Although Fulcrum assured them he would come back, he didn't say when. He dropped by the infirmary to check in with Kanan before leaving, and that was the last anyone on Chopper Base saw of him. It seemed that not even Rex received a message from him while he was gone.

Kanan eventually was released from the infirmary and allowed to remain on the Ghost, but he was just as sullen and quiet as he was under medical care. He didn't join on missions, and he barely left his cabin. Even Hera was worried for him, but she told her crew that he just needed space and time to recover.

That left Ezra as the main Jedi on board. To his credit, he did well stepping up to fill the void Kanan left in his absence. He, too, was less talkative than he had ever been in his life, but he was determined to rise to the occasion. Sabine thought he was acting like he had something to prove, but that didn't make sense because neither of the other Jedi was around. Who was he trying to prove himself to?

Nothing strange happened until a few days later when Ezra told Hera that he would be gone for a few hours. She immediately became worried, but he promised that he would be back before sunset and that his communicator would be on the whole time. Reluctantly, she let him go. When he returned, he seemed more relaxed and certain than he had been for days. The rest of the crew asked him what he had set out to do, and in response, he opened his hand and showed them a shiny rock. Ezra had found another kyber crystal.

This was the first good news any of them had heard in days, so it lifted the spirits of the entire crew. Everyone started scrounging for parts that Ezra could use to build a new lightsaber. As he was eager to have his own again, he wasted no time in constructing a new hilt. Now that he had already done this once, the second time went much quicker. In one rotation, it was finished.

When the pieces finally fit together as he wanted them, Ezra compared the lightsaber he just constructed to the Padawan's lightsaber. They were very different, but Ezra had looked at the inner workings as a reference for the design. It helped speed construction, which was greatly appreciated.

In the past few days, Ezra had meditated multiple times with the Padawan's lightsaber. She showed him a few more visions from the Clone Wars, which were as interesting as they were shocking. He had seen Kanan as a teenager once or twice and Rex back when he was in the Grand Army of the Republic. He saw Master Skywalker more than once, as well as Master Kenobi a few more times. This Padawan seemed to know a lot of people.

As grateful as he was for the spare lightsaber, he preferred his own. Ezra stood up and turned the new weapon on. This time, the blade was a bright green, something Ezra had only seen in recordings and on Malachor with the fallen Jedi's lightsaber. Now, the hilt didn't disintegrate in his hands.

"It's the same as your first lightsaber," he said aloud to the Padawan, who seemed to have been hanging around with Ezra. Her lightsaber pulsed, encouraging him. She and Ezra had become somewhat good friends while they worked together. He wished he could meet this girl, but he assumed that was impossible now. Through his visions, he had seen that her lightsaber (one of the two that she carried) was green. Ezra liked it.

Stepping into stance, he ran through a basic sequence once. This lightsaber felt much more natural, no offense to the Padawan. Whenever he fought with her white lightsaber, he felt tense and hyper-aware of his position, which didn't comfort Ezra. With his new weapon, he could relax a little bit and be certain about his instincts. He didn't feel the urge to calculate every single movement he made. Maybe that worked for the Padawan, but Ezra didn't prefer it.

Pleased with himself, he turned the green lightsaber off and clipped it to his belt. He smiled at the Padawan's lightsaber in his other hand. "Thanks again for the help," he told her. "It's been nice having someone around, even if you're not really here."

The Padawan seemed to smile. It appeared that she had enjoyed the time as much as he had. As he walked out of the cargo hold, Ezra wondered if he would meet this Padawan one day after he was dead. He didn't know much about what happened to people after they died, but he could hope, right?

Ezra stopped outside Kanan's cabin. Hera told him and the others not to bother him if they didn't need to, but Master Skywalker told him to give the Padawan's lightsaber to Kanan once he was done with it. Sighing, he knocked, and he heard Kanan invite him in.

Back on Chopper Base, Rex had found a mask lying around. After a little bit of refurbishment and a paint job, he had offered it to Kanan to cover his face. It hid from his eyes up, exposing everything below it, including the stubble on his face that Kanan didn't seem interested in shaving these days.

"Hey," Ezra greeted him quietly, stepping inside the room. "I wanted to show you something." He sat on the bunk beside Kanan and handed him his new lightsaber.

Kanan's fingers ran over it, feeling the shape of the hilt but, more importantly, feeling the kyber crystal inside. Ezra saw his mouth curl up, which made him smile too. This was the first time he had smiled in a while. Activating the blade, he asked, "What color is it?"

"Green, actually," he answered, listening to the hum of the weapon. "I wasn't expecting it, but I like it. It's new."

"You certainly built it a lot faster than the first one," he noted, turning it off. "No blaster feature this time?"

Ezra shook his head, taking his lightsaber back. "No. I guess I'm going to have to find a blaster now."

Without speaking, Kanan reached a drawer underneath his bunk and pulled out the one he usually carried. "I might as well give you this one, then. Think it'll work?"

"Are you sure?"

"It's not like I'm using it these days," he pointed out. "If you find another one, you can trade them out."

