Chapter Text
For as long as Kanan Jarrus could remember, the Force was a part of him. Well, it was a part of everyone, technically, but he could feel it. It was a swirling pool of energy inside him, constantly moving, constantly changing, but always familiar.
Master Billaba once told him that the Force was interpreted differently by everyone, and he supposed he understood that, but he could never truly comprehend it. That was the beauty of the Force, it wasn’t there to be understood…that was something Master Billaba had said too, but sometimes he wished the Force would just be a bit more direct.
A lot had changed lately. A lot had changed over the course of his whole life. He’d spent his first 14 years so sure of how he’d spend the rest, but he never could have seen any of this coming. Sometimes he found himself wondering where he’d be, what he’d be doing, if things had turned out differently.
But ‘what ifs’ were dangerous. If you spent too much time dwelling on what could be, you’d miss out on what was. He was pretty sure Yoda had said that one, just not in that order.
Despite everything he missed, everyone he missed, he knew he was where he wanted to be. Whether he had the Force to thank for that was unclear. He wasn’t sure whether he should ‘thank’ anyone for the things that had happened to him, but he knew he wouldn’t change it if he could.
Sometimes that hurt to admit, sometimes it felt like he was letting people down. Sometimes he wished that the Force would just tell him that it was ok to be happy here, that it wasn’t selfish to want this life, even if it meant not having the other one.
But the Force didn’t work that way. And the ‘what ifs’ crept in anyway.
If Caleb saw him now, would he recognize anything?
He sat in the copilot seat of the Ghost as it hovered in space, its engines off. Staring out through the vast expanse of stars always made him think, for better or worse. Hera sat beside him, fiddling with dials and switches, doing Force knew what. She liked to check as many systems as she could before jobs. Though she never found anything wrong, he admired her dedication, both to the work and to the ship.
He watched her work in silence. He’d always liked the colour green, but it took on a whole new meaning the day he met Hera, everything had. If there was one thing he had to thank the Force for, it was her.
“Would you quit staring at me?” she asked, without looking up from the control panel.
He turned away quickly, his cheeks turning red. “Sorry.”
She chuckled. “You know, if you’re gonna sit there, you could at least help me.”
“Oh no, you’re really good at this, I’d only mess it up,” he said sarcastically.
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “You don’t even know what I’m doing, do you?”
“Exactly why I shouldn’t be doing it.”
She stood up and reached for a button on the ceiling just as a static noise played from the control panel.
“Uh, Hera?” Zeb’s voice came through the cockpit speakers. He sounded unsure of himself.
“What is it?” she responded.
“We have a stowaway.”
“What?” Kanan asked, turning to Hera. “Who is it?” They’d never had a stowaway before.
“I don’t know, some kid,” Zeb replied.
“Not another one,” Hera mumbled.
“I heard that,” Ezra chimed in. Kanan couldn’t help but smile.
“Bring them in here,” Hera said. She pressed a button in front of her to turn off the channel. She turned to Kanan. “How did a kid get on my ship?” she asked.
He shrugged. “They must have snuck on before we left Lothal.”
“That was over a day ago.”
Kanan spun around in his chair toward the door. “Who knows h–”
He was cut off by an excruciating pain in his head. His brain felt like it could leap from his skull as every part of him was pulled toward something, no someone, on the other side of the door. He clutched his head and groaned in pain.
For a split second, nothing made sense. The Force spun and spun, faster than he was sure it ever had. He couldn't feel anything. He couldn’t even feel Hera beside him. There was only chaos, and pain.
But just as quickly as it had started, it was gone. He opened his eyes. His head still hurt, but it had dulled to a manageable amount. He hadn’t noticed Hera move, but suddenly, she was crouched at his side, her eyes wide.
“What's wrong?”
“I don't know. My head…”
From the other side of the door, he heard Zeb ask, “Are you ok kid?”
“What can I do?” Hera asked.
