A/N - I have a file on my phone full of notes, random thoughts snippet of dialogue that pops into my head. Most of it never gets used because there isn't enough there to build a full story. The thing is, I liked a lot of what I had, so I decided to make a story out of all of it, it's kind of smushed together around a vague central theme, and I really hope it works. Also, some of it is written in the second person, which I know is a bit weird, but that's how I wrote it and when I tried to change it it didn't sound as good!

Also, at least one part of this comes from a prompt on SWRRequests that was filled by somebody else. This is unrelated and written independently of that, it just wasn't enough to become a fic on its own!

You are okay now.

For a long time, you were not. You teetered on the edge of despair, convinced that that one mistake, the split second of inattention that had cost you your sight, had also cost you your purpose, your ability to be of use. Your ability to be anything at all.

You allowed yourself to wallow in self pity, dwelling on what you had lost and what you were missing, regretting the past instead moving onward to the future. But you have learned that you were wrong about so much, and you are fine now.

Well, no, not entirely, but things like that are relative.

Looking (in a manner of speaking) back at your life, it is fairly safe to say that 'fine' is something you have never been, not entirely. Or at least, not for a very long time. What you are dealing with now is just the very latest of the terrible things that have happened to you, and you have always, always managed to claw your way back, dust yourself off and carry on down the road. This time will be no different; this obstacle is no more insurmountable than the other great losses that you have endured; your Master, the Jedi Order, your whole way of life.

Of course, things become so much more difficult when you are forced to do them in the dark.

But you are okay now. You are okay, because that is what you need to be. You have been out of the fight for too long, allowing yourself to wallow in your misery. It never helped before, and it has not helped this time. If anything, the self-indulgence has made things worse. So you have moved on, because that is what you do. You adapt to your circumstances, whatever they happen to be.

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Kanan almost shook with exhaustion as he dragged himself up the ramp and back onboard the Ghost. Ezra followed close behind him, followed by Sabine, all equally tired and weary. It had been a difficult mission, and a long one. Ezra and Sabine's footsteps behind him were heavy as they walked slowly up the ramp onto the ship.

"I think I need to sleep for a week," Ezra muttered.

"Yeah, right. A day should do it," Sabine told him. "But then maybe another day of lounging around not having to do anything. Are you hearing this, Hera. We're off the hook for two days minimum before we have to risk ourselves again, deal?"

Kanan hadn't even realized that Hera was there. He reached out though the Force and located her familiar presence. "She's right," he said, turning in her direction. "I think they've earned it."

"They?" Hera asked. "Not you?"

He shrugged. "I'm fine. You know me, I bounce right back. A hot meal and a half hour's meditation and I'll be good to…" his foot caught against something on the floor, it knocked him off balance, the top half of him keeping up its forward momentum as his foot stalled. His arms spread out ahead of him, partly to cushion his fall, partly in the hopes of grabbing hold of something to keep himself upright, but in his exhaustion and momentary confusion, his old instincts kicked in, rather than the new ones that he had been cultivating, and tried to look not with the Force, but with his eyes.

Not that it would have made much difference anyway. There was nothing there that he could have used to right himself, and he was already so far into the trip that there was no righting himself. He braced for impact as the floor moved ever closer.

Arms closed around him, one set at either side, supporting him, pulling him back up to a standing position; Ezra and Sabine. They maintained their grip on his shoulders until they were certain that he was going to remain upright, then backed off, Sabine first, and then Ezra. His apprentice's hand hovered nervously by his shoulder for a few moments, before he tapped him gently and allowed it to drop back to his side. "You okay?" Sabine asked.

Kanan nodded, reaching for the wall of the ship and pressing his hand against it to ground himself. "Thanks," he muttered, embarrassed.

Stupid mistake. And it wasn't because he couldn't see, it was because he hadn't been paying attention. He was exhausted, he was finally safe back on the ship, and he had let his guard down.

