Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Repairing his lightsaber hadn’t been the first thing on his mind when the Phantom had landed back on Atollon, or even the second, but as the days wore on, Ezra grew frustrated. By the light of only the Sith holocron, he sat in his bunk, surrounded by bits of metal and cracked pieces of kyber crystal, trying to fit the pieces back together.

It had never even occurred to him that lightsabers could break; once he had assembled the pieces, his lightsaber became an extension of himself, and as long as he was still breathing, the Force should be flowing through it. He had tried asking the Sith holocron for instructions, or at least advice, but the most it offered was a weak, red light that elongated all the shadows of the room. What a waste of a mission—of two people’s entire lives—and he couldn’t even figure out how to put these pieces back together. Lightsaber? No, this was a pile of scrap metal.

His patience wore thin, and he collected the pieces and stuffed them back into his dresser, slamming the drawer shut once and then again, because the metal-on-metal crunch was just about the only satisfying thing he’d felt in more rotations than he could count.

Ezra knew he was going crazy. When his eyes were open, he stared robotically past everyone, looking over their shoulders instead of in their eyes, and stumbled through whatever menial task he had been assigned. And when his eyes were closed, he saw everything that happened on Malachor, like he was watching a tape—a sped-up tape that looped endlessly—and he couldn’t change the channel. Ezra wasn’t ashamed to bargain; he wished he hadn’t brought his blade up to deflect Vader’s. He wished Maul had betrayed him and let him fall into the chasm of the Sith Temple. If the Force would just grant him this one opportunity to go back and make things right, he would take it without hesitation. He’d let himself fall into the abyss; he wouldn’t even try to fight Vader; he’d sacrifice himself so Kanan and Ahsoka could escape. He’d pay his debt, and he’d be free.

Since returning, he and Kanan had only talked once, a hurried conversation in the middle of the night on the only path either of them walked with any consistency: between their beds and the ‘fresher.

I don’t blame you, Ezra, Kanan had called through the dark.

I wish you would, he called back before Kanan could say anything else. He shut his door and bolted it for good measure. Why did Kanan insist on lying to him? There were a million reasons why the mission had failed, and they were all his fault. Ezra didn’t listen; Ezra didn’t understand; Ezra was naïve and foolish, too trusting of Maul and not trusting enough of his Master. It was all his fault, and why did everyone else insist on pretending otherwise?

Ezra abruptly let go of the handle on the drawer. He had to get out of here. Out of this room, off of this ship, off this planet, preferably even out of this system. The only thing that mattered to him now was finding a way to destroy the Sith, and he wasn’t going to accomplish that sitting on this dusty backwater world fending off spiders. He needed a new lightsaber—not something constructed from the wreckage of his previous one, but something entirely new.

There were no junkyards on Atollon to salvage scraps of metal, and he had no reason to believe he would find a kyber crystal here either. It was time to go. The thought of leaving began to clear some of the fog from his head, and as he threw a spare set of clothes and some ration packs into a bag, he felt more alive than he had in weeks. He wrapped the Sith holocron in an old shirt and stuffed it into his bag as well, then pilfered some of the emergency supplies from the Ghost’s cache; sooner or later, someone would notice the thermal blanket and glow rods were missing and replace them.

There were two final things Ezra had to do before he left. He found Hera in the munitions storeroom, comparing an inventory list on her datapad with the latest shipment of supplies they’d received from another rebel cell. The last few weeks had been hard on all of them, and Hera was no exception. Her eyes were tired, and her lekku seemed less animated than usual.

Ezra coughed once to get her attention.

“I’m leaving,” he said flatly and without introduction, staring at a point over her shoulder.

She set the datapad down on a crate and turned toward him.

“Ezra?”

She took a step toward him and reached for his elbow. He flinched and shrugged her off.

“You don’t—you don’t have to, you know?” she said.

“I do.”

“There has to be another way, right?”

“There isn’t.”

She sighed, and even without looking up, he could feel her eyes on him. He found her curiosity invasive and her kindness offensive.

“Okay. I believe you. But take Chopper, too, please?”

“Fine.”

He met her eyes for a second before turning around and walking mechanically out of the storeroom. Now he had another task before he left: avoid Chopper. The astromech was arguably Hera’s most beloved companion, and Ezra had already caused enough damage to Hera’s loved ones.

That just left the final, and most difficult, task. He knew he would never forgive himself if he left without saying anything to Kanan, but as he stood outside the door to his Master’s cabin, his mind was blank. He had nothing to say. He was leaving, and he wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back. Ezra knocked.

The door slid open, and it took his eyes several seconds to adjust to the darkness. Kanan was seated in meditation in the center of the room, his back to the door.

“Hey,” Ezra said softly, wincing at his choice of words as he spoke. They hadn’t talked in weeks, and that was the best he could come up with?

“What’s on your mind, Ezra?” Kanan asked.

“I have to go.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“How are you getting there?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Sit for just a second?” Kanan gestured to the space beside him.

Ezra’s knees nearly crumpled there in the doorway, but he forced himself to walk forward, sinking to the ground as the door closed and the darkness swallowed them both. He felt directionless and disoriented without any visual reference, and the sound of his breathing—of both of their breathing—filled the room, louder than it should have been. More than anything, he wanted to reach out toward Kanan with his hand and steady himself. The world had always made so much more sense with Kanan as a guide.

“I have to go,” he said again. “My lightsaber—I can’t fix it. Not here, at least.”

He heard Kanan shift beside him, and then the glow of a datapad filled the room. As Kanan entered something on the screen, Ezra took the opportunity to really look at him. He stared rudely; gone was the familiar, carefully maintained goatee he’d become so accustomed to seeing. In its place grew a rough, uneven beard, framed by stringy clumps of hair; the usual ponytail was also gone. The air in the room was so stale that it almost hurt to breathe.

Kanan handed him the datapad.

“What is this?” Ezra asked, looking at the screen. All it contained was a set of coordinates.

“A starting point. And a better ship.”

Ezra didn’t typically help with navigation, and even if he knew where Kanan was sending him, he wouldn’t have been able to tell from just the numbers.

“Hera won’t miss that junky old freighter we picked up on Garel. Take it there—it’s a junkyard on a planet called Kaller, you’ll see—and tell the owner that Caleb sent you, and he’d like his ship back.”

“Who’s Caleb?”

“The owner’s name is Janus Kasmir. He’ll help you.”

“Who’s Caleb?”

“You should get going before someone else decides to take that freighter.”

Ezra stood up, accepting that he was not going to receive an answer.

“Okay.”

No one had flown that ship since they had established Chopper Base. There was no urgency. But it was still time to go.

“Goodbye, I guess.”

“Goodbye, Ezra.”

As Ezra left the room, he looked over his shoulder as the door closed behind him, and Kanan’s back disappeared into the darkness once again. His lungs felt like they were full of icy water.

From his own bunk, he grabbed his bag and spare supplies and made his way out to the dockyard. The ship was small as freighters went, and a quick sweep told him the cargo hold and the cockpit were both clear of Chopper or any other stowaways.

The engine whined as he prepared the ship for takeoff, and soon he began to climb through the atmosphere. Ezra watched as Chopper Base disappeared below him. He kept his eyes on it until he could no longer distinguish it from the forest of plated tree coral that covered Atollon. Soon he cleared the planet’s atmosphere and sat in orbit, empty space stretching out in every direction before him and a hyperdrive computer with coordinates to an unknown planet.

“Here goes nothing,” he said to no one in particular as he punched the hyperspace drive. The stars elongated, and he was gone.

Chapter Text

Ezra slouched in the captain’s chair, his eyes closed, as he absentmindedly ran his fingers along each edge of the Sith holocron. It glowed like an extension of the instrument panel, bathing the cockpit in a flickering red light. Still in hyperspace, he wasn’t due to arrive in the Kaller system for another couple of hours, and he passed the time alternating between probing the holocron and sketching out what he needed to find in order to build a new lightsaber.

Though he had discarded everything from his old lightsaber, he considered himself lucky that he wasn’t starting from the very beginning. He knew what he was looking for, and he knew how to put the parts together. Honestly, that was more than half the battle right there. On the datapad Kanan had given him with the coordinates, he had made a list: a small power cell, an emitter matrix, a blade emitter shroud, and a button to turn the thing on and off. And a kyber crystal, of course. Aside from the crystal, he felt reasonably sure a junkyard was a good enough place to start his search. He might as well start with the easy stuff.

