Ezra sighs quietly into the darkness. Even as he tries to stop them, he can feel his eyes straining against it, trying to pick up any hint of light. He doesn't think he has ever known darkness so complete. It is not a comfortable experience.

The walls of the cave appear to grow narrower with every step. He keeps one hand glued to the wall, the other hovers just in front of him, bobbing around the level of his stomach despite his efforts to force it to his side. He knows that Kanan is in front, and that he will warn him of any upcoming obstacles, he trusts in the Force not to allow him to walk into anything he shouldn't, but still the hand resolutely refuses to move from its guard position.

He hates this. He hates it all the more for the fact that every time his loathing of the situation rears its head, he remembers that this is Kanan's life now, that when they emerge from the caves, his Master will still be in the dark. He remembers that that is because of him, and that thought intensifies his state of misery until it feels like a hard, heavy ball in the pit of his stomach.

"You doing okay back there?" Kanan asks. He actually sounds… not cheerful as such, but there is no tension in his voice. He sounds as though the situation doesn't bother him as much as it should.

Ezra supposes that that should reassure him. It does, a little. "Yeah," he replies as he stumbles over an unexpected dip in the path. Instinctively, he grips the wall of the cave with both hands, and allows himself a moment to recover before continuing. "Ready to be out of here though," he adds, and instantly feels another stab of guilt.

"Working on it," Kanan tells him. "Okay, we're turning to the left just ahead. Make sure you don't miss the turn because there's a pretty deep drop coming up."

Ezra can sense a wide, open space before him, he imagines it as a large cavern, the floor and roof adorned with stalagmites and stalactites formed by centuries of slowly dripping water carrying the same minerals and heavy metals that is blocking their radio signal to the Ghost. In his mind's eye he sees the drop, sudden and sheer, straight down onto sharp rocks below. He shudders, wondering whether it is just his imagination running away with him, or whether the image has come from somewhere, supplied by the Force.

Is that how Kanan sees now? In glimpses of the world, half gleaned from the Force, half from his own imagination with no way to tell the difference between the two? He concentrates hard on the space in front of him, exploring the distance from one side to the next, the shape of the area, the size of the space. The more he tries, the less he sees. The towering stalagmites fade away, replaced by a vague impression of the ground and he realizes that they were never there at all, they had simply been created in his imagination from the pages of a book his mother had read to him as a child. The new impression of the area ahead of him is much less majestic, far less detailed, but he knows it is correct. He knows it in the same way that without looking, he knows the position of his feet on the ground, the way in which he is standing. He feels it, without seeing.

Without warning, a hand grips him from behind and pulls hard, dragging him backwards and around a corner. He thrusts his hands out to the sides for support, flailing as the unexpected tug throws his sense of balance out of whack and he stumbles. Only the strength of Kanan's grip on his shoulder saves him from hitting the ground. He shakes himself free of the grip and spins around to glare angrily through the total darkness.

"Okay?" Kanan asks him.

Shaking, Ezra brushes his hands swiftly down the front of his clothes, wiping away the dampness on his palms. The palm of his right hand throbs harshly, and he touches it gingerly with his fingertips. They come away damp and sticky, but the injury is minor and already beginning to clot. He wraps the end of his sleeve around the cut and squeezes to blot up the worst of the blood. "Ouch," he says pointedly.

"You were about to walk off the edge of a very steep drop," Kanan tells him. "Believe me, it would have been much worse than 'ouch'."

"I…" Ezra blinks compulsively, still trying to clear the darkness before his eyes. He realizes now, far too late, that he had lost track of Kanan, concentrating instead on the dimensions of the cavern before him, with no thought whatsoever to the distance between him and it. "Thanks," he mutters, embarrassed.

"Thank me by not falling down a hole," Kanan tells him. "The last thing I need is to have to carry you out of here. Or to have to explain to Hera how you ended up with two broken legs."

Ezra can't help it, his face splits into a wide grin and he laughs. "I'll try not to fall down any holes," he promises.

"Do, or…"

"Do not," Ezra finishes for him. "Yeah, I remember. I think I'm definitely going to go for 'do not,' in this situation. Thanks for watching my back."

Kanan makes a sound that is almost, but not quite, a laugh. "I think that's the first time you've said anything even referring to sight to me since Malachor," he says.

Ezra feels his eyes widen in panic. "Sorry, I didn't…"

"Don't. It's good," Kanan tells him. "You need to stop tip-toeing around me. All of you. Believe me, it's really not as helpful as you think." He pauses, thoughtful. "I think it's time for a break," he decides.

Ezra hears him lean against the wall then sit slowly, easing himself down onto the hard stone floor. He follows his lead, dropping down to the ground next to him.

"We need to add water to the list," Kanan says.

