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“How’s Ezra’s training going?”
Kanan sighed. He crossed his arms over his chest as he and Hera trudged through Lothal’s high grasses. Hopefully, the posture looked contemplative rather than petulant.
They had left half an hour ago on a supply run to Jhothal and it was, for once, just the two of them. Sabine had been immersed in her most recent piece, Zeb had wanted to do maintenance on his Bo-rifle, and Ezra had been taking a nap in his bunk. When they’d realized that none of the kids—even Chopper—seemed at all interested in accompanying them, Hera had very pointedly suggested that they walk the short distance to Jhothal instead of taking the Phantom. They were only looking for a few odds and ends, anyway. They’d be easy to carry, between the two of them.
Isolated time with Hera? Free of the attention of their ever-growing band of teenagers (and teenage-adjacent Lasats)? As if Kanan was going to argue with that, even if he would be picking bits of grass out of his clothes for days.
“Do we really have to talk about the kids right now?” he grumbled. He was joking. Mostly.
Hera rolled her eyes. “You like talking about the kids.” She drifted closer to him, setting a warm hand on his elbow. “What’s wrong? I thought things were going better.”
“They are.” Kanan kicked a rock. It soared off to the right—the opposite direction from where he’d meant to aim it. “It’s not Ezra. I mean, it never was Ezra. He’s different from other younglings I knew, but that’s to be expected. It’s… Force, Hera, it’s me. I don’t know how to get through to him.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Hera chided. “I saw him practicing with your ‘saber the other day. He really looked like he was getting the hang of it. And he hasn’t burned himself in weeks.”
“But that’s exactly what’s worrying me. Being a Jedi… it’s more than the physical aspects of the Force. His ‘saber skills are improving in leaps and bounds, and he could already use the Force to augment his strength and agility long before we found him… but he doesn't understand it. He can’t connect with it. It’s only a tool to him, and a peripheral one at that.”
Kanan caught Hera smiling out of the corner of his eye. “That explains the meditations.”
He whipped his head to face her, trusting in the Force to keep him from tripping. “How do you know about those?”
“You’re not the only person he talks to.” Her voice softened. “And he’s as frustrated as you are.”
Fantastic. “Thank you, Hera. That makes me feel so much better.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” She swatted his shoulder. “So? What’s going wrong?”
“Hasn’t Ezra told you?”
“I know what he thinks is going wrong,” she said. “But something tells me that’s a very different story from yours.”
Kanan groaned. “He’s… scattered. Every morning, I sit him down for meditation, and every morning, we both just… He doesn’t get it. And I’m starting to realize it’s because the entire concept of meditating is at odds with everything that he is.” Hera laughed, and he glared, although only half-heartedly. “I’m not being funny.”
“I know you aren’t.” Hera was quiet for a while, nothing but the gentle sound of wind rustling through the tall grass between then. But Kanan had known her long enough to sense that she contemplating something. Finally: “How did your master teach you to meditate?”
He swallowed down the familiar lump that gripped him at any mention of Master Billaba. “She didn’t,” he sighed. “We were meditating by the time we were toddlers. I don’t even remember learning. It was like walking, or reading. We just… did it.”
“Have you ever considered that you’re over-complicating this?”
“No.” He glared through the reeds in front of him, looking for another rock to kick. There wasn’t one. “I just mean… It is complicated. And it’s important. The Force flows through all living things. As Jedi, we’re not meant to wield it so much as channel it. If Ezra can’t master that, then he’ll never become a Jedi.”
Hera laughed. She turned her face up to Lothal’s sun, relaxed expression comically at odds with the heavy weight sitting in Kanan’s chest. “And now you’re being overly fatalistic,” she said.
Kanan stopped abruptly, spinning to face Hera. She stopped too, head tilted slightly, waiting.
“I’m not—He could Fall, Hera.”
“You won’t let him.”
“It’s not up to me,” he hissed. “Better masters than I have had students Fall. Ezra’s powers are growing every single day. His connection with the Force is even stronger than mine. If he doesn’t learn how to center himself—if he can’t touch that power while balancing it with harmony—then… I don’t even want to think about what might happen to him.”
And Hera just smiled at him, reaching up to run her fingertips over a lock of hair that had escaped from his nerf-tail. “And you and the kids complain that I’m the serious one.”