“No, I'll be fine,” Kanan replied, waving her away.
“Don’t you lie to me Kanan.” She sounded scared.
Before he had the chance to reassure her, the door slid open. Kanan could have made a thousand guesses at who snuck onto their ship, but he never would have been right.
He froze as he stared across the room at himself. Except this wasn’t Kanan, it was Caleb. 14 year old, Jedi Padawan Caleb. Oh, the Force thought it was so funny.
Zeb ushered him into the cockpit. He wore messy robes and clutched his lightsaber hilt tightly, ready to turn it on at any moment. He scrunched his nose, almost as if he were in pain as well.
Zeb looked worried, and when he saw the shocked look on Kanan’s face, that expression only deepened. Ezra, Sabine, and Chopper filed in behind them, all utterly confused.
“We almost had a duel in the lounge, but I managed to calm him down,” Zeb said.
“Don’t look at me,” Ezra argued. “He pulled his lightsaber out first.”
“He doesn’t seem to know where he is, or how he got here.”
Sabine rolled her eyes. “Yeah right.”
“Look, why don’t you start with your name?” Hera asked gently.
He looked at Kanan wearily. He had yet to move and was still staring at him with wide eyes.
“My name is Caleb Dume.”
Kanan’s stomach dropped at the sound of his voice. It was uncanny.
Hera turned to him. “Kanan…?” she asked like she didn’t want to hear the answer.
All he managed to get out was, “Uh-huh.”
Zeb, Ezra, and Sabine looked at each other, even more confused now.
“Is there something else going on?” Sabine finally asked.
Ignoring her, Hera asked, “How did you get here Caleb?” She was taking this situation surprisingly well. But someone had to, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Kanan.
“I told him, I don’t know,” he said, upset. “I was with Master Billaba in the market and–”
“Master Billaba?” Zeb cut him off. He had heard that name from Kanan before. “Kanan?”
“Everyone just shut up!” Kanan yelled, louder than he had meant to.
There was no way. He must have been dreaming, or having a vision. He knew he was by no means an expert on the Force, but time travel? Surely someone would have told him about that. But what if this was new? What if the Force had never done this before? But why now? What was so special about him?
It didn’t feel like a dream. And it definitely didn’t feel like a vision. Visions were floating, surreal, and never clear. This was solid, and present.
It made him feel sick to admit, but he knew it was real. Somehow, his younger self had been plucked from the past and brought here. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, but it was real.
After several moments of silence, he asked, “What’s the nearest planet?”
“Erebus,” Hera responded.
“Take us there.”
“Kanan.”
He finally turned to her. “Just land the ship, please.”
She looked worried, but she seemed to understand. She sat down and got to work, turning the engines on and typing in coordinates.
Kanan turned back to the impossible child standing in front of him. “You, sit down.” He pointed to Caleb and then to the empty chair behind Hera. “Everyone else, back to the lounge. I promise we will talk about this when we land.”
“Kanan, what–” Ezra stared.
“That’s an order,” Kanan interrupted. He tried not to sound angry, but he needed to get across the severity of the situation. They couldn’t say anything else to Caleb until they knew the truth, and he couldn’t tell Caleb the truth. Not to mention, his head was spinning, and he needed some air.
The ship rumbled as it entered hyperspace. Caleb reluctantly sat down, while the rest turned and walked out, the door sliding closed behind them. Kanan spun back around in his chair, burying his head in his hands with a loud sigh.
“Sir, am I in trouble?” Caleb asked quietly from behind him.
Kanan let out a dry laugh. Sir? As if his life wasn’t crazy enough.
He sat up, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Caleb as he spoke. “No, you’re not. We’re just gonna land the ship, and then I’m gonna talk to my crew.” He wanted to sound reassuring, but it came out more exhausted instead.
“I swear I just stepped away for a moment. The food smelt so good and I–” He gasped. “Did you kidnap me?”