He snapped awake from his daydream as the ship’s navicomputer beeped three times to signal their departure from hyperspace. A large, green planet began to fill the viewport; the poles were white, seemingly encrusted in snow and ice, and large tracts of forest covered much of the planet’s surface.

Welcome to Kaller, he thought as he began to descend through the atmosphere. Just as more ships, mostly mining freighters full of ore, began to appear, a crackle of static came from the ship’s radio.

“Freighter, state your callsign and business,” came a voice from the spaceport’s traffic control station.

So accustomed to evading Imperial blockades with the Ghost, Ezra momentarily panicked. He had no story prepared.

“I’m uh—Jabba. And I’m here on business.”

“Aren’t we all, Jabba? State your business on Kaller or prepare to turn around.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m um… I’m meeting a junkyard operator and scrapping this ship. It’s on its last legs, you know? Surprised I made it here.”

He held his breath. It wasn’t very convincing, even though, for once, he was telling the truth.

“You are cleared to land, freighter. Hangar D10. Welcome to Plateau City.”
Relieved, Ezra guided the ship down into the spaceport, narrowly avoiding scraping the hull of a logging freighter. The controls of this ship were significantly less responsive than the Phantom’s.

After paying the entrance toll and the hangar fee, Ezra pulled up a map of Plateau City on the ship’s computer, plotting the route between the hangar and the junkyard. It sat about two klicks due east from his current location, a manageable distance, though he stuffed an extra ration pack into his pocket just in case.

As he set out from the spaceport, he immediately noticed the complete lack of stormtroopers. In spite of being a world so rich in natural resources, the Empire had not laid claim to any of the mines or forests of Kaller. Instead, the streets bustled with life; aliens of species he’d never seen sold fruits and vegetables he’d never even heard of. Ezra had never seen such a rich assortment of tentacles, teeth, and limbs in such a concentrated space. It reminded him of the central marketplace on Lothal before the Empire came, and he joined the crowd.

Blending in seamlessly, he walked for several blocks until the flow of traffic came to a halt, crowding around two aliens in a heated argument.

“Pay attention, you sleemo!” the larger of the two aliens yelled, pointing to the front of his speeder bike. “This is a custom job—it’s expensive to fix."

“You’re the one who ran into me,” the other alien yelled back.

They continued to shout for several moments until they came to some kind of agreement; from his spot in the back, Ezra couldn’t make out the details. Slowly, the crowd began to move again, allowing Ezra to read the name printed on the side of the custom speeder bike: Kasmiri II.

Ezra studied the owner of the bike. Tall with dark green skin, the alien was muscular and wore no shoes; each limb instead branched into three digits, and a series of handsome black stripes ran across his body. The alien began to push his speeder bike along the street, and because they were heading in the same direction, Ezra followed him from a distance, intrigued.

Separately, they each wove their way through the grid of streets, past market stalls and bars, crumbling flophouses, and what Ezra assumed to be brothels. They turned onto a side street, and there was the junkyard, exactly where Kanan said it would be. Ezra stepped out of the shadow and approached.

“We’re not open, kid,” the alien said as he reached for the padlock on the junkyard’s gate. “Come back later.”

“Are you Janus Kasmir?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Caleb sent me.”

The alien let go of the lock and turned towards Ezra, narrowing his eyes.

“He sent you to get his ship, didn’t he?”

The dots connected in Ezra’s brain, and he felt a confusing roil of humiliation and anger. Why hadn’t Kanan ever told him he had another name? The person who spent most of his time lecturing Ezra to open up was apparently much more closed-off than he had let on.

“He told me there was a ship here.”

“Well, you can tell Caleb that if he wants his ship back, he has to come get it himself.”

The alien turned around again and opened the padlock, and the rusty gate creaked open.

“He gave it to me. For now, at least,” Ezra yelled desperately at Kasmir’s back, who seemed ready for the conversation to be over.

“Oh,” Kasmir said, stopping again. “Well, in that case, I hope you have something to trade for it. Storage isn’t free, even for old friends.”

“I do, I do. It’s back in the spaceport. An old freighter. Not much of a ship anymore, but the parts are still good.”

“And there are no active warrants out for this ship’s immediate capture?”

“Definitely not.”

Kasmir nodded slowly, stepping back outside the gate.

“Okay. Bring that freighter here, and we’ll see what we can do—and what did you say your name was?”
“I’m Jabba.”

“Well, Jabba, get going. Before I change my mind.”

And so Ezra nearly ran back to the spaceport, praying that the ship would start up again, and when it did, he flew it as gently as he could back to the junkyard’s landing pad. Skeletons of ships in various states of disassembly dotted the yard.

“Well, here she is,” Ezra said, exiting the ship. “Hope it’s good enough, ‘cause I’d really like a different ship. This thing handles like a bantha.”

Kasmir arrived with a crate of tools and scanners and began to inspect the ship, taking meticulous notes. He checked the entire hull for cracks and carbon scoring and tugged on every cable and pylon he could reach, citing a bad experience with mynocks. He tested every button, lever, and hatch and demanded that Ezra demonstrate its flying capabilities once again. Ezra sighed internally with relief when Kasmir had finished; he had half expected the Kalleran to count every screw, nut, and bolt on the ship.

“This’ll do,” Kasmir said, extending a grease-covered hand towards Ezra, which he reluctantly shook. “Caleb’s ship is over there. Been awhile since it's flown—might need a new power cell. Let me know, and I can get you one. My treat, since you went to all the trouble of coming here.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have another spare power cell, would you?

“How big are we talking? Speeder bike? Imperial Star Destroyer?”

“No, no. A tiny one. Handheld.”

Kasmir drummed his fingers on the hull as he thought.

“There’s probably one around here somewhere. If you can find it, it’s yours. What are you trying to build, anyway?”

“Nothing special.”

“Should’ve figured you’d say that,” Kasmir laughed. “You look around long enough, and you can find just about anything you’ll ever need in these junkyards. And even more you don’t need!”

“Do you mind if I stay here awhile then? I’ve got kind of a long list of stuff I’m looking for,” Ezra asked, seizing his opportunity. The more time he spent out from under the nose of the Empire, the better.

“Fine. But don’t expect any more favors. And you leave when I tell you to leave; no negotiation.”

“One rotation’s notice.”

“Okay. You get one rotation’s notice, and then I better never see you again.”

“Deal.”

They shook hands again, adding another layer of grease. No matter how hard he scrubbed, the outline of Kasmir’s hand remained embedded in Ezra’s skin for weeks.

Chapter Text

Before they knew it, Kasmir and Ezra had fallen into a rhythm: scope, steal, profit. Their skillsets complimented one another perfectly. Kasmir knew every shipping schedule by heart and could provide detailed maps of nearly every building—and thus every stealthy entrance and exit—in Plateau City, and Ezra was still just small enough to fit through nearly all of them. They ate like kings, enjoying more than modest profits from the resale of stolen merchandise: power cells, blasters, and building materials. You name it; Ezra could steal it, and Kasmir could sell it.

The holocron finally made itself useful and began whispering advice to him. It happened by accident at first; he’d fallen asleep in the captain’s chair of the Escape, holocron in hand, and all night his dreams were bathed in eerie glowing red, and he woke up knowing exactly how he would get revenge on that Rodian who’d shorted him on credits last week.

Let your anger be your guide, the holocron murmured in his ear each night as he slept, and Ezra listened. It helped that during their waking hours, Kasmir (unknowingly) mirrored the holocron’s guidance. Lie, steal, cheat—whatever it takes to get what’s yours.

Lying, cheating, stealing—these were all old skills now refined by the one thing Ezra hadn’t had before: the Force. Kanan had taught him digression well; he never revealed his training as a Jedi in the presence of anyone else, but at the end of the day, even without a fully assembled lightsaber, Ezra honed his connection to the Force. He learned to crush empty metal cans with a squeeze of his fist and to slam doors shut with his mind. All of his anger—anger at Master Yoda for sending them to that wretched place, anger at Kanan and Ahsoka for not trusting him, anger at Maul for betraying him, anger at himself for letting it all happen—guided his exercises at night. Gone were the directionless, foggy days shortly after their return from Malachor; Ezra could see clearly now. He was focused and disciplined, and he knew what he wanted and how to get there.

He began to find bits and pieces for his lightsaber. Shortly after his arrival on Kaller, he stumbled across a small power cell in fine working condition from an abandoned droid in Kasmir’s junkyard, and a few weeks later, he molded a pristine sheet of durasteel into the exterior casing, courtesy of Kasmir’s extensive collection of metal-working tools.

