#comments are loved

"Well, I for one, am glad."

"Eh?"                                    

"You all have your own lives now. That's what I always wanted for all of you."

"Heh, I know, cap'n. Doesn't mean we don't miss you."

"I miss all of you too, though, I'm just glad all of you have found your place in this world."

"Hard to believe you're a father of three now."

"I can't believe you married a bear."

"HA!" Rat laughed at that comment. "Well, she's quite the woman, as is Missy Orana. I mean, Princess Orana. It's hard to stop calling her that."

Liz ran to the ship, excited the with the news she brought, it meant one more nail to place into their departure. "Captain Corsaire! They’re coming into shore!"

"What are you waiting for then? Go greet them!" Corsaire waved her off. "And for the sea's sake, make sure your Uncle Acrobat doesn't slip in this snow. Metal and ice don't mix!"

"Sure thing! Revy's really excited to see them Uncle Rat. Might want to reign her in."

Down at the shore, Revy was shooting colourful flares to signal to her band of Uncle's coming into land. How she loved every single one of them, and it had been far too long seeing some of them.

"I-I-I really don't like th-this." Pockets' teeth chattered horribly as he clung to the saddle for dear live. "W-Why did we have... have to t-take dragons?!"

"Cause cap'n told us ta hurry." Acrobat told his long time friend. "And if cap'n says to hurry it up, we's hurrying it up."

"We really need ta git on these lizards more often!!!" Mojo was having the time of his life with the wind in his face. "Where do I buys one?"

"You don't buy one, they's choosing you." Juju told his brother while hanging onto his bandanna. "You's has to ask the Lorleidians 'bout it."

"Do the loop de loop again!" Bomba was literally bouncing up and down on his saddle in excitement. "Again!"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Aw, you's no fun."

They saw different colour flares being shot from the shore line for the dragons to land safely. Revy was like a firefly in the distance, buzzing around excitedly.

"Hey, dere's Reveka!" Mojo pointed out the flares.

"Woohoo! Revy!!! Hey!!!" Juju waved to his niece.

"She likes me best, I'm the coolest uncle." Bomba declared with a flick of his wrist.

"Pfft, you wish, we's all know that I's the favorite" Acrobat argued. "Who convinced Rat ta get her da puppy?"

"I-I-I did." Pockets tried to hold back a snicker.

"Hey!"

Once they all landed, it quickly dawned on the how big she had grown. She stomped like a giant at them as soon as they got on their feet, and scooped as many of the men she could in a bear hug. "It's so good to see you all in one place again!"

"Ooof! Easy on dis old rigger, Reveka!" Acrobat grunted when she picked him up so easily. "He's not as young as he used ta be."

"Y-You've gotten so b-b-big!" Pockets was still taller than Revy and gave her a gentle pat on the head, ruffling her hair. "Grow so f-fast!"

"Heeey, dis ain't cool, why's the shrimp taller than me now?" Bomba crossed his arms in a fake pout. "Ah well, some ladies prefer der men fun size anyways."

"Bork!" Boof made his presence known and demanded pets from every man. "Woof!"

"Ah, good ta see you, Boof-Boof." Mojo scratched the dog behind his ears. "Revy taking good care of ya?"

"Bork!"

"Aye, she always does, doesn't she?" Juju laughed and then asked. "Revy, how's your wee brother?"

"He's doing really good Uncle Juju. I've been making sure that he's got a lot of meat on his bones. Ooh! Check out this out!" Revy took a step back and drew her sword. Concentrating her magic, she thrust her sword upwards, and a lightning bolt from deep up in the sky struck down, and her blade sparked in a cone of dancing electricity. "I'm an electric warrior!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

There were multiple exclamations as the men made sure to keep Acrobat out of the way.

"Dat's really cool, Rev, but could ya do it when I'm not... in proximity?" The old rigger asked his niece. "I's much like a lightning pole now with these new legs."

Revy noticed his legs sparking. Shit. Metal. Metal very, very bad. She quickly stabbed her sword into the ice next her to dispel the lightning. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. That would have been bad. But pretty cool overall right?"

"Aye, pretty damn cool."

"Bomba, don't curse around the lassie!"

"What?! She's an adult now, I'm pretty sure she's heard damn before, as well as shit---"

"Bomba!"

"Ass---"

"Bomba, shut up!"

"And fuck, but who knows?"

"Well, I consider myself a pretty hardcore mother fucker if I do say so myself. Bring all the bitches in~" Revy snickered, happy to fuel her Uncle Bomba's antics.

"Oh, good water spirit, ya rubbed off on her ta much, Rat's gonna have ye head." Mojo nudged Bomba in the shoulder.

"Rat's gotta catch me first, and I'm quite younger than him." Bomba snickered.

"Ye's still a brat, and ye know it." Juju nudged the other shoulder, causing Bomba to laugh.

"Wh-Where's your mother?" Pockets asked Revy. "W-We wanna make s-s-sure she knows we'll take... take care of you!"

"Aye, she knows, Borghild trusts us with her little cub." Acrobat wrapped one arm around Revy's shoulders. "Though, I believe we's all going to need a little of dat famous Uskarian mead before we---"

"Don't even think about it," Rat's voice interjected, chuckling as he saw all his former crew mates. "That stuff knocked your ass out for three days last time."

"Well, I think I used up two of my three swears for the year anyways. If you want change you should see how Liz and Lex have changed." Revy turned and waved to her dad. "Hey Dad! They all made it!"

"By the water spirit, you weren't joking when you said you got new legs!" Rat bent down to look at the metal working on Acrobat's hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. "Dat Lady Asakonigei made 'em for you?"

"Aye! I take 'em off at night, but beats the crutches any day. I can finally run again!"

"N-Not fast."

"Not fast, but still."

"Cap'n is glad you's all here, I's glad you's all here."

"Seer's our brother, Rat, we'd brave maelstroms and sirens for him."

Liz took her time walking with Rat, but when she saw her other Uncle's she felt a bit of hope. Seeing her dad again felt like it was fated and set in stone with them all gathering here. "Hello everyone. I'm happy to see you arrived safe and sound."

"Sheesh, time passes too quickly nowadays, you's all gone." Bomba sighed deeply with a sulk. "And you're taller than me too."

"Cap'n finishing the ship preparations?"

"He is. Once that's complete, we're hitting the ocean. In the meantime, we should gather the others and say our goodbyes."

Revy followed Liz back to town. Lex was having her 'friends' carry all their luggage to the ship for her. Least they could do after the going away gift she gave them all. "Ok boys, careful with the luggage. Some breakable glass in those bags you know."

"Lassie, dis is a rescue mission, not a... a slumber party." Bomba watched as piece after piece of luggage went on the ship. "I mean, I's understanding of a lady's need for... uh... personal products, but... isn't dat a bit much?"

"It's potions, maps, weapons, and gold for gambling. We might need to do all sorts of negotiating." She bent down to kiss Bomba on the cheek. "It's good to see you Uncle Bomba. All the rest of you too Uncles."

"You lassies need ta practice shooting?" Mojo asked the girls. "Brought my training guns 'case you's out of touch."

"We can set up targets." Juju offered. "Someone steal Cap'n's hat."

"I heard that!" Corsaire said from the ship, looking over the ledge at his old crew. He grinned from ear to ear. "Good to see you all again, mates. Missed you much, that's for sure."

"Never thought we'd be on ta Sea Witch ta hunt other pirates, cap'n." Acrobat had to chuckle at the irony. "So much for thief's honor."

"Well Uncle Acrobat, thieves don't have honour. They steal. And by stealing, they ruin lives. Dad was stolen from us afterall." Liz bitterly said. With a deep breath, she dropped her shoulders.

"Tis an old pirate saying, lassie." Acrobat patted one of her shoulders. "We's gonna get him back."

"D-Don't be sad," Pockets told Liz with a smile. "We's gonna find S-S-Seer, we p-promise."

"I'm not sad. I'm angry." Liz turned at the sound of people gathering. Borghild and little Trygve arrived with Scarlet, and Halvar came with his bag and his family behind him to see him off.

"We'll be awaiting your return, son." Torbjorn told Halvar as he handed the young prince his bow and sack of arrows. "Be careful."

"I'll be fine, Father." Halvar assured his sire. "I'll have the whole crew with me, and besides," He looked over his shoulder to Elizabeth. "I have to support Liz. I love her and want to be with her."

"We understand." Brigritta then wrapped an extra cloak of fur around Halvar's shoulders. "Keep warm and be alert. The seas are just as dangerous as our lands."

"I will, Mother."

Borghild had Trygve on her hip, carrying him to the docks.

"Scarlet? Are you sure about this?" Borghild asked the Iron Knuckle.

"I'm sure. I have to make sure Rat and Revy don't get themselves killed. I'll see they return in one piece." Scarlet had enjoyed how close she had gotten with Borghild over the years, and gave her a close hug.

Revy bent down to Boof and patted his head. "I need you to look after Trygve until I return Boof. You understand boy?"

"I know you will, Scarlet." Borghild returned the hug and then added. "You make sure you come home in one piece too. You're our family, you know. Revy might be full grown, but there's nothing wrong with her having two mama bears."

"Wwwwwwhhhinnne." Boof pawed at Revy, not liking the fact that his human was going away without him. The two had hardly been separated ever since she was little.

"I won't be long boy. I promise." Revy hugged her dog close. He was getting old, and she wouldn't risk his life on such a dangerous journey.

Bakura finished bowing to Vidar, having finished a sparring match to make sure he was in shape for the journey. Walking to the group, he gave a bow to Corsaire's crew. "I assume you are the many uncles my daughters tell me about. It's a pleasure to meet you all."

The crew was a little surprised by the bow. The men certainly were not used to such respect. So, the crew showed their acceptance the only way they knew, with a good, old-fashioned punch to the shoulder.

"Aye, we's his old crew and the self-proclaimed uncles." Mojo slung one arm around Bakura's shoulder. "Been with Cap'n for years now."

"We helped changed the wee ones diapers when they's were babes." Juju slung one arm around Bakura's other shoulder. "And rocked 'em to sleep when Seer needed a break."

"Sang jaunty after jaunty," Acrobat added. "After jaunty."

"L-L-Liked 'Tipsy Toe Tease' the b-b-best." Pockets thought back to those years ago.

"Tipppppsy toe, tipsy toe, tease! What a bar wrench you are for me!" Bomba belted out with a dramatic flare of his arm, then jumped up on a barrel. "You sneak into bed, leave me dead, face all rrrrrreeeeddd!!! Sneak out in the morn, I'm so forlorn, things go to norm! I'm pleasing, wheezing, dreaming, of my tipsy toe tease!"