Kanan pinched the bridge of his nose. That didn’t even make any sense. Who kidnaps someone and then tries to convince them it was all their fault? He sighed. Caleb was scared, and he had to do something to stop him from running the second they landed.
He finally turned around to face him, still shocked by what he saw. “You mentioned Master Billaba. I’m a friend of hers. I don’t know how you got here, but I promise we’re not gonna hurt you. You can trust me.”
Caleb looked unsure. “Your name’s Kanan?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“I like that name.”
Kanan smiled. Yeah, no surprise there.
“But I’ve never heard Master Billaba mention a Kanan,” Caleb said.
Kanan turned back to the window as they dropped out of hyperspace. “We haven’t spoken in years.” It wasn’t technically a lie. “But a friend of Master Billaba’s is always a friend of mine.”
...
They landed in the middle of nowhere, as far away from the mining operations and labour camps as they could. From what Kanan had heard, there wasn’t any surface on Erebus that was untouched, but no one was currently mining this valley.
Hera hadn’t said a word since they’d entered hyperspace, only giving him empathetic looks that made him turn away. Despite protests from the rest of the crew, Kanan refused to say anything until they were off the ship. He made Chopper stay with Caleb in the lounge, much to both of their dismay’s, and everyone else followed him outside.
The ground was dusty and barren. There was a mountain range in the distance, but Kanan could barely see it through the smog. Not that the scenery was any of his concern at the moment. He pressed a button on his belt to close the loading hatch and kept walking.
“Kanan.” Hera’s worried voice came from several feet behind him.
He finally stopped. He did not want to have this conversation, but it had to be done.
He kicked at the ground and watched small clouds of dust plume around him.
“That’s me,” he muttered.
“Come again?” Zeb asked.
Kanan turned around and pointed to the ship. “That kid is me, from the past.”
Everyone stared at him. Everyone but Hera, who already knew the truth.
“No he’s not,” Sabine protested like he’d lost his mind. He wasn't entirely sure he hadn’t.
“Yes he is.”
“But he said his name was Caleb,” Ezra said.
“That’s my real name.”
“What?” Zeb interjected.
“Kanan Jarrus is an alias I assumed after…” He went quiet. He could never bring himself to say it. “So I wouldn’t get killed for being a Jedi.”
No one knew how to respond to that.
Finally, Sabine said, “I didn’t know Jedi could travel through time.”
“We can’t!” Kanan exclaimed. “At least, not that I was aware of.”
“Then how the hell–”
“I don’t know!” He turned around and started walking again. “But there’s a lot that I don’t know. About the Force, about The Order, about everything!” He stopped, sighed, and made his way back to the group. “Look, all I do know is that he looks like me, and he sounds like me, and he’s got my lightsaber. And this headache…” He reached for his head as the pain swelled again.
“He keeled over in pain in the hallway,” Zeb said.
“That would be about the same time I did,” Kanan said. “We’re not supposed to exist at the same time, and it hurts.”
“So what do we do?” Hera asked, the only calm one at the moment.
“I guess we have to find a temple. See if we can find out why this happened and how to get him back.”
“We don’t have time for a pitstop, Kanan,” Sabine said, “the drop is in four hours.”
“Forget the job,” Ezra argued. “Don’t you think this is maybe more important?”
“No, she’s right,” Kanan said quietly.
Ezra stepped toward him. “Kanan, we can–”
“We have three days worth of fuel left.”
“What?” Zeb asked.
“Our funds are running dry. We’ve had a hard time finding jobs that aren’t just, you know, crime for the sake of crime. Jobs that hurt the Empire, not the little guy.”
Hera stepped up beside Kanan. “We do have a couple weeks of rations left, so nobody panic yet. But if we don’t complete this job, we might not be able to get to the next one.”
Sabine threw her arms up. “That’s just great. How’d you let it get this bad?”
“Trust me, this happens way more than you think. We just don’t normally tell you guys because we don’t want you to freak out.”
