In the early days, after Malachor, it had surprised Ezra how little the loss of his sight had affected Kanan's ability with a lightsaber. While he had struggled at first to find his way around an unfamiliar room, or perform normal, everyday tasks, the moment he activated his blade, all hesitancy disappeared. Whether he was performing katas and practicing alone or sparring with Ezra, Ezra could see almost no difference in his master's skill level.

It was as though he could somehow see by the light of the blade.

Kanan had laughed when Ezra had said that. Not a real laugh, more like a smile and a quick exhalation of air through his nose, but it was obvious that the comment had amused him, and Ezra had wondered why.

Kanan had shaken his head and deactivated his blade. "Something I said once," he had explained. "When I was a youngling, at the Temple. I asked what was the point in learning to use a lightsaber blindfolded because nowhere was so dark the blade wouldn't give you enough light to see by. It turned out I was wrong."

Ezra had winced at the explanation. It wasn't funny, and he didn't know how Kanan could have laughed about it. Overcome by the urge to see, he had deactivated his own lightsaber and pulled off the blindfold that he had been using during the sparring match.

"We used to train with our vision obscured all the time as younglings," Kanan had continued. "But it wasn't about learning how to fight blind, that was just a byproduct; it was to teach us to trust in the Force. It's more reliable than your other senses; your eyes can deceive you."

Ezra had known that. Kanan had told him before, back when they both had perfect vision and no idea that anything was going to change, but this was the first time Ezra had heard it in some time. He repeated the words in his mind, holding onto them, trying to find comfort in them. But that wasn't why Kanan had said it. He wasn't trying to reassure him, it was simply a statement of fact.

He had known, too, that Kanan had done that kind of training. He had made no secret of the fact that he had called upon the lessons he had been taught at the Temple for inspiration when he began to teach Ezra. What he hadn't realized until now, was the extent of Kanan's training. Blindfolded, once he had gotten over the problem of balance without his sight to ground him, Ezra had no problem going through the motions of the basic stances and katas that Kanan had taught him, and he wasn't bad at deflecting objects thrown in his direction, but ask him to face an opponent, even in a friendly sparring match, and he was completely and totally out of his depth.

But Kanan, newly blinded, had faced Maul and escaped with his life.

Looking uncomfortable, Kanan had clipped his lightsaber to his belt before folding his arms and turning away from Ezra so that his face was hidden. "I… hated it," he had added. "Not being able to see, I mean. It made me feel vulnerable. I think that's why I didn't use that method more often with you. I should have."

That part was new; something Kanan had never told him before. Honestly, Ezra had never enjoyed it much either. He had hesitated then, caught between saying something to try to reassure Kanan, and steering the topic of conversation as far away from the current one as he could. If they had known what was going to happen, they would probably both have done a lot of things differently. There was nothing they could do about it now. Nothing except make up for lost time.

Training as a whole meant something different now than it had done before. It wasn't only about lightsaber practice, or using the Force. They were still a part of it, but there was so much more now too.

Training meant slowly but surely learning how to find their way around the base; a place that in its current state, Kanan had never seen and Ezra was still getting used to. It meant expanding on the Force techniques that they had already developed to allow them to sense the world around them, improving them, using them over and over until it became second nature. It meant hours and hours spent practicing with the tactile alphabet that Sabine had brought to them, learning how to recognize each letter by touch, and then how to read whole words and sentences.

Much to Ezra's frustration, training now also meant a lot more meditation than it had before, concentrating on strengthening their connections to the Force.

There was more to it than that, though. So much of what they were learning how to do didn't involve the Force at all. That shouldn't have come as a surprise to Ezra, who as a child had observed the methods that his aunt had used to compensate for her blindness, but for some reason it had. For a time, he had been fooling himself into believing that eventually, with enough practice, the Force would be able to compensate for everything.

He was now realizing that wasn't the case.

Training now also meant Kanan talking through problems that he had encountered, mundane tasks that neither of them had even considered before, that had suddenly become difficult or impossible, and the two of them working together to find a solution.