Revy and Lex gave a giggle, remembering the song well. Liz bit her lip to not snicker at her poor father being slung around by the crew. Bakura simply gave a smile to the bizarre crew. "Well, thank you."

Scarlet hoped things wouldn't be too awkward with her coming along. "Hello gentlemen."

"I can sing 'Whale Farts' too."

"No, no, just... no, Bomba."

"What? That one always made Revy giggle."

"Whaaale fart make tsunamis and fish make great suuushi---"

Rat clamped his hand over Bomba's mouth so Scarlet could greet the crew.

"Ah, so... no breaking noses dis time, right?" Mojo asked in good humor.

"We's glad you's coming with us, we need da extra muscle." Juju told Scarlet.

"I got muscle!" Bomba had removed Rat's hand from his mouth and flexed in front of Scarlet. "See? Not bad for a shortie."

"Well I'm glad to help." Scarlet raised an eyebrow at Bomba, and leaned her head down to him. "Your energy sure hasn't changed little man."

"I'm fun-sized, all over baby." Bomba winked at Scarlet. "Wanna check just in case?"

Rat promptly smacked a hand to his face and sighed deeply while the rest of the crew laughed.

Unknowns to Bomba, he might have just struck gold with that. "Well, I guess we'll have to see you prove it on this journey, won't we."

Before the men could process if that was genuine interest being sent back to Bomba, Scarlet turned to the girls. "Get on board. We're heading out ladies."

"Yes mom!" Revy went over to Borghild and her little brother, giving them one more hug. "I will return. I love you both so much."

"I love me a giant woman." Bomba whistled as Scarlet walked on board.

"Bomba, she could crush ya like an egg." Mojo shook his head.

"What's wrong with ya?" Juju asked.

"There's nothing wrong with wanting her to walk on me."

"BOMBA."

"I wonder if they carry heels in her size---"

"BOMBA!!!"

"Okay, okay, I'll hush now, you's just jealous cause I got me an older woman."

"Will you shut up?! That's Reveka's mom!"

"Yeah, and? I can't think a mom is hot? You know what a MILF is, right?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, if you don't shush right a-now, I'm throwing you into the water!"

"Aye, aye, me's a hushing."

Scarlet gave a light smile as she walked aboard. Liz walked up with Halvar, and Lex joined them right after. Revy dried some tears forming from Boof pulling on her pants. "Mom, can you take him? If he gets pulling, I just might stay."

Boof insistently pulled on Revy's pant leg, trying to keep her from going on the ship without him. When Revy removed his mouth, he wrapped his forepaws around her ankle. The snow dog did not want his human to go without him. Borghild gently took Boof's collar, setting little Trygve down so he could say goodbye to his sister.

"Boof, be a good boy. Reveka will be back soon, you just have to wait." Borghild assured the dog. "Be careful, my sweetie. Remember, a mama bear only charges...?"

"Only charges after using our heads first." Revy gave them all one last hug. "I'll be back. I promise."

With that, Revy ran onto the ship before she had any more second thoughts. "I'm... I'm ready to go dad."

"We'll bring them back soon!" Corsaire called to the families waiting on the docks. "Anchors up, Pockets! Unfurl all sails, Acrobat! Bomba, check cannons!" He started barking orders as the Sea Witch pulled away from the port. "Mojo, Juju, check engines! Rat, keep us on course! Elizabeth, overhaul the ropes for Acrobat! Scarlet, furl the extra sails! Reveka, stock gunpowder! Alexandria!" He paused and then looked at his niece for a moment and then said, "Make sure Pockets has the nipper to bind the anchor."

"Does that include Scarlet, cause she's a bombshell too."

"BOMBA.

"Okay, okay, I'm a git'n."

Lex knew very little about going about a boat, but she made sure to help best she could. "Yes Uncle!"

Liz got right to work. "How fast do you think we'll go with these sails?"

"Fast enough, I hope." Corsaire took the wheel and watched as the glistening sails unfurled. "She's an old girl, but she's never let me down once. I know she'll get us there."

"Well, I hope magic sails turn out to be real!"

Bakura looked around, wondering what the journey ahead would bring them now they had finally departed. "Is there anything I can do Captain?"

"You're a fancy, high-jumping assassin, right?" Corsaire pointed up to the jolly roger, where Acrobat was working the ropes. "Think you're up to help him work the ropes?"

"I believe I can." Bakura took a few steps forward, and climbed his way up to Acrobat, making sure to help. Liz watched, hopeful that the ship would pick up speed. "Gods, give me this..."

As all the sails were unfurled, the magic started to work. The usual white sails turned into a golden color and shimmered. It was then, the speed increased, and kept increasing. This was no time to be slow, so Corsaire braced himself and held onto the wheel tightly.

Hobbie frowned, temporarily puzzled before he thought he understood and the expression turned to a wide grin.  “You mean you’ve been…”

“No.” Ezra cut him off quickly. He hadn’t been approved for duty again, and he didn’t want to hear somebody say it when it wasn’t true. “I was just thinking maybe I’d ask about other jobs I could do around the base.”

Hobbie looked like he wasn’t sure what to say to that.  He rubbed a hand over his face and behind his neck, then looked at Ezra searchingly. “What kind of other jobs?”

That, of course, was the question.  He didn’t answer right away, he didn’t really have an answer to give.

“I mean,” Hobbie continued at the silence, “you’re still trying to get back on missions as well, right? You’re not giving up on…”

“No,” Ezra interrupted him again before he could finish. That was exactly what he had been worried about; that people were going to think it was over. That he couldn’t be trusted on missions anymore, so he had to be given something else to do. Something where he would be safe. “No,” he repeated. “I’m not giving up on anything. As soon as I get a bit better at…” he hesitated, “at the stuff Kanan’s showing me, things’ll get back to normal.” Some semblance of it, anyway.

“Then why do you want to do something else? Wouldn’t you be better spending the time practicing the stuff instead?”

Ezra shook his head.  “Sure,” he said.  “If I want to go insane. You try spending six hours a day practicing walking around with your eyes shut, see how you like it.”

Hobbie folded his arms and at least had the decency to look embarrassed for a moment.  He didn’t apologize though, and Ezra was glad of that.  “Most standard shifts are eight hours,” he said, “with a break for lunch.”

“Eight hours then. Fine. Whatever. I’d still rather spend some of that time doing something useful than… you know.”

“Some people would say the ‘you know’ is useful. But hey, what do I know?”

Ezra let his head fall backward until it bumped gently against the wall of the storage crate that shielded them from the view of the rest of the base. Hobbie was right of course, but so was Ezra. He did need to practice the skills Kanan was trying to teach him, and he was practicing, but he couldn't spend every moment doing it.  Anyway, he couldn’t help but feel that if his day had a little more structure he might even get more done.

Or at the very least, have a good excuse on those days when he just didn’t have the energy to practice.

“What are you going to ask to do, though?” Hobbie asked. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but outside of Jedi-ing and talking to dokma, what are you good at?”

“Hey, I’ve got skills!” Ezra told him.

“Like?”

He frowned, thoughtful. Years of watching Hera had turned him into a decent team leader. He was confident in his decision making skills. He wasn’t a bad fighter either, even discounting ‘Jedi-ing’, and his piloting was… or at least had been, coming along. All very useful in the field, but not so much around the base.

He straightened his spine against its desire to slump, drawing himself up to his full, seated, hight, and tried to project an air of confidence. “I’m a pretty decent pickpocket,” he said. “I can pick locks too.”

Hobbie nodded.  “Great, they’re both gonna be really useful around the base. I was only saying the other day, it’s been too long since I had my pockets picked.”

Ezra scowled, but Hobbie wasn’t wrong. “Honestly, I don’t care what I do. I’m just going to ask to be put on the general duty roster or something. I spent about three hours looking for Hera so I could talk to her about it, but apparently she’s better at hiding than I am.”

“Did you check her ship?” Hobbie suggested.

Ezra nodded.  The Ghost had been the first place Ezra had looked, simply because he had begun looking shortly after waking up.  He hadn’t expected to find her there, not really.  “She doesn’t spend a lot of time there anymore,” he said. “Nobody does.  Back before we were based here I could almost guarantee I’d find her in the cockpit or in the lounge.”

There was a reason for that of course; before they were on the base she didn’t have many other places to go.

“What about over in repairs and mechanics? She was working with some of the pilots a few days ago, teaching them how to do some emergency repairs, she could be there again.”

“Tried that too,” Ezra said.  “I’m pretty sure I tried everywhere.”

It felt strange not to know where one of the Ghost crew was. For years it had been just the six of them, living in close quarters. It had been practically impossible to avoid another person unless you tried really hard. Now, instead of being a few rooms over, that person could be anywhere on the base. On the planet, even.

“She definitely didn’t go off-world, did she?” Hobbie asked.

For a moment, Ezra wondered, then dismissed the idea.  For one thing, both the Ghost and the Phantom were exactly where they were supposed to be, and Hera wouldn’t go anywhere without at least one of them. For another, although Ezra had been a little out of the loop lately, he wasn’t so far out that he wouldn’t have heard about it if something were happening that would take Hera off-base

“No, she’d have told me,” he said.

Even if she couldn’t take him with her, she would have let him know.  No, she was on the base somewhere, Ezra just had no idea where.

He sighed and slumped slightly.  “Maybe she really is hiding,” he said.

“Captain Syndulla doesn’t strike me at the type to hide away just to avoid being seen by other people.” Hobbie told him. “That’s more your thing.”

“I’m not hiding,” Ezra said defensively. “I just happen to be sitting in the dokma training spot.”

Which just happened to be invisible to the rest of the base, but that wasn’t why he was there. It had just been a convenient place to go.

Hobbie laughed. “Don’t be so defensive; I didn’t mean right now. I just meant of the two of you, you’re the one most likely to squeeze yourself into some uncomfortable hiding place to avoid having to talk to people. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Ezra really hoped Hobbie hadn’t found one of his hiding spots. It wasn’t like his friend would go around telling anybody else if he had, or like he would disturb him there, but they were private. And two of them did require squeezing in.

“If Hera had a hiding place, it wouldn't be like that,” he said.

“No?”

“Of course not. She wouldn’t even think of it as a hiding place. It’d just be a quiet place to work. Somewhere she wouldn’t be interrupted.”  He was already trying to think of places like that, somewhere he wouldn’t have thought to look for her.  None sprung to mind.  But then, that would be the point, wouldn’t it?

Hobbie frowned. “You’re trying to think of hiding places she’d use, aren’t you?”

“No.”  Ezra sighed.  “Nah, she’s probably just moving around the base, that’s why I can’t find her. She’s busy with different jobs, mission debriefs, planning new campaigns… running a squadron can’t be easy.” He paused, then looked away.  “Especially when your Jedi keep going blind.”