The trouble was, would they know that? Or would they assume it was down to not being able to look where he was going. Would they worry, as he once had, that it made him a liability?

He felt Hera's presence, closer now. A hand snaked around his back and gave him a gentle squeeze. "Fine?" she laughed. "By your standards maybe. Can you get to your quarters without collapsing from exhaustion, or do you need some help?"

"I…" he ached from head to foot, the worst of it concentrated in his left leg, right arm and his head, just behind his eyes. He needed help. Not to find his way, not to keep him from tripping again, but to ensure he got there before he lost consciousness. He shook his head. "I'm fine," he said. "But actually, sleep might not be a bad idea."

He grimaced and took a limping step toward the door.

"Well," he heard Ezra saying as he left. "If the offer's there, I could use a hand."

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There has always been something unnerving about darkness. Something dwelling deep in the genetic memory of not just humans but almost every sapient race in the galaxy; something that begs and pleads with you to switch on the light, to move somewhere else, somewhere illuminated, or to find a safe place to hunker down and wait for the night to pass.

But then, you remind yourself, not for the first time, not even for the twentieth; it is not really dark.

It is easy to tell yourself that; to understand it intellectually, but it is another to believe it when you can feel that your eyes are wide open, and staring at nothing. A nothing that your mind incorrectly interprets as blackness. There is no black, no darkness, there is only a lack of sight. The two are not the same thing.

It is a message that resolutely refuses to sink in.

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To his left, Ezra and Zeb were laughing about something. He didn't know what it was; he had missed the beginning of the conversation, either because he was too engrossed in the act of not spilling his lunch, because he allowed his mind to wander further that he should have, or because whatever was so funny was something that he no longer had any way of perceiving.

The Force could tell him a lot about the world, he was still learning exactly how much, but one thing it could not do was provide perfect vision.

But that was okay. He didn't need that.

(Want and need were two different things.)

Chin resting in one hand, he stirred his spoon absent-mindedly around the edge of his bowl, listening to the sound it made as it scraped the edge, and feeling the thick texture of the soup. He inhaled through his nose, drawing in the scent of the meal. He wasn't hungry, and it didn't smell particularly appetizing anyway, but he raised the spoon nonetheless, and brought it to his lips.

"You're quiet, Kanan," Zeb announced unexpectedly. "You okay?"

He squashed down an irrational stab of irritation and swallowed his mouthful of soup before he could answer.

"Chopper's turn to cook again?" Sabine's voice interrupted from somewhere behind him. Kanan started to turn his head in the direction of her voice as she approached, but stopped as he realized the futility of the gesture, and returned his attention to the bowl in front of him. He listened to her sit down opposite her. "Wow, this has to be the least appetizing thing I have ever seen," she added. Her spoon clinked against the side of the bowl as she agitated the soup carefully.

"We were just saying pretty much the same thing," Zeb agreed. "Ezra thinks Chopper should be banned from cooking before he kills us all. Trouble with that is the rest of us would have to pick up the slack."

It didn't taste too bad. Kanan tried another spoonful. He could hear the distaste in Sabine's voice. "Kanan, how can you eat something that looks…" She stops, catching herself just in time, and just too late.

He leaned forward just slightly and shoveled in three mouthfuls in quick succession. It wasn't great; bland and flavorless, with an unpleasant greasy texture that coated the inside of his mouth and wouldn't come off. The horror rolling off the three others was almost palpable. He grinned at them. "What?" he said. "It looks fine to me."

There was an awkward pause that stretched just a few seconds too long, before Zeb let out a loud guffaw.

"Oh, you're hilarious." The eye roll, whether or not it happened, was definitely implied in the tone of Sabine's voice. Ezra may, or may not, have been conspicuous by his silence, it depended in a large part on what else he might be doing. Kanan had no real way to tell.

Zeb thumped him on the shoulder, it wasn't hard, but it was unexpected, and unprepared for it, it knocked the spoon from his grip and sent it clattering onto the table. Kanan cursed inwardly as he smiled good-naturedly. His hand swept the part of the table where he heard the clatter, but it was gone. Instead, his hand passed through a splattering of soup that had spilled when the spoon hit the table.