But despite their string of successes, Ezra knew there was a gnawing emptiness in what he and Kasmir were doing that he could not ignore. The Kalleran was a good conspirator, but at the end of the day, he rarely wanted to talk. They ate their meals mostly in silence, and he rarely laughed, unless it was at Ezra’s expense. Ezra would have been fine with this arrangement had he not known the warmth of the Ghost’s dinner table; everything tasted better when you were laughing together and when you felt loved by the person who had cooked your dinner.

But that was the past, and he took what he could get. His appetite was ravenous these days, and he guessed he had grown at least an inch since leaving Atollon. Whenever he felt lonely, he reminded himself that he had enough to eat, and that was all he needed.

One night, they sat lazily around a fire, finishing the last of the roba steaks they’d intercepted from a shipment destined for a local restaurant. Kasmir gnawed on a bone, picking off the last strips of meat with his teeth and noisily sucking out the marrow, while Ezra licked grease off of his fingers, quietly celebrating that he only needed to find one more mechanical part for his lightsaber: the emitter matrix. Without one, he was more likely to lose a limb the first time he ignited that blade than to hold his own in a lightsaber battle. With his bare hand, he grabbed another bone to chew. Hera had managed to instill some semblance of table manners in him over the last few years, but he quickly abandoned them once he began to share meals with Kasmir.

It had been another dinner of near-silence; the only words they’d exchanged had been over who got the last hunk of meat. Ezra kept glancing toward the entrance to the junkyard, wishing more than anything that Kanan would walk through the gates and join them around the fire. There was no way around it; no matter how much he wanted to deny it, he missed Kanan. He missed his Master’s laugh and his encouragement, the way his eyes lit up when Ezra finally got the hang of something, and the way they communicated beyond the constraints of words. Without Kanan, Ezra felt like part of himself was missing.

“What was Caleb like back then? When you knew him?” he asked, glancing toward Kasmir, who had finished stripping the last of the meat from his bone.

The Kalleran tossed the splintered remains of the bones into the fire and stared at the flames. A white-hot bed of coals had formed at its base, the embers glowing against the darkness.

“He was a kid scared out of his mind when I first met him. But he learned to pull his weight eventually.”

Kasmir gave the fire a poke, shifting the logs around. Ashes floated up into the night sky.

“Why d’you ask? What’s he like now?”

“Hard to say,” Ezra lied, feeling a pang in his heart as if he had just tried to sever his Force Bond with Kanan. Everything he had wanted to say before he left Atollon—he didn’t trust me enough, he was always critical of me despite his own obvious shortcomings, and he didn’t even try to stop me from leaving—seemed to echo as if Kanan were on the other end of the commlink, listening to every word. “I don’t really know him at all.”

“And he let you have his ship? I’d heard he’d taken up charity work, but I didn’t think he was that delusional.”

Ezra shrugged, and he let the conversation die. They sat in silence until the fire burned out, and like they did every night, they each retreated separately to bed.

The next morning, Ezra awoke to a pounding on his door.

“Heard you’ve been looking for an emitter matrix!” Kasmir shouted from the other side.

“I’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard by now,” Ezra said, still half asleep. He shuffled to the door and let Kasmir in. “Why’d you have to wake me up to tell me that?”

“Well, I think I found you one.”

Ezra’s heart lit up, and he felt buoyant, as if the force of the planet’s gravity had suddenly decreased. Suddenly, he was very awake.

“When can we grab it?”

Kasmir waggled his finger at him and clicked his tongue.

“No grabbing. I don’t steal from this guy. Honor code.”

“Since when have you had an honor code?”

“Since I started babysitting lost teenagers, thank you very much. If you want it, you can steal it yourself, or you can pay for it.”

“Fine. What does he want for it?”

“Four thousand.”

“Four thousand credits?” Ezra’s heart sank all over again. “Do you have any idea how long it’ll take us to come up with that?”

“Well, he did say he was open to…alternative…forms of payment,” Kasmir said, folding his arms across his chest and looking at the ceiling.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s open to credits, but he’d prefer spice.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Somebody needs to import it.”

“Yeah, and that somebody isn’t gonna be me.”

“D’you want that emitter matrix or not? Because you could do fifty stupid little jobs and barely break a thousand credits, or you could do one spice run, get your emitter matrix, and be on your way.”

Ezra sighed, still pajama-clad and barefoot. Kasmir was right; they weren’t getting paid much because they weren’t doing jobs that warranted it. This might be his only chance at getting that matrix.

“Fine. But we’re taking your ship.”

“No, we’re taking yours. You want the part; we’re taking your ship.

And so, against his better judgment, he prepared to add another title to his long list of accomplishments: Ezra Bridger, spicerunner.

Chapter Text

“Stick to the plan, and everything will be fine,” Kasmir said, cracking the knuckles of his three-fingered hands as he started the engines of the Escape. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

Ezra strapped himself into the co-pilot’s seat and nodded, his stomach tight with worry. He had not asked how Kasmir had come up with a plan for them so quickly, and he did not intend to find out.

“Relax, kid, really. It’s not a crime to import goods from off-world. Lots of stuff is hard to get on Kaller. They’ll never know.”

Kasmir jerked the steering yoke upwards, and Plateau City began to grow smaller and smaller beneath them. The Escape ascended through patches of fog, and everything lost its edges; below them was just an unending expanse of green and white, and forests and glaciers stretched in every direction. Far to the north stood an imposing range of mountains; it was easy to see why Kaller was known for its ores and timber. They left the planet’s atmosphere and sat in orbit, waiting their turn to enter the hyperspace lane that would take them to Mygeeto.

“It’s too bad that freighter of yours is in such bad shape—it’s really the perfect ship for this job,” Kasmir said as he drummed his fingers. He seemed almost bored.

“Is someone going to think it’s weird that we’re hauling cargo on this ship? It’s not exactly… huge,” Ezra asked, trying to conceal from Kasmir how nervous he was.

“I doubt it. Out here, this close to Wild Space, people do all kinds of things for an extra credit or two. I’ve seen more cargo hauled on smaller ships than this.”

The queue of ships awaiting departure moved slowly, but soon enough, they received clearance from the air traffic control tower, and Kasmir plugged the hyperspace coordinates of their destination into the navicomputer. With a burst of light, they hurtled through the stars towards their cargo. Ezra sat perfectly still for the entire trip.

Mygeeto was by far the busiest hub in this sector, and the volume of air traffic made Kaller seem like some forgotten backwater world.

“See?” Kasmir said, gesturing out the viewport towards the commotion. “We blend right in.”

Ezra nodded curtly and pulled up the shipping manifest on his datapad.

“This says we’re here to pick up a shipment of relacite. What’s that? Some kind of crystal?”

“A synthetic crystal used in comms devices. It’s commonly used across the galaxy but only manufactured here—something about the cold on this planet. Kinda weird, to be honest. It’s not like this is the only cold planet out there. I hope you brought a parka with you.”

“You never mentioned that part of the plan,” Ezra scowled. “I would have grabbed one if you had told me to.”

“Kriff almighty, you want me to wipe your ass while I’m at it?” Kasmir said, flashing a toothy grin. “Guess you’ll just have to go cold, huh?”

They received their clearance to land in Mygeeto City, and Kasmir guided the Escape towards the industrial center of the city. They flew over a seemingly endless series of warehouses and shipping containers before reaching a landing pad.

“Here we go,” Kasmir said, killing the engines and unbuckling himself.

They exited the ship and stepped into the frigid air of Mygeeto, and even once they had entered the nearest warehouse, the temperature didn’t rise much. Ezra shivered and pulled his meager flight jacket tighter around him. His shoulders were nearly too broad for the jacket, and the fabric stretched uncomfortably tight around his body. He could see his breath, and the tip of his nose was soon numb. He stuffed his hands deeper into his pockets and ran to keep up with Kasmir.

They approached a Trandoshan foreman wearing a hardhat and fluorescent orange vest, who seemed busy directing several ASP-Series Labor Droids towards a stack of crates. Kasmir nodded like he knew the foreman and handed over their shipping manifest, who looked it over and grunted before handing the datapad back to Kasmir.

“Get them their cargo already, will you?” the foreman barked at the nearest labor droid, who quickly scanned several of the crates from the stack. Another labor droid appeared with a forklift and loaded the scanned crates onto a repulsor sled.

“Thank you much. Always a pleasure doing business with you,” Kasmir said, taking the sled from the droid and nodding to the Trandoshan. “Take this, will you?” He pushed the sled full of cargo towards Ezra and began to walk back towards the Escape. Ezra once again hurried to keep up, and together, they loaded the crates into the Escape’s cargo bay.