"List?"

"The one I've been constructing in my head. This is the last time we go wandering into a situation unprepared. I knew this planet was prone to earthquakes, I should have planned for this eventuality."

Ezra shrugs, "I don't think anyone could have planned for this particular eventuality," he says. "By the way, I hate to sound like a kid being dragged out on a trip, but are we nearly there? You said an hour, and it has to have been twice that already."

"I had to alter the route," Kanan tells him. Some of the caves I thought were passable turned out not to be.

"Oh." Ezra leans his head back against the wall. He trusts Kanan to get them out. If it takes a little longer than they had expected, they can live with it. He closes his eyes, it isn't like they're much use for anything right now anyway, and shivers a little as he feels his muscles begin to relax. The temperature deep in the network of caves is significantly cooler than on the surface, or in the shallow cave mouth where the weapons that they had been supposed to be rescuing had been stored.

He wonders where they are now in relation to the cave that they had entered through. In all the twists and turns that they have taken, he has completely lost track of the direction that they are traveling, as well as their depth inside the mountain, because for a while, they had definitely been traveling downward. He thinks of the tons of rock surrounding them on all sides, and suddenly finds himself hit with a wave of claustrophobia. He can feel nothing but the ground around them, swallowing them as they travel deeper and deeper inside it. He tries to reach out with the Force, expanding his awareness further. He finds the maze of tunnels surrounding them, and a lot more rock. It doesn't help much.

"Kanan?" He asks hesitantly. "What's it like to see through the Force?"

Kanan doesn't answer at first. The silence stretches taut between them, made even worse by the darkness. Ezra opens his mouth to apologize, but Kanan finally replies before he is able.

"It's hard to explain," he says. "When you say 'see' through the Force, that's not entirely accurate. It's an awareness. You'll have experienced it yourself, but maybe not realized. When you know something is going to happen before it does, what move your enemy is going to make next in battle, or what you're going to find around the next corner when you run into a room… It's something that normally only happens in the heat of battle, you know, life or death situations. It's that, but trained to be switched on all the time."

"Sounds difficult," Ezra says.

"It's… tiring," Kanan agrees. "It takes a lot of concentration all of the time, and that's only to get a fraction of the information I could have gathered with my eyes." He pauses, thoughtful. "But I'm learning," he adds. "It's getting better."

Ezra sighs. "I'm sorry," he says.

"It's not your fault, Ezra."

"I'm the one who…" he stops, shakes his head. "We should get moving." He begins to climb to his feet, but stops when he realizes that Kanan is not moving. "Kanan?"

"Sit down. We've been needing to talk about this for a while now," Kanan tells him. "Might as well do it now, while you can't make an excuse to leave."

Ezra's heart sinks as he lowers himself back to the ground. Kanan is right, the conversation is long overdue, but he hasn't been able to face it, staring at that mask his mentor wears to hide his scars, knowing that he can't look back at him. Knowing that it's all his fault.

"We all make our own choices," Kanan tells him. You were fooled by Maul, but I'm the one that made the decision to remain on Malachor, and I stand by it. We were sent there for a reason, and I have to trust that the Force has a plan, that everything that happens happens for a reason."

Faith in the Force appears to come easily to Kanan, who grew up surrounded by it, using it, learning to understand it. For a kid who didn't even know what the term meant a few years ago, it wasn't as easy. "You talk about the Force like it's a living thing, like it can think and scheme and have opinions. Like we're all just pawns in it's plan. That's not right, is it?"

"Some times, I'm not so sure," Kanan tells him. "But the point is that we were sent to Malachor for a reason, and you were right to want to stay until we completed the mission."

"But Ahsoka…" Ezra feels himself falter at the mention of her name, feels the well of emotion deep within him begin to stir.

Kanan places a hand on his shoulder, the same one he had grabbed earlier in an effort to prevent him falling into the cavern. "The Jedi taught that death isn't the end. If she died at Vader's hand, she's not gone, she's just… more difficult to reach now."

Ezra wipes away the tears gathering in his eyes, and takes a deep breath to still the bubbling grief within him. Emotion, yet peace. That was what Kanan had attempted to teach him once, it hadn't meant anything to him then, and it still doesn't, not really, but something in the words resonate with him now. "I'm the only one that escaped unscathed," he whispers. "I'm the one that made us go - made us stay - and the two of you…"

"Ezra." Kanan pulls him closer, draping an arm around his Padawan and squeezing him. "We both know that you didn't escape unscathed. Your scars might be deeper, more difficult to see, but they are there and you're going to have to learn to carry them just like the rest of us."

Ezra shakes his head, but can't bring himself to speak.