“Hera—”
But she’d already started moving again, pace brisk as she made a beeline for Jhothal, which was just beginning to rise up from the grasses in the distance. He scrambled to catch up with her.
“Do everyone a favor, love, and stop thinking about all the things that might go wrong. Stop thinking about how you did it. And start thinking about Ezra.” She tapped her forehead. “You’ve always been a great tactician. So, Ezra’s the problem. How do you solve him?”
—
They reached Jhothal just as the sun was settling comfortably into its midday orientation: high and hot. Kanan let Hera take the lead, meandering after her as she moved from stalls to storefronts, angling for the best prices. Haggling had never been his strong suit—it hadn’t been a skill he’d needed, before the Purge—but Hera was a natural. That, and hanging behind her didn’t exactly leave him with a bad view.
Sometime around Hera’s sixth negotiation, Kanan found himself mindlessly perusing the items on display at the stall beside them. It was a unique layout—mostly junk, with the occasional tourist trinket or collectible. Not that many people had ever visited Lothal; even fewer had come since the Empire had begun mass-building their ugly factories. But what caught Kanan’s eye was a small, flat box. Its wooden lid was open, revealing a set of about a dozen interlocking metal pieces. If combined in the correct orientation—as they were now—they formed a perfect square that fit neatly in the puzzle box, flat enough for the lid to shut and latch.
He remembered Master Billaba having something similar, although hers was a cube, and Kanan thought its solution had been more complex. He had noticed it during one of his first visits to her quarters. It had sat on the low table near her meditation pad, out of place in the traditionally barren landscape of a Jedi’s rooms. He’d asked about it—Caleb Dume never had been able to hold back a question—and she’d hidden a private smile behind her hand, explaining that her master had given it to her when she was only an Initiate. He’d seen her with it once or twice after that, hadn’t he? He remembered those moments only vaguely, because she had only ever seemed to reach for it during their meditation—
Oh.
Depa Billaba’s voice rang through his mind, long dead and still sharply remembered. A Jedi does not resist who they are, she lectured, cross-legged in one of the meditation rooms. The restless will be restless, as will the quiet be still. And the questioners, she’d added, smiling indulgently at him as she’d tapped her index finger to his brow, will question. The skill of a Jedi is not to squash these idiosyncrasies. It is to channel our energies in ways that improve ourselves and those that surround us. Do you understand, Caleb?
He grinned. I do, master, he thought, letting the unspoken words drift out into the Force.
The stall was manned by a Rodian. He caught her attention and pointed at the puzzle. “How much for that?”
She almost looked surprised by his interest. Business was as slow as Kanan would’ve assumed it was, then. “Ten credits.”
Kanan dug around in his pockets, sparing a glance at Hera. She was still deeply engaged with the Ithorian shopkeeper at the other stall, bartering for a part she needed to repair the Ghost’s water recycling system. He counted out the credits and dropped them into the Rodian’s outstretched palm. She handed him the small box in return, still looking vaguely startled by her own sale.
He wandered closer to Hera and loitered behind her. As he waited, he amused himself by fiddling with the puzzle. He quickly convinced himself that there was nothing relaxing about the Sith-cursed thing at all—but, then again, Ezra often surprised him. Maybe he’d like it. Or maybe he’d fling it across the Ghost after five minutes. Who knew?
“Kanan?”
He snapped the box shut and looked up at Hera, feeling oddly like a youngling caught rifling in the caf’s cooling chamber. “Hey.”
Hera quirked an eyebrow at him. “Well, that’s the last thing on my list. What’ve you got?”
He held out the puzzle. Hera took it and popped the lid, regarding the pieces inside. She picked up one of the stranger ones—a zig-zagging shape that reminded Kanan oddly of the silhouette of a mudhorn—and the corner of her mouth twisted up in amusement. “A puzzle?”
“It’s not for me.”
“I didn’t think it was.” She handed the puzzle back to him. “So, spill. What’s your plan?”
He shrugged. To be honest, he didn’t have a plan. Master Billaba had clearly used her own puzzle in meditation, and Kanan felt instinctively that Ezra was calmest when working with his hands, but beyond that…
“I’ll let you know when I figure one out.”
Hera laughed. Kanan tucked the box into one of his pockets as she dragged him out of Jhothal and back towards the Ghost. She slipped her hand into his as the town started to blur behind them, and Kanan had to admit that for half an hour, he didn’t offer much thought to the puzzle, or to Ezra, or to the Force at all.