“That’s it?” Ezra asked as he began to unlatch the lid of one of the containers. “How do we know—”

“Not here,” Kasmir hissed, slapping Ezra’s hand away from the lid. “Go return that sled and get ready to leave.”

Ezra, now marginally warmed from all the running around, did as he was told and sprinted back, as he would not put it past Kasmir to leave without him. When he returned, the Kalleran had generously turned the ship’s heating system on, and feeling slowly began to return to his fingers and toes.

They reversed their way off Mygeeto, once again sitting in a traffic jam, though Ezra felt less bothered by the entire thing. Kasmir was right; there were probably a thousand ships out there right now, and as long as they didn’t call any attention to themselves, there was no way their tiny vessel would set off anyone’s alarm. All they had to do was patiently wait their turn for hyperspace clearance, and they’d be on their way.

As soon as they were in hyperspace, Ezra made his way to the cargo hold and opened each of the crates. Beautiful blue crystals glimmered even in the low light of the cargo hold, and Ezra began to root around, reaching deeper into each of the crates. In the third crate, his fingers brushed something metallic towards the center, and he fished out a small case that had been buried among the relacite. He sat down and pulled it into his lap, unlatching the clasps that held it shut. An overpowering smell of cinnamon filled his nostrils, and he shut his eyes and inhaled deeply, mesmerized.

“Don’t touch that stuff,” Kasmir warned him, appearing suddenly from the cockpit. He slammed the case’s lid shut, and Ezra snapped out of his trance.

“If you’re trying to relax, go make yourself a drink. You can drink all you want; I don’t care, but don’t get into spice.”

“I was just smelling it.”

“You touch it once, and it’ll never let you go, got it?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Ezra returned the case to the crate, burying it once again among the crystals, and tried to ignore the tide of shame rising from his stomach. He could look after himself, thank you very much. Who was Kasmir to be giving out life advice anyway?

“No hard feelings, kid,” Kasmir said as Ezra slouched back into the co-pilot’s seat. “I’m just doing my job.”

“It’s fine,” Ezra grunted.

“Caleb said the exact same thing you did—I’m just smelling it. But that kid always preferred alcohol anyway. You know, I bought him a drink the first time he shaved—it seemed like the kind of thing you celebrate. Then I never saw him without a bottle in his hand after that.”

“What?”

“He could drink a freighter full of Ugnaughts under the table. Loved every bottle he ever met, though, as I recall, he was partial to Corellian whiskey. Oh, the things I’ve seen him do for a bottle of that stuff,” Kasmir said, stretching his arms behind his head. He flashed Ezra a toothy grin. “I guess you were right—you don’t know him at all.”

“I guess he’s not like that anymore.”

“Maybe. Or he’s just gotten better at hiding it.”

“Kan—” Ezra caught himself before the second syllable slipped out. “Caleb wouldn’t do that.”

“Believe whatever you want, kid. All I know is that if you gave me a credit for every time I had to carry him home from a bar, I wouldn’t be living in a junkyard or hauling spice with you,” Kasmir said. “I’d have bought myself a fast ship and retired somewhere in the Outer Rim. A water world, somewhere nice and warm. I would have been a rich man if—”

“Okay, I get it. You can stop,” Ezra snapped.

They sat in stony silence for the rest of the trip back to Kaller. Kasmir hummed quietly to himself while Ezra stared directly ahead, almost frozen in place. From the moment they met, Kanan felt familiar, and Ezra had immediately forgotten what his life felt like before that moment. He was embarrassed to admit that right now was the first time he considered that Kanan had his own life, a life long before he knew Ezra, one that Ezra would never know. Something inside of him felt hollow, as if he had never met Kanan at all.

The flight into Plateau City was uneventful, and as they landed back in Kasmir’s junkyard, Ezra realized, for better or worse, the Kalleran had been right—the entire trip had taken less than a rotation, and they hadn’t run into a bump of trouble the entire way. Maybe he could get used to this.

“Where’d you say that emitter matrix was?” he asked as they disembarked.

“In a shop that way,” Kasmir said, pointing vaguely west. “You can’t miss it; just look for the Devaronian with the cybernetic eye. Name’s Kleeve. I told him to expect you.”

“You need any help with these crates before I go?”

“Nah. They’re not going far. I’ll deliver ‘em while you’re gone.”

Ezra once again removed the metal case from the pile of relacite, this time stuffing it into a satchel. It looked inconspicuous enough. Like Kasmir said, it wasn’t a crime to carry something in a bag, and he set out in the direction of the shop.

After several blocks, he came upon an open storefront displaying a variety of electrical equipment, spanning the range from useless trinkets to high-capacity power cells. Behind the counter sat a one-eyed Devaronian, a cybernetic eye held in place with a black band that wrapped around his horns. Ezra swallowed hard.

“I’m here for an emitter matrix,” he said as confidently as he could, approaching the counter. “I think Kasmir told you to expect me?”

The Devaronian gave no indication of recognition of either Kasmir or a plan, and his cybernetic eye buzzed as it surveyed Ezra.

"I hope Kasmir told you the terms of payment.”

Ezra lifted the case out of the satchel. He placed it on the counter and pushed it towards the shopkeeper, who grabbed the handle and disappeared through a doorway behind the counter. Ezra stood frozen in place; Kasmir hadn’t mentioned this part. Was he supposed to know what to do? Was this part of some unwritten code Kasmir had conveniently forgotten to mention to him?

After what felt like an eternity, Kleeve reappeared through the doorway, carrying the emitter matrix.

“Don’t get too many of those coming through anymore,” he said as he handed it to Ezra.

“My lucky day, I guess.”

“Kasmir didn’t tell me your name.”

“You can call me Jabba.”

“Well, Jabba, I hope you’ll keep me in mind should you require any other hard-to-find components for—what are you building?”

“Just tinkering. I like to work with my hands.”

Kleeve folded his muscular arms across his chest and nodded. Ezra had a suspicion that the cybernetic eye had zoomed in on him, scrutinizing the micro-expressions of his face—expressions he couldn’t control.

“Well, in any case, you know where to find me. Goodbye, Jabba. I have other customers waiting.”

Ezra left the shop and burst into the cool sunshine. His heart felt lighter than it had in months; except for the kyber crystal, he had everything he needed for his lightsaber. Even though he’d arguably saved the hardest part for last, Kasmir was on his side now. He would have another mysterious connection, or at least know where to start. The kyber crystal felt within reach. Someday, all of this would be over.

He took the long way back to the junkyard, wandering through the bustle of Plateau City. Kaller wasn’t such a bad place; with all that mining, it was possible he wouldn’t even have to go off-world to find a kyber crystal. Maybe. Ezra had no guide on the subject; his first crystal had come to him in the Jedi Temple on Lothal, and Kanan had said that was unusual. What the usual route was, he had no way of knowing, but those were the old ways, and the old ways were done. The galaxy was different without a Jedi Temple or younglings or a council, and Ezra liked doing things his own way, anyway.

He rounded the corner back into their block, a route now familiar to him. The junkyard wasn’t the Ghost, and Kasmir wasn’t his family, but this—what they had going—was good enough for now. Ezra raised a hand to greet Kasmir, who stood leaning up against the gate to the junkyard. The Kalleran did not return the gesture.

“We’ve got a problem,” Kasmir said as Ezra approached.

“What kind of problem?”

Kasmir handed him a datapad. It took Ezra several seconds to process what he was seeing; his own face stared back at him from a wanted poster.

“What is this? How?” Ezra’s heart pounded.

“Seems like somebody isn’t too happy about those power converters you stole a few weeks ago. Ha! And you were worried about smuggling spice.”

Kasmir slammed the gate to the junkyard shut and locked it behind him.

“Get lost, kid. And maybe cut your hair. I can see you coming two kliks away.”

Chapter Text

Ezra leaned over the sink in the cramped ‘fresher of the Escape, taking a pair of scissors he’d found in the ship’s medkit to his hair. He grabbed it by the fistful, cutting off clumps at a time, and remnants of his curls littered almost every surface, including the floor. He had no vision or no end goal other than to erase his resemblance to the photo on the poster Kasmir had shown him.

