THE JEDI WHO NEVER WAS

gezellig (dutch, adj.) - cozy, nice, inviting, pleasant, comfortable; connoting time spent with loved ones or togetherness after a long separation

At first there had been nothing but the fire. Raging hot, angrily thrashing against the invisible barrier supported by nothing but his will. Held back long enough until he could hold it back no more, and he was consumed by blistering heat and reduced to smouldering ash, a dying ember that could not penetrate the darkness settling in around to cast any more light. For a while that was all he knew, an eternity of umbra, the abyss stretching out before him as he seemed to walk or float or fall without any sense of direction. Lost, cast adrift, like the scared little boy who’d ran from the loss of his mentor so long ago.

At first there had been nothing but the fire, and the darkness, but then light emerged. Tiny distant pinpricks in the blackness. Constellations, known and unknown to him. Then voices emerged to fill the gap between the far-off stars, whispers on the edge of his senses, a mass of unseen people speaking with offers of comfort and danger, kindness and violence, but somehow in the midst of the indecipherable void he found his feet and realised that there was a path he could follow. So he did, and along the path came fleeting moments where it seemed as if he almost returned to the waking world. There was heat, but not of fire; far more welcoming. And with it a sense peace ushered in by simplicity of the mind, almost...animalistic in its nature. When that sensation overcame him he saw another boy, no longer afraid or alone, falling behind the horizon (or was the boy still, and it was he who was fading back?), and there was nothing but a sense of joyous pride. Then those brief interludes themselves faded, and all he knew was the strange winding path suspended in the shadow, but he still carried the light within him and knew not to be afraid.

At first there had been nothing but the fire, and her. Always her, ever since she’d brought him out of the numbed stupor he thought was a suitable replacement for existence and with him through everything since. Right up to that final moment, where in his last breath his sight returned, and he could see her; brilliant green skin outshining the orange hue of the storm at his back, still beautiful even in her impending grief. He’d long ago promised to do everything in his power to stop anything that could cause her to look so devastated, and though the chance to behold her one last time was not taken lightly, that wasn’t how he wanted to remember her. But now the darkness had departed, and though his sight was still gone he knew, somehow, he’d come back to the light. And now he could amend leaving her in such sorrow, and make good on his oath that he never leave her side again.

Lothal had changed, that much was certain. Even before he spoke with anyone after waking up (if that was the right term, but it seemed easiest), the sense of the planet beneath his feet had shifted. No longer was there an undercurrent of despair, a clogging coldness as if the very life of the world was being choked from its core. Instead it thrummed with the beauty of balance, a natural spring through which the Force flowed freely. Pieces of conversation soon informed him why. The Star Destroyers had gone, the fields were restored, and the city was now a shining pinnacle of peace. They did it, he could only think, the images of his family seared on to his mind and heart coming back to him. It hadn’t been in vain. That, more than anything, brought comfort that dispelled the last lingering threads of fear that he might fall back into that place without full life. Now he simply needed to share it with them in person.

Finding a ship was easy enough. Finding the Rebel (or New Republic, as he’d been corrected) fleet less so. But after persuading enough officials and officers with his knowledge of protocol and the specific one he wanted to see, they finally directed him to her flagship. He’d felt her from the moment he woke up on Lothal, far across the stars, though an unbreakable bond that he knew would always lead him back to her. Now, in the hangar, he could have laughed as he followed the light of her spirit, bathing in the rays from the lighthouse of her soul, calling to his own. It didn’t surprise him to find her among the pilots and technicians, and he could almost picture her as greasy or scarred as the droids and engineers she conversed with. Any of the hundred quips and casual greetings Kanan had thought of on his way here immediately disappeared, and he could only whisper a single word, but he knew he’d come close enough for her to hear.