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Kanan had more or less collapsed on the seats within the Phantom. He could hear the familiar roar of the engines. He could feel the solid walls behind his back. But louder than everything he heard his own heartbeat, felt the soaring pain, now that the adrenaline fell away. He drew breath, tried to focus on the Force, but it seemed far away now and he was trapped inside his own head, inside the dark and the pain and the doubts and the fears.
There was only one thing, one thought that kept him upright: You win by surviving. Caleb Dume, Kanan Jarrus – they had always won by surviving. They had always gotten up again. He was up. He was alive. His breath wheezed. Darkness. Pain. Doubts. Fear.
He felt a hand on his own hand and took it. He had only seldomly shared a touch with Ezra. When the boy had been told about his parents’ death. When Kanan had carried him after he gave in to the dark side confronting the Inquisitor on the meteorite. When he had leant on him after being tormented and wounded. He was not Ezra’s father or brother. Ezra was sixteen years old, and you didn’t simply hug or hold hands with a boy of that age, as if he was a child.
But now Kanan was blind. There was nothing else but touch and sound. Kanan held the hand as if Ezra could pull him out of ice water. The boy leaned into him, sobbing, clutching the holocron in his other hand, Kanan touched the damned cold edgy triangular thing before he reached for Ezra’s shoulder, pulling him close.
“There’s nothing we can do now. It’s over.” Kanan said it to Ezra as much as to himself. “It’s over.”
They leaned into each other, the Phantom soared into hyperspace, and there was nothing outside of the tiny shuttle, only void and death and coldness. He felt Ezras hair on his neck and chin. He could even smell it, sweat and fear and shampoo and vulnerability and family. Perhaps they were brothers, or father and son, or just two persons, randomly welded together by fate or chance.
“You need … you need medical care. You need something against the pain, I guess?” Ezra sounded helpless, and Kanan felt the urge to be the adult and not the one who needed tending.
“It’s alright. I can drop in at the med station when get back.”
“You’re crazy. We have a first aid kit here somewhere.” Ezra was gone, the holocron was gone, the boy rummaged around in one of the hidden closets within the Phantom’s hull and Kanan couldn’t even detect his Force signature, the pain made him numb and weary. “Here, I got it. Painkiller patches.”
“Okay, I take one of these.”
“Take three”, Ezra said simply. Kanan’s heartbeat retreated a bit as he listened to the wrapping being removed. The pain eased away in anticipation, still a blurring, throbbing, burning agony. Ezra patched three painkillers onto his arm. Immediately, a numb feeling started to race through his veins, finding his head. Finding his eyes. Kanan leaned back, exhaling. He noticed just now how much he trembled.
Pictures floated through the blackness. Maul. Ahsoka. The holocron. The pyramid.
Hera.
We will see each other again. I promise.
He felt sick. His stomach clenched and he felt like crying, but he couldn’t, there was nothing left to cry with. The thought of that made him shiver even worse.
“How long … till we’re there?”, he whispered.
A short pause. “Seventeen minutes.”
He gasped. Too short. Not enough time to pull himself together. Ezra touched the mask.
“They will freak out when you arrive with that mask. Let me … let me see … Perhaps I can … the medkit … There is stuff in here …”
“I’m blind.” The words were out. He knew he would have to say them over and over again until he believed them himself. “There is nothing a medkit can do, trust me. I … I’m pretty sure.”
“Please. Let me … take the mask. It even freaks me out. Not knowing … how bad it is …”
Kanan gave in, too weak to protest. Perhaps Ezra was right. And the kid was used to terrible things. Just as Caleb had been, when he was Ezra’s age. Nimble fingers removed the mask that had been fixed at the ears. It hurt like thousand needles as it pulled away from the wounds. Ezra gasped. Kanan felt like avoiding his gaze, but he couldn’t. Ezra could look at him, and he could neither look back nor decide not to look back. He was blind.
I’m blind.
“Okay, it’s that bad, hm?”, he said just to say something. He heard Ezra swallow and then sob.