He hadn’t intentionally begun to grow his hair out since he left Atollon, but once he began conducting business with a partner who didn’t even have hair to begin with, maintaining any sort of coif that required effort seemed frivolous. He hadn’t started tying it back in a ponytail for any reason other than that without one, he ran the risk of getting snagged on something in the junkyard or accidentally getting sucked into an engine. He definitely did not think about Kanan every time he corralled all of his loose ends with a hair tie, and he absolutely didn’t feel like he was losing his Master all over again now as his hair fell to the floor. Every snip of the scissors did not feel like a paper cut.

He barely recognized himself when he was done; a stranger seemed to stare back at him from the mirror. His cheeks were hollower than he remembered and his eyebrows thicker; the softness that had clung to his features since childhood was nearly gone, replaced with stubble and a sharpening jawline and a short crop of hair cut close to his skull—a buzzcut, but without the buzz. He left the ‘fresher without even bothering to clean up after himself.

Back in the cockpit, he ripped open a ration pack and forced himself to eat, his jaw chewing mechanically. He swallowed without tasting anything, his stomach feeling like it had shrunk to the size of a shriveled jogan fruit. He had programmed the navicomputer with a hyperspace route to Lothal because he didn’t know where else to go. Kasmir had generously allowed him back into the junkyard for the sole purpose of retrieving the Escape, pointing a blaster at him the entire time until he had started the engines and lifted off, which didn’t exactly lend itself to choosing a destination.

Returning to Atallon was out of the question. There was no reason to return to Mygeeto, and he figured it was probably best to leave the entire Kaller system behind. Roaming the galaxy aimlessly had a certain appeal, but it was a waste of fuel and an invitation for pirates, or worse—Imperial surveillance—and so back to Lothal it was.

Ezra would be the first to admit that he had learned a lot about asking for help in the last few years, but he had his doubts about asking around for kyber crystals. Jedi question aside, the Empire was known to mine planets rich in kyber for its capacity as a weapon. Wherever there were kyber crystals, the Empire was sure to follow, and Ezra didn’t need that kind of risk right now.
To pass the time during his flight, he assembled all the parts of the lightsaber he had and practiced the forms of combat Kanan had taught him. Even without the whir of the blade, his body remembered how to move, when to duck, and when to strike. He stood in the center of the cockpit, practicing until his arms ached and his shirt was slick with sweat, and he only stopped because the navicomputer beeped at him, signaling his upcoming departure from hyperspace. He quickly disassembled the lightsaber in case some Imperial customs officers got curious.

These? Oh, these are just spare parts I keep around—not really sure what I’ll need ‘em for, he imagined himself saying to some buckethead.

A bittersweet pang welled in him as the viewport filled with the orb of his home planet. Even this high up, he could see all the things that made Lothal special: vast expanses of prairie, the shallow inland seas, and chains of wild, rugged mountains. Small patches of blue dotted the golden planet. Ezra had known Lothal was special long before Ahsoka had told him it sat on a Vergence in the Force. This planet spoke to him like none other, sometimes in whispers and sometimes so loudly he could barely stand it, and no matter how jarring his departure from Kaller had been, he had faith that coming to Lothal was a decision grounded in some wisdom. Maybe this was the Force’s way of telling him it was time to move on from Kaller; he’d collected all the parts he needed, and there was no point in lingering.

Turning off the navicomputer as he entered the atmosphere, he flew over Lothal’s northern hemisphere and allowed the Force to guide him towards the Jedi temple. He felt strong and focused, the Vergence intensifying his connection with the Force. He could sense it: he would find a kyber crystal here on Lothal, finish constructing his lightsaber, and uncover the secret to defeating the Sith. Armed with both a lightsaber and the Sith holocron, he would wield both light and dark, and he would overpower anyone who stood in his way.

The sight of a tall stone spire in the distance brought him out of his daydream; he was approaching the temple. He banked the Escape and landed in a ravine some ways away from his destination, gathering scrub by the handful to camouflage the ship. Though he was unlikely to encounter anyone all the way out here, if he did, they would almost certainly be an air patrol, and he dragged enough debris overtop the Escape until it blended into the surroundings. From the sky, it appeared as just another scrubby hillside on a vast, empty planet. Satisfied, Ezra began to make his way towards the base of the temple.

As he approached, he realized it really hadn’t been all that long since he, Kanan, and Ahsoka had been here last, but it felt like ages ago, an event that happened in someone else’s life. He stood at the base of the temple, just where he and Kanan and Ahsoka had stood, and reached through the Force, feeling around for an opening. All he could detect was smooth stone; there were no handholds here, no doors, and no portals.

Frustrated, he took a step closer to the stone and tried to create a door where there was none. He scratched at the stone, and it remained unchanged. The temple would not yield.

His concentration broke the instant he realized that the temple was never going to open for him; it took a Master and a Padawan. He might have considered himself his own Master these days, but the Force didn’t see it that way.

He did not know where his volcanic anger came from, but by the time he was aware of it, it had radiated through his entire body, erupting as a scream as he clawed with all his might at the temple. He had come so far. He had come all this way in search of his prize, and an old Jedi tradition, this old magic was not going to stop him. The old world was gone, and the old ways had died out with it. A new era had begun, and Ezra needed that kyber crystal if he was going to be part of it.

Fissures appeared at the base of the spire, and loose rock tumbled down the slope, sending a cascade of scree towards Ezra. The fissures grew into jagged cracks, and the harder he pulled, the deeper the cracks became. He was so close to forcing the temple open; he could feel it just beyond his fingertips.

Then the ground beneath his feet began to shift, the loose soil disappearing into the dark chasms that had split the planet open. Ezra struggled to maintain his balance and made a half-hearted attempt to run away from the base of the spire, but the damage was done. The vergence of Lothal, his beloved home world, had swallowed him whole.

Chapter Text

Ezra awoke flat on his stomach. Startled, he pushed himself to his knees and blinked several times, his eyes struggling to make sense of where he was. A darkness surrounded him as if he were suspended in an inky black sea, the only light coming from two small indentations made by his knees and dozens of thin pairs of parallel lines strung randomly through the darkness. Pairs occasionally intersected with one another, while others looped and spiraled their way through the sky before disappearing beyond his view. The air was cool, and while he could hear the faintest whisper of a breeze, he felt nothing on his skin.

The light around his knees jogged his memory; he’d been here before. This was the place where he’d gone during their last visit to the temple. The place where Master Yoda had instructed him to find Malachor. The place where everything had begun to unravel. Last time he’d been here, he had been confined to a disk of white light, but now he appeared to be on some kind of pathway. He stood up quickly, unsteady on his feet, and looked around. There was no sign of the Jedi Temple, and no fissures split the sky above him. Wherever he was, it offered no explanation for how he had gotten here.

The only other feature Ezra could discern in the darkness was the occasional geometric shape. They appeared regularly along the lines, which he assumed to be pathways like the one he stood on. Some were as simple as a single circle, while others appeared to contain intricate patterns; as far as he could see, no two were the same. It was impossible to judge distance or depth in this space; even basic orientations like up and down seemed to be tenuous at best, but Ezra chose the only thing that was in his power to do: he began to walk.

His footsteps did not echo, and the only sound was that of his own breathing. The edges of the pathway provided a small amount of light, and everything else remained in darkness. This place matched no description he’d ever heard, not even from the old folktales he’d grown up with that were more myth than truth.

As he approached the first of the geometric shapes, a large archway hugged by a border of repeating triangles, the whispering sound that he had heard earlier grew louder, as if it were coming from the archway itself. Though he strained his ears, he could not make out what the voices were saying or even what language they were speaking.

He stopped and stood directly in front of the glowing shape, the whispering now elevated to a hum, almost as if the archway were breathing and alive. As he stared through it, the darkness began to ripple, becoming first blurry with light and then sharpening into focus. The archway had become a portal, and through it, Ezra looked out over a dark, snowy forest. Rocky outcroppings dotted a river that tore through the trees, and a massive waterfall spilled over the edge of a cliff, sending a spray of mist high into the air. His eyes traced the river’s path beyond the edge of the forest, and a boy no older than himself, wearing a set of brown robes and wielding a lightsaber, came into focus.

“Stay back!” the boy yelled as several figures dressed in clone armor approached him, their hands raised and their weapons abandoned. “Stay away from me!”

“Kid, wait, we don’t know what’s happening, either,” one of the clones said, taking another step forward. “Something’s wrong.”

“You killed her!”

The boy swung his lightsaber wildly at the nearest clone and took off running, his boots sliding through the snow as he approached the edge of the trees. Two of the clones pursued him. Glancing over his shoulder, the boy tripped over a root but sprang right back up, wiping snow from his knees as he disappeared into the evergreens. As soon as Ezra lost track of him, the scene began to dissolve, and the archway returned to its glossy black surface. Ezra stared at the empty space where the scene had been just moments ago, breathless and confused.

