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Ezra watches Kanan block back the flames.
It’s no better from a different angle. Kanan is going to die again, and Ezra is going to fail to save him. Again. “If I can change your fate, I can change his!” he yells to Ahsoka. Kanan’s face is stoic, focused on pushing back the explosion before he turns to face them one last time, one hand outstretched. “I can reach him.”
“Ezra…Kanan gave his life so that you could live. If he’s taken out of this moment, you all die,” Ahsoka says.
Ezra thinks that he doesn’t care. He would have been dead ten times over by now if not for Kanan. He would have died on the streets of Lothal, a poor, starving loth-rat. He would have died at the hands of the Inquisitor, or Vader, or Maul, or any number of other foes that they were only able to defeat because they were together. Kanan and Hera gave him a home, a cause, and a family. That’s something for Ezra to die to protect. Kanan’s already lost so much—his master, the other Jedi, his sight. After all this time, shouldn’t Ezra be the one to sacrifice?
“You don’t understand what you’re asking me to do,” he says, watching, remembering how a half-dazed Hera tried to run after Kanan while Ezra was frozen to the spot. She was pushed into his arms one second, struggling to escape his grip by throwing her weight into him the next. Force, how she’d screamed Kanan’s name, like it was being torn out of her, voice already rough from the Imperial torture. She and Kanan deserved more than this. So much better than this.
“Yes, I do. You can’t save your master, and I can’t save mine. I’m asking you to let go.”
In his heart—in the part of him that believes in the Force and all it can do past allowing the Force Sensitive to manipulate it into powerful abilities—he knows that she’s right. What was the last thing Kanan had said to him? May the Force be with you. His parents are in the Force with him. He believes that, even if most days it’s hard to reconcile with the part of him that loves and misses their physical presences too. It means that Kanan is with him too. In this moment, guiding him along this unsteady path of a future without his master and father-figure.
It’s not enough. At the end of the day—however all of this ends—it will have to be. But standing there, knowing he can see Kanan one last time…knowing he’s out there in the Force isn’t enough. And for the next five minutes, Ezra will allow himself to acknowledge that.
“Ezra, no!” Ahsoka shouts, but her cries go unheard as his hand touches the portal.
He reaches out into it as he did with Ahsoka—at the moment when the explosion should take Kanan, but this time doesn’t. His hand is warmed by the flames and smoke. The wind rages around it. Ezra reaches out to the presence of his master with his mind, wrapping the Force around Kanan before giving a hard pull.
Time inside the world between worlds doesn’t stop. Ezra doesn’t suddenly cease to exist. Kanan Jarrus, alive and only slightly worse for wear, tumbles onto the pathway with a grunt.
“What…where—“ Kanan slowly rises to his feet, his hands revealing nothing about the pathways of this plane that are solid, but are otherwise transparent and featureless. His unseeing eyes then snap towards Ezra, seemingly gaining his bearings, finally noticing him. “Ezra?”
Ezra opens his mouth to say something—to confirm his presence, to yell at Kanan for putting himself in danger for them—all he wanted more than anything ten seconds ago was to talk to Kanan again, and now he’s not sure what to do. “I—“
“Ezra,” Kanan breathes out, relieved, a smile breaking out across his face that quickly disappears. He strides over to Ezra, grappling his shoulders in a vice grip.“Ezra—what—what did you do?! I’m supposed to be—“
“Dead,” Ezra finishes, looking at his feet, then back at Kanan, even though he can sense the fear, anger, and disappointment mixing in with the clear joy his master feels at seeing him again too. He won’t get another chance after this. Five minutes. Maybe less. That’s what he promised himself. Better make it count. “You were supposed to die saving us, I know. But I saved you.”
“Ezra,” Kanan breathes in deep through his nose, an action Ezra knows means a lecture is coming. “I know that you have lost more than you have deserved to in this war, but that is no excuse to change what happened. I knew what I was getting into. I made the choice to go after Hera knowing something like this might happen.”
“That’s what I told him,” Ahsoka stomps over, arms crossed, clearly disappointed in Ezra as well. “Ezra, saving your master was unwise. Do you have any idea what could happen—“
“I’m not saving him!” Ezra spits the words at her, hating them even though he made the choice himself. There’s a pause then, no sound at all between the three of them and no more voices echoing between the doors to the other points in time.
