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“Is Ezra here yet?”
Hera laughed fondly at Jacen, who had abandoned his favorite game of chasing Loth-cats to join Kanan and Hera where they sat on the ramp of the Ghost. Kanan could hear their son shifting impatiently from foot-to-foot.
“I don’t know,” Hera said, amusement adding Kanan’s favorite kind of music to her voice. “Does it look like Ezra’s here?”
“No.”
“Then I think it’s safe to assume that he isn’t here yet, kiddo.”
Jacen groaned, then raced back off into Lothal’s tall grasses, footsteps first clanging on the metal ramp then thumping softly against the dirt. He’d be back within fifteen minutes—that was, so far, the longest he had managed to contain himself before pestering his parents with his excitement. Not that Kanan could blame him, since he found himself doing the more adult version of Jacen’s questioning: casting his awareness out into Lothal’s upper atmosphere, searching for the familiar spark of Ezra’s Force signature. He could sense Hera doing something similar, shifting her gaze up to the sky with a regularity that was borderline comedic.
It was the beginning of Lothal’s warm season. The air tasted sweet, the sun welcome and the breeze pleasantly cool. They’d parked the Ghost in the plains that surrounded Capitol City, at one of the rendezvous points the crew had favored during their years using the planet as a home base. Kanan couldn’t see the scenery, of course, but he could imagine it. Gold grasses rippling in the wind; distant, conical mountains just beginning to crack from the summer’s dry heat. He could sense a temperature drop as shade drifted over them on occasion—so a mostly blue sky, with scattered clouds. Sometimes Kanan wondered if that was why he still felt so tethered to Lothal—he had seen these plains when he’d still had his sight, which made it easy to pretend. On Lothal, he didn’t need Hera to painstakingly describe a view he’d never truly be able to conceptualize. All he needed was memory.
He opened his senses again, expanding his awareness upwards. This time, a familiar buzz sparked into life at the edges of his mental net.
Kanan grinned, bumping Hera’s arm. “Do you see him?”
Hera leaned into his side. “Not yet. Do you feel him?”
Kanan hummed. “Coming in from the east.”
It wasn’t long before the distant hum of an engine reached them. Kanan assumed that the ship itself must have now come into view, because Jacen came bounding back up the ramp, grabbing onto Kanan’s sleeve and bouncing in place. It was a rule that Hera had established early on for Jacen: if a ship was landing anywhere in the vicinity, he had to stand with an adult until they told him it was safe. Kanan sat a steadying hand on the crown of Jacen’s head, smiling as he felt his son’s pure excitement radiating into the Force.
Ezra’s X-wing sent a torrent of artificial wind over them as he guided it in to land. Or, at least, Kanan assumed it was his X-wing. Hera thought it was funny that Kanan hadn’t learned to differentiate one ship from another simply through the tenor of the engine, which was something that she found effortless. For his part, Kanan couldn’t fathom how anyone would even begin to do such a thing.
The ship’s engines whined as they powered down. Kanan could practically hear Hera’s brain whirring as she evaluated the landing. She’d gotten good at refraining from constantly going captain mode on the grown kids, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to.
“Okay,” Hera said to Jacen as the grass rustled into stillness. “See if you can knock him over.”
“Really?”
The X-wing’s hatch hissed as it rolled back—and Kanan was sure it was the X-wing, now—followed by the soft thud of Ezra’s boots hitting the ground.
“If you can knock him over,” Kanan said, “I’ll get you a present next time we’re out.”
He didn’t have to tell Jacen twice. He took off towards Ezra. A few seconds passed, then a hollow, metallic clang rang out as Ezra’s back hit the side of his X-wing. Rookie mistake—Jacen tackled him too soon. If he’d let the kid get a few more steps clear of the fighter, he probably could’ve dropped him. The entire scene was accompanied by Jacen’s delighted laughter.
“Oof,” he heard Ezra mutter, although he was laughing, too. “Now my own family’s trying to kill me, huh?”
