster, he thought with wry amusement, but Kanan was slowly but surely healing himself and euphoria was seeping into his bones with every cell he could see repair itself with the assistance of the Force and his determination.

Finally, Kanan thought his purpose was complete. He couldn't find any more cells to heal. Everything in his mind's eye was glowing happily and practically dancing with the Force filling him right now.

Taking a deep breath for courage, Kanan reached up and felt the skin around his eyes. It felt smooth again, perhaps even smoother than before Maul's lightsabre strike.

So he opened his eyes.

And blinked. And blinked again. Then gasped in startled wonder.

Kanan could see, and it was like he was floating in space without the ice cold vacuum. (Which he could say for a fact that it was brutal, after having experienced it not once, but twice.)

It was black, so black, but tiny stars twinkled everywhere, and it took him a moment to realize that each star represented yet another portal. There had to be millions of portals. And they were all connected by winding, almost invisible paths that had no rhyme or reason; just meandered up, down, and around in whatever way they wished.

He could wander around in here until he was old and grey and never see a portal that would lead him home.

But Kanan refused to let that thought settle.

He would go home to his family again. He would see his Hera again. He would see his child when it was born. He would see Ezra and Sabine and Zeb again. Gahhhhh. He would even see that stupid droid again.

Kanan took the two steps back to the mask he'd dropped and picked it up, finger tracing the jaig eyes that Sabine had painted on the dark green mask she made him, remembering the day she'd given it to him.

"I put jaig eyes on it for you, Kanan," she'd said, her voice softer and more tentative then he'd ever heard from her before. "They're worn only by those who have proven themselves in honourable combat. You have more than earned the right to wear them. I hope you're okay with that."

Kanan remembered reaching out to where he sensed her presence to be and tentatively patting what he dearly hoped was a shoulder. "Thank you, Sabine. This means a lot to me."

Then she'd surprised the heck out of him by hugging him for three whole seconds really hard before running away. She'd never hugged Kanan before that. In fact, he didn't know if she'd hugged anyone before that. But since... Well, she wasn't exactly a cuddler, but she did sit closer to people and even leaned on them once in a while. And she'd even given Kanan a couple more hugs, the most notable of which was when she'd stayed behind on Krownest.

Now Kanan smiled at the memory as he looked at the stylized shriek hawk eyes on his mask, finally getting to appreciate her art again. Kanan was going to have to get her to show him everything she'd painted over the last couple years, even if that meant wandering all over Capital City on both Lothal and Garel so she could point out all her graffiti.

Spurred by a rumble in his stomach, Kanan got a move on and started walking down the pathway in front of him before he remembered that the wolves had been leading them on a much higher pathway. Gathering the abundant Force around him, he leapt up, and up again, until he was three pathways higher. He wasn't sure if this was the right one, but at least it had to be closer.

"Okay portals, show me what you got," Kanan mumbled to them as he started walking again. And just like that, all the portals around him turned on, multiple voices speaking all at once, startling Kanan.

Frag, he didn't think that actually would work.

Snorting at himself for not giving the Force more credit, Kanan strode down the path to the closest portal, drawn by the sound a familiar voice.