"You know," Ezra said one evening as they printed out tactile labels for items in the kitchen cabinets. "I'm pretty sure figuring out how to shave without looking would be one of the least difficult things we've done recently."

Kanan raised a hand and ran his fingertips through the beard that covered his lower face. He smiled and shook his head. "That's one of the reasons I stopped shaving at first, but it's grown on me now."

"Yeah," Ezra said. "That's kinda my point."

Kanan sighed pointedly. "I meant I like it now."

"That's only because you don't have to look at it," Ezra told him. "I do."

"Not for much longer," Kanan retorted, then froze in apparent horror.

Ezra blinked, caught off-guard and momentarily unsure how to react. Ezra had been making comments like that for months, and getting away with it. Jokes and comments sometimes at his own expense, sometimes at Kanan's, sometimes at both of them. It had become almost a reflex. This was the first time he had heard it from somebody else.

It felt weird.

He did the only thing he could, under the circumstances. He laughed. "Point," he said.

"I'm sorry," Kanan told him. "I didn't mean to…"

"Hey, you're not wrong," Ezra said.

Kanan was still frowning. Ezra got it, he had said things that he regretted before now. It was refreshing, in a way, to hear somebody else do it instead.

"I know," Kanan said, "but…"

"Seriously, don't apologize. It's about time someone else tried to make a joke around here. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing all the work. And talking of work, how's that label coming?"

Kanan relaxed just slightly and got on with printing the next label.

As Ezra watched, he felt a smile spread across his face. What Kanan had said hadn't been a joke, not a deliberate one anyway, but it had actually made him laugh, if only because it had taken him by surprise. As jokes went, he had heard worse. He had made worse.

"The first time I said something like that was an accident too," he said. Kanan knew that of course; he had been there. The second time had been an accident too, and the third. "But then I decided to stop worrying about it. I figured if I could make people laugh, maybe it'd make the whole thing start to feel more normal."

"Did it work?"

"Nope."

Kanan nodded like he had expected that answer.

"But at least I'm not beating myself up every time I make a joke anymore," Ezra added. "Anyway, it still might work, especially if you're going to do it too now."

Kanan shook his head. "I'm not…" he began.

"Next time, say something in front of Hera," Ezra suggested.

Hera in particular never seemed to relax. She was constantly on edge around both Kanan and Ezra in a way that Sabine and Zeb weren't anymore. She watched Kanan, and sometimes Ezra too, like she was on the verge of helping, ready to spring into action if they needed anything. If Kanan noticed, he didn't mention it, but to Ezra it felt stifling. Nobody was comfortable with the situation yet, Ezra least of all, but he could sense Hera's discomfort and that made his own worse. He hadn't dared to make a joke around her yet, because he didn't know how she would react.

Without even taking a moment to consider it, Kanan shook his head. "I'm not that crazy," he told him.

So he had noticed. Ezra shrugged. "I just figured that coming from you, it might be easier for her to handle. She might even laugh. Or at least pretend to."

If not, at least she would be mad at Kanan and not Ezra. He imagined she would forgive him more easily.

"Maybe Rex," Kanan mused.

He was right, Rex would be better. He was the only person who had never walked on eggshells around them. He laughed when Ezra made a bad joke and he wasn't even faking it. "Nah, too easy," Ezra told him. "Is the label ready?"

Kanan finished the last letter and handed over the finished label. Ezra squinted at it in an attempt to see what was printed there. It was pointless; he already knew that his eyes were no longer capable of making out the tiny colorless bumps that made up the tactile alphabet. He still tried anyway, every time.

He gave up on reading the label visually, and ran the tip of his index finger slowly over the text, taking his time, checking each letter carefully. He frowned. "Uh, Kanan? Doesn't this one say 'sugar'?"

"Stop asking me what they say," Kanan told him. "Start trusting yourself. You know what it says; you just read it."

"Yeah, and it's a good thing I did. I asked for one that said 'jogan tea'."

Kanan shrugged, apparently unbothered by his mistake. "We need to label the sugar too, don't we?"

Not anymore, apparently. "Sure, but…" he began.