Hobbie didn’t reply, and Ezra deliberately didn’t meet his eyes, but he could sense a flicker of awkward amusement through the Force.

“I guess that’s true,” Hobbie said carefully.

They sank into silence for a moment. It stretched on a little too long, but it was comfortable enough to cope with.

“You could always radio her,” Hobbie said after a while. “You know, just to ask where she is, or see if you could schedule a meeting.”

Ezra shook his head.  There was no reason why he couldn’t do that, they all carried their comms devices with them most of the time so they could be contacted in an emergency, but this wasn’t an emergency. Really, the devices were for use in the field, and he was sure receiving a call like that would immediately set her on edge.

Kanan had done it, when they had decided the time was right to tell Hera about Ezra’s sight, but that was… it had been a special case, and it wasn't a memory he wanted to revisit.

“Nah,” he said. “It’s not like that, Hera’s family; you don’t schedule meetings with family.”

He stretched and got to his feet.  He supposed he could have contacted her by sending a message to her datapad instead, the same way Noisi had been trying with him. He doubted she would ignore it or avoid opening it like he had, but to do that, he would have to return to his quarters to retrieve his own device, and in the process see the message that he was trying to ignore.

He definitely didn’t mind putting that off for a little while longer.

“I’ll catch her sometime, it’s probably best not to track her down when she’s busy anyway.  I’m pretty hungry; I’m gonna go see if they have anything left in the commissary. Wanna come?”

Hobbie shook his head. “Lunch was hours ago. You’ll be lucky if there’s anything left by now.”

Ezra’s stomach growled at the idea of being denied food.  He hadn’t realized it had gotten that late.  Either he had been looking for Hera for longer than he had realized, or he had spent longer than he intended sitting behind the storage crate staring out over the desert.

“I’m gonna give it a try,” he said.  If Hobbie was right, there was probably something in the kitchen on the Ghost instead. Failing that, he had his own stash of ration bars in his quarters.  He waved a quick goodbye to Hobbie and headed back to base.  As he did, he felt something knock against his thigh. Instinctively, he reached a hand down and touched the smooth round surface of the folded cane Kanan had given him just a few days earlier.  It had been better concealed than that, but must have worked its way loose while he had been sitting.

He turned quickly, hoping it had gone unnoticed by Hobbie, then hurried away.

“See you at the races tonight?” Hobbie called after him.

He thought back, trying to track the progression. Had he been able to see in the dimly-lit cabin a month ago? A week? He couldn’t be sure. It was difficult to keep track. He couldn’t write it down; someone might see it. Even if he kept it vague there was a chance they would work it out. Anyway, sooner or later it was going to reach a point where he wouldn’t be able to read it, rendering the whole thing useless.

And after that, it was going to get even worse still...

There was a rustle of bedcovers as Zeb shifted around. “I can still see it through my eyelids,” he complained.

That didn’t sound so bad to Ezra. He scowled and didn’t reply. The week before, he had finally forced himself to read up on Sacul Syndrome. From what he could work out from the very small amount of information he could find, the younger you got it, the faster you went blind. Considering the average age was somewhere in your early fifties, Ezra had gotten it very young. It wouldn’t be too long before seeing light, through his eyelids or otherwise, was a distant memory.

Unless, of course, he was wrong about what was happening. There was still a chance he was wrong.

He had to be wrong, because he had come so far over the past year and a bit, and if he was right, it was all going to go away. You couldn’t be a Jedi if you couldn’t see; you couldn’t fight the Empire if you didn’t even know which direction to swing your lightsaber.

He had to be wrong, because otherwise he was going to have to return to Lothal. Maybe not even that; he was known there, and if he couldn’t defend himself or run away he would be a target. He might have to go somewhere new, somewhere where he could hide away.

Either way, it was all over. Unless he was wrong.

“Come on, lights out,” Zeb insisted again. “I’m tired of this argument every night. What are you, scared of the dark all of a sudden?” He laughed deeply at the idea.

Times like this, Ezra almost wanted to come out and tell them what was going on. It might be worth it to shut Zeb up.

He flicked off the light. The room fell into instant and complete darkness. He found himself looking at it -- not trying to look through it because he knew from experience that it was impossible -- but looking at it, trying to force himself to become used to it. If that was going to be his future, if there was nothing he could do to stop it, he had no choice.

“There, see. Not so scary after all,” Zeb said mockingly from the bunk below.

Ezra wanted to argue back, to angrily deny that he was afraid, but it would be a lie. Instead, he turned over again so that he could at the very least see the illumination strip. The light rippled out at the edges in a way that he hadn’t noticed before, giving it the appearance of being larger, yet duller than normal. It didn’t matter, it was a thing that he could see. He wasn’t blind yet. He lay very still, staring out into the room and willed his eyes to adjust to the low light. They would do it, eventually. It would just take a lot longer than it used to.

The truth was, he was afraid. Not for the reasons Zeb might be implying -- and he knew that he was only teasing and that there was no real malice behind the words -- but because it was unnerving to helplessly watch the slow but steady progression of the deterioration, and to be unable to do anything about it.

“Ezra, you okay?” Zeb asked. “I was only teasing, you know.”

Ezra frowned; he knew he was being conspicuous by his silence, he needed to throw an insult back, or Zeb might start to put things together. “I only want the light on so when your snoring wakes me up, it’s easier to check and make sure a Loth-wolf hasn’t broken in and started eating you.”

“Ha. Fair enough. It still stays off.”

“You know, because you’re so loud it’d be easy to think that’s what the noise was.”

Zeb sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. It’s hilarious. But at least I’m not afraid of the dark.”

But Zeb seemed to accept that reply. Ezra lay in the darkness and listened to his bunkmate’s breathing slow as he began to drift off to sleep. His own eyes remained open, though they still hadn’t even started to adjust to the gloom. He was beginning to realize that they weren’t going to. Not anymore.

For just a moment, she considered describing the thing she had been planning on painting instead.  It wasn’t like Ezra was going to know the difference.  She dismissed the idea instantly, it would have been unfair and dishonest.

“If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,” Ezra told her.

“It’s not that,” she assured him.  Only it was, in a way.  She sighed, a sharp intake of air expelled hard through pursed lips.  “It’s nothing special,” she said.

Behind her, she heard Ezra’s feet shuffle impatiently before he sat himself down at the desk she had constructed in the space that had once been a lower bunk.  “They’re all special, Sabine,” he told her.  “I remember that much.”

She frowned.  That wasn’t true.  Sometimes, a painting was just splashes of color, meaningless, a spur of the moment thing thrown onto a canvas or the wall.  Other times she put her heart and soul into a piece.  This was both, actually.  It was also impossible to describe.

She was running out of space on her walls.  There wasn’t a lot of room for anything new there anymore.  From time to time, she would paint over something she didn’t like anymore or thought she could improve upon; cover the wall in the same gray as it had been originally to create a blank canvas or, when she could get hold of some, clean off the paint with solvent.  She hadn’t done that today though; she hadn’t had the time to select a piece to be removed, or to paint over it with the many layers of paint it took to block out the bright colors of her previous works.

That was probably for the best; it had turned out she wasn’t in the mood for bright.  If she had started, she might have found herself unable to stop until the images were all gone and there was nothing on her walls but a dull gray.

At least she wouldn't have had any trouble describing that to Ezra.  He was intimately associated with how that would look.

“It’s just colors,” she told him.

“Which ones?” he asked.

She stared at the wall.  “Blue, mostly; purple, a bit of red, but mostly blue.  Different shades.  And it’s kinda…”

It was mostly dark, almost black toward the middle with a deep, rich shade of blue on the outer edges.  It looked like the sky at night, not long after the sun set; the blue remaining, but growing darker as the last hints of light sank further into the horizon and night descended.

As she had painted, allowing the work to expand to fill the space, it had begun to crowd out other paintings on the wall, even obliterating one completely; not one she cared much about, but by that stage she probably wouldn’t have noticed if it had been.  It was as though the paint had taken over, the art compelling her to keep going, layering ever darker shades on top of the lighter until the middle was almost black with the lighter shades around the edges, like they were clinging on, trying not to fall.

Like the sun setting not into the horizon, but into a black hole.

“It’s kinda…?” Ezra prompted

She folded her arms, the paint can still clutched in her hand.  “Swirly,” she said.

Sabine had never had a talent for words.  It had never bothered her; it wasn’t like she was bad with words after all, she could use them just the right amount, and in more languages than most people.  She had just never seen any kind of a need for poetry before.  There was nothing wrong with poetry; her people had a long and proud tradition of it.  She just chose to express her art visually.

“Swirly…”  Ezra screwed up his face theatrically, like he was putting genuine effort into bringing an image to mind, then shook his head.  Sabine looked back at the painting, trying to think of a better way to describe it.  One that would make sense.  “Wow, yeah,” Ezra continued.  She wasn’t looking at him, but she could hear the ridiculous grin in his voice.  “You’ve got such a talent for description, Sabine.  Blue and swirly.  Beautiful.”

Sabine made a frustrated sound.  She stared deeply at the painting, her eye drawn to the centre, the hole into which the color was falling.  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine never having seen it, tried to pick out the important parts, the things that meant something, and that would mean something to Ezra.  She couldn't do it; it was too abstract.  Any attempt to describe it would fail.  It wasn’t a person that Ezra knew and could imagine like some of her paintings, or a landscape that he might have some kind of similar visual reference for.  It wasn’t a thing.

“It’s blue around the edge, then gets darker in the middle,” she tried.  “It is swirly.  The colors swirl into the middle.”

“Like a spiral?”

“No, like… like water down a drain.”

Ezra frowned, his brow wrinkling in consternation as he tried to picture it.  “So, is it water?”

“No, it’s…”

It wasn’t a thing.  It was a feeling.

It was Ezra, and it was Kanan.  It was light being stolen from the world, the day being replaced by the night.  It was the helplessness she felt every time she looked at Ezra and he didn't — couldn’t — look back.  It was the feeling of laughter and joy dying the way they had that day over a year ago.  It was the idea that she might never seen Kanan smile again.

It was the blue that was still so clear and vibrant in Ezra’s eyes.

“It isn’t anything really.”

Ezra laughed, not exactly mockingly, but it was close enough.  “So, it’s blue and swirly, and it isn’t anything.  Wow, yeah.  I can almost see it.”

She spun around to glare at him and found a wide grin spread across what she could see of his face with his far too long hair covering most of it.  Honestly, he was her family, and she loved him, but there were times that she just wanted to smack him in the face.

Of course, there were times when she had done that.  She didn’t make allowances for the fact that he couldn't see her coming, not anymore.  He had proven himself more than capable of ducking out of the way.  

She loosened her grip on the can of spray paint in her hand, and tossed it in his direction.  There was no malice behind the action, she simply wanted to show him that she didn’t appreciate being laughed at.