His two options were a fingertip search of the table until somebody noticed his difficulty and handed him the missing object, or use the Force, which would take time and concentration and frankly felt like too much effort. Instead, he went for the third option, wiped the spilled soup from his hand onto the edge of the table, picked up the bowl in both hands and drank it down in a few deep gulps.

"Delicious," he proclaimed loudly, while quietly wondering what it was about the food that the others had found so off-putting.

It was probably better not to know.

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Slowly but surely, you are reshaping your understanding of the world around you, building up an image made not of pictures, colors and concepts that you can no longer perceive, but instead of tangible shapes; the sharp metallic corners of the rooms, the number of steps from one part of the ship to another, the way the wall feels as you trace it with your hand, the familiar bumps and grooves under the tips of your fingers.

You learn to listen more deeply than you had realized was possible; how to hear not just the words someone is using or the emotions behind them, but the sound of them licking their lips, touching their own clothing; fidgets, sighs and throat clearing that would have gone unnoticed before suddenly develop layers of meaning. You listen to the sound of footsteps, and become accustomed to familiar patterns, become aware of when anything is different or out of place.

You learn about the Force more quickly that you have since you were a youngling, you become reliant on it, and that scares you more than anything else, because deep down inside of you there is still that fear, borne of years on the run; the knowledge that the Force means death and that if you use it in the wrong place, in front of the wrong person, it is all over. Of course, you can no longer see who is the wrong person, and so you are reliant of the Force for that information too.

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Kanan took a deep, cleansing breath as he moved his lightsaber through the air above his head, he concentrated on the feel of the weapon in his hand, on the sound it made as it moved through the air. He concentrated on these things as he tried to purge the frustration that curled uncomfortably in his chest and stomach.

He did not know where it had come from. Nothing had happened, nobody had said or done anything wrong, it was just a bad day; he had simply woken up in the kind of mood where he wanted… needed, to destroy something. It was better that it wasn't somebody he cared about, and so he had come here, to the furthest part of the base's perimeter, where he would not - or at least should not - be disturbed.

He abandoned his carefully controlled form, allowed his stance to become slack and careless. His Master would have never let him get away with it, but for once he did not care. He raised the blade high above his head and brought it down hard onto the top of the old supply crate.

The blade whirred as it cut apart the box, slicing through the metal with barely any resistance. It fell apart with a satisfying sizzle and a crack, and landed on the ground with two almost identical thumps. He readied himself for another strike before moving forward to attack the defenseless crate again from the side this time. The weapon sliced through first one and then the other half of the already split crate, the resistance and the sound changing subtly as the weapon moved through different materials, and through the air. He swung again, and again, and again. Finally, when pieces were scattered all around him, some so small that they crunched underfoot, he stopped, took a breath, and briefly removed his mask to mop the sweat from his brow.

"So… Did it do something to offend you?"

Kanan froze, mask still in his hand. Ezra was standing behind him, watching from a safe distance. He had, he realized now, been watching him for quite some time, hovering on the edge of his awareness, observing him as he… trained.

He turned to face his apprentice as he placed his mask back over the upper half of his face. "It's old," he explained. "Broken, it doesn't hover any more."

Ezra's tone of voice was dubious as he surveyed the destruction. "No, I don't suppose it does."

In his mind's eye, Kanan could almost see his apprentice, arms folded, disbelieving expression on his face.

"You alright?" Ezra asked, concern obvious in his voice.

Kanan straightened, instantly on the defensive after being caught at a weak moment. "I'm fine," he said. "Why does everybody keep asking me that?"

"Well," Ezra said. Kanan could hear the smirk in his voice as he glanced over the destruction around him, oblivious to Kanan's discomfort. "I can think of a reason or two."