“Case in point,” Kanan added.
Hera glared at him.
“So…are we bringing him with us then?” Zeb asked.
“We’ll have to bring him to Loronar, but he stays on the ship. If anything happens to him, who knows what’ll happen to me.”
“What do we tell him?” Ezra asked.
“The truth,” Kanan replied.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Hera said.
“Well not all the truth. The truth that we don’t know how he got here. That way we don’t really have to tell him anything.”
“So we have to convince him that he somehow made it to Lothal, snuck onto our ship, hid there for a day, and he doesn’t remember any of it,” Ezra said, like he couldn't believe that was the plan.
“Correct.”
“This is not gonna end well,” Sabine said.
Kanan glanced up at the cockpit of the Ghost and saw Caleb sitting in the pilot's seat. He was leaning against the controls, looking bored as he watched them talk.
“What is he doing?” Kanan asked. He walked toward the ship.
“You mean what are you doing?” Ezra corrected.
Kanan spun around. “Ok from here on out, as far as you’re concerned, we are two different people. I don’t want to hear you calling him anything other than Caleb, and I don’t want to hear you calling me anything other than Kanan. Just, honestly, don’t talk to him if you don’t have to. The plan hasn’t changed, we just have to get this over with and then we can deal with,” he gestured vaguely at everything, “this.”
...
Caleb Dume was having the weirdest day of his life. One moment he was at a market on Alderaan, killing time before a meeting with the senator that was going to be so boring, and the next he was on a ship in the middle of space, surrounded by people he didn’t know, being accused of sneaking aboard.
But they must be right. How else did he get on their ship undetected? But why? Who were these people? And why couldn't he remember anything in between? Nothing made any sense.
The Force swirling through him was usually calm, like a serene ocean. Today it raged like a storm, threatening to make him sick. It seemed to get worse whenever he got too close to that man. Kanan, he’d called himself. Something felt familiar about that name, like he was supposed to remember something, but he didn’t know what. And every time he tried, it only made his headache worse.
Something strange was going on here, and Kanan was the only one that knew the truth, given everyone else’s confusion. He knew something. About Caleb, about how he got here, and whatever it was, he didn’t like it.
Caleb watched the group talk, or rather argue, from the pilot seat. Chopper had tried to stop him from leaving the lounge, but then he remembered he didn’t actually want to be babysitting, so he let him go.
They’d all briefly introduced themselves after they landed. Kanan wasn’t happy about it, but if Caleb was going to stay on the ship while they had their exclusive little meeting, they had to give him something.
Kanan and Hera stood in front, trying to calm everyone down. They were clearly the leaders of this group. Family? He wasn’t actually sure. But Kanan had given Ezra an order so…maybe they were military? None that he recognized.
And Ezra had a lightsaber. So did Kanan. Well, that was at least a kyber crystal he sensed on his belt, but it was too small to be a lightsaber hilt. They definitely weren't dressed like Jedi. Did they steal them?
He was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of someone coming up the ladder into the cockpit. He turned around in time to see Kanan climb out, a furious look on his face.
“What did I tell you?” he asked.
Caleb crossed his arms. “You lucky I’m still here.” He was dropping the scared kid act. This guy was getting on his nerves, and if they wanted to kill him, they would have done it already. Well, they would have tried. “You’re droid’s really annoying, by the way.”
Kanan looked like he was biting back several colourful words.
Hera stifled a laugh as she made it to the top of the ladder and joined them in the cockpit.
Kanan pinched the bridge of his nose and took several deep breaths. “Ok listen, you must have snuck on our ship when we were on Lothal."
“Lothal? I was on Alderaan, how did I get to Lothal?”
Kanan ignored him. “You either really don’t have any memory of the last day–”
“Last day!?” There was no way it had been a whole day.
“Or you’re lying to us. Either way, I don’t really care. We have to be on Loronar for some…important business. We’ll deal with you after that. Get out of the seat.”