Ezra caught it easily with a sweep of his hand through the air; he didn’t even turn his head like he was trying to see it, the way he used to do.  The result looked impressive.  It wasn’t though, not really.  Or, it was, but for Ezra it was just normal now.

What was really impressive were those times when Ezra did seem to look; when he genuinely appeared as though he could see.  It had taken a lot of practice, but he had almost perfected the fine art of deception.  He used it occasionally undercover, but only when he had no choice, because he didn’t trust himself not to slip up and give himself away.  More often, he just used it to mess with people.

Most recently, on a trip back to Krownest, he had managed to fool some distant cousin of hers for a full five days before he finally decided to tell him the truth.

“Thanks,” Ezra said, his grin widening as his finger touched the top of the spray can.  “I guess that means it’s my turn to paint something?”  He brought the nozzle toward the wall.

The blue paint can moved dangerously close to the wall, and to paintings that she didn’t want to lose.  Sabine resisted the urge to go over there and snatch it away from him.  “Don’t you dare,” she told him.  She tried to keep the panic out of her voice.  He wouldn’t do it; she knew that.  She trusted him.  But on the other hand, he was still Ezra.  His sense of humor was sometimes tinged with the kind of malice that showed exactly how much time he spent around Chopper.

He shook his head and put the can down on the table in front of him.  “Joking,” he assured her.  “Don’t worry, I know you’ve finished that wall.  But find me a nice blank space and I bet I could fill it with something ‘blue and swirly’.”

Sabine grimaced at the reminder of her terrible descriptive skills.  “Shut up,” she told him.  “It’s a picture of nothing, of course I can’t describe it.  It’s not even very good.”

It wasn’t bad, actually, and it definitely wasn’t really of nothing.  It didn’t matter anyway; she didn’t think it would be there for long.  It was making her think of things she would rather not.

“I’m sure it’s great, Sabine.  I’ve never seen you paint anything bad.”

“Yeah, well.  You haven’t seen this…” She stopped abruptly, her breath catching in her chest and heat rising to her face.  She hadn’t meant to say that.  Of course he hadn’t seen it; that was the whole point.  He hadn’t seen anything she had painted for over a year.

She forced up her gaze up, to look at him, dreading what she was going to see.  Slowly, he picked up the paint can again and rolled it between his palms, then allowed the tips of his fingers to trace the top, a solemn expression on his face.  “True,” he agreed.  “I still know it’s great though.  In fact, if I could get to see one more thing, I’d choose this painting.”

She winced.  She hated talk like that, and he knew it.

“Sorry,” Ezra told her.  “I would though.  Even if it was just to prove I’m right.”

“No you wouldn’t,” she told him.  For a start, the ability to see one more thing would be a gift that he wouldn’t waste on a design sprayed onto a wall.  If he ever got that chance — and he wouldn’t, so there was no point thinking about it really — she still had the holo of his parents carefully stored in a safe place.

Ezra grinned, and she wasn’t sure whether it was her imagination, or whether the expression didn’t quite look real this time.  “I don’t know, I might.  I’m kinda curious why you’re being so secretive about it.”

She looked at the painting again.  It was going.  First thing in the morning she was either going to find a way to change it into something else, or she was going to paint over it.  She didn’t have any paint right now that matched the walls, but she didn’t care, she would cover it in orange if she had to.  It was too personal.  Anyone that saw it probably wouldn’t understand what it represented, but it still gave too much away.  She didn’t like having something like that on her wall.

“Actually,” Ezra continued, a little wistfully now, “maybe I’d see your new hair color.  This is the second change I’ve missed.”

She folded her arms.  It was the third change, technically.  He hadn’t seen the black she had dyed it for her undercover mission either, but that didn’t really count.  “It’s purple,” she told him.

“And swirly?”

“Shut up.  No.  It’s a little lighter at the tips, but basically it’s just purple.”

It hadn’t been this dark in years.  In certain lights it almost looked like her natural black.  She half-wondered whether she had made an unconscious decision to remove some of the colors from her life; if Kanan couldn’t have them, and Ezra, they felt meaningless sometimes.

“I mean, it looks good,” she added, “but if you could see one thing?  There’s a lot better things you could choose.”

She didn’t really want to be talking about this.  It was irrelevant, theoretical, and she didn’t know how Ezra could stand to even imagine being faced with a choice like that.  It shouldn't bother her.  If it didn’t bother him to talk about it, she should be able to listen.  Maybe it even helped him, so it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to stop.

“Fine,” he said.  “I’d choose the painting you did of Zeb and Kallus in the cargo bay, the one that Zeb keeps threatening to paint over.  I’d want to see it before it’s gone.”

She couldn’t help but smile at that.  “You know, that one I actually believe you might choose,” she said.  “It’d still be a huge waste though.”

He shrugged.  “Hey, at least I’d get a laugh out of it.  Your description of that one was actually pretty good.”

“That one was an actual thing,” she told him.  “This is more like…”

“A feeling?”

She looked at him, surprised.  How had he known that?

“You can describe those too, you know,” he told her.  “Like… you remember on Atollon?  I only saw it once before we left for Malachor, but the sunset, it was beautiful.  The sky was almost purple higher up, but the horizon was on fire.  It was my first night there, and I knew I was leaving soon, and I didn’t know when or even if I was going to come back, but it already felt like home, you know? I felt safe, and I got that warm feeling you get when you know you’re right where you’re supposed to be.  It was the same feeling I got when I met you guys, when I first came aboard the Ghost.  Until then, I hadn’t felt it since I was too young to recognize it.”

“It wasn’t that you were too young,” Sabine told him.  “It’s because you’d never been without it, it had just always been there so you never noticed it until you lost it and got it back.”

Ezra shrugged, “Maybe you’re right.  But it was that, and it was this feeling that we were starting a new chapter, like things were going to get better from now on, things were finally going the way they were supposed to.  I was nervous, obviously, but I felt at peace, like whatever happened on Malachor, at least I’d come this far.  It was like the sun was setting on the past and getting ready to rise on something new.”

She folded her arms tightly.  The sunset hadn’t meant that to her.  It hadn’t meant anything.  He was right; it had been beautiful, but she had seen it so many times that it had become commonplace.  Now, she was seeing it through new eyes.

Why could Ezra do that, when she couldn’t?

“I hate you,” she told him with a smile.

He grinned back at her.  “I know.”

She looked at him critically.  He had changed so much in the few years she had known him.  Not just the obvious; the extra inches on his height that had made him taller than her, but also the confidence that he had picked up along the way.  He had lost it for a time, after Malachor, but it had come back to him in recent months, and it suited him.

Picking up on her change of mood, he turned his head in her direction, eyes not quite meeting hers.  “What?” he asked.

She shook her head.  She wasn’t going to get into that, not now.  “Your hair’s getting long,” she said instead.  “When did you last cut it?”

He put down the paint can and frowned thoughtfully.  “Before,” he said.

She didn’t need to ask before what.  Their lives were divided now, into what happened before and after that fateful mission.  “Yeah,” she told him.  “That’s what I figured.  It’s almost touching your shoulders now.”

In fact, it was a little longer than that, at the back.  In that awkward phase of growing where it was neither one thing nor the other.  It looked a mess.

His hand moved to his hair, brushing it back.  It wasn’t quite long enough to stay in place, and when he moved his head it came back to where it had been a moment earlier.  “Yeah, I know,” he told her.  “I don’t need to see it to know that.”

Of course he didn’t, she hadn’t meant to imply that he didn’t know.  She frowned at him.  “So what’s the plan?” she asked.  “You trying to compete with Kanan or something?  Planning on growing a beard next?”

Ezra grinned teasingly, and touched his fingertips to his face.  “Hey, great idea.  I think it’d look pretty good.”

“Yeah, well.  You think wrong.”

He laughed, and touched his hair a little self-consciously.  “I guess you’re right, it is getting a little long.  I should probably either cut it or tie it back.  I’m just not sure I trust myself to cut it without looking.”

Right.  Which was why it had gotten that long in the first place.  And probably why Kanan had grown his beard too.  Ezra’s hair was probably too short still to tie back without the front parts falling out around his face, but it definitely needed something.

She could have some fun with it.

He stared at the closed door left in her wake, his mind racing.  That had to be a good thing, surely.  Why else would she want him on the Phantom if he wasn’t cleared for duty? Was this her way of telling him, by taking him with her on a mission?  He wondered where they were going, what they were going to do.

It didn’t matter.  It was still something; a beginning.  A return to a kind of normality.

Hopefully.

He scrambled to get ready, hurriedly pulling on his boots and running his fingers through his close-cropped hair, before checking his comms unit was attached to his wrist and rushing out of the door.

His footsteps echoed loudly on the floor as he raced in the direction of the new Phantom.  He reached the ship and let himself onboard before even Hera arrived.  He sunk into the copilot’s seat, leaned against the backrest, and waited, not quite able to keep the smile from his face.

For the most part, Hera liked the increased responsibility that came with her role as Phoenix Leader.  However, there were times when she felt that she would gladly trade in the autonomy and respect the rank afforded, just to get out of a difficult conversation.  This was one of those times.

She walked slowly, feeling her own reluctance holding her back, almost as though it were a physical force surrounding her.  She ignored it, kept her gaze forward and her chin raised as she approached and entered the ship.

She started in surprise to find Ezra already seated in the copilot’s seat, carefully examining the controls, hunched over a little, presumably to better allow him to read the labels on some of the switches.

She felt her heart sink as he turned to look at her with an excited grin.  “You fixed it with Sato?” he asked.  “Where are we going?”

Hera pressed her lips together, and sat down in the other seat.

“Anybody else coming?” Ezra asked her.

She shook her head.  “Not for this,” she told him.

With practiced skill, she piloted the ship out of the base’s airspace and into a low orbit, all the while feeling Ezra’s eyes burning into the side of her face as his excitement and curiosity morphed into confusion at her lack of an explanation.

“Will you at least tell me what you said to Sato to change his mind?” he asked her, finally.

Hera sighed, programmed the autopilot to continue orbiting the planet for now, and turned to look at him for the first time.  “Nothing,” she said.

Ezra frowned, obviously and understandably confused.  “What do you mean?  He just decided on his own?”

She swallowed, and licked her lips.  “I spoke to Sato yesterday,” she told him.  “We agreed that you’re a member of my team, and so it should be my call whether or not you’re fit for duty.  He left it as my decision.”

“That’s great!” Ezra began, grinning widely.

