The battle is shorter than Kanan would have expected, but the most important thing is that he wins.

He has the Inquisitor at his absolute mercy, dangling from a catwalk across a chasm with two blue lightsabers crossed at his throat. Around them, the Star Destroyer is shaking and surging with hot, explosive energy, and in this chaos and heat Kanan understands that it would be so, so easy to give in to anger and hate.

He could do it- just leave the Inquisitor right here to die, in the middle of this burning metal tomb, above a forsaken planet. One little action, and Kanan could cut off his head or step on his hand, and watch him fall to his death just like Ezra.

Something dark inside of Kanan wants this- something vicious, and out for blood, and suffocating in grief is there, clawing for attention- but he also knows, above everything raging in his heart, that that is not the Jedi way. Kanan knows that if he gives in to this temptation, it will be a step towards the Dark Side of the Force, and the Inquisitor, the Sith and the Empire itself would win overall. Nothing he had taught Ezra would mean a thing if that happened.

He withdraws both lightsabers and sticks them to his belt, failing to avoid the thought that they are both his now. He looks down at his beaten opponent- hanging helplessly from the metal ledge above a deadly fall, framed in shadow and the shifting oranges, yellows and reds of the core exploding beneath him.

"There are some things far more frightening than death," the Inquisitor snarls with pointed teeth, his yellow eyes boring right up into Kanan's.

But Kanan doesn't need to guess what the Inquisitor means- he's well familiar with things more frightening than death. More frightening than death is watching someone you love die to save you, their last words telling you to run for your life; worse than death is having to kill your former friends, to fight your way out; to hide, scared and alone, and need to drink yourself into oblivion to stave off the pain. Worse than death is losing everything but your own life time after time, and still having to carry on despite the holes where the things you loved used to be. Worse than death is watching Ezra Bridger fall to a spinning red lightsaber, and being helpless to stop it.

The base is shuddering, the walkway under him is beginning to sway- below, the unstable core explodes again, and-

-the Inquisitor lets go.

If it had been a different time, if he had been a different Jedi, perhaps Kanan would have reached out and tried to save the other man; but here in this time and life, he is too shocked, too unprepared to do anything but kneel down and watch with wide eyes.

The Inquisitor's final act is to be swallowed by a mouth of fire, and then it's over.

It's over.

He feels no vindication, no justice in the moment, although a tight tension seems to lift itself from his shoulders, and his limbs go limp. For a moment, he feels nothing at all, except hollow and worn.

Kanan had pushed his everything into his feet and the lightsabers in his hands for the fight, but now the adrenaline is dying down and the weight of days of torture is returning to pull at his body as well.

He knows there is no time to stop, no time at all to rest- from the size and sound of the explosion, the entire ship is going to blow, and soon- no time to retrieve Ezra's body. He would have preferred a proper ceremony, a proper fire, and a proper chance to say goodbye, but time was ripping all of that away from him.

(A flash of spinning red arcing towards Ezra; a scream, a lightsaber cluttering to the parapet; a fall; and Kanan's world comes crashing down around him once again.

One look at his small Padawan lying deathly still on a lower walkway seems to crack something inside of Kanan. For a second, it overcomes him- a wild, raging grief that had makes him clench his eyes shut, dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands and want to implode in on himself like a supernova.

But suddenly, a wave of calm seems to wrap itself around him- he feels strangely at peace, disconnected but in control at the same time, suddenly ready to stand up where before he had been ready to fall. He senses something familiar in the sensation- something he hasn't sensed in a very long time, and it comforts him greatly. Everything else fades away as he takes up his old lightsaber alongside Ezra's unique design, and-

(-not thinking of how he'd never get to see the boy's smile or hear his laughter again, how he'd never train with him or teach him the ways of the Force that Kanan himself had long forgotten, would never grip Ezra's shoulder or mess up his dark blue hair again-

-nor did he think of how Hera, Sabine, Zeb and even Chopper would react when they found out Ezra was gone, he didn't want to think of their heartbreak and tears, their devastation-

-but mostly Kanan didn't think about how it was all his fault, how Ezra shouldn't have even been on the ship to begin with, how he had failed-)

-with nothing left to fear from the Inquisitor, he charges into battle with every last bit of strength he has.

He feels it, like a change in the wind. The Force is with him.)

The explosion below is growing angry, and it will soon engulf everything; the ship, Ezra, and Kanan himself if he doesn't get moving. But neither his mind nor legs respond to this logic, and instead he stares for an extended moment into the flames that had swallowed his enemy whole.

Later, he will probably feel too many too familiar feelings crash into him over and over like the waves of an ocean. Later, there would be proper time for mourning and remembering, but in this moment- the Inquisitor dead and the world burning around him- Kanan Jarrus takes a second to sit back, shutter his eyes open and shut, and think-

I'm so sorry I failed you, Ezra. I'm sorry I couldn't save you.

"Kanan," a voice replies, and for a moment it's unrecognisable, until Kanan realises it is Ezra's.

A stab of pain tears into his chest- he'd been taught in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant that life merges with the Force after death, so that all living things connected by it in life can be reunited in death. He clings to the idea that Ezra must be there now, calling out to comfort him, to push him forward. He has vague memories of hearing Master Billaba's voice in his dreams in the weeks after he'd witnessed her death as well. Or perhaps it is all just his imagination, an auditory hallucination conjured by his exhausted brain, or his guilt. There is no way-

"Kanan!" Ezra repeats, except this time his voice is coming from Kanan's right side- but that doesn't seem right. He blinks, shakes his head, turns and- and-

It's almost indescribable, that shocking, relieving, euphoric feeling of knowing that something you thought lost forever was, in fact, standing right in front of you. Battered and bleeding, but in one piece, and just there. Kanan feels a great pressure suddenly lift from his soul.

Alive. He's- he's-!

Ezra's hair sways in the smoky wind, and he is framed by the light and moving shadows of the fires raging below, but Kanan doesn't doubt what he sees for a second. He looks right into Ezra's very blue, very alive eyes, and finds himself with something he'd never really had before- a second chance.

"I thought I'd lost you," is all he can say, soft, and with something tender present. He tries to say a lot of other things in that one sentence, things he's not sure he'll ever find the words for. Thank you, I'm sorry, I thought I'd never see you again and it almost destroyed me.

I love you.

"I know the feeling," the boy responds.

Ezra grins, and Kanan drinks in the way he tilts his head and sways his arms, every small detail and mannerism putting a fire back in Kanan's heart. He looks at everything he'd been so sure he'd lost forever, and lets it chase the darkness and grief away.

"Let's go home," Ezra adds, with a shrug of his shoulders to the exit.

After that, there's not much room for any thoughts beyond escape the burning Star Destroyer, what is this strange fleet that has come to save us, and how is Ahsohka Tano alive, but as he runs down the walkway and through the white Imperial corridors, Ezra Bridger at his side, he can't help but feel like the universe is as it should be.

They'll be alright.

So this show has taken my soul, and I was itching to get some feelings out. There are so many angsty moments, and I love it.

Thanks for reading.