“I was just trying to knock you down,” Jacen argued. He sounded pleased with himself. “Mom and Dad told me to.”
Just one set of footsteps approached them. Ezra must be carrying Jacen.
Ezra raised his voice, clearly trying to ensure the comment carried to Kanan and Hera. “That’s not very nice of them.”
“Just trying to keep you sharp,” Kanan said.
“More like bruised,” Ezra grumbled. He was right in front of them now. “He’s heavy.”
“He’s been having a growth spurt.”
Ezra laughed, although the sound tapered off into a grunt. Kanan imagined him shifting Jacen in his arms. “Yeah. Could’ve warned me.”
“And where’s the fun in that?” Hera’s warmth left his side. He sensed her presence drift closer to Ezra, then heard the soft rustle of their clothes brushing as she embraced him. “Welcome home, sweetheart,” she whispered, so light that Kanan barely heard it.
“Yeah!” Jacen crowed. “Welcome home, Ezra! We missed you!”
There was a soft scuffle of Ezra setting Jacen down. “Thanks, kiddo. I missed you, too. And Mom. Not Dad, though.”
“It was Mom’s idea to knock you down,” Jacen said, like he was imparting a secret.
“Yeah, well, your mom does what she wants.”
Kanan rolled his eyes. “And I don’t?”
“No. Hey, where’s Sabine?”
“Dealing with something administrative with Ryder,” Hera said. Kanan could still sense her presence pressed right up to Ezra’s—she probably had an arm around him. “She’ll be here for dinner. Zeb and Kallus should get in tomorrow.”
“Cool.” Kanan felt Ezra’s attention settle on him. “Hey, Kanan. Wanna meditate with me?”
Kanan cocked his head, instinctively reaching out with the Force to consider Ezra in the best way he could, now, without his vision. It was an odd request, not only because Ezra must’ve known that Jacen would want to talk his ear off for at least an hour, but because Kanan was genuinely wondering if he’d ever heard of Ezra willingly submitting to meditation.
“Sure,” he said, in no way trying to hide his suspicion. In return, he felt a pulse of sheepishness wash through Ezra’s signature.
As expected, Jacen whined. “But you just got here! Can’t you do boring stuff with Dad later?”
“I’m sure they won’t be long,” Hera soothed, although Kanan could sense her curiosity, too. “Maybe when Ezra gets back, he can help you with your meditation.”
“I don’t need help,” Jacen said, way too quickly. “I’m good at mediating.”
“Meditating,” Hera corrected. “And everyone needs help when they’re learning. Even Ezra gets help from your father, sometimes.”
“But what does Dad know?”
Kanan heard Ezra snicker and resisted the urge to reach across and smack him. “Well, this conversation is really making me feel good about myself,” he muttered.
Hera herded Jacen back to the Ghost—and although Kanan seriously doubted that she’d be successful in wrangling him into actually meditating, he did trust that she’d be able to placate him until he could return Ezra. As for Ezra himself, the kid seemed to wander aimlessly off into the plains. Kanan followed a few steps behind. Ezra didn’t speak, so neither did Kanan.
Eventually, Ezra stopped. Kanan couldn’t sense anything specific about the spot, but clearly Ezra had found something he’d been looking for. Ezra wavered, uncertainty flaring through his signature. He turned to Kanan, as if looking for direction.
Slowly, Kanan settled down in the tall grass, reaching up to his face and removing his mask. It was still the same one that Sabine had fashioned for him all those years ago, although he knew she occasionally took it and revamped the paint job. She’d tried to convince him to let her experiment with the design dozens of times, but he preferred its current simplicity.
He set the mask aside and turned his face towards a spot to his right, where the bright star of Ezra’s Force signature still burned, as familiar as it was vivid.
“So,” he said, settling his palms flush against the tops of his thighs, “what’s on your mind?”
He sensed Ezra settle on his knees in front of him, mirroring Kanan’s favored meditation pose. “What do you mean?”