“No,” she shook her head, “wait.  Let me finish.”  She took a deep breath, and made a conscious decision not to give into the temptation to look out of the view screen, or busy herself programming insignificant course changes as she spoke.  “I will clear you for duty,” she told him, “just as soon as I’m confident that you’re ready.  There are some conditions I need you to…”

“What?  But…” Ezra interrupted.  Before her eyes, his elation turned to confusion, then to hurt, and finally to anger.  “What do you mean ‘ready’? How can I possibly not be ready to do something I’ve been doing for years?”

Hera sighed, and finally, briefly, gave into the temptation to look away.  The view of the planet below filled the view screen.  “I know,” she said.  “Just hear me out, okay?”

Ezra shook his head from side to side in clear disbelief.  He got to his feet and quickly walked the length of the small vessel, turned and walked back.  “Why’d you bring me up here?” he asked.  “If you’re just going to tell me no, why didn’t you do it back on the Ghost?”

“I’m not just telling you no,” Hera told him.

He scoffed, head still shaking, still pacing.  “Take us back down,” he demanded.

Hera spun in her seat to regard him, deliberately keeping her expression neutral.  “Why?” she asked.  “So you can leave?”

“Yes!” he said.  “Exactly!  Obviously you don’t need me here, because you don’t think I’m ‘ready’.  Never mind that I was on the mission where we got this ship, I was ready then.  And the one…”

“Where we lost the last one?”  Hera regretted her words instantly.  That was in the past.  Over and done, forgiven, if not forgotten.  By mutual, unspoken understanding, nobody had brought it up since the night of their return.  She shook her head.  “Sorry.”

Ezra folded his arms across his chest defensively, and looked down at his feet.  “Why are we up here?” he asked.

“Sit down,” Hera told him.  She reached across and patted the back of the copilot’s seat invitingly.

Ezra shook his head and tightened the grip of his arms across his body.  “Why’d you trap me up in here?”

Hera sighed.  “Okay, fine.  We’re up here so that we can have a conversation without you leaving in the middle when things get too hard.”

He stared at her for a moment, before his eyes began to dart around the ship again.  “I don’t do that,” he muttered.

“You and Kanan came to tell me about your condition,” she said.  “Halfway through you decided to leave.  Same thing when you told Sabine and Zeb.  Before that, when we were discussing telling Sabine and Zeb…” and Ezra hadn’t been able to read the text on her datapad...

“It wasn’t like that,” Ezra told her.  “I always had a good reason for leaving…”

“I know.  You left because you wanted out of the conversation.”

Ezra shook his head.  “No, I…”

“Yes,” she countered.  “And that’s fine.  I don’t blame you for that.  But the truth of the matter is, you have difficulty talking about this and your solution to that is to take yourself away from it.  I understand that, I’ve done it myself more than a few times.  But we do need to have this discussion, and I need you to be present for it.  Frankly, this was the only way I could think of to ensure that.”

“By tricking me,” Ezra muttered.

Hera patted the seat again.  “I’m sorry if you think that.  I didn't mean for you to misunderstand.  Sit down, talk to me.  Please?”

Ezra hesitated, took a step toward the chair, then stopped again.  “And then you’ll take me back?”

“Yes, Ezra.  I have no intention of keeping you here forever.”

Ezra approached the chair as cautiously as if it were a wounded animal.  Finally he sat down, turned it forwards, and stared out of the view screen.  His arms were still folded, and he was very deliberately not looking at her.

“Good,” she said.  “Thank you.”

Ezra rotated the chair incrementally, turning a fraction of a degree further away from her.  Hera took a deep breath, filling her lungs slowly, and then released it through pursed lips.  Now that it came time to finally have this conversation, she found herself at a loss for words; all the carefully planned points and counter-arguments abandoned her in an instant and she, too, almost wished that she could escape the situation.

She parted her lips just slightly, preparing to speak, when Ezra broke the silence for her.  He spoke quietly.  His voice trembled; not with anger or rage, she realized, but with with the effort that he was clearly putting in to prevent himself from crying.  He rotated his chair further still, until she found herself looking at the back of his head.

“You always said we were family.  Family supports each other.  You’re supposed to be on my side in this.”

Hera bit her bottom lip and fought the urge to look away herself.  “I am on your side, Ezra.   We all are.  It’s just, there are no sides here, not really.  There’s only what’s happening and what we need to do to deal with it.”

Ezra made a sound, somewhere between a scoff and sob.  He raised a hand and rubbed at the cheek below one eye, as though he was scratching an itch.  He still wasn’t looking at her.  “We don’t need to deal with anything, I’m the one who…” he stopped abruptly and rubbed his eyes again.  “I have to deal with it,” he said.  “I know there’s nothing you can really do to help, but you’re not supposed to make it worse!”

Instinctively, Hera reached for him, hand passing through the air between them until it came to rest gently on his shoulder.  Ezra didn’t respond, except to tense his posture slightly.  She allowed her fingers to squeeze gently.  “You haven’t even heard what I have to say,” she told him.  “Hear me out first, okay?”

Ezra sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly.  He swiped at his eyes for a third and final time, before nodding, still looking in the opposite direction.  “Fine.  You said something about conditions?” he whispered.   “What are they?”

Hera sighed.  This would be so much easier if he would just turn around and let her see him.  She allowed her hand to fall away from his shoulder and placed it in her lap.

“First, let me ask you a question, and I want you to answer truthfully,” she said.

Even staring at the back of his head, she could see his curiosity in the way he stilled.  She waited for a few seconds longer, and he turned around to glance at her, a frown on his face.

“How are you today?” she asked.

His frown deepened.  “Are you serious?”

“Very,” she assured him.

Looking mistrustful, as though dubious of her motives, he turned a little further in her direction, putting her squarely in front of him.  The whites of his eyes were tinged a little pink, but there was otherwise no sign of the tears she was certain he had wiped away just moments earlier.  “Fine,” he said.  The anger in his voice belied his response, but it was exactly what she had expected.

“How are your eyes?” she tried.

He looked away again, but didn’t swivel his chair this time.  Instead he angled his gaze down into his lap.  “They’re okay.  I can see fine right now.”

Hera nodded.  For the most part, she supposed that was probably true.  The light level in the cockpit was relatively high, and from what she understood of the way Sacul Syndrome worked, right now his vision shouldn’t be too bad.  But that was now, she had phrased the question wrong if she had been looking for a broader answer.  “And at other times?” she ventured.

“I don’t get… why are you asking me this?  What difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference,” she assured him.  “Just humor me, okay?”

Ezra took very slow, very deep breath and released it as a heavy sigh.  The fingers of one hand worried a worn patch on the seam of his pants leg, and he kept his gaze focussed there, as though it were vitally important that he concentrate on the action.  “Sometimes they’re not great,” he admitted quietly.

Hera nodded.  “Thank you,” she said.  She paused for a moment, giving him an opportunity to relax.  Those few words had clearly been difficult for him, and she wasn’t done yet.  “What about when it gets dark?” she asked.  “You’ve been having trouble reading normal-sized print, how bad is that?  What else are you having difficulty with at normal light levels?  What about your peripheral vision, is it a problem yet?  How much of one?”

Ezra’s hand stilled, fingers frozen in the action of picking the hole in his seam.  “I… um… That’s a lot of questions.” He resumed the task of unpicking the stitching at the bottom of the small hole, fingers working frantically now, the action appearing to take all his concentration.

That was okay.  She hadn’t really expected an answer to those questions.  Not yet, at least.  “I know.  I’m sorry,” she told him.  “But these are questions that I need you to be able to answer.  More than that, I need you to be able to volunteer the information.  I understand you not wanting to talk about it, but if I’m relying on you to be able to perform a task, I have to know that it’s something you can do, and I have to know that if you can’t, you’re going to be honest about that.  Do you understand that?”

Ezra nodded.  He enclosed the fidgeting fingers of his right hand with those of his left to still them, and looked up at her.

“That’s the first thing,” she said.  “Honesty.  I’m not saying you’re not honest already, just that from now on you can’t withhold anything.  You notice any changes, you need to tell me, or you need to tell Kanan.  I need to know what you can do right now, and what you can’t.  And if anything changes, either you suddenly find that you can’t do something anymore, or you’re having trouble with it, or if you master some new way to compensate and suddenly you can do something that you couldn’t before, tell me.”

Ezra frowned, but nodded.

“Even if you don’t think it’s relevant to missions,” she added.  “Even if you know it’s not.  Because it’s not just about that, Ezra.  I want to know what’s happening; the good things and the bad.  I want to be involved.  I care about you, and I don’t want to lose you to this.  Do you understand?”

Ezra blinked.  His eyes reflected the lights from the control panel in their brilliant blue, wide with surprise and damp with emotion.  He nodded again.  “I can do that,” he told her.

In theory, yes he could.  And she had no doubt that he believed it at that moment, but in practice, that remained to be seen.  She smiled anyway.  “Thank you,” she said, and took a deep breath.  “But that’s only the first thing.”

“Yeah,” Ezra said.  He started, and then instantly stopped picking at his seam again.  “I know, you said.  There’s nothing wrong with my ears.”  He smiled awkwardly.  “My eyes either, really, most of the time.  Yet.”

Hera pressed her lips together.  ‘Most of the time’ wasn’t good enough.  “Okay.  Compensation techniques for those other times though, because they’re going to happen more and more as time goes on.  Imagine something for a moment,” she told him.  “Imagine you’re on a mission, doesn’t matter where, or what, but imagine the power gets cut somehow.  Or you’re on a planet for longer than you expected, the sun goes down.  What do you do?”

Ezra frowned.  “It would depend.”

“Okay, so there are multiple options?  Give me one of them.”

She watched him search his mind for an appropriate answer.  “I probably wouldn’t be on my own,” he said.

“So you rely on your teammates to keep you safe,” she said.

“No!  Well, maybe.  But Kanan’s been trying to teach me some of what he does, so there’ll be that, I guess.  Also,” he tapped at something attached to his belt, and she saw a small flashlight there, next to his lightsaber.  It didn’t look as though it would cast much light, but it might make a difference.  It was a good idea, an example of planning.

Hera nodded.  “But you’re hiding, you need not to be seen.  A flashlight would give your position away.”

Anger flashed quickly across Ezra’s expression, but disappeared quickly, replaced by something more like frustration.  “That’s not fair,” he said.  “You keep changing the scenario.”

“A real life mission doesn’t always go according to the plan,” Hera told him.  “Sometimes, things go wrong, or you have to change plans at the last minute, or improvise.  You know that; you’ve had to do it yourself more than once.”

“I’m learning how to get around without seeing,” he said.  “Like I said, Kanan’s been teaching me.”

Hera nodded.  “Okay, good.  Can you show me?”

“Show you..?”

“Something you’ve learned.”

Ezra hesitated.  “How?”