“What?”
“I’m not saving him. I just—I wanted to say goodbye.” Ezra looks up at Kanan, hoping this doesn’t make everything ten times harder than doing nothing at all. “I understand that you want me to let go, Kanan. I know that I don’t have any other choice. That doesn’t mean I don’t get to say goodbye.” Ezra thinks of his parents—they died after hearing his voice one last time. He didn’t get the same thing in return, back then. “Not this time.”
This time it’s Kanan who is speechless, his mouth agape and his opaque eyes slightly wet. “Ezra…”
Ahsoka nods, understanding finally and stepping away. “I’ll give you two a moment.”
He knows he shouldn’t waste this time, but there’s a moment of silence between them. Part of him wishes it would last forever. Not speaking to Kanan in those months after Malachor will always be better than this future of never speaking to him again.
“I—“ Kanan starts, then shakes his head. “I don’t even know what to—“
Ezra doesn’t either, so he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he moves his feet without really thinking about it, gravitating towards his master—his friend, his adopted father—then wrapping his arms around Kanan’s torso. Despite Ezra’s growth during the last year, he’s still shorter than Kanan, and the hug is reminiscent of the one they shared on Atollon barely a year ago. His head rests comfortably against Kanan’s chest, digging in harder when he feels Kanan’s arms wrap around him too.
Kanan breathes in deep, slightly shaking before he speaks. “Ezra, I need you to know that I am so proud of you. It has been a privilege to watch you grow into the Jedi—into the person I always knew you could be.”
“Even when I was stealing from you?” Ezra jokes, his eyes watering at the vibration of Kanan’s chuckling against his ear. He’ll miss Kanan’s laugh a lot, he thinks. The way it always makes Hera’s laugh start first before the entire crew is rolling on the floor.
“Even then. Especially then.” Kanan’s hand moves to cup the back of Ezra’s head, almost caressing the short hairs there, trying to remember the feeling of what once was. “I was always so unsure of everything I was doing when it came to you.” He huffs, self-deprecating. “Hells, ask Hera sometime—I used to sit in the co-pilot’s seat for hours with her, venting, always scared I was doing the wrong thing.”
Ezra shakes his head, wiping tears into Kanan’s shirt. “You were great—you’re—I never wanted anyone else to—“
Kanan cuts him off, firm in not needing the reassurances. “That’s just part of being a—“ Kanan stops himself, as if stuck on something Ezra can’t identify. “Being a parent—I couldn’t have expected that, after everything that happened. I’m still not ready—“ He shakes his head, then cups Ezra’s face between his palms. “What I’m trying to say is—I know that you lost your first family a long time ago, but I have loved being your second. So much, kiddo. All of us have. You have to remember that, no matter what. We’re here for you. Even when I’m gone—“
“I know,” Ezra nods, pulling Kanan back in again. It was too embarrassing to say—embarrassing to think too, yes, but still—Kanan gives the best hugs. Maybe he knows that, maybe he doesn’t, but Ezra believes in the safety he feels when Kanan is by his side. He used that embracing comfort as a crutch after his parents were truly dead, after Malachor. Whatever Kanan wants to say, whatever he’s trying to fit in before there aren’t any more words left, Ezra both greedily wants to hear and also wants to silence him in favor of a few more seconds of physical comfort.
“M’ gonna miss you.” Ezra doesn’t know what else to say but the obvious. It doesn’t help anything, doesn’t make anything easier, but he doesn’t want to hold anything back at a time like this.
“I’ll still be around,” Kanan replies with a vague gesture around them to the Force, momentarily devolving into his old, familiar, Jedi-er-than-thou tone before settling at Ezra’s look. “I was already missing you guys before you pulled me out of there, to be honest.”
Ezra sniffles, smiling up at his master. Ezra knows emotional deflection better than anyone, but it’s a nice, brief reprieve into their early days that were filled with such talk. “Good.”
Kanan puts his hand on Ezra’s shoulder, and Ezra leans into the familiar touch. Even back when he hadn’t been shown that kind of casual affection in years, Ezra always found it a soothing gesture. Kanan. Peace. The Force.
“Ezra,” Kanan sighs, bringing up his other hand to Ezra’s other shoulder too. “I think it’s almost time.”