“It’s … it’s …” He struggled, tried to turn away. Kanan caught his wrist and pulled him towards him, forehead to his shoulder, the only way he could be sure the kid didn’t look at his face. “It’s my fault”, Ezra forced out, barely audible.
“No, it isn’t. We win by surviving, Ezra. And we survived. I’ve … I’ve seen worse days.” He laughed, despite himself. “At least I won’t see worse days now anymore!”
“It’s my fault. I trusted … I trusted …”
“You had no choice. None of us had. Vader would have the holocron and an intact Sith temple now if it wasn’t for us. For you. And Ahsoka.”
“Ahsoka … is … she ... How can we return to Rex and … and tell him that … that I left her?”
He patted the back of Ezra’s head, at loss of words. It was so cruel and gruesome out there that he would scream forever if he tried to talk about it.
Long hard breaths later, a beep announced that they would reach Atollon within five minutes.
Ezra broke free. “Oh, I have to fix that. I mean. I … have to … I will just bandage your eyes, okay?”
“Alright.” Kanan tried to say something funny, but funny seemed horrible right now. Ezra’s fingers were icy cold, as he removed his gloves to bandage his eyes. It hurt, but the painkillers numbed everything down to a bearable level.
“Can you … just … tell me what it looks like?”, he pleaded, a mere whisper.
“It’s a burned gash. The right side is worse than the left side, but I think … there are … you … don’t have ...”
“Okay. Thanks. Ezra, I mean it. Thank you.”
Ezra shook his head, fiercely, even Kanan could sense it. There was so much pain inside of the boy – and none of the patches would be able to numb it. Kanan felt dizzy but he tried to reach out with the Force, trying to assure him that he was grateful, that they had won by surviving, that he should stop feeling responsible. He was shut out by a wall of overwhelming, self-destructing feelings.
The Phantom got out of hyperspace. The sudden thought that he would not be able to steer it anymore hurt. Chopper took them the way down to the planet’s surface. Kanan drew a ragged breath and took Ezra’s arm.
“Would you … would you guide me?”
“Of course I will”, Ezra said, unwept tears lay heavy in his voice. “Everywhere.”
***
Hera watched the Phantom landing. Her heart had lost tons of its weight as Chopper had announced the landing to Phoenix base – but no word over comm from Ezra, Ahsoka or Kanan. She tried to calm down the sick feeling that something was wrong. She had worried so much. So much more than she had ever worried. They had gone separate ways before, there had been death traps, capture, torture … and worries, but never before she had felt so sure that something would go utterly wrong.
As the Phantom landed, dread and joy wrestled in her stomach, and as the hatch opened, the dread won. She swallowed. Two pairs of legs – Ezra’s and Kanan’s. She heard Rex gasp behind her – she hadn’t even noticed that he had joined them. Something was wrong with the steps of these legs. Small, unsecure steps down the hatch. Kanan leant on Ezra.
Not again. Not again him.
They stepped out from the shadows that lay inside the Phantom. His face … Hera started to tremble. His eyes were bandaged. Not as if there was a wound to tend underneath – or at least, not only. No, his eyes were bandaged as if he was blind.
He can’t be blind. He’s just wounded. He is wounded. He will recover.
She had not noticed that she had started to walk towards him. Nobody said a word, and she was so terrified. She touched his face, his long jawbones and chin, careful and in need to know that he was alright. She felt him smiling slightly underneath her shivering palms.
He’s blind.
She said nothing and he hugged her tightly, just as he had done when they parted. She felt him trembling, too, they trembled together, and she felt tears at her chin – when had they started to flow that they reached her chin already? She tried not to sob and failed.
Ahsoka. Fulcrum.
She didn’t dare to ask. She had to, eventually, but not now, not here.
“I see you, love”, she whispered. “Half the promise kept.”
He managed to laugh, a rasping sound, but genuine.
“Let me take you inside.”
“To the Ghost”, he requested determined, his right hand and her left hand entwined at their sides. “We’re home.”