Hera’s eyes darted to one of the switches on the control panel, and before Ezra could even register what she was doing, she reached over and flicked it down.  The main light in the cockpit went out and the glow of the control panel reduced significantly.  The image from the viewscreen still illuminated the area slightly; more than well enough for her to see the surprise and then fear that registered in his expression.  His hands gripped the armrests of his chair tightly, and she watched his eyes dart around, unable to focus on anything in a way that reminded her painfully of Kanan.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.  It wasn’t even that dark, but it was painfully obvious that if he could see anything at all, it was nothing of any use.

Ezra nodded emphatically.  “Sure, of course.”

Hera felt a pang of sympathy, and she didn’t want to have to do this.  “Can you show me something?” she asked again.

For a moment, she thought he was going to get up.  She held her breath, willing him to do something, anything at all, even if it was only to make an attempt.  He stopped, halfway through getting to his feet, and sank back into his chair, every muscle tense.  “I don't want to do this right now,” he said.

“But if you were on a mission…”

Ezra lifted one foot onto the seat of his chair and hooked his arms around his knee, hugging it tightly.  “Do you think I haven’t thought about this stuff?” he asked.

He looked so small, all she wanted to do was reach for him, hold him, promise him that it was going to be okay.  But she couldn't do that, not yet.  “I think you have,” she told him.  “But I think you just instantly dismissed it and pretended it was never going to happen.  All I’m saying is, what if it does?”

“So that’s it?” he asked, speaking into the space somewhere just to her left.  “No more missions ever, in case it goes dark?  Kanan never…”

“This isn’t about Kanan, this is about you.  And you know I’m not saying no more missions.  I’m telling you that you need to be prepared for these things.  You need a plan in place, and I need to know what it is and how it’s going to work.  So does anybody who may be with you.”

He sighed angrily.  “Fine,” he said, “So I give in.  What is the answer?  What am I supposed to do in this scenario?”

Hera frowned.  “I don’t know.  It’s not a quiz with a right and a wrong answer.  This is part of what I mean about being open.  What you can do, and what you can’t.  You need to know that it’s okay to ask for help.  And then we can work out the answers together.”

Ezra sighed, and nodded, still not able to find her in the darkness.  “Okay,” he said.  “So, have a plan for everything, that’s the second thing.”

“Good advice for anybody,” Hera told him.  “But in your case, you need to know what you’re going to do in every possible scenario, or you have to sit the whole thing out.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  “So, now you’ve made your point, can you turn the lights back on?  Please?”

She slipped her hand across and flipped the switch back up.  The lights came back on in an instant, and she blinked as her eyes adjusted.  She watched Ezra release his knee from its hug, and get to his feet.  He folded his arms and began to walk slowly into the back of the ship, before turning around and walking back again.  “Thanks,” he said.

“The third thing,” Hera told him quickly, before she lost her momentum.  “Appointments with the med droid.  You need to make them, and you need to keep them.”

Ezra slowed his pace slightly and turned to face her.  “Why?”

“Because it’s important.  I spoke to it, and…”

“What?  When?  You don’t have access to my files.”

Hera held up both hands in mock defense.  “Believe me, I know.  I spoke to it in general terms, about the condition.  But that brings me to another point.  Like Sato told you, I need access.  Even if it’s just to talk about your eyes and nothing else.  I’m not going to pry, I just want to know that if I need to ask it something, I can.  And that’s why I need you to attend your appointments regularly, so that the information it holds is up to date.”

He shook his head.  “It’s not necessary.  It’s not like Noisi can do anything to help.”

“Noisy?  I don’t care.  It’s for your benefit too; you need to be able to monitor the progress in more than anecdotal terms.  You need to know what to expect, and when; if it’s progressing at the expected speed, if anything’s making it worse, or better.  N015 is designed for eye problems.  It’ll be able to give the relevant advice.”

Ezra opened his mouth, presumably to protest, and then clamped it closed again.  He unfolded his arms, then folded them again, and finally sighed in resignation.  “How long do I have to keep going for?”

Hera bit her lip.  “For as long as it takes.”

“As long as what takes?”

She didn’t answer.  She didn’t have to.  She saw him make the connection as soon as the words left his lips.

He sank back into the copilot’s chair and turned away from her again.  “Right,” he said.  “Got it.”  He sighed deeply and stared out into space through the screen, eyes very obviously drinking in the view as though he was afraid it may be the last time he saw it.

“Ezra,” she asked.  “Are you okay?”

“Great,” he said flatly.  “Anything else?”

She shook her head.  “Nothing important.”

“Good.”  He continued to stare out of the viewscreen, not even so much as glancing in her direction.  “You’re right, you know.  If something goes wrong, I’m not ready.”

It sounded strange to hear him admit that.  She forced herself to sit still and listen, and waited for more.

“But do you know what?” he continued.  “I never have been.  None of us are; you included.  It just doesn’t work that way.  When you’re in the field, you have to be able to think on your feet.  So if I can’t do that anymore, what you’ve just told me is that it’s over and I might as well leave, go back to Lothal and find a way to fight the Empire on my own again.  That way at least I’d be able to…” He tailed off and sighed. “If I wait until I can do everything you want from me, I’m not going to be out there again until long after I’ve stopped needing those appointments.”

“No, that’s not it at all,” Hera insisted.  “I’m not saying you need to tell me what you’ll do in every single situation; just that I need to know that you can handle yourself.  Don’t stop thinking on your feet, just think in advance about what that might involve.”

Ezra tore his gaze from the viewscreen for a moment to look at her.  “So how am I supposed to prove myself to you?” he asked.  “How do you decide when I’m ‘ready’?”

The truth was, she didn’t know the answer to that.  There was no definite reply that she could give him; no standard to work toward.  “I’ll know,” she said.

He shook his head.  “That’s nice and vague,” he said.  “Can’t you give me something?  Like a challenge that once I can do it, I’m in.  Something I can work toward instead of…” he waved his hand in the air, presumably indicating the uncertainty.

“Okay.” Hera pursed her lips.  “But you won’t like it.”

“Try me.”

She inhaled slowly.  “Eventually, you’re going to have to be able to function without any vision at all,” she said, keeping her words slow and measured.

She watched Ezra’s face for his reaction to that statement, but there was none.  It wasn’t the calm acceptance of someone that had come to terms with an uncomfortable fact, but the carefully-schooled expression of someone desperately trying to give that impression.  

“As soon as you can demonstrate that you can do that, you're back in.”

His face grew visibly paler, though he succeeded in keeping his expression neutral.  “So, blindfold?” he said.

“Not necessarily.  It could be in the dark, or some other way of obscuring your vision, but essentially, yes.  If you can move around an area you don’t know without any problems, if you can defend yourself, if you can do everything that you can do now, but without your sight, then you can forget the other stuff.”

He frowned and drummed his fingertips on his knee.  “Okay,” he said, and exhaled slowly.  “Okay.”

“But Ezra, you don’t need to be able to do that yet.  You’ll find the other things much easier, I promise.”

He didn’t reply, but the expression on his face was easy to read.  Neither option was easy, nothing was easy, and Hera, who had no right at all to talk about what and was not possible for him, was putting more and more obstacles in his way at every turn.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not sure whether she was speaking about the conditions she was having to impose, or the situation that made them necessary.  Whichever apology he heard, he simply shrugged dismissively.  She reached across to touch him on the shoulder.

Ezra stiffened in surprise, and she realized belatedly that she had approached him from the side, and that there was a good chance that he hadn’t seen her, but he quickly relaxed again.

“I know it’s not helpful, but you know I’d swap places with you in a heartbeat if I could, don’t you?”

He turned and looked her straight in the eye searchingly.  “Yeah, well I’m glad you can’t,” he told her.  His expression morphed into a sad smile, and he shook his head.  “You’re a pilot, Hera.  I mean, no offense, but there’s no way you’d be able to cope!”

He was joking, or at least he spoke as though he was joking, but he was probably right.  The idea of losing the sense of freedom she got behind the controls of a spacecraft… she couldn’t even imagine it; she didn’t want to try.  But she liked to think that she would do it for him, or for Kanan, if she could.  Not that it mattered; life didn’t work that way.  “Come here,” she said, getting to her feet and extending her arms to him.

Ezra hesitated for a moment, before climbing to his feet and stepping forward.  She wrapped her arms around him tightly, as though they could protect him, and he hugged her back like somebody clinging on for dear life.

“You’re going to be fine,” she whispered in his ear.

“Hey!”

“Sorry.”  He shrugged.  “Well, not really.”  He glanced down at the three dokma sitting around them.  As he did, the second one that Ezra had stopped got to its feet and continued on its way to wherever it was going.  “So, do you want to try it out for real tonight?”

Ezra considered it.  On the one hand, he was curious as to whether he would be able to actually influence the outcome of the race; on the other, whether it worked or not, this technique wasn’t going to be any good in the long run.  He shook his head.  “No, not yet.”

The first dokma got back to its feet and continued on its way.  “Why not?” Hobbie asked, watching it go.

“Because I’m supposed to be figuring out how to make one dokma win, not make four others lose.”

Hobbie frowned.  “If it works, does it matter how you do it?” he said.

It did.  It mattered a lot.  But it wasn’t something that he was going to be able to explain to Hobbie.  He sat down on the ground, maintaining a tentative connection to the third dokma.  It was still happily sitting there, basking in the sunlight.  As soon as he released it, it would be free to do what it wanted again, and if he connected to another one, he would have to release that one first because he could only connect to one dokma at a time.

Until now, his main worry -- outside of being caught and banned from the races -- had been the idea that the whole thing would fall apart when he could no longer tell which color of paint had been daubed onto the shell of whatever dokma he had chosen.  Now, Hobbie was expecting him to track five constantly moving creatures, moving his control from one to another, and to know which of the five not to touch.

He could do it.  Now.  Without sight, without the colors as a visual reference, it would be impossible.

Of course, Hobbie didn’t know that.  He couldn’t possibly know that.  He probably hadn’t even considered the future in that way.  Ezra wished he still had that luxury.  Suddenly, whichever way he turned, he saw it looming over him, and that wasn’t going to stop.  Not until...

“Does it matter?” Hobbie said again, sounding less sure of himself now.

Ezra made an effort to push aside the thoughts running through his head.  He shrugged slowly, buying himself a little time to remember what they had been talking about.  Hobbie’s expression was one of confusion mingled with the beginnings of concern.  Ezra couldn’t tell him the truth.  He didn’t even know how to put that into words that would make sense to someone that didn’t use the Force, or that hadn’t spent any length of time thinking about what losing your sight would actually mean.  Anyway, he didn’t want to explain.  He could try to imply what he wanted to say, and leave Hobbie to work it out.  But no, he didn’t even really want to do that, because if Hobbie didn’t know, then Ezra could continue to pretend nothing was wrong.  

