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Perhaps Kanan Jarrus was immune to the dark side. He had never really given much thought to it although he guessed that Depa Billaba had assumed as much – and had found it very curious about him. There had been moments when the dark side had lingered only inches away, right beside him, tempting him to grasp it. In those moments, he knew that it was there. It was almost palpable. But he found that he couldn’t move himself to touch it. He rather turned away from the Force entirely, as he had done so often to cope with what had happened.
This is why being hollowed out and filled by hate and despair and envy and greed was something new. Unexpected. Discomforting in its logical conclusiveness.
Everything happened so fast, especially in the blurry sensations that built the cave into his mind. Although he could rely on his other senses and on the currents and flows of the Force that surrounded everything, he still couldn’t rely on his sight, and without it, the cave felt filled with more than one presence, and they seemed to float in every direction and every corner at once. He could sense Maul and Ezra, but these other … beings – he didn’t even have an idea of what they looked like. Until they opened his eyes.
Sabine had gone down, he had sensed something very strange about her and caught her before she could hit the ground. Her – and this other thing that had merged with her familiar signature. He could not even try to understand before something tore him open –the floating presence of hate and anger and fear ripped him violently apart and forced its way into him. Cracked his mind, squeezed into his soul. His body tried to convulse, to reject what was happening, but the cave was their fiefdom and they could do as they pleased.
Kanan felt the dark side filling him to the brim, without question, without temptation, without decision. Somehow, the only thing he was still allowed to feel beside hate and coldness was a shale disappointment. That was it? How it would end? How he would fall? His body moved. As an alien consciousness took over, it steered his limbs, kept him upright. But he didn’t feel like a mere passenger, no: It took hold of his mind and pierced into it. It began to tattoo its own thoughts and ideals onto the surface of his identity. Sooner or later, it would change him beyond recognition. It opened his eyes. And stopped short.
Why was everything black?, he wondered. Blind, he reminded himself. I am blind.
He had grown used to the spot of nothingness where once his sight had been, but now it felt new to him.
There is something, he realized. Something in front of my face. A weight, leather and Beskar. He touched it, pulled it off and let it fall to the ground. He opened his eyes.
The nothingness had lifted. The cave was enormous, and only lit by the sickly green fog of spirit creatures that crawled from a stone altar with ancient carvings in it. He was bound to that fog, a single creature threaded to a larger web of woven afterlives.
No, he managed to think. Not me. That thing!
But the ‘me’ began to disperse, the lines became blurry. ‘Us’ was the new tapestry of his mind.
He held a weapon. His eyes found something in front of him, pulsating red and black, flashing with quick anger and even quicker fear and the constant throb of madness.
He hated it. He felt the rush of his own emotions and the ‘us’ inside him cheered. There was not a moment of hesitation. He ignited the weapon he bore and stretched his face to a grin. It was a new face, a new grin. Our new face. Our new mouth to speak with. Our new ears to hear with. Our new hands to kill with.
He raised his weapon.
He hurt me. He tried to kill me. He made me freeze and suffocate. He made me lose something. Something important. My sight. He tried to make me lose more. The woman I love. The friends I feel responsible for. The apprentice I teach.
He hadn’t seen clearly before, but now he saw: This creature deserved death. Deserved to be mauled and maimed and crippled and bled out before it died. This creature would feed his hunger for revenge.
He attacked and Dathomir agreed with the death of its son.
***
A world in green. He could see through the mist. He was the mist, the voices of his sisters whispering. So close. So close. He sat on something cold and ancient, and they looked at him from the outside. His hero pose, shins on the ground, sitting on his feet, back straight. Meditation. Centering.
What had just happened? Blades, clashing against each other. Screams. Motion.
Bloodlust.
Had he killed?
Meditation brought up the remnants of his old life. He had so many old lives, he felt as if he had lost track. He was a Night Sister. He had been Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight. He had been Caleb Dume, lost son of the Jedi Order. He found these words inside of himself, because he sat like that: in hero pose.
He had not meditated for a long time. A common smuggler and thief – why should he? A bartender and explosive hauler – why should he?
It had crept back into his life, because of her. She was the one who first played with the thought of him being a Jedi Knight. He had left it behind, but somewhere along the road, she had found it and brought it back to him.
She – a Night Sister? He slowly shook his head. No.
Meditating. Centering. Finding … what? What did he usually find? Peace? There was no peace on Dathomir! Tranquility? In a temple of ancient evil! Serenity? When they had taken the sky from him in this dark cave! He shook his head again. No. The Force was here, as it always was, everywhere. It surrounded him, but it felt … cold. Powerful. Alien. He opened his eyes again.
A living being came nearer. He grinned and knew that he was meant to devour it.
***
Hours later he still felt painfully dizzy. The sisters’ spirit had left him although it had felt as if it was forever. Nothing left but a smear upon his soul, more like the marks of tentacles on the skin of a whale. It was only superficial. It hadn’t dragged him down.
They hadn’t spoken much on their way back. Ezra steered the ship, Sabine and Kanan were both in the Phantom’s back seats. He couldn’t feel much more. Was Sabine looking at him? He couldn’t sense it, everything was numb and the cold mask pressed against his forehead. He felt … blind. The green mist took his sight from him – again. It wasn’t as painful as the first time, when the red light had done it, but it still left the searing desire to be able to see again. To check if Sabine was okay, if Ezra was unscathed by his journey with Maul.
Perhaps see Hera’s face again.
No, he couldn’t wish to be part of the green mist! She wouldn’t have wanted him to look at her with the power of the dark side in his eyes.
He tried to orientate. Something was odd. Sabine held an object in her hand, moving it back and forth, and he could sense a pulsing presence in it. A kyber?
He lifted his head, pretending that he was still able to meet her gaze with the Jaig eyes on his mask.
“Here”, she said abruptly and put her hand forward. He could sense it. Warm, living bodies weren’t so hard to perceive. I can go on like that. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.
Their hands met, then her finger retreated and left what they had held in his hand: cold, angular metal, formed like the hilt of a saber. A memory dawned in poison-green haze: Clashing blades. Lightsabers, long, thin, glowing bright in their center. And something else. Different sound. Different light. The aura of something old and strange, like the altar on which he had meditated and yet so very different.
“What’s that?”
“Dunno. Have … have it. It’s not. It’s not meant for someone like me.”
Kanan took it and set it on his lap. The strange artifact weighed heavily. He felt its edges with his fingers, felt his brow involuntarily furrowing under the mask. It had a story, a secret to tell.
“It’s not meant for someone like me either”, he replied.