He shut off the blade and wished that he still had the ability to glare at people. Of all the things he thought he would miss, that hadn't made the list. It turned out it was more important than he ever realized. "I'm fine," he repeated. "Seriously. I've been training for this my entire life. I mean, I didn't realize it at the time, but still."

Ezra moved forward to better survey the damage. "Well," he said, deliberately misunderstanding, "if you're going to spend your whole life training for something, it might as well be something fun, like using a lightsaber to slice up an old supply crate, I guess."

"Funny." It was, actually.

"I try." Ezra shifted a little uncomfortably. "You know, if you want to train, I could use some practice myself. I mean, unless you're still looking for something to slice into pieces, in which case maybe not."

Kanan nodded. They were behind on Ezra's training as it was, it had been selfish of him to spend his downtime alone taking out his frustrations like that. It hadn't helped anyway.

Well, maybe it had a little.

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You have always suffered from nightmares; of Kaller, of your Master's death, of the Clone troopers coming for you, the Empire finding you during your days on the run. Of them finding the people that you care about. You have spent more of your life on the run than you ever did safe, you have lived in a universe at war for as long as you can remember. That kind of thing leaves a mark on the psyche.

Now though, when you wake gasping and trembling with unspent adrenaline, your body soaked in sweat and sheets twisted uncomfortably around you, just before you remember, while you are still more in the dream than out of it, you reach for the light control. Still gasping for breath, your eyes strain futilely against a darkness that refuses to lift, and even then, there is still a moment of confusion before you remember. When you finally do, you pull back your hand from the light control and close your eyes, the afterimage of your night terrors still seared into your brain and no way to chase it away.

Even when there are no nightmares, those occasions where you drift into a thankfully dreamless sleep, when you wake it is sometimes still to a moment of confusion. It passes more quickly each time, but you wonder whether you will ever be truly free of it. And if you are, you wonder whether you will miss it when it is gone. As unpleasant as that realization is, it is almost worth it for the ever shorter moment where you believe that you can switch the light on.

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"I have to admit, Kanan, I'm not loving this idea."

Kanan could understand that, even without even taking recent events into consideration. It didn't matter. "It's a standard part of Jedi training," he said. "You know that, we've done it before."

Ezra's feet shuffled uncomfortably on the dusty Atallon ground and he didn't reply.

"It's not sight, or… lack of," Kanan continued, half quoting one of the masters that had thought him these lessons many years ago. "Your eyes can deceive you, you know that, everybody knows that, but they're still… you still need them, I'm not expecting you…" he broke off, took a breath. He knew what he needed to say, but the words would not flow the way they had in his imagination. It was more difficult than he had anticipated, to ask Ezra to do this.

Ezra ran his fingers through his short hair. His discomfort was communicated to Kanan through the Force.

"This is about learning to trust the Force," Kanan continued, "and your instincts. It's about having the same understanding of what is happening behind you as you do of what an enemy is doing right in front of you. It's about knowing something is going to happen before you see it, before an opponent makes their move."

Ezra sighed, a sharp intake of breath and a quiet exhalation. His feet shuffled again. "I know. I know all this. It's just… you know."

He did, unfortunately. But Ezra wasn't going to miss part of his training especially such a potentially valuable part, because it felt a bit weird." He handed a strip of ripped cloth to Ezra. "Put this on," he said.

Ezra accepted the blindfold reluctantly. "You always just had me close my eyes before," he said, a little sulkily.

"I know, but this is a little different. We're going to be sparring eventually and trust me, the temptation to peek will be pretty strong. I just want to make sure you don't give in to it."

"Kanan?" There was a slight rustling of cloth as Ezra tied the strip of material around his face. His voice continued, a little quieter, unsure. "This has to be kinda weird for you too. You sure you're okay with it?"

This might be even better for Ezra than he had realized, an opportunity for him to show him how he was learning to experience the world, a way to prove to him that he was alright and that it was time for everybody to stop checking. But the answer to the question was no, but not for the reasons Ezra presumably thought. He had hated this kind of training as a padawan, it had made him feel vulnerable and weak, feelings that had manifested themselves again, repeatedly, in the months following Malachor. He did not relish the thought of putting somebody else through that, least of all Ezra.