Kanan snorted. “Seriously, kid. Wanna meditate with me? In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never willingly meditated. That’s my thing.”
Ezra’s signature bristled with indignation, but Kanan still sensed that he was right.
“I’m a Jedi Knight now, master.”
He just raised what he hoped was an imperious eyebrow. “Spill it.”
Ezra sighed, but relented. “Ahsoka was here recently, right?”
“She was.”
“Did she tell you that she found all those old Jedi texts?”
Kanan nodded, curiosity growing. Ahsoka had indeed told him of her discovery. He had pondered it for many days, trying to reconcile his joy at discovering that some of the Jedi’s knowledge had indeed survived the Purge with the grief he felt when it dawned on him that he would never be able to read the very texts that would have once guided his life.
“Well, I’ve been studying them,” Ezra said, oblivious to Kanan’s thoughts. “I… don’t know how much of them you know. Or might’ve read, at the Temple.”
“Very little, I’d guess. I was only fourteen when the Order fell, and I’d spent nearly all my time as a padawan fighting in the war.”
Ezra must have sensed the regret in Kanan’s voice—in fact, Kanan felt the emotion so strongly that he wouldn’t be surprised if some of it leaked through his shields and across their training bond, still intact after all these years—because he shifted closer.
“I could read them to you,” Ezra said softly, after a moment. “One day. If you came to Ossus.”
Affection swelled in Kanan, although it butted up uncomfortably against shame. Ezra may not be his son in quite the same way that Jacen was, but Kanan did think of him as his, just as he thought of Sabine as his, or Zeb as his brother. Ezra shouldn’t be reading to him. He shouldn’t need his own student’s—his own child’s—help.
No. He forced himself to release his self-pity. He reminded himself, as he had regularly since Malachor, that he was not less than he was before. He was simply changed.
“I’d like that.”
Ezra’s delight lit up in the Force, bright enough to wash away any of Kanan’s lingering discomfort. He’d grown up so much since Kanan had met him, yet he’d never lost that dogged desire to be useful to the people he loved.
“Anyway, uh, I found something in them. And I’ve been practicing. And… I think I’m ready to try it.”
“Wanna clue me in?”
Ezra shifted. “If we both drop our shields, and we open our bond as wide as we can… I think we can share memories. Or, well, my plan is… I think I can show you Jacen. And Hera. And, uh, everyone.”
This time, it was longing that ached through Kanan’s chest. To see Hera’s face again… To see Jacen at all…
“Really?” he whispered, trying and failing to conceal the hope in his voice.
“I think so.” He felt a displacement of air as Ezra waved his hands vaguely around them. “Hence, you know, this. I think it’ll be easier to do it if we try during meditation. I’ve gotta really concentrate.”
Kanan had never agreed to one of Ezra’s plans so quickly.
Entering meditation was a harder task than Kanan wanted to admit. He and Ezra breathed together, the routine so ingrained that neither of them needed to speak. Kanan pooled his excitement within him, then struggled to release it. For once, he sensed Ezra’s presence settling long before his own, a soft sense of serenity drifting across the thread that tethered their minds together. And Ezra was patient—as Kanan had been with him, for so many years—waiting within himself until Kanan had found his center.
Ezra initiated the meld, slowly dropping his mental shields and nudging softly against Kanan’s—the Force equivalent of a friendly knock. Kanan quickly mimicked him, letting their signatures meet and blur. Ezra’s presence was familiar and electric. Even in the midst of his meditation, Kanan felt himself smiling. He and Ezra hadn’t joined like this often—it was a level of intimacy that was difficult to explain to non-Force sensitives—but it satisfied the part of Kanan that had been forced to grow used to Ezra’s absence, since the fall of the Empire. He spent so much of his time darting between worlds, acting as a symbol of hope for the New Republic. And even on the rare occasions when he was released from those duties, Ezra was often on Ossus, helping Luke form a curriculum for the next generation of Jedi.