"If anything, I think yours will be the more difficult journey; but we're going to help you through it, okay? You're going to be faced with some difficult decisions, and you need to stay strong and make the right choices, for all our sakes, but especially for yourself."

"I don't…" Ezra shakes his head. "I don't understand."

Kanan shifts his position, moves his arm from around Ezra's shoulders and gets to his feet. Ezra shudders at the sudden lack of contact, finding himself once again awash in a sea of darkness. Kanan reaches down, takes his hand and pulls him to his feet. "If you really don't, you will soon. Just remember that we're there for you, all of us, okay?"

Ezra allows himself to be pulled into a standing position, before he nods, unsure whether Kanan can perceive the motion or not. "You too," he says.

"Come on," Kanan tells him, "Let's get out of here, I don't think it's too much further."

The temperature has been increasing slightly for the past half hour, a sure sign that they are nearing the way out of the mountain and into the warmth of the sunlight outside, but it is not until they turn a corner and light begins to filter back into the world, that Ezra realizes the journey is almost over.

The change is barely perceptible, a tiny sprinkling of light that could almost be his imagination. He blinks, uncertain at first, turns his head from one side to the other, then slowly raises a hand in front of his face and rotates it. As it moves, he can perceive what looks like a shadow in the darkness, barely there, but so significant he finds himself coming to a complete stop in order to better concentrate on it.

Kanan notices almost immediately. Ezra knows, whether by the sound of his voice or through the Force he isn't sure, that Kanan has turned to face him.

"We're almost there," Ezra tells him. He can barely contain the relief at the idea of escape from the network of caves that has trapped them for the better part of a day.

Kanan turns back and continues walking. Ezra follows him, every step bringing more light to his world.

Finally, they turn another corner and hit pure daylight, it is so bright that Ezra has to cover his eyes for a moment while they adjust. He laughs, relief flooding him so hard he almost falls to the ground. They are in another cave not dissimilar to the one they had been forced to abandon after the landslide, but this one appears to have survived relatively undamaged. Beyond the mouth of the cave, the sun is setting, bleaching the sky a bright mixture of oranges and purples. "We made it," he says, awestruck at the view.

Kanan presses his radio. "Specter one to Ghost," he tries.

The radio crackles to life in answer, Hera's relieved voice fills the cave. "Kanan? Are you alright?"

"We're both fine," Kanan assures her, smiling widely in relief. "We just had to take a little detour. I'm afraid we weren't able to bring the blasters with us, though."

"Forget the blasters," Hera tells him. "I thought you were dead! I've been worried sick! We all have."

"Sorry about that. The metals in the rocks block communication," Kanan explains. "Trust me, we'd have been in touch sooner if we could."

"What's your location?" That's Sabine's voice, interrupting over the channel.

Kanan hesitates. "Not sure. We're somewhere on the west side of the mountain. We managed to walk through the tunnels and out the other side."

"We'll come and find you. Zeb and I have been out here for hours trying to dig you out, we were just about to plant some charges and blow the blockage away with a controlled explosion."

The corners of Kanan's mouth twitch in amusement. "Sorry to disappoint you," he says.

"Shut up. Wait there. We're on the way."

The radio goes dead.

Ezra grins as he walks to the mouth of the cave and settles down to keep watch for the rescue party.

Kanan follows him, stopping a little further from the mouth of the cave, and sitting down with his back against the wall. "So much for a nice easy mission for my first time back out," he says.

"I don't know," Ezra tells him. "By our standards, this was pretty tame. Nobody tried to kill us."

"Apart from the mountain."

Ezra shrugs, "Well yeah, apart from that." He takes a deep breath of clean air, relieved to no longer be breathing the stale air that had been trapped under the mountain with them. He looks out over the view as the sun begins to sink into the horizon.

"Good to be in the light again?" Kanan asks.

Ezra glances in his direction sharply, but Kanan doesn't appear to be upset or jealous at the experience that he is missing. Instead he looks relaxed and at peace. Ezra smiles. "Yeah."

"Just promise me you'll remember that feeling if you ever find yourself tempted into the dark," Kanan tells him.

Ezra thinks of the holocron; of the secrets it holds, the knowledge that he knows could help them if they would just let it. His smile falters for a moment before he forcibly widens it again. "Is that another way of telling me to remember a flashlight next time I'm going to be in a cave?"

"Exactly," Kanan tells him, letting it go for now. He rubs absently at the edge of his mask where it makes contact with the skin of his face.

"You can take it off, you know," Ezra tells him. "If it's bothering you. You don't have to cover your face around me - any of us."

Kanan's mouth curves into a smile. "I know," says, but he doesn't make any move to remove it.

Before either one of them can say anything else, the engine hum of the Phantom approaching fills the air, and Ezra gets to his feet and begins to wave them in to a landing.