Another shape sat not far along the walkway; this one was triangularly shaped without any adornments or border. Ezra glanced between the archway and the triangle, suddenly afraid that he was being watched. Without turning his back on the archway, he slowly began to walk towards the triangle, glancing back and forth between them the entire time it took him to reach the next doorway.

As he drew closer, he could hear a similar whispering coming from the interior of the triangle, and just as before, as soon as he stood directly in front of the portal, the darkness gave way to a rippling light that slowly focused into a scene.

He heard voices before he could see anything.

“You think you’re protecting me, but you’re really protecting yourself from suffering another loss.”

Ezra nearly leapt out of his skin. He knew that voice. What was Kasmir doing here?

“We’re just better off on our own.”

As the scene sharpened, the same boy from before spoke, though he no longer wore Jedi robes, nor did he carry a lightsaber on his belt clip.

“Wrong lesson, kid.”

The boy stood and glared at Kasmir for a moment before he spun around suddenly, his fist landing directly on Kasmir’s jaw. The Kalleran stumbled backward in surprise, and Ezra was privately jealous.

“I SAID stop calling me KID!” the boy yelled. “Caleb Dume is dead, and you and I are done.”

The portal darkened immediately, but Ezra stood frozen in front of the triangle long after the scene had faded away. The only thing Kanan had ever said about his life after the Clone Army betrayed the Jedi and before he joined the crew of the Ghost was that he’d lost his way for a long time, which Ezra had accepted at face value and without judgement, and he never pushed the subject. Sure, Kanan didn’t owe him an explanation, but Ezra had never even attempted to ask.

Slowly, he began to walk onward, but the next three shapes he reached refused to budge, the surfaces remaining black and smooth as glass, and when Ezra reached his hand out, all he felt was a terrible cold. Distance was impossible to measure in this place, with no landmarks to judge perspective, and he had no idea how long he’d been walking or how far he’d come. The space was both unending and claustrophobic.

The sixth gate he approached was a simple circle, smaller than the others he had seen, and he had to stoop to his knees to peer through it. Ezra was surprised to look and see himself—himself from more than a year ago, his eyes closed as if he were in a trance. He recognized the scene—it was the cave on the asteroid base he and Kanan had visited, hoping to lure the Inquisitor away from the rest of the crew while they shuttled Tseebo to safety.

Ezra’s memories of what had happened on that asteroid were fuzzy, but he remembered exactly how he felt: his anger at Tseebo was a more palatable emotion than his fear of knowing exactly what happened to his parents, just like how the dread he felt when the Inquisitor threatened to kill Kanan felt more powerful when he expressed it as rage, and he channeled that anger through the mother of all fyrnocks, unleashing his unadulterated rage of claws and teeth on the Inquisitor. He promised himself that he would never allow anything to be taken from him again, and after that, he only remembered a cold darkness.

He saw himself sink to the ground, unconscious, and Kanan appeared by his side immediately, unable to shake him awake. The cave rumbled violently, and Kanan hoisted Ezra over his shoulder, dragging them both back in the direction of the Phantom.

“The darkness calls to him—can’t you sense it?” the Inquisitor taunted, even as the fyrnock had him pinned in a corner. “And how could you possibly keep him safe with just your half-finished training? Do you really think you’re qualified? That you have anything to teach him?”

“I won’t let him lose his way,” Kanan yelled from the mouth of the cave. "Not like I did.”

The engines of the Phantom burst to life, and the portal closed once again, leaving Ezra more confused than before. He sat now in the uncomfortable knowledge that he had left Atollon, abandoning Kanan in the process, because it had been easier than asking for forgiveness. He left Atollon himself so that he would never have to hear Kanan tell him to leave. He assigned himself the blame for Kanan’s blindness so that he would never have to sit powerlessly under someone else’s blame. He was afraid in a galaxy that preyed on fear, mistaking it for weakness, and he forcefully and purposefully forged his fear into anger in order to survive. Because that’s what Ezra was good at—surviving.

He had no doubt his Master meant to keep that promise he made on the asteroid, but deep down, Ezra felt that he did not deserve any of it—the promise of guidance and the forgiveness of someone who had already lost so much. His legs ached, and he sat down on the edge of the pathway, his feet dangling over the edge. Suspended over a great empty darkness without any ration packs or water and no indication of where he was or how to find his way out, he began to despair.

He imagined himself checking every gate he came to; maybe one would eventually lead him back to his own time and place. Maybe he would never find his way back. Maybe he was dead, and this was what Kanan had meant when he told Ezra that the Force taught that life did not end with death—it simply changed form, though he thought that it seemed cruel for death to just be the ability to float between scenes of life.

He swung his legs idly, his gaze unfocused in the darkness, until a flicker of light beneath him drew his attention. A glowing circle had appeared directly beneath him, slowly expanding as its edges sharpened.

He knew exactly what he was about to see a split second before the portal opened. The opening of the Sith Temple on Malachor; Kanan yelling for his Padawan; Maul, a fire burning in his eyes. Ezra tried to look away, but the portal was too wide, filling his entire field of vision. A red flash and a scream.

Where’s Ezra?

Had this been Maul’s plan the entire time? To betray Ezra’s trust and use him as a pawn? Or had it been an impulsive decision, born out of an unexpected opportunity? And did the answer even matter?

“Why are you showing this to me?” he whispered to no one at all as he curled into a ball, covering his ears with his hands. “I get it. I get it. I’m sorry. I’d go back and change it all if I could. I never meant for it to happen like that. And I know I can’t change it. What am I supposed to do with all of this? Nothing I ever do will take it back. Just let me forget about it.”

“The greatest teacher, failure is,” a small, raspy voice said, startling him.

Ezra opened his eyes and snarled. Master Yoda sat cross-legged in front of him, suspended above the darkness on a floating circular disk.

“You!” he yelled at the Jedi as he got to his feet. “This is all your fault. You could have just told me what I needed to know, but instead you told us to go to Malachor. Well, we failed, and everything’s lost. I lost everything because of you.”

“What I told you when we last spoke, remember, Padawan? A challenge lifelong it is, not to bend fear into anger.”

“Easy for you to say. I have every right to be angry,” Ezra said, rolling his eyes and glaring. “You’ve always had other Jedi with you. You were never alone. But me? After the Empire took my parents, I had nothing until I met Kanan, and it’s your fault that… you could have just told me how to defeat the Sith instead of sending us into that trap.”

Ezra knew he wasn’t making sense, but he didn’t care.

“It that you fear, what is? Yoda asked, seemingly ignoring him. “Named must be your fear before banish it you can."

“Have you even been listening to me? I’m afraid of losing everything. I’ve already lost my parents, and I’m afraid of losing my family. I won’t let the Empire take them from me. If you won’t tell me how to defeat the Sith, I’ll find someone who can.”

“To love is to let go. To be a Jedi is to let go. Let go of fear, and loss cannot harm you. Give off light or darkness, Padawan. You must decide.”

For so long, whenever Ezra wondered about his future, he had seen nothing. He imagined himself surviving day to day until one day he didn’t, and that was it. He knew he was an insignificant stitch in the fabric of the galaxy, and whether or not he chose to make anything of his life made no difference to anyone else.

But since he’d met the Ghost crew, he felt more like a lump of unshaped clay, his hands guided by those who’d been there before. How many times had he thanked Kanan for simply being there when no one else was, and now, when Kanan truly needed him—Ezra was gone. He would rather not see anything at all than have to face his Master now. He would go to any lengths to destroy the Sith entirely. Only then could he return to Atollon. He knew his decision. It was an easy one, really.

“Then I choose darkness!” Ezra yelled, his voice hoarse.

“Then dark your path will be,” Master Yoda said.

Ezra blinked once, and the Jedi Master was gone. The pathway that had been supporting him began to tremble, and all around him, like grains of sand falling, the gates and the pathways disintegrated into the darkness, and soon he could see nothing at all.

Chapter Text

For the second time in recent memory, Ezra awoke somewhere unfamiliar. He felt like he had been compressed through a tiny tube, with his head fuzzy and his insides hollow. This time, the ground was solid beneath him, and the air was cool and damp. Not eager to make a habit out of this guessing game, he reached out his hand and felt around in front of him, and his fingertips brushed over loose stones and something spongy, maybe moss.