Well, that and flirting, probably. But Kanan pretended not to notice that part.
Really, Kanan was proud. As a Jedi Knight, he had learned to release his hold on Ezra and simply take pleasure in the person he had become. But as a man… Kanan missed him. He often found himself thinking back to the early days of the Rebellion—or even before, when the crew had just been taking tiny bites out of the Empire on Lothal—with a strange, guilty sense of nostalgia. The galaxy was so much better off now, with the Empire defeated. This was what they’d been pursuing all those years.
And yet his family was scattered. In his weakest moments, he longed for the simplicity of stealing Imperial supplies, eating ration bars in the galley of the Ghost, then falling asleep just meters away from all the people he loved most in the galaxy.
For a strange moment, that longing seemed to swell beyond its usual breadth. It took him a handful of chest-tightening seconds to realize that he was feeling Ezra’s loneliness as well as his own. Kanan had forgotten how easily thoughts traveled during a meld this deep—Ezra must have sensed his ruminations and shared them.
Kanan felt a pulse of guilt. All those years of scolding Ezra about focusing and tranquility, and now it was Kanan who was shaking the kid free of his center. He forced in a few deep, steadying breaths, then allowed his emotions to flow freely into the Force. He sensed Ezra rushing to copy him.
Once they had both reached a more stable equilibrium, Ezra’s focus twisted noticeably inward. He seemed to grapple with something for a few moments, his signature glowing brighter and brighter as he tapped into the Force for strength. Kanan’s chest warmed briefly with familiar pride—Ezra’s control had grown, and his instincts for channeling the Force were impressive—then allowed the sensation to pass.
And then—
An image drifted across their bond. It was blurry at first, just the barest sense of color and shape, but as Kanan sensed Ezra directing more and more concentration his way, it clarified.
It took Kanan a shamefully long beat to realize what he was looking at. A little boy with green hair, teal eyes, and a wide, toothy smile.
He knew what Jacen looked like in theory. He’d had Hera describe his son to him over and over again. For years now, Hera’s soft voice had filled his nights—the two of them coiled together in their bunk, Hera’s hands tangling through his hair. She murmured descriptions of Jacen, Ezra, Sabine, Zeb… even Chopper, when Sabine updated his chassis or touched up his paint. But to see Jacen… To look at his son…
He felt Ezra holding the image in place, patiently waiting until Kanan nudged him to shift to the next. After a few minutes of trying to memorize every inch of Jacen’s face, Kanan did. The first image was replaced by another, still of Jacen. The boy had a tan Loth-cat curled up in his lap, his little fingers tangled in its fur. That image passed, and there was Jacen sitting in Hera’s lap, gripping the Ghost’s steering yoke. Then, Jacen as an infant, so small and squished that he could’ve only been a few hours old. Ezra seemed to have collected a small reel of his own favorite memories of Jacen, all carefully brushed up and clarified.
Eventually, Ezra shifted to images of Hera. Holding Jacen in her lap. Piloting the Ghost. Reaching out to cup Ezra’s face, a softness in her eyes that Kanan had only ever witnessed when she was looking at one of the kids. Even one of Hera smiling towards a blurry outline that Kanan recognized as himself, enough love pouring out of her expression to take Kanan’s breath away.
It was strange to experience memories through someone else’s eyes. Even though Ezra was only projecting static images, Kanan could still feel the emotions attached to the moments he had isolated. His fondness for Jacen, his deep affection for Hera. Kanan knew, of course, that Ezra loved their family just as deeply as Kanan did, but to feel it firsthand was another thing entirely.
Ezra showed Kanan Sabine. A few memories of her recent art. Zeb and Kallus. Ahsoka, then Luke. He had Ezra linger for a while on the image of the latter. He’d been curious about the appearance of Anakin Skywalker’s son since he’d heard he existed, especially since he remembered seeing Skywalker during his days at the Temple. He had always seemed larger than life to Kanan, then—a hero from holovids rather than a fellow Jedi.
