Kanan Jarrus is used to darkness now. He has no choice- it is before him constantly, a heavy curtain of endless black drawn between him and the vibrant world of light and colour he'd always taken for granted. Malachor and Maul had taken a lot of things from him in a very short amount of time, but it hadn't been the first, nor would it likely be the last time his life was turned upside-down in a moment.

In the days after returning to Atollon, all the med-droids had been able to tell Kanan was what he had already figured out for himself- that his eyes were well beyond medical repair, and biotic replacements simply stretched too far outside of the Rebellion's current means, not that he would have wanted them anyway. He knows one man isn't worth that much cost or effort, especially in the face of the Empire's tyrannical rule and the galaxy's suffering. It was better to have those resources go where they were actually needed.

The droids settled for reconstructing the bridge of his nose and his eyelids, and letting the eyeballs themselves heal the best they could with the help of time and bacta. No one seemed to want to describe to Kanan what his face looked like now, and he can't bring himself to blame them. The smell of roasting flesh still creeps up on him at odd hours in the night, and he tries not to think too hard on how the tip of the red lightsaber had gouged its way across his face. Sometimes, however, he can't help it, and he gags on bile, always having to force it back down his throat. It would be embarrassing to ask someone to lead him to the refresher just so he could throw up. It was embarrassing enough asking for help when he needed to go to the refresher anyway.

There had been nothing to be done for his tear ducts. It's strange to think that he will never cry again. Then again, he had been taught as a child not to show those kind of emotions, even if they were a natural part of living.

After some months, they finally tell him that his eyes have settled down and are now a traumatised, clouded over blue, while a jagged but slowly fading red scar apparently spans the line between the corners of his eyes. He doesn't dare touch the area for the longest time for fear of aggregating it. The memory of pain stays with him even after he no longer requires pain medication.

It isn't too difficult for Kanan to find his peace with his new shroud of darkness- it is with him always, surrounding him no matter where the sun is in the sky or how bright the lights on the Ghost are.

It takes far longer for him to come to peace with his sudden uselessness. After all, how can a blind man be anything but a burden on friends and a growing rebellion? He's not a Jedi anymore; if he were to ignite his lightsaber now, he wouldn't see even a dim flicker of blue light, much less be able to protect the ones he loved with it. He hasn't called on the Force in months, seeing no need for it.

With every passing day, all he is doing is taking more precious time, energy and resources away from the rebellion, unable to give anything back. It's slowly killing him, but Kanan eventually finds peace with that too.

After all, his family would never willingly abandon him. They are too stubborn, too kind.

Although his sight is gone, Kanan's remaining senses cannot help but remind him that the galaxy hasn't changed an atom around him. He sits in meditation at the edge of Chopper Base, the warmth of the sun kissing his hands, while a gentle wind rustles at his hair and ears. A spider-creature scuttles by the sensor fence, noisily kicking sand up with its long legs, and Kanan has to shuffle to pull a rock out from under his knee that had been biting into his skin. He takes a refreshing gulp from his water canteen and behind him, the distant murmur of movement and life continues as the rest of the base goes about their duties, his crew among them.

The world around him still turns and tumbles in its orbital path through space, but Kanan Jarrus cannot see it happening.

He has only memory of colour and light to work with now.

In the first few weeks after Malachor, it feels like he doesn't get a single minute to himself. There is always a helpful (yet almost pitiful, patronising) voice in his ear, a guiding hand on his shoulder or back as he adjusts his entire being to a new, monotone reality.

A lot of the time it is Hera. He tries hard to imagine her in his mind; she is the light green of her skin, swathed in orange and brown, a nebula of light emanating from her smile, framed in the dazzling blue streak s of a hyperspace tunnel opening, the soft glow of that final sunset when he'd promised to see her again. In the black, he feels Hera's soft arms around him, warm and comforting, her patient voice directing him, her light kisses on his skin sustaining him on nights when he lets the darkness get too close. Just as before, Hera is a beacon calling him home, and he has never been more grateful to have her in his life. But a heaviness in his heart has to remind him that Hera cannot be his guide forever; she is too important to the Rebellion and Phoenix Squadron, and so she is gone in longer and longer intervals during Kanan's recovery.