Must be in a cave somewhere, he thought, which would explain why his eyes weren’t adjusting much to the darkness.

Somewhere off to his left, he heard the faintest crunch of footsteps on the loose rock. Still on his stomach, he turned his head in the direction of the sound, but his eyes couldn’t make out anything in the dark. He couldn’t see whatever was out there, but the hair on Ezra’s arms stood on end as the Force called out to him; he could sense the Force signatures of three, maybe four creatures nearby, and he had a hunch that whatever these creatures were, they knew exactly where he was, too.

Ezra’s fingers closed around a small rock, and slowly, he sat up. With his other hand, he reached in the direction of the sounds, probing more deliberately with the Force. As he released his fear and settled into his focus, he recognized the creatures immediately; in spite of having never seen a living loth-wolf in his life, his home planet resonated powerfully with the Force, and that resonance sounded through him and through all living creatures on Lothal. They watched him in the dark as if they had known he had been there long before he had awoken.

The loth-wolves began to stir as they sensed he was awake, and Ezra heard them begin to walk down a passageway off of the chamber he was in. Though he did not know where they were going nor could he explain why, he knew he was meant to follow them, and he pushed himself to his feet and began to feel his way along the wall of the cave, trailing behind the loth-wolves.

The passageway, just wide enough for them to pass single-file, sloped gently downward. Ezra struggled to keep up; the loth-wolves were more agile with their four limbs and giant paws than him, gangly and uncertain in the dark. Several times, the loth-wolves stopped, waiting impatiently for him to pick his way over a rock pile.

“You could just give me a light,” Ezra grumbled after the second time he slipped, his palms stinging as he wiped them on his pants, dislodging several small pebbles that had embedded themselves in his skin.

The loth-wolves gave no reply.

Their path twisted and turned, and the loth-wolves confidently navigated each fork they came to. Deep under the mountains, it was impossible to say where on Lothal they were.

The wolves suddenly stopped, and Ezra nearly collided with the nearest one as he struggled to catch his breath. They stood in silence, and he looked around, trying to figure out why the loth-wolves had chosen this place to stop. It looked nearly identical to every turn they’d made. But the longer he stood still and listened, the sharper his senses became, and then Ezra could feel it—there was a difference, a humming along a higher frequency, one he’d never heard before.

Carefully, he shuffled past the loth-wolves, and when he entered the larger chamber, he knew exactly why they had come here; from every corner poured thin veins of kyber crystal, glowing a ghostly white against the darkness. The entire cave seemed to hum—the sound of so much energy crashing through the Force at once. It filtered through Ezra and the loth-wolves and then back into the crystals themselves, an endless loop.

Ezra closed his eyes and listened. The crystals whispered as individuals and as one, and he let the Force guide him towards a particular face of the cave wall, running his hand over the cool, damp stone until his fingertips brushed a small patch of kyber crystal, and the humming filled his ears. He held his hand over the crystal, learning its contours and song. He expected the crystal to resist and put up some fight, but as soon as he closed his hand around it, it fell into his hand, cool and heavy. He stood completely still and stared into his palm, mesmerized by the glow.

Ezra exhaled. This was what he had set out to find; this was the completion of his quest. He still felt exactly the same—angry and lost, but what did that matter when he had all the pieces he needed? With a kyber crystal, he could build a lightsaber. With a lightsaber, he could fight. And when he could fight, he could defeat the Sith.

He held the kyber crystal in front of him and made his way back to the pack of loth-wolves. They began to ascend back through the maze of tunnels, Ezra following but no longer stumbling. The air grew fresher, and soon a patch of sunlight appeared ahead of them, silhouetting the loth-wolves against a bright blue sky.

The mouth of the cave opened onto a wide, empty plain, the golden prairie grass swaying in a gentle breeze. On the horizon, Ezra could see mountains, including a spire that looked like the Jedi Temple. He watched the loth-wolves, two of whom had sprawled out across several large, flat rocks in the sun, and basked. Several others had begun to wander out into the grass, nearly disappearing amid the stalks, and Ezra waded after them into the golden sea.

As they drew closer to the Jedi Temple, Ezra could make out deep tracts of disturbed soil at its base. They weren’t as jagged as they had been when they were fresh, and in time, the prairie grass would grow back and the earth would close, but until then, the entire planet bore witness to Ezra’s rage. He felt ashamed.

But he wasn’t heading to the Jedi Temple; he made for the Escape, where the other pieces of his lightsaber sat in a storage compartment in the cockpit. The ship remained untouched where he had camouflaged it, and he removed the mats for grass he had placed over its frame, his heart pounding. He retrieved the pieces he had spent an agonizing amount of time and energy collecting, laying them on a stone. The loth-wolves sat and watched.

If Ezra’s first lightsaber had doubled as a blaster by necessity, a reflection of his inexperience in wielding the Force, then this lightsaber would represent everything he had honed since then, distilled into its simplest form. It was all the things he loved and hated about himself: his scrappiness, his unrelenting insistence on survival, on getting what he wanted. He, just like this lightsaber, was more than the sum of his parts.

Though he had assembled these parts together several times before, adding the kyber crystal felt monumental, as if he were assembling an entirely different device. His hands nearly shook with anticipation as he finished joining the segments of the lightsaber, then gripped the hilt in his hand. He stared at it, almost unable to believe that he was here. The hilt had a good heft to it, and it was properly balanced. Taking a deep breath, he brought his thumb to the activation button and pressed down.

Nothing happened.

At first, he thought it was simply a delay—some kind of side effect of the first time a kyber crystal channeled the Force through a lightsaber. He pressed the button again, yielding the same result. Silence. He gave the entire lightsaber a good shake; maybe all the parts just needed to get acquainted with one another. And when that didn’t work, he disassembled the entire thing, cleaned every piece with the hem of his shirt, and reassembled it methodically. This had to be a fixable problem, and he was going to figure it out.

He repeated this process of reassembly three times before he admitted defeat. There was nothing structurally wrong with any of the parts he had found. The crystal appeared healthy, free of any cracks or imperfections, and it made sense to Ezra that he had found a kyber crystal once again on Lothal. Why these constituent parts did not unite into one and allow Ezra to wield the Force remained a mystery to him, and the dread he had barely been keeping at bay in the moments after he first tried to ignite his lightsaber catalyzed into anger the instant he gave up hope.

Ezra screamed and threw the lightsaber—the husk of a lightsaber, really—as far as he could. He never wanted to see it again. He sank to the ground and buried his face in his knees, willing himself to cry, but his body would not cooperate.

One of the loth-wolves chased after the lightsaber and retrieved it, dropping it at Ezra’s feet and pawing at his arm.

“No!” he yelled at the loth-wolf. “I don’t kriffing want this piece of junk.”

He grabbed the lightsaber and once again hurled it as hard as he could into the prairie, and the same loth-wolf responded by bounding after it and retrieving it, this time dropping it in Ezra’s lap.

“You stupid dog, what part of I don’t want this don’t you understand?” Ezra snarled, grabbing the lightsaber from the ground and waving it menacingly at the loth-wolf. He threw it against the ground, where it kicked up a cloud of dust. The loth-wolf snapped its jaws around the hilt and lunged towards Ezra, knocking him backwards onto the ground. It loomed over him, teeth bared, and growled at him.

Ezra didn’t dare move. Several stones jutted sharply into his back, but he knew he was at the mercy of the loth-wolf. Uncomfortable and exhausted, fuming over small electronics and an even smaller crystal, Ezra had never felt so completely alone in his entire life. The prairie did not sing to him. He felt no communion with the loth-wolves. The warmth of others—his friends, his family, even Kasmir—had burned out and cooled. The world was flat and dull and drab; no wonder his lightsaber wouldn’t ignite.

Before Ezra had salvaged the parts for his new lightsaber, they had sat idle, each deprived of function. A power cell with nothing to power, an activation switch with nothing to activate, an emitter matrix with nothing to emit—none of these individual parts meant anything on their own. Only together, united towards a common purpose, did they achieve anything. This power was only as strong as the bonds that held it together, and kyber crystals were no exception. Without a bond to the crystal he had found in the cave, Ezra could never use it to direct the current of the Force. Without his bonds—as a Jedi to his kyber crystal, as a Padawan to his Master, as a crewmate to his family—Ezra was adrift, alone in the galaxy, and on his own, he meant nothing. Individuals would not win the Rebellion, and no one drawing strength from an isolated and fearful well would ever vanquish the Sith. It was from those murky waters that the Dark Side drew its power.