Some things, he had learned, were rather all-consuming.
—
Kanan implemented his strategy—if it could be called that—the next morning, just after breakfast.
The rest of the crew had dispersed for their daily tasks, leaving Ezra and Kanan alone in the Ghost’s common area. Kanan could see the kid visibly steeling himself for their usual meditation session. He told himself that none of that made him feel guilty, but it did.
Kanan pulled the puzzle out of his pocket and tipped the pieces into the palm of his other hand. Then, he dumped the lot into Ezra’s lap.
“If you can solve this,” he said, “then you can keep it.”
Ezra scooped up the jumbled mess and deposited it onto the dejarik table in front of him, eyes narrowed suspiciously. He seemed to understand the point of the puzzle relatively quickly, though, and transferred the pieces in a heap in the center of the box. Predictably, he didn’t grumble anything about why he would even want a puzzle box. That was the thing about Ezra: growing up on the streets had given him an odd habit of squirreling away every supply or knickknack he could get his hands on. He liked having possessions—useless or not.
It wasn’t very Jedi-like. But whenever Kanan thought about scolding him for the habit, his mind drifted to his nights spent warming Hera’s bunk, and he decided that hypocrisy wasn’t the most appealing trait in a master.
“Can I flip the pieces over?” Ezra held one up in example, twisting it so the Ghost’s lights caught on the different textures. “Or do you have to pick a smooth side or a bumpy side?”
Huh. Kanan hadn’t even noticed that the pieces were different on opposite planes. “I don’t know. It’s probably a better challenge if you match them.”
Ezra shrugged. “Okay.”
He left Ezra to it and knelt a few paces away, determined to meditate himself, even if he’d decided to let Ezra off. He wasn’t sure what to expect from the exercise, but he did expect it to fail. In fact, the longer he sat there, alone with his thoughts, the more Kanan convinced himself that he’d been stupid to try the puzzle in the first place. Ezra’s issues were deep and structural—they weren’t the kind of thing that a marketplace trinket could solve. He needed a Jedi Master—a real Jedi Master—who understood the Force in ways that Kanan just… didn’t. Couldn’t. Kanan’s own solution to Ezra’s struggles was proof enough that he hadn’t been ready to take on an apprentice. What kind of master tries to meet their padawan’s restlessness with distraction?
He let out an exasperated breath, trying—and failing—not to berate himself. No wonder Ezra struggled to silence his thoughts, if Kanan was his only example. It had been years since he’d found his mind so crowded, so loud.
And Ezra…
Ezra was quiet.
Kanan’s eyes popped open. He’d reached for the kid through the Force on instinct, expecting to find his usual turbulence of emotion and disjointed attention. Instead, he’d felt… something very different. The kid wasn’t necessarily connecting consciously with the Force, but he was calm. Ezra’s Force signature had been a maelstrom from the first moment Kanan had met him—vivid, loud, with stray flares of energy lashing out at random intervals. It barely dimmed even when he slept. And while Kanan certainly wouldn’t describe Ezra’s presence as dim or even peaceful now, it had changed. Ezra felt… less frenetic somehow. Focused.
Centered.
Outside of the Force, Ezra was exactly where Kanan had left him, hunched over the dejarik table. The position looked uncomfortable, but the last thing Kanan was about to do was interrupt him. For once, he didn’t even seem to notice Kanan watching him. That in and of itself was odd enough, considering Ezra’s usual paranoid observance of the world round him.
Kanan rose from his meditation position—it wasn’t like that was happening, anyway—and wandered closer. Ezra’s only reaction was a flicker of acknowledgment in the Force.
“You don’t have to solve that in one sitting, you know.”
Ezra shook his head. He didn’t look away from the puzzle. “I’ve almost got it,” he said, softly. Kanan wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard Ezra speak softly before.
Kanan didn’t dispute him, even if his first impression was that Ezra was very much not close to getting it. Instead, he settled down on the booth beside him and watched the kid fiddle, curious. Slowly, he recognized a pattern in Ezra’s attempts. He would find a promising combination of two or three pieces that filled out a corner, then methodically interlock and interchange the others in the remaining space before starting over from scratch.