Kanan wasn’t sure how long passed. After what felt like hours and no time at all, he felt Ezra’s intention to retreat like a ripple through their connection, and balked.
“Wait,” Kanan whispered, with his voice and through the Force. “Show me you.”
Surprise jolted through Ezra, although it was immediately followed by a sense of acquiescence. A few minutes passed with nothing—Kanan sensed, like a distant hum, that Ezra was sifting through memories. Then, slowly, a new wave of images came.
It took Kanan a moment to realize that the first was Ezra’s own recollection of the family mural Sabine had worked so diligently on, in those strange few months immediately after the Empire fell. It had been a product of a strange time for all of them. Once the giddiness of victory had waned, everyone had felt a little lost. Hera and Kanan had had Jacen to pour themselves into. Zeb, Kallus and his people on Lira San. Ezra, Luke’s plans for Ossus. But Sabine had been particularly unmoored. She’d spent weeks feverishly working on the mural, then waited until one of the rare moments when the entire crew found their way to Lothal to reveal it. Kanan had wished very much for his sight back, that day.
It was—as all of Sabine’s art was—beautiful. She’d never been afraid of color, and she didn’t shy away from it in depicting her family, either. She captured them not quite as they were, but as she saw them—an animation, almost, of her memories. Kanan studied the portraits of each of the crew in turn, finishing with Ezra. This version of the kid would’ve been quite a few years younger than the one sitting in front of him, but still a few years older than the Ezra that Kanan had last laid eyes on, back on Malachor. His hair was shaved short, his features seemingly hovering on that tipping point between boy and man. Sabine had included his twin scars—a sight that still, after all these years, made some distant part of Kanan cringe in sympathetic pain.
He felt Ezra push gently against the sensation, a sense of forgiveness humming between them. With a deep breath, Kanan let the feeling go.
The mural blurred, then clarified into a new image, vaguely blue-tinged. A memory of a holo. Ezra sat in the Ghost’s dejarik booth with Jacen, both of them smiling brightly at the camera. Hera must’ve taken it—after all, Kanan wasn’t exactly going to be someone’s first choice for a photographer. The photo was at least a few years old, since Jacen couldn’t be more than a toddler. Ezra didn’t look all that different from Sabine’s mural, although his hair was an inch or so longer. Kanan had known he’d been growing it out again; it was different to see it.
The next image showed Ezra standing in a refresher, staring at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. His hair was at least as long as Kanan’s had been when they first met and was pulled back in what looked like a bun, a loose lock or two curling around the edges of his face. There was the shadow of stubble lining his chin and upper lip. A yellowish bruise covered the underside of his left eye and cheekbone. Any hint of boyhood had vanished from his face and shoulders. He looked confident, and calm, and kind. And underneath all the differences of maturity, he looked like Ezra—his Ezra, the fifteen-year-old version that Kanan saw whenever he thought of the kid. His eyes were the same shape, the same blue. He looked a little tired in the memory, but that was hardly an expression on Ezra that Kanan was unfamiliar with.
Just like with the others, Kanan felt a surge of love wash through him as he absorbed every inch of Ezra’s face. But unlike with the others, Kanan was acutely aware of Ezra’s reaction to those feelings—surprise, gratitude, and a swelling of shaky adoration that might’ve reduced Kanan to tears, if he’d still been capable of crying.
The images faded. For a moment, they both lingered there, together, in their shared mental space. Then, Ezra gently tugged back, and Kanan found himself slipping back into his own body far faster than he’d been prepared for.
Kanan gasped as the various sensations of his body assaulted him—the brush of the wind, the itch of the grass, the pressure of his shirt pressing down on his skin. He braced a hand against the firm ground at his side as he struggled to orient himself. Just inches away, he could hear Ezra panting for breath. Kanan couldn’t imagine the mental strain such a task as the one the kid had just performed required, and he could feel Ezra’s fatigue through the sudden dimming of his Force signature.