For a while, Chopper takes it upon himself to be Kanan's personal, if eternally-complaining cane. He remembers Chopper in orange, yellow and white, covered in dirt and glinting in the Ghost's artificial lights, the blueish jolt of electricity leaping from his taser extension. It must look strange from the outside, a blind man being led around base (with its haphazard array of ships and equipment from various sources bleeding different coloured whites and greys into each other, while beyond, hues of yellows, oranges and browns stretch out into the desert- at least this is what he pictures, from memory) by a cranky astromech, who shouts at everyone in binary to 'get out of the way' while Kanan is coming through. He finds himself memorising the steps between ships, and feeling out the well-worn pathways under his shoes for himself rather quickly, if only so he can stop apologising to the confused pilots and rebels volunteers that Chopper keeps terrorising.

Back on the Sith temple, it had been an overwhelming comfort to hear Chopper's beeps and boops after only having Maul's sickening voice, some of Ahsohka's last words and the thrumming dark power of the temple powering up to keep him company. Just to put his hand on the Chopper's worn metal head and tell him to 'lead me to Ezra' had calmed Kanan down immeasurably. Once he's mapped enough of the base in his mind to get by, Kanan makes sure to thank the droid for his help. In true Chopper fashion, he tells Kanan not to mention it, and somehow makes it sound like a threat.

Out of them all, Zeb is the most notably uncomfortable around Kanan, at first. Zeb (yellow and green, the electric purple of his bo-rifle, a swift blur of colour in the middle of a fight) tries to keep the stutter from his voice, and the shaking from his hands as best as he can, but Kanan can hear his sadness and anger in the way he rustles and mutters for revenge under his breath. The Lasat had no doubt seen horrific wounds during the genocide of his people, and it pains Kanan to once again show him that they are all built of flesh and bone that is too easily scarred and torn apart. Zeb holds on to Kanan a bit tighter, and more frequently now than before, holding Kanan's shoulders as they walk side-by-side down corridors and hovering with hands on his back as he climbs down ladders on the Ghost. 'I got you, mate,' Zeb says, every now and then, and Kanan doesn't doubt it. After a while, they fall back into old habits and jokes. They are both soldiers, after all, and soldiers carry on.

Sabine, he quietly admits to himself, is the one he misses seeing most, because Sabine is the human embodiment of everything he can no longer process. Sabine he thinks of not only in bright, raging colours (orange, dark blue, turquoise, burgundy, browns and blacks, in splatters and stripes and checker patterns, the brightness of an explosion chemically designed to be a rainbow) but in the heat of her determination, the bright warmth of her courage and the glow of her kindness. He hears Sabine's sadness as well, in her quietness around him the first time they are alone together after Malachor, and the soft sobs and angry spray painting sounds he hears coming from her room late one night. She is a calming and reassuring voice, a gentle but firm touch, an arm linked through his, a tight hug. She offers, jokingly, to let Kanan ride on her back so he won't bump into anything , and he tries to remember her smile as he jokes his way out ('Not this time, Sabine, but I might take you up on that offer in the future.'). He misses her orange Starbird tags.

Sabine takes one look at the plain black half-mask Kanan finds, and asks if she can paint it. She makes it a green similar to his old sweater, and paints white jaig eyes on it using a thick white paint so that Kanan can trace his fingers over them whenever he wants. He isn't quite sure if he deserves the eyes like this, but finds he cannot refuse her wish. The familiar smell of paint calms him more than he would ever admit.

Ezra…

The last thing he remembers of Ezra is shrouded with regret and shadow. He sees Maul (red and black, like the red lightsaber arching towards his face; the blinding, red pain that fades to black; the deep red anger and dark fear that fills him at the words 'Ezra will be mine!') and beside him, smaller but determined, stands Ezra. Perhaps Kanan should have fought harder that day, perhaps he should have fought less, but he's wise enough to know not to dwell too much on what could have happened if he been beside Ezra as that elevator ascended upwards, and not Maul.