So he can be diligent, Kanan thought, pleased and amused. The kid really was a great deal cleverer than he gave himself credit for—than even the crew gave him credit for, really. Except maybe Hera. But Hera had an eerie way of knowing her people better and deeper than they knew themselves. Kanan would still be drifting through the galaxy without that.
As it turned out, Ezra’s patience outlasted Kanan’s for once. He’d thought Ezra would get frustrated, eventually, but if anything, the kid’s focus only seemed to become more and more singular as the minutes wore on. Once he realized that Ezra really wasn’t moving until he’d figured the little box out, he patted the kid’s shoulder and headed for the cockpit. Hera was up there, probably going through the Ghost’s usual off-mission maintenance checks. Maybe her steadying presence would let him meditate—or, even better, maybe she’d actually let him distract her from her work this time.
—
Many hours later, just as the sun was starting to droop towards the end of daylight, the doors to the cockpit hissed open.
“Here,” Ezra said, then dropped the puzzle box unceremoniously into Kanan’s lap.
Kanan picked it up. The lid was shut flush and when he flipped it open, the pieces were nestled together in their solve. Ezra had taken the harder challenge, too—each of the pieces had their bumpy side facing up. Curiously, Kanan probed at the kid’s Force signature. He’d expected it to have returned to normal without the puzzle to focus on, but he still found it calmer than usual.
No, Kanan corrected himself with a soft rush of surprise. Kanan had been misinterpreting the violence of Ezra’s Force signature as a reflection of his disposition this entire time, but now, sensing Ezra’s presence in its actual natural state, he realized that he’d been wrong. What he’d thought was a chaos borne of lack of discipline had actually been distress. Ezra wasn’t calmer so much as more comfortable. For some reason, the kid had needed the distraction of the puzzle to reorder his own thoughts and emotions, a need that had extended far beyond Kanan’s singular desire to connect him more easily to the Force.
He closed the lid and offered Ezra a small smile. “Well done, Padawan.”
Ezra shifted his weight. His eyes danced between Kanan and Hera, who had pulled away from her work under the steering console and was watching their exchange. “Was that a test?” he finally asked, turning his gaze—bright, clear, and eager—back to Kanan.
“Was what a test?”
The kid snorted. “The puzzle. Was it a test? Did I pass?”
“No,” Kanan said, feeling an unexpected fondness rise up in him at the innocence of Ezra’s expression. “It was… I just thought you might like it.” He paused, then pushed. “Did you?”
“I… Yeah.” Ezra squinted down at the puzzle in Kanan’s hands. “I dunno why. I’m too old for toys, anyway.”
“It’s not a toy.” Kanan considered Ezra for a moment. “My master had something like it, you know.”
“Yeah?”
Kanan hummed. “She used it to meditate, I think. I don’t remember exactly how. But I know you’ve been struggling—we’ve been struggling—and, well, I think I’ve been trying to force you to fit into my expectations a little too neatly.” He paused, fumbling for the right words. He wished he was better at these heart-to-hearts. “That… wasn’t fair on you.”
Ezra’s head cocked to the side. He fixed Kanan with one of his unreadable expressions, the one he used when he was sizing someone up. “Are you… apologizing to me?”
Kanan sighed, rubbing the back of his head uncomfortably. “Yeah, kid. I’m sorry.”
“People don’t usually apologize to me.”
Kanna was of the opinion that the entire galaxy owed this particular kid a very sincere apology—but that thought was far too sentimental to voice aloud.
“Well, I’m apologizing to you.”
Ezra’s eyes softened. For once, there was no suspicion lingering in his Force signature. In fact, for the first time since bringing the kid onto the crew, Kanan realized that he could actually detect an edge of real, honest affection in his face. He wasn’t sure what to do with that—but he could see Hera notice the same thing out of the corner of his eye, which meant he’d have to talk about it later.
“Can meditation be… like that?” Ezra asked. He ducked his head so his hair fell in front of his face, like a shield. Maybe he’d realized just how much of his emotions he’d let Kanan see. “Not just… sitting around, staring at the backs of my eyelids?”
“I think,” Kanan started, slowly, “that we’ll work it out as we go.” He held out the puzzle box to Ezra. The kid had solved it, after all, which meant that it was his now. “Sound like a fair deal?”
Ezra took the box and grinned. “Yeah. Fair deal.”