"I'm making sure you read them," Kanan told him. "I don't want you to stick the labels on upside down." He paused. "Again."

It had been one time, and he had noticed immediately. Ezra sighed pointedly. "Sure, I'll just assume I read them right," he said. "Just don't blame me the next time you try to make caf and end up with a cup of watery gravy or something instead."

Kanan laughed. "You wouldn't do that," he said.

"Not deliberately, no, but if you keep giving me the wrong labels on purpose…"

Of course, he wasn't going to do it deliberately. Not only because it would be cruel and pointless, but also because it wouldn't be long before Ezra needed to use the tactile labels too. He squinted at the sugar jar. Not long at all, judging by how difficult it was getting to make out the aurebesh printed on some of the containers they were labeling today.

That was a frightening thought. He glared at the text on the sugar jar as though it was somehow at fault, then gave in to the slightly vindictive urge to carefully stick the label over the text so that nobody else could read it either. It was a distinctive-looking enough container that he doubted anybody actually needed to read it, but it still made him feel better.

He didn't mention to Kanan what he had done. Somehow, he doubted that he would approve.

"So, can I have the jogan tea label now?"

Kanan printed and handed over another label, far too short to be what Ezra had asked for. Ezra read the word 'caf', rolled his eyes, then stuck it on the correct jar without comment. Kanan waited, obviously expecting Ezra to say something. When he didn't, Kanan printed another label, longer this time, and handed it over. Ezra checked it, stuck it on the tea, put the box away, and closed the cabinet door.

"That's everything," he said. Well, it was everything in that cabinet anyway, and that was all they had planned to do for now. There was still much more to label around the ship, and around the base, but that was a task for another day. "So, wanna do something else?" he asked.

"What did you have in mind?" Kanan's lips quirked into a smile. "Meditation?"

Ezra made a face. Let Kanan get away with one joke at his expense and he was going to have to put up with them for the rest of his life. "I was thinking of something a bit less boring," he said. "Did you know the mechanics have set up a racing track for the dokma?"

"Yeah. Rex mentioned it." Kanan shook his head. "I hear they color-code the dokma so people can tell them apart."

"Yeah, and we bet for rations and equipment and stuff. Someone even bet a helmet a couple of days ago, but I didn't win it."

Kanan nodded. "But I hear they color-code the dokma," he repeated, a little more slowly. "And then people watch them race down the track."

"'Race' might be a bit too strong a word, they more like… Oh." He stopped, finally understanding what Kanan was trying to tell him.

"You go ahead," Kanan told him. "I have plans with Hera tonight anyway."

He was such an idiot. Of course Kanan wouldn't be able to watch the race. He had known that. It had just taken him a little longer than it should to realize that a night of standing around not watching five creatures meander around a racing track might not be entertaining for him.

Or, soon, for Ezra.

He slumped against the wall, suddenly feeling very tired. Every day he found something else that he couldn't do anymore, or thought of something that was going to get harder, or something that he was going to miss. He hated it. He hated everything about it.

Suddenly, he didn't feel like going to the races anymore.

But he liked the races. He didn't want to have to give them up. He didn't want to spend the time he had left to enjoy them wondering how long it would be before he could no longer follow what was happening on the track. Plus, he had a pocket full of ration bars that he had been hoping to turn into a meiloorun for Hera's birthday.

"Ezra, it's fine," Kanan told him. "Go."

But it wasn't fine. It already wasn't fine. "I mixed up two of the colors the other night," he admitted.

He hadn't thought anything of it at the time; he had put it down to not paying attention, then forgotten about it when he got swept up in the euphoria of having won the race when he thought he had lost. But that had been the start of it. That had probably been the first of many times that it would happen before he finally gave up and started to rely on others to tell him who had won. It was only going to get worse.

Kanan sighed deeply. He folded his arms and appeared to hesitate before he replied, like he was trying to think of the right thing to say. "Okay," he said. "So what can you do about that? What would make it easier to tell them apart?"

Nothing. There was nothing he could do. It was only going to get worse.