"If you need to stop, just tell me," he said, instead of an answer. "Now, we're just going to do some simple blocking." He switched on his lightsaber, and as the sound of it filed the air, he felt Ezra's flinch through the Force. "Switch yours on," he prompted. "Okay, now concentrate."

Ezra shifted his position, readying himself for an attack, his lightsaber held apprehensively across the front of his body. Nerves came off him in waves as he waited, and probably without even realizing what he was doing, he took a small step back as though he thought that Kanan might attack him unexpectedly.

"Relax. I'm going to tell you before I do anything," Kanan promised him. "I'm just not going to tell you what it is I'm going to do. It'll just be one move at a time though, and I'll do it slowly. All you need to do is anticipate my movements and block me. For now, anyway. Ready?"

"No. Wait…" There was a rustling of cloth at Ezra pulled up the blindfold. "What if I make a mistake and hit you instead?"

Kanan smirked a little and shook his head. "I don't think that's going to be a problem," he said.

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Sometimes, you worry that you are forgetting how they look. You reach for an image and for a moment you find it absent, replaced by a blank space, or sometimes an incomplete picture, parts missing, faded around the edges.

In some ways, that is worse. It feels like a precursor of something more distressing to come.

But then you reach deeper into the memory, and something appears. Not always an image, but people are so much more than that. Hera is not her appearance. She is not the shape of her eyes, her hand resting on her hip as she glares in exasperation at Ezra, Zeb or Chopper. She is not the delicate movement of her lekku as she shakes her head, or the rich green of her skin. These things are important, but there are other details that matter more.

Hera is the warmth in her voice; the way that even when she is angry, her love for her family shines through. She is the warmth of her touch, the way she so gently helped you change your bandages after your injury, and how she never once shied away the sight of the burn. She is calm confidence combined with a vulnerability that she only shows to a select few. She is the grounding presence in your life, the one that you can turn to when things get too hard, the one that turns to you for the same reason.

And when you think really hard, you can still see her face, it just doesn't seem as important compared to everything else.

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"Anywhere nice?"

Kanan frowned. "What?" He and Hera were alone in the cockpit, she piloting while he sat back in the co-pilot's chair, just keeping her company.

"You looked like you were somewhere else," Hera told him. "I was just wondering what it was like there."

Kanan leaned back in his seat, feeling the shape of it pressing comfortably against his back. He had taken his mask off and it lay resting on the console in front of him. It felt good to let the air onto his face, it felt equally good not to have to feel the need to hide the scars. His eyes were closed, for all the difference it made, simply because it was more comfortable that way.

All around him, the usual sounds of the cockpit provided a familiar backdrop, while the distant but ever-present rumble of the engine sent a gentle tremor through the entire ship. It had always been there - it must have always been there, but he had only really began to notice it in recent months. It was nice; comforting. Hera's breathing was slow, gentle and barely audible, but if he concentrated, it combined with her familiar presence in the Force to create a clearer image - not image - idea of her.

"Kanan, are you..?" she asked. She frowned. Or at least in his mind, as her confusion was communicate to him through the Force, she frowned. The back of her chair creaked as she turned against it, looking at him. He realized that he hadn't answered her.

He didn't bother to turn in her direction, it would have been pointless, and he was comfortable where he was, head leaning against the back of his chair, more relaxed and contented than he could remember being in a very long time. He smiled. "Am I what?" he asked.

She sighed, her breath caught in the smallest of laughs. "I was going to ask if you were okay," she told him, "but then I saw you and I realized what a stupid question it was."

Eyes still closed, he turned just slightly to face her, as comfortable as he was, it didn't feel right to have a conversation with the ceiling. "Right now, I've never been better," he said. "But tomorrow, who knows? I guess…" he smirked, "I guess I'll have to wait and see."