The loth-wolf dropped the saber into the dirt beside him and retreated, soundlessly disappearing into the prairie. The others quietly followed, leaving Ezra alone on the rocks.

He was ready. He gathered his tools and carefully stowed the lightsaber in the cargo hold, then ignited the Escape’s engines and began to calculate the hyperspace coordinates for Atollon. The kyber crystal, buried deep in the hold, began to glow a very faint green.

Chapter Text

Ezra stared blankly out of the viewport of the Escape as it sped through hyperspace, his stomach twisting itself in knots. Turning around was out of the question; he still wanted to return to Atollon. He wouldn’t even have to lift a finger until it came time to land, but the difficult thing about returning had never been coming back—it was what he would say once he arrived. He’d been rehearsing since he left Lothal.

Hi, Kanan. I got your ship. How are you?

Too casual.

Hi, Kanan. I got your ship. How are you? By the way, can you help me finish my lightsaber?

Self-absorbed.

Hi, Kanan. I’ve brought back your old ship for you. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you. You’ve always been there for me. Can you help me finish building my lightsaber?

Groveling.

Hi, Kanan.

He could leave it at that. Everything else he wanted to say felt too complicated for words and too dependent on whether or not Kanan even wanted to hear what he had to say. Simpler was better, and besides, Kanan had supported him leaving, or at the very least hadn’t tried very hard to make him stay. No matter how they started talking, it was preferable to silence.

Long before Ezra was ready, the navicomputer beeped three times, and the stars sharpened into dots again. The dusty, barren surface of Atollon sprawled beneath him. From this high in orbit, he had no hope of seeing Chopper Base, but he couldn’t help himself, his eyes scanning the wilderness below for any signs of the Ghost or its crew or anyone else who might have joined the Rebellion in his absence.

He held the Escape in orbit until he felt claustrophobic, then steered towards the surface of the planet, heading towards a set of coordinates far away from the base. He landed at the base of a large plated tree coral, killing the engines before hauling himself out onto a branch. The sun was warm and dry against his skin, and the only sound was the wind. He reactivated his comlink and stared blankly at it, then turned it off again, reaching instead for the datapad Kanan had given him before he left. He opened a channel to his Master and entered the coordinates he had landed at. For several minutes, he debated adding a message but settled on just the coordinates; Kanan had left him with coordinates, and he would return with coordinates of his own. Plus, this way, it would hurt less if Kanan declined to meet or simply ignored him.

After transmitting the message, Ezra waited in silence. The wind had died down, leaving the landscape eerily quiet. Even the krykna, almost impossible to avoid near Chopper Base, did not bother him out here. Occasionally he glanced at the datapad, but no messages arrived, no indication that Kanan had received his message or had any intention of responding.

The sound was faint at first—a low whine far off in the distance—but as it grew closer, Ezra recognized it as a speeder bike. He jumped to his feet and hauled himself onto a higher branch, looking out over the dusty plain. A lone figure sat on the bike, his face obscured by a helmet, but Ezra didn’t need to see his Master’s face to recognize his Force signature. Goosebumps appeared on his neck, and he shimmied down the trunk of the tree coral, landing in a cloud of dust. His mouth was dry and sticky, and he still had no words.

The driver shut off the bike’s engine, allowing it to glide to the base of the tree, and got off the bike. He did not remove his helmet.

“Kanan,” Ezra said. “I didn’t think you’d actually—I wasn’t sure if you got my message.”

He took a step closer.

“Wait, you rode here yourself? Does that mean you can see again?”

“Sight can’t be restored. It doesn’t work like that," Kanan said, removing his helmet. "I trust the Force.”

“Oh,” Ezra said, his hopes falling as quickly as they had risen. He shuffled awkwardly, taking a step backward. “Yeah, uh, that…makes sense.”

It didn't make sense to him, but he didn't say that. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked at the ground. Kanan said nothing.

“Um, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” he started, and once he started, he found it easier to keep going. “Well, that’s not the only thing I wanted to say. But it’s true—I’m sorry, and I should have listened to you, because you were right. You were right about everything.”

“That’s not the lesson I’d take away from this.”

Ezra frowned, furrowing his brow.

“What? But it’s my fault. You were right. And if I had just listened to you, we wouldn’t even be here in the first place.”

“The best thing I can teach you is that you have to learn to make your own decisions. You have to learn how to make your own decisions, and you have to learn how to trust them. You have to learn how to trust yourself and to trust the Force.”

“But—”

Kanan held up a hand, and Ezra stopped, falling silent.

“Accept the decisions you’ve made.”

“But Kanan. That doesn’t make any of this okay. I care so much—”

“It doesn’t need to be okay. Things just are how they are, and accepting things as they are isn’t the same thing as not caring. Giving up is not caring.”

“I left so that you wouldn’t tell me to leave. I just—I’m sorry. Even if this is how things are now, I’m sorry. You’ve always been there for me, and I just left. I wasn’t there for you.”

“That’s not—”

“But I’m here now. And I’ve got your ship. I followed your advice,” Ezra said quickly before pausing. “Honestly, Kasmir’s kind of weird.”

Kanan laughed softly, the first emotion Ezra had seen him express in the entire conversation.

“He’s still a little rough around the edges, huh? You never quite know what you’re going to get with that guy.”

Ezra smiled, shrugging his shoulders, and in the silence that followed, he began to feel lighter. He wasn’t at peace, and things weren’t resolved, but they also felt less complicated, or maybe it was that he felt less of a need to untangle them.

“So, uh. I’ve been working on something lately, Ezra said, gesturing vaguely toward the Escape. “I could show you—or, I mean, tell you about it, I guess.”

“This isn’t another one of Kasmir’s hare-brained get-rich-quick schemes, is it?” Kanan said skeptically.

“Ha, no, it’s not. My old lightsaber was, well, you know. Destroyed. I needed a new one. And I’ve got all these pieces here, but it just…it won’t quite work.”

“Walk me through it. Let’s see if we can figure it out.”

Ezra retrieved his lightsaber and his tools from the ship, once again disassembling the pieces he had gathered and describing to Kanan what he had found and how they fit together.

“That’s weird, though,” he said. “The kyber crystal wasn’t glowing before.”

He handed the kyber crystal, which now glowed a faint green, to Kanan, who held it up to his ear. Ezra could hear the crystal humming more loudly than before.

“Your design is solid. Simple and elegant. I don’t think your problem is with anything mechanical.”

“So why doesn’t it work? And why is it turning green?”

“Kyber crystals are naturally attuned to the light side of the Force,” Kanan said. “They resist the power of the dark side. So what’s still dark?”

Ezra’s thoughts drifted back to the ship. The holocron. Even without seeing it, he knew that Kanan knew the holocron was here with them.

“It’s taught me so much,” Ezra said hesitantly. “I wouldn’t be here without it. Don’t ask me to—”

“Maybe that’s true,” Kanan said. “But you can’t stay where you are now if you want your lightsaber to work.”

Ezra opened his mouth to speak several times but then closed it, unable to find a response.

“I don’t blame you, Ezra, for anything,” Kanan continued. “I never did. For Maul’s betrayal or for using the holocron. It’s good to be curious and to want knowledge.”

“What if I’m stuck on the dark side, though?”

“There’s a reason that crystal chose you, and there’s a reason it’s glowing green now. Green represents growth. Regeneration. Life. That’s you, Ezra. You can’t have light without the dark. It’s all together. That’s the true power of a Jedi. Having a choice and choosing light.”

Ezra retreated into the ship momentarily and returned with the holocron.

“I guess you can look after this better than me,” he said, handing it to Kanan. “For now, at least.”

He looked away as Kanan tucked the holocron into his pocket.

“Wanna give that lightsaber another try?” Kanan asked.

Ezra, now an expert in lightsaber construction, quickly fitted the pieces together and held the hilt loosely. His hand trembled slightly as he pressed the ignition button, and he nearly dropped his new lightsaber in surprise when the blade ignited, a brilliant green light thrumming with the life-force of the galaxy. He quickly turned the blade off and then back on again, less startled but just as incredulous the second time it ignited.

“That’s so—” he said, searching for the right world. Simple? But the Force was always like that—simple and complicated—and never in the direction you expected. All he could do was laugh.

“This doesn’t change my mission, though,” he said, once again turning off the blade and clipping the hilt to his belt.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was to destroy the Sith, but I don’t know if I can do that without falling to the dark side. But I know things won’t be right as long as the Empire’s still around.”

“Maybe start by coming back to camp? I’m sure it’ll come to you after you’ve had dinner.”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”