Caleb stood up and Hera took the pilot seat, with Kanan sitting beside her. She turned the engines on and they took off. She seemed almost…embarssed to be a part of this conversation.
“Any chance you could drop me off somewhere on the way?” Caleb asked.
“We don’t have time for that, you’re coming with us.”
“So just leave me here. The radar picked up some buildings near the mountain.” He pointed toward the range as they flew higher. “I’m sure someone would let me borrow their communications array to contact the temple.”
Kanan turned his chair to face him. “Why were you messing with the radar?”
Caleb shrugged and sat down behind Hera. “I don’t know.”
Kanan took another deep breath. Caleb was beginning to find this amusing. “I’m not leaving you on some barren planet by yourself,” Kanan argued.
“Why not? You don’t know me.”
“You’re a kid.”
“I’m a Jedi, I can take care of myself.”
“You’re a Padawan, and barely. You’ll be safer with us. Then once we’re done, we’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
“And what exactly are you doing on Loronar?”
Kanan paused. “That’s none of your business actually.”
“Right. So something bad.”
“Believe whatever you want kid.”
Caleb crossed his arms. “I won’t be a part of your little plan.”
“No, you’re staying on the ship.”
“So as soon as you’re gone, I’ll leave.”
“Ok, first rule of planning an escape: don’t tell the people you’re escaping from.”
“You can’t lock me in here, I’ll cut through the ship.”
“You will not,” Hera said sternly before looking at Kanan, as if to say ‘fix this’.
“What can I say to make you trust me?” Kanan asked.
Caleb stood up. “How about telling me why you won’t let me leave? Something else is going on here, I can feel it. You’re lying to me, or concealing the truth. There’s no way I just lost an entire day, and my head…” He stumbled back as the pain suddenly spiked.
Kanan sighed. “This isn’t gonna work.”
“Do not do what I think you’re about to do,” Hera said.
“I’m pretty sure you’re in the future,” Kanan said, ignoring Hera.
“He did it,” Hera said, defeated.
“What?” Caleb asked with a laugh.
“What year is it?” Kanan asked, like that was a completely normal question.
Caleb laughed again, nervously this time. “I’m not answering that, you’re insane,” he said.
“Ok, I’ll answer it then. It’s 7974.”
“No it’s not.” It was definitely 7958 when he was on Alderaan, and it was definitely still 7958. Right?
“The reason I acted so weird when we met, and since then, is because we’ve met before. Clearly it hasn’t happened for you yet, but for me, it was like…15 years ago. And you looked maybe a bit older than you do now. Why are you 14 again?”
“No you’re–you…all of you have gone mad!” He backed up slowly. “I want off this ship right now!” Kanan was scaring him, but he was also scaring himself. Somehow, his idea didn’t feel as crazy as it should.
Kanan pointed to the rushing tunnel of space behind him. “We’re in hyperspace, kid. Not gonna happen.”
“If you expect me to believe this insanity, you’re gonna have to give me more than that.”
“You feel weird, your head hurts, because you're not where you're supposed to be. You’re feeling the rip in the Force that brought you here.”
Caleb couldn’t deny that that made sense. He’d never experienced anything like the disturbance he felt shortly after arriving here. Everything was wrong; it was almost like the Force was angry, or scared, or some other emotion he could never begin to describe. And he’d felt so out of place since, not just with these weird people, but within the Force itself.
“Are you a Jedi?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yes, and I can feel it too.”
“Since when can we time travel?”
“I wasn't aware we could. But clearly,” he gestured to Caleb, “we don’t know everything.”
Caleb sank against the back wall and pulled his knees to his chest. “What do I do?”
Kanan stood up and walked over, crouching down in front of him. “You stay on the ship while we finish this job, and then…we’ll figure it out together.”
Kanan smiled.
Caleb had no reason to, but something told him he could trust this man. Maybe they’d be close some day.