Ezra nods. He can feel it too. The Force granted him this, or he took it into his own hands and made the Force let him have this final moment with Kanan. Whichever it is, it’s coming to an end. If Ezra doesn’t reverse his actions, the consequences will follow, whatever they may be.
“I’m not ready,” he says. “I’ve never been. Not with my parents, and not with you. But I’m going to accept that and…and accept that you are.”
“No one is ready for something like this,” Kanan replies, his thumbs brushing Ezra’s shoulders. “Especially not me, not with—“ Kanan tilts his hand behind them towards the portal, where the scene Kanan was pulled from now stands frozen. Hera’s screaming in Ezra’s arms, Sabine is watching in horror from the pilot’s seat.
“I’m learning right along with you, Ezra. Sometimes we have to let go, even when it’s hard. But I’m learning from you, too.” Kanan gestures around them, to what he cannot see but seems to know is there in this world between worlds. “Letting go doesn’t have to mean not getting to say goodbye. Not always. The Force is filled with miracles and tragedy in contrasting amounts. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to be on the right receiving end.”
Ezra’s vision fogs up again with tears, but he wipes them away to look at Kanan one last time. Awkwardly shaven and chopped hair. Long ago scarred facial features. Same old green colors, just without the pauldron on the side. Lightsaber pieces missing from his belt. So much has changed, but he’s still Kanan. Ezra will remember him in a million different ways, but this last moment that shouldn’t exist—he cements it as best he can. The look on Kanan’s face indicates he’s imagining what his sight cannot provide in a similar manner.
Kanan initiates the hug this time, pressing his lips to Ezra’s head softly before pulling him in. “I love you, you know?”
“Yeah,” Ezra says, because he truly does know, even if it often went unsaid. Kanan has loved him—has loved their entire family—for a very long time. That love has gotten them all through so much in only a few years. It can get Ezra just a little further. “I love you, too.”
“Yeah,” Kanan echoes. “Tell Hera—“ Kanan shakes his head. “Tell everyone that for me, okay? Even Chopper.”
Ezra smiles, giving Kanan what he thinks will be the one last squeeze of a hug they’ll ever have. “Chopper too.”
Kanan pulls his breath in deep, letting it out in a way Ezra recognizes from their long hours of meditation together. Kanan is preparing himself to die, and Ezra is preparing to let him.
“I think I’m gonna need a boost, kid,” Kanan says, his hand cupping the back of Ezra’s neck and leading Ezra to face the portal with him. The contact is warm, the emotions of love and acceptance radiating from Kanan in a way Ezra remembers from the early days of their master/padawan partnership: reassuring, comforting, and encouraging. Giving fourteen year old Ezra the push he needed to get back up and try again. To try his best until the job was done.
“Yeah.” Ezra nods, more to himself than in response to Kanan. “I can do that.”
Kanan gives Ezra another squeeze around his shoulders, pulling away to get into running stance a few steps away. The portal warps for a moment, as if preparing to accept reality once more.
Kanan turns to Ezra. “May the Force be with you.”
Ezra nods again, accepting that Kanan’s last words to him will remain the same. But this time he gets to reply, and he’ll always be grateful for that, he’s sure. He swallows back the lump in his throat, ignoring the fresh tears burning at his eyes, responding how Kanan used to say Jedi Temple dwellers once did in the time of the Republic. “And with you.”
Kanan’s lip quirks up in a smile, expression fond. Then he runs, taking the last step as a hop. Ezra pushes with the force, reversing his earlier action, and the act of saving Kanan’s life.
The portal closes on the scene of Kanan being engulfed in the flames as Sabine flies their ship away.
Kanan Jarrus is dead.
Ezra lets his grief settle, wiping his new tears and breathing a few times for good measure. He’s sure this peace in him won’t last long—looking Hera in the eye and knowing he could have saved Kanan will not be an easy task.
But she loves Ezra too, just like Kanan loved them. Together, with Sabine and Zeb and Chopper—as a family—they’ll make it through. No matter how rough what’s coming to Lothal becomes, the Ghost crew will survive, just like Kanan has within the Force.
Ezra turns away from the portal, missing the visage of the glowing blue figure reaching out from where his master once stood.