In his mind, Ezra is in blues (hair in certain lights, bright wide eyes, and clever multi-purpose lightsaber), oranges (his tattered, too large jumpsuit) and whites (the glow of Lothal's twin moons shining down on both of them). Ezra is an eclectic mix of the darkness and the light. Ezra is a small voice breaking in horrified realisation ('Kanan, your eyes.'), a hand gripping his being pulled away with all the angry might of the Force ('I know, I've got you!') and a wetness on his shirt, while he runs his fingers through Ezra's hair trying to ground himself amidst the pain and the then-new suffocating darkness ('It's over now. It's over.').

Ezra is also silence, and distance. They haven't talked a lot since Malachor. In truth, Kanan hadn't talked that much to any of them, as they were all busy with missions and useful tasks. It's Ezra's voice he finds he misses most- words dripping with sarcasm and laughter; a smile brighter than a supernova; a dirty child with wild hair, too small for his age, jumping on the speeder Kanan had been about to steal and driving off with a cheeky salute.

Of them all, Kanan misses Ezra most dearly, so much so that it creates a physical ache in his chest. They'd gone to Malachor for answers, and none of them had returned unscathed. Ahsohka (blues, whites, browns) hadn't returned at all.

With the help of the Bendu, Kanan eventually learns to see himself again, but sometimes wishes for more. The Force allows him to see things in new and different ways, and suddenly he is useful again- but there is still the absence of light and colour.

He misses Sabine's paintings every time he smells fresh paint in the air, and in quiet moments misses tracing his fingers along the markings on Hera's lekku. Ezra cuts his hair one day, and simply doesn't tell Kanan. One night, some of the pilots hold an impromptu circus performance in the mess hall, and while Kanan can sense the objects being juggled flying through the air, he cannot put a word into describing them. He is there when Chopper steals one of Sabine's paint cans, and it ends up exploding neon purple all over his chasse, and there when Zeb wakes up to find one of the shuttle crabs has crawled over him in the night, leaving a sticky residue that puts his fur on end and sends everyone else into fits of laughter. He pulls Sabine aside one day, and asks her to describe her new hair colour, and while she tries her best to relay it, he can't quite picture it in his mind, although he thinks that white and purple must look good on her. He can only listen to the sound of Hera's fingers as they dance their way around the Ghost's cockpit when they rush off to Reklam Station, both nervous of what they will find there.

He doesn't see Ezra grow six inches taller. He doesn't see the Sith Holocron until it is too late. He can't reach for Ezra when the kid collapses in the middle of a debriefing, despite the horror clawing at his chest begging to understand the situation. He can't see the tears in Sabine's eyes as she screams her family's betrayal at him, holding the Darksaber aloft. He can't see if Sabine has her mother's eyes, and despite feeling the cold touch of snow through his boots and listening as best he can to Ezra's description of the landscape on Krownest, he feels heartbroken that he cannot see it for himself.

Zeb tries a new way to style the fur around his ears, and Sabine laughs so hard at it she falls out of a chair. Chopper argues with AP-5 over the way Ezra has painted his latest Imperial disguise. Hera stops wearing her shoulder pads, and he is surprised to find them missing when he reaches for her shoulder one day. The world continues spinning around him.

Most of the time, Kanan can simply accept his blindness, but there are times when he wishes he could see how his family is growing and changing before him. He isn't sure how long he'll be able to keep the memory of their colour and light in his mind before that too succumbs to the darkness, but he knows that it will never fade completely.

After all, Kanan Jarrus may be used to the darkness, but he knows very well that the light is still there- even if he can't see it.

Kinda wanted to experiment with Kanan and descriptions that didn't rely entirely on sight. I really liked the idea of focusing on colour and light, since that's the two things Kanan can no longer experience (especially with Sabine).

Big thanks to everyone who's been leaving faves and comments on my last few fics. I'm not too good about replying, but rest assured I'm reading them all and squeeing to myself.