“Thank you,” he whispered, trying to pour every ounce of his feeling into the words, although he supposed it wasn’t necessary. He and Ezra had been bonded so closely during the exchange that Ezra would have felt Kanan’s emotions as strongly as Kanan had felt his.
He fought back a blush of embarrassment when it dawned on him what he may have accidentally projected to Ezra when the kid had shown him images of Hera.
“Don’t thank me,” Ezra said, surprisingly earnest. “Really. I… I wish I could give you more.”
“Ezra,” he whispered.
Ezra plowed ahead as if he hadn’t heard him. “I should be able to do more than images, with some practice. I think I remember Jacen’s first steps well enough to project them. I might sleep for a week after that, though.”
“Careful,” Kanan said, a smile tugging at his lips. “If it means you’ll stick around that long, I’ll be dragging you out to do this whenever I can.”
“I don’t think I’d be that interesting,” Ezra half-laughed, half-sighed, clearly spent. “I mean, I’d be asleep.”
Kanan thought about telling Ezra that it didn’t matter what he was doing, as long as he was here, with them, and safe. But then again, telling him didn’t matter all that much. He’d just felt all of it.
“I get it, y’know,” Ezra murmured when Kanan didn’t answer, tentative. There was a soft scuffle as the kid moved from facing Kanan to sitting next to him, close enough that he could lean into Kanan’s side. “I miss before too, sometimes.”
Ah. In the excitement of seeing again, Kanan had almost forgotten about the beginning of their meditation. But of course, Ezra wouldn’t have.
“Change is part of life,” Kanan said softly. “We all have to learn to accept it.”
“Sure,” Ezra said, yawning around the word. Kanan had a feeling that the kid had intended to say more, but gave up once he realized how much energy that conversation would’ve taken.
They lapsed into companionable silence. Kanan wrapped an arm around Ezra’s shoulders, taking a simple comfort in the steady rise and fall of his breaths. And without particularly meaning to, he found himself drifting back through the memories Ezra had shown him. Jacen’s bright eyes, the curve of Hera’s waist, the stubble on Ezra’s…
“What happened to your face?”
Ezra shifted, dragging himself out of a doze. Kanan could feel his sleepy confusion drift into the Force, followed promptly by an amused realization.
“Oh,” Ezra reached over and brought one of Kanan’s hands up to his cheek, letting his fingers brush over his face and feel the unmarred skin there. “That memory was from a couple of months ago. It’s fine now. I, uh, I guess I shouldn’t have shown you that? Sorry. I’d picked out all the other images, but I didn’t really have any prepared of me. I didn’t think about the fact you might want to see what I looked like, too.”
Something strange churned in Kanan’s stomach. “Of course I’d want to see you, Ezra. Missing you growing up—”
“Hey,” Ezra stopped him, voice soft. He could feel the kid impressing his sincerity to Kanan through their bond. “No, I know. I do. I honestly just didn’t even think about it. It’s not like I look at myself that often.”
Kanan smiled towards him fondly, clinging tightly to the images of the kid—the man—that he’d seen. Trying to imagine how Ezra must look in front of him now: strong jaw, shaggy hair, eyes still as piercingly blue as when Kanan had first met him.
“You never answered my question.”
“Huh?”
“Your face.”
“Oh.” Kanan could practically feel Ezra’s blush beneath his fingers. “It isn’t… You’re gonna laugh at me.”
“Go on.”
Ezra shook his head, and Kanan let his grip drop from the kid’s face to his shoulder. “I was sparring with Luke.”
Kanan felt a flicker of surprise. “Luke hit you in the face?”
“No. I… The planet he’s on—Ossus—it, uh, it has these vines. They’re all over the ground. I got… maybe a little overzealous with my form, and tripped over one.” There was a pause, and Kanan could sense Ezra steeling himself against a swell of embarrassment. “I hit myself in the face. With my ‘saber hilt.”
Kanan couldn’t help it—not even after the gift the kid had given him that day. He dropped his head back and laughed.