“It’s just got to be easier to control one dokma than four,” he said.  It wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t the whole truth.  “Anyway, don’t you think it’d look a bit weird if all the dokma but one just kept sitting down for a rest in the middle of the race?”

“No, not really,” Hobbie told him.  “I think it’d look indistinguishable from any other race.  In fact, it’s probably going to look stranger if one of them actually races and doesn’t sit down in the middle, than if four of them take a few more rests.”

Ezra turned to look at him.  Hobbie was watching him warily, obviously not knowing what he was thinking, but very much aware that something was wrong.  “What is it really?” he asked

Ezra shook his head.  “I don’t know.  It’d just be easier to do it the other way.”

“Not if the other way doesn’t work,” Hobbie supplied, correctly.

“It will work.  As soon as I’ve figured it out.  And anyway, the one I’m going to try to control isn’t just going to get up and run, it doesn’t work that way.  I’m thinking if I can make them want to sit down, there’s got to be a way to make them want to move.  They’re too stupid to understand where I want them to move to anyway.”

“So it might move in completely the wrong direction?”

Ezra shrugged and grinned.  “Maybe, yeah, unless I figure out how to make them a lot smarter.  But then hopefully it’ll get to the other side, turn around and go back again.  Anyway, the races wouldn’t be fun if there wasn’t some chance of losing.”

Hobbie shook his head and grinned back at him.  “Speak for yourself.  I want to win.”

“We will,” Ezra promised him.  “Okay, I’m going to work on making this one want to move around.”  He indicated the third dokma, the one still sitting on the ground, with a wave of his hand, and glanced up to gauge the position of the sun.  He had an hour at least before it started to set.  “Can you keep watch again?”

Hobbie sank to the ground next to him, settling in for a long stretch.  “You me to tell you if it gets dark again?”

Ezra hesitated.  Last time they had done this, he had given an excuse for needing to be warned about the encroaching nighttime.  It hadn’t been a good excuse, but at least it had been some way to justify it.  Obviously it hadn’t fooled him.  He glanced quickly at Hobbie, and then away again.  “Yeah, if you want,” he said, then closed his eyes and concentrated on the dokma before Hobbie had a chance to react.  “But mostly, keep an eye on the dokma, tell me if it does anything interesting.”

It was a lot more difficult to get the dokma to move than it was to make them stop.  That revelation hadn’t been unexpected.  The vast majority of the dokma remaining around the base now were the ones that simply didn’t have the drive to go anywhere, and that meant that staying where they were was, in a way, their default setting.

Ezra furrowed his brow in concentration and pushed a command onto the creature.  “Anything?” he asked Hobbie, who was still sitting nearby.

“Not sure, try it again?” Hobbie said.  Ezra sighed and tried again.  The dokma hadn’t moved, he could tell that much through his connection, and his ability to discern the position of the creature he was sharing a connection with.  Without words, he pushed a feeling in the creature’s direction, something like the opposite of the feeling he had sent when he had made it stop.

“It’s wiggling its eye things around a bit,” Hobbie told him.  “Maybe it’s just tired, it should probably have got up and walked away by itself by now.  The others did.”

Ezra sighed, and pushed a little harder.  Hobbie didn’t say anything, so presumably there was no noticeable difference.  He pushed harder still, trying to keep himself calm and not give into the frustration that he could feel building up inside him.  He could have tapped into it, and he could probably have used it to increase his ability, but he wouldn’t.

Instead, he took a deep breath and released the frustration as he exhaled.  He broke the connection for a moment, then remade it, with more purpose this time.  He remembered that need to move on that he had sensed in the swarm, that feeling that set them aside from their more complacent brethren; the restlessness, the need to be elsewhere.  He replicated it within himself, and then sent it through their connection, pushing hard, like a wave rather than a gentle stream.

“It’s…” Hobbie hesitated.  “It’s doing something.  It’s getting up.  Oh, unless it would have just gotten up anyway; maybe it finally got bored and decided to leave.”

It wasn’t that.  It couldn’t be.  Not at that precise moment, it would have been too much of a coincidence.  Ezra opened his eyes to watch the dokma as it began to move away.

It was dark.

Not as dark as he had allowed it to get a few nights ago, when he had tried connecting with the dokma for the first time.  The world around him was made of shades of gray and muted colors, unlike the blackness that night.  He squinted.  It made no difference, it was as though all the detail had been erased, leaving him with shapes and outlines.

He turned to Hobbie.

“What do you think?” Hobbie asked.  “Was that you, or did it just get sick of having you in its head and decide to leave?”

Ezra could make out the shape of his friend, still hunched on the ground a few feet away.  His datapad was face up on the ground next to him, the screen glowing brightly, but not in the right direction to allow him to see Hobbie’s face.  Ezra climbed to his feet, keeping one hand on the side of the storage crate.  He didn’t need to, but the solid object made him feel safe.  Unease stirred in the pit of his stomach.  He took a deep breath, and tried to release it in the same way that he had his frustration at the dokma.

He licked his lips, and tried to sound casual.  “That was definitely me,” he said.  He turned to face the direction from which he could sense the dokma’s presence, as though he were watching it go.  He couldn’t locate it, the light color of its shell blended in well with the shade of the desert ground.  “I’ll have to try a few more times to make sure I can do it again, but I’m sure it moved because of me.”

“Great,” Hobbie said with an audible grin.  “So you have the power to bore them to sleep, and to scare them away.”

Ezra shrugged.  “I’d be insulted, if that wasn’t exactly what I was trying to do.”  He broke his connection to the dokma, and tuned his awareness, but not his face, to his friend.  “You were going to tell me when it got dark,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” Hobbie paused, “it is getting that way.  I was going to mention it in a few minutes, if you hadn’t stopped on your own.”

Ezra’s awareness of him through the Force was made up of that impossible-to-describe signature that each person had, unique to them, but sometimes difficult to differentiate from others.  He would learn them, eventually.  For now, Hobbie’s just felt familiar, but he just wasn’t sure that he would recognize it if he didn’t already know who it was.  Through it, he could feel nothing that would imply that Hobbie had noticed that anything was wrong.

Ezra shrugged, still not facing Hobbie.  It wasn’t dark, Ezra could see that himself.  The sun had barely begun to set, and the light level had dropped only slightly.  Hobbie could obviously see well enough that it never occurred to him that it might be a problem.  Probably because Ezra had never told him that it would be.

Carefully, he brushed the flashlight hanging from his belt with his fingertips, checking that it was there.  It was still light.  He could still see the top of the sun as it dipped into the horizon, he could still see everything, more or less, it was just the details that escaped him.  The flashlight wouldn’t help with that.  As tempting as it was to switch it on, all it would do right now was draw attention to him.

“Okay, I guess we should head back,” Ezra said.  He tried to keep his tone light, but he could hear the tension in his voice as memories of the last time he had made this mistake flooded back to him.  He swallowed hard, and stared down at the ground just before him, unblinking.  It wasn’t like the last time.  He could see.  If he was careful, and if he was quick, he could get back to the illuminated part of the base without Hobbie even realizing that there was a problem.

It felt a little like walking through a thick mist that had settled on the ground.  He could make out the ground itself, and any obstacles, just about, but with difficulty.  He reminded himself with each step not to walk slowly, not to feel his way with the tips of his toes, not to look like he couldn’t see.  He reached out with the Force as best he could, scanning the ground before him as he took each step.  It wasn’t like the other night.  The darkness wasn’t so thick and overpowering and the dokma were almost all gone.  He maintained what felt like a normal pace, with Hobbie walking quietly by his side.

The fingers of his right hand ached by the time he reached the base itself, and he realized that he had been tightly gripping the flashlight that was still attached to his belt as he had walked.  He forced himself to let it go and flexed his fingers, then turned to Hobbie.

“I think it’s going to work,” he said, talking about the dokma.  After all, Hobbie wasn’t aware that there was anything else to talk about.  “I just need to try it out a few more times to be sure, then we can try it out for real, see if it works.”

Hobbie folded his arms and nodded.  “Sounds good,” he said.

He had positioned himself directly underneath one of the artificial lights of the base.  They had only recently turned on, which made sense, as it wasn’t dark, but by its light, Ezra could see Hobbie easily again.  He was staring at the ground, looking unhappy.  Ezra frowned.

Hobbie cleared his throat.  “So, I guess for future reference, this is what I should think of as dark?” he said.  “To tell you, I mean.”

Ezra froze, embarrassed.  “No,” he said, automatically.

Hobbie looked at him searchingly.  “If you don’t tell me, I won’t know,” he said.

That was the point.  Ezra sighed.  “Fine, this is dark-ish.  Yeah, this is what I mean by dark.”

Hobbie glanced around them.  “It’s barely dusk,” he said.  “I mean, the sun’s almost down, it’s not as light as it was, but it’s not…” he stopped, and looked at Ezra.  “Okay,” he said.  “Sorry.”

Ezra shrugged.  “It’s fine,” he said.  “I should’ve said.  You’re right, it’s not dark.  I can see it’s not dark, I just can’t s…”  he looked away.  “I just can’t see much else.  Stupid, right?”  He leaned against the wall of a building and folded his arms.

“No it’s not, it’s…”

“Anyway, it’s not gonna be a problem anymore.”  He glanced around to ensure that nobody was within earshot and lowered his voice a little more.  “Because I’m thinking the next step is to try to do… the thing… without being obvious.  That means eyes open, and maybe while doing something else.”

Hobbie nodded, appearing to accept the change of subject.  “Maybe after a drink or two, too,” he added.

Ezra relaxed.  He grimaced theatrically at the memory of the burning liquid running down his throat.  If he tried it again, maybe he’d be able to take a sip without gasping for breath.  “As long as Kanan’s not there,” he said.

“We could still try it tonight,” Hobbie suggested.  “Now you think you’ve managed to do…” he glanced around for prying ears, “…that thing you wanted… Why not try it out a few more times, beforehand, make sure it works, and then try it out for real?”

It was tempting.  He glanced around and located a dokma some distance away, not doing much.  He surreptitiously elbowed Hobbie in the side, and nodded in the direction of the creature, then took a few casual steps in that direction.  Hobbie followed him.  As he walked, Ezra began to concentrate on that same feeling, restlessness, a need to move.  He watched the dokma as he made the connection, making a conscious effort not to close his eyes, and pushed the wave of feeling at the creature.  As he watched, it flexed its eye stalks for a moment, then got to its feet and wandered away.

Ezra glanced at Hobbie and grinned triumphantly.  Hobbie returned the grin.  “I guess we’re going to the races then,” he said.