"Are the colors too similar? Could they be changed? Or, what are the lights like out there? Maybe you could ask the engineers to make them a little brighter."

Kanan was trying to do for Ezra what they did for Kanan when he ran into a problem; try to find a solution that would solve it. Ezra considered the suggestions. The colors were fine, it was his eyes that were at fault. He would probably have as much difficulty with two other colors as he had with blue and green. The lighting though; it was lit, but it wasn't great. It could be better. "Maybe," he said. It would be a temporary fix, but it would work for a time.

But that would only help him, not Kanan.

And after a while, it wouldn't help him anymore either.

He forced a smile. "Mixing them up worked in my favor though," he added. "Kinda. I thought I'd lost, then they announced blue was the winner, not green."

"Great," Kanan told him. "Leave everything how it is, maybe it'll happen again."

Ezra sighed. It would happen again. Asking for better lighting wouldn't stop that, it would only delay it.

"They always announce which color won, though," he added. "So maybe the answer is not to look, or not to trust what I see. Just wait for the announcement."

Kanan frowned and Ezra thought he felt a flicker of sadness through the Force, but he nodded. "It's certainly going to work better in the long-run," he agreed.

Not to mention, it didn't mean asking for any special treatment; he didn't like doing that.

The races weren't really races anyway. A race usually involved more than one person or thing trying to get from the start to the finish. The dokma didn't do that. They didn't try to get anywhere. They didn't even know they were supposed to be in a race, so instead of trying to reach the finish line, they meandered in random directions, crossing from one lane to another, or turning around and going the wrong way. Sometimes they stopped completely and went to sleep.

Most people didn't really watch the race. They were just there to hang out, place bets, and have a drink. The fact that a race was happening nearby didn't even really matter most of the time.

"It might not be so bad," he said. "Not being able to see the race, I mean."

He didn't need to see to choose a dokma either. It wasn't possible to tell by looking at them which one would be most likely to wander in the right direction; it was pure luck.

There were things that he would miss, like the end part of the race when people began to notice one of the dokma approaching the finish line. Awareness would spread through the crowd like a ripple, gathering momentum as people realized those around them had shifted their attention to the track, and they too started to watch intently, or shout encouragement. He wouldn't be a part of that. Not really.

Mostly the shouting didn't make any difference; the dokma didn't notice. Apart from one particularly hilarious night when someone screaming loudly at a creature inches from the finish line scared it with his volume and it retreated inside its shell for long enough for another dokma to wander over the line.

It wouldn't be the same not to see things like that happen, to have to hear about them second hand from someone else. But it would eventually be unavoidable. He would have to get used to it, or stop going, and he didn't want to stop going.

"It should be fine," he said, not completely sure whether he was speaking to Kanan or to himself.

He pushed aside a slight flutter of nerves at the thought of what he was about to do. It would be fine. It would be a little frustrating not to be able to see what was happening on the track, but he would get used to that. Being around large crowds with his eyes covered was disorienting, but he had done it before, and it was something else that he was going to have to get used to.

Honestly, the worst part was probably going to be trying to explain to Hobbie and Wedge why he had decided to show up wearing a blindfold.

He reached into his pocket and slowly pulled out the strip of fabric he kept on him for training. He could test it out, see how it went, then he and Kanan could think of a work-around for any unanticipated problems, then try it again.

He tied the blindfold around his face, covering his eyes, then adjusted it until it was as comfortable as he could make it. He took a deep breath to calm himself, marveling at the fact that the rising panic was gone. A few months ago, he couldn't have done this. He couldn't even have contemplated it.

It was going to be different when he had no choice, when he wasn't wearing it and he still couldn't see. In some ways, the blindfold was comforting, its presence a reminder that when he took it off, he would find the world exactly where he had left it.

Through the Force, he could feel Kanan's surprise as he realized what Ezra was doing.

"You don't have to do that now," he said.

But he did have to. If not now — if not before he needed it — then after, when he did. And it was going to be so much worse then.

"I know," he said. "I'll let you know how it went tomorrow."

He headed for the door, and out into the base, leaving Kanan behind him