Even as he desperately tried to block it out, he felt himself probing, curious as to the source of the onslaught of emotion.  He knew Kanan’s mind, and to a lesser extent he knew Zeb’s.  This was neither of them.  It couldn’t have been Zeb anyway, he was peacefully snoring in the bunk below him.  That didn’t just leave Hera and Sabine, because on the base there were any number of people he could have tuned in to, but proximity made the ability stronger, and that meant that people aboard the Ghost were much more likely culprits than anybody else on the base.

He probed deeper, feeling the shape of the emotions pressing on him, sensing the Force-signature attached to them.  He recognized it, but then he would if it was somebody he knew.  He concentrated further, not reaching in deeper, but exploring what he already had.  Slowly, an image of sorts began to form, and he knew the source of the emotions.

Sabine. 

The instant he knew that, as though responding to his realization, the emotions crested once again.  She was a ball of pain.  A glowing orb of emotional torment so bright, and so loud, that he couldn’t even begin to block it out.

Ezra had a talent for connections.  Or, so Kanan had told him.  Once, when Kanan said that, it had felt like a compliment, like a positive thing.  At times like this, it felt more like a curse.

In fact, it had never really even felt like a talent to Ezra.  Compared to many of the other Force abilities that Kanan had taught him over the past few years, the skill had actually felt like more of a struggle to acquire.  He had to admit that he had improved at it quickly, but it still didn’t feel like anything special, it was just... a thing that he could do.

Anyway, to be honest, a lot of the time it was more of a hindrance than a help.

Kanan barely brought it up anymore, not in lessons anyway.  It was as though he thought there wasn’t anything else that he would be able to teach him.  He even asked Ezra for help when it came to a situation that required that particular skill, and although in a way that felt good, in another he couldn’t help but feel that it was a mistake, that he was nowhere near as good as Kanan thought.

If he was, he’d be better at blocking.  Surely that was the other side of the same skill, you couldn’t have one without the other.  Or you shouldn’t, anyway, because that was where the problems started.

The emotional onslaught swelled again.  Below him, Zeb continued to snore gently, oblivious.

It always happened at night.   He supposed that it made sense, it was at night, when people were alone with their thoughts, that things felt their worst.  It had been that way after his parents had been taken; the days filled with the endless quest for food and shelter, with forging alliances with others in a similar situation, befriending local street vendors and stealing from those that wouldn’t give him the time of day.  It had been when the sun went down and he found himself huddled alone in whatever corner he had managed to find, when he had had nothing to do but think, that his treacherous mind had taken him to places that he didn’t want to visit.

Often, it hadn’t been until the light of day chased away the shadows and the sun had returned, that he had begun to see the problem in a new light and, for those few hours at least, he had been able to convince himself that it would be alright.

Of course, things always felt less hopeless in the light, and he didn’t know what that would mean for him in the coming years.  He had to believe that there would be other ways of chasing the shadows from his mind.  What he had seen, heard, and felt of Kanan’s experience told him that it would take a long time to find.

Sabine didn’t have that problem of course.  She would never have to worry about that -- he hoped she would never have to worry about that -- not for herself, anyway.  Apparently, she worried for Ezra though. There was little doubt in his mind that he was responsible for her pain.  He had to wonder though, why now?  Why tonight?  Nothing, as far as he knew, had happened to Sabine over the course of the day that would make her feel it so deeply.

Him, on the other hand, it would have made perfect sense for Ezra to be up, worrying, going over the events of the evening in his mind, unable to sleep.  But Sabine?  It wasn’t like anybody would have told her what had happened after he connected with the dokma.

Except… what if she had seen it?  It hadn’t really been as dark as it had appeared to him.  He hadn’t thought there was anybody around, but what if he had been wrong?

No.  He would have known.  Kanan would have known.  Kanan would have told him.  He hoped Kanan would have told him.  It wasn’t that.  It might not even be anything.  Perhaps the feelings had been there all along, ever since he had told her, unnoticed by him.  He had, after all, opened himself up to the Force that evening, Kanan had told him that what he had done with the dokma had been almost like meditation.  Perhaps that was the cause.

In a way, he hoped it was.  At least it would mean that he had achieved something, even if it wasn’t the something that he had intended.  He was under no illusions that the whole ‘connecting to the dokma’ thing had been anything more than an excuse to get him out of his room, but for a moment there, he had felt as though he was doing something right.

Well, until it had all gone hideously wrong.

But putting that aside, and putting aside the possibility that being open to the Force had allowed things to get in through gaps that he had opened and couldn’t close, he had done something good, and he was still feeling the dubious benefits of it.

The problem with having a talent for making connections was that once he had learned how to do it, it had become tough not to do it.  Not always, not even often, but sometimes, it took genuine effort not to connect, or to break a connection once he had made it.  And that was fine when it was loth-cats, or purrgil.  Under most normal circumstances it would even be fine with the dokma.  The times that it became a problem were the times when he realized he was connecting with people.

Those kinds of connections didn’t work in quite the same way as with the other creatures; like what was happening now, they were usually on an emotional level; feeling what they were feeling, experiencing their emotional state.  It was confusing, and more times than not, it hurt.

This wasn’t the first time it had happened.  It wasn’t something he usually did consciously; there had been times when he reached out deliberately to learn a person’s emotional state, but those times were few and far between.  Most times, it wasn’t until after a connection had been made, that he realized what he was doing.  

Even that was okay, most of the time.  On an average day, and when people were feeling a normal range of emotions.  It didn’t hurt anybody, and for a time it had helped him to understand his new family better.  But then there had been those times that he had woken from Zeb’s nightmares of the massacre on Lasan, and found himself curled in his bunk, unable to move, crushed by the horror of it.

He should have known then that it needed to stop.  He should have spoken to Kanan about it, worked on learning to block it before anything worse happened.  But that pain had been private, and he had known it wasn’t his to discuss.

But then Kanan had been hurt, and although it had been the physical pain of his injury that kept Kanan up at night, it was the emotional pain, the same one that, by then, he had already known lurked in his own future, that haunted Ezra, and all of a sudden he just wanted the ability gone.

The Force didn’t work like that though.  Or at least, if it did, Kanan had never shown him that part.  His training had all been about strengthening his abilities, not learning how not to suppress them.  And so he had worked in private on blocking, trying to forge a shield between himself and the rest of the crew.  Sometimes, it even worked.

Other times, it didn’t.

Lying on his bunk, Ezra gasped as another wave of sorrow washed over him, and for a moment it was difficult to differentiate between what belonged to Sabine, and to himself.  Hands clenched into fists, eyes squeezed tightly closed, he tried to put up his defenses, build a wall to protect him.  It did little good.

The worst part was that this was his fault.  He had done this to her.  To everybody, really.  It hadn’t been intentional, but he had done it nonetheless, and the news appeared to have hit Sabine harder that he had realized.

It made a kind of sense when he thought about it.  For Kanan, the loss of one’s vision was something he understood intimately, and with that understanding came the knowledge that, for him at least, it hadn’t been the end of the world.  Hera too, she had been there with Kanan through the worst of it, and watched him come out the other side.  Ezra supposed that he should take comfort from that too, but it wasn’t as easy as that.

Zeb cared.  That fact hadn’t exactly come as a surprise to him; over the years, their uneasy alliance had turned to a close friendship, and they did care about each other.  Still, it had actually surprised him how much Zeb appeared to care.

But Sabine… her reaction had surprised him more than any other.  Shock and disbelief had quickly given way to an overriding sense of sadness.  She hid it well around the others, squashed it down so deep that Ezra couldn’t have even sensed it even if he went looking -- not that he did go looking -- but when she was alone, it was as though she reached a point where she couldn’t hold it back.

Apparently, it wasn’t going to go away.  He couldn’t be sure how long it had been going on as he had slept, but he knew grief, and he knew that it didn’t disappear quickly.  It might fade before it returned, but in the middle of the night, wide awake and with nothing to distract from the unwelcome thoughts spinning around your head, the only thing that stood a chance of stopping it was sleep, and even that wasn’t guaranteed.

Finally giving up on sleep, for the time being anyway, Ezra sat up in bed, spine rounded as he leaned forward, pressing his chest against his knees and his hands to his ears.  Covering his ears wouldn’t work, she wasn’t actually crying, and even if she had been, he wouldn’t have been able to hear her.  Still, it felt like the right action somehow.  Besides, it blocked out the sound of Zeb’s gentle snoring below him.

He hated this.

He hated that he had done this, but more than hating her feeling that level of pain, he hated that she was allowed to feel that.  He couldn’t have that; he couldn’t allow himself to slip that far into much misery, because he knew that if he did, he might never be able to claw his way back again.  Sabine could allow herself that luxury, because she wasn’t the one going to have to live with it.

He felt a spike of anger at that, and just for a moment, it felt good.  It felt good to feel something that wasn’t another person’s sadness.

He pushed it aside, much more easily than he could Sabine’s emotions, and concentrated again on strengthening his shield.  That was a completely different skill to blocking his own emotions from others around him.  That ability had come relatively easily; though it was sometimes difficult to maintain the block, he had no problem putting it up.  This was different.  In a way, it felt like cutting himself off from the Force itself, and that idea scared him, because if he didn’t have the Force, he would have nothing.

He pressed his hands harder against his ears and tried again to block her out.  Again, he failed.

He didn’t need this.  He felt bad enough himself without having to deal with other people’s unhappiness.  It wasn’t fair.

Carefully, taking care to keep his breathing shallow and quiet, so as not to wake Zeb, Ezra moved to the edge of the bed.  He climbed, rather than leapt, down to the ground and tip-toed across the floor of the well-lit room.  Behind him, Zeb didn’t even stir, completely oblivious to what was happening across the hall.

The door opened with its usual sound, and Zeb moved just a little, but didn’t wake.  As it closed behind him, Ezra relaxed, but only very slightly.  He sagged against the wall, eyes fixed on Sabine’s closed door.  There were no distractions for her in the middle of the night, but perhaps he could be one.  If he could talk to her, maybe he could convince her that it was okay.  It wasn’t okay, but maybe he could convince her anyway.

Or if not ‘okay’, that it wasn’t as bad as she thought.  After all, it wasn’t like she was the one going blind.  He wasn’t going to say that.  Even though it should, he didn’t think it would help.

It was probably -- definitely -- for the best that it wasn’t Sabine.  The thought of not being able to see Sabine’s art again hurt, but he couldn’t imagine what that would do to her, to lose something like that, the ability to create in that way.  That probably explained some of her reaction, actually, now he thought about it.

Well, there was something for him to be grateful for; at least he wasn’t an artist.  At least he would be spared the pain of that particular loss.

He bunched his hand into a fist, ready to knock on her door.  He took a step closer, and sucked in a deep breath.  There was silence on the other side of the door, but the onslaught of grief did not relent.

It felt like an intrusion, somehow.  She was hiding this from him, not showing it around him, or the others.  It didn’t feel fair to let her know that she had failed.