"Thanks," he told him, pulling the blaster out of its holster. Ezra had seen it before, of course, but he hadn't used it much. He'd have to train with Sabine or Zeb until he got more comfortable with it.

After a moment, put it away again. "Master Skywalker gave me one of his spare lightsabers to use until I built this one. He told me to give it to you."

He slipped the Padawan's lightsaber into his hands, and this one, Kanan seemed to recognize immediately. "This is one of the white ones?"

"Yeah. It belonged to a Padawan during the Clone Wars. I think you knew her."

Nodding, Kanan offered a little bit of explanation. "Master Skywalker was with her when she died. He's held onto her lightsabers ever since."

Ezra looked down at it. "I wonder how he fights with them so well. Whenever I tried to use it, I kept paying so much attention to my form that it was hard to focus on what was going on around me."

"That makes sense. She was always nagging me about my form when we were Padawans," Kanan remembered fondly, grinning a little bit. "I never figured out why."

"Me neither. Let me know if you do," Ezra groaned, standing up to leave. Kanan chuckled a little bit, and he realized that was the first time he had heard his master laugh since Malachor. He paused to say something else but thought better of it.

Kanan noticed. "What is it?"

"Hera said not to say anything."

"Hera's in the cockpit," he reassured his apprentice. "She can't hear us."

Ezra hesitated, then decided to say it. "I just hope you come back soon."

He was speechless for a minute. Come back? Wasn't Kanan already here on the Ghost? They were just talking, weren't they? "Ezra, what do you mean 'come back?'"

No response came. Kanan reached out with the Force and realized that Ezra had already left the room. Deciding to forget about it, he picked up Ahsoka's lightsaber again.

Kanan had thought about asking Master Skywalker if he could play around with this a while ago, ever since he realized he was still carrying it, but he hadn't taken the chance before Malachor. As he turned it over, he swore he could feel Ahsoka sitting next to him.

As if to prove it, a warm wind blew around him, the same one that Master Skywalker said was her. Hope rose in Kanan, as well as pain. "How come every time you leave, you never say goodbye?"

In his mind, he could see her laughing sorrowfully. Ahsoka was smiling, but her head was dipped down in guilt. He didn't really know how he saw it, but between her lightsaber and the wind, Kanan was almost sure it was happening.

He took his mask off his face. He didn't know why. "I guess you've seen Ezra now. I wish you could have met him. He'd probably love you."

A bigger smile now. The corners of Ahsoka's eyes would have turned up. "People keep saying he's just like me. I don't see it. "

She was raising her eyemark at that, calling him out. Kanan laughed, mostly at himself. He had lied; he knew Ezra was like him. He saw it just as much as other people did. He just wanted Ahsoka to chastise him again, the way she used to when he said something silly.

That's what he wanted. He wanted his friend back, even if it meant she rolled her eyes at him or something. Kanan would take it, or he would take Depa's lectures and stern looks, as long as it meant that either of them was alive. Drawing his knees up to his chin and crossed his arms over them, just like he did when he was a kid. "I could really use you right now," he whispered into the room, praying that she would hear him.

Maybe she did, maybe she didn't, but a vision came over Kanan either way:

"I tried to figure it out, Ahsoka," Kanan heard himself say. He was sitting against the wall in the same position he was sitting now, except in the past, Ahsoka was sitting next to him. "I tried to help them, but I can't do what you did. I was so scared, I thought that any day, someone would...would feel too much and everything would fall apart, I thought we would lose the Order. Nothing felt safe anymore, not even the Temple, and I just wanted to run, and I wanted-I wanted to hide from the Darkness, but I couldn't, and-"

In an instant, Ahsoka had her arms wrapped around him, keeping him safe from the nightmares haunting him. The warmth of her hug unlocked the memory Kanan didn't realize he still had. He felt so weak and vulnerable crying on the floor, but Ahsoka didn't look down on him. She didn't look annoyed or disappointed at his weakness but sympathized with his pain. "It wasn't your job," she told him. "It was never your job to fix that. It wasn't your fault, it shouldn't have affected you, but you were, and that's not your fault."

Somehow, her words steadied him. When he pulled back to look at her, her face wasn't mad or angry but kind. "It was what he wanted, Caleb. Sideous was trying to divide the Jedi. You should have never been put under the pressure to take care of the Younglings, not after he twisted their minds. One Jedi Padawan isn't going to be able to fight off a Sith Lord."

The idea was so ridiculous. How was a teenager supposed to fight off an all-powerful Sith? Caleb laughed at himself, and Ahsoka smiled too. "You tried to, though," she reminded him, and she brought her thumb up to wipe away his tears. "You tried to help them because that's what you do. It's who you are, and it has been as long as I've known you, Caleb. You will always try to save everyone you can, even if you have to move a mountain to do so."

"Yeah," he admitted, smiling just a little bit and sniffling. "I guess that wasn't very smart. I was never going to be able to save them."

"Listen to me," she told him, and she held his head in her hands. It was almost like she was hiding his face so he wouldn't feel like he had to. "That is not a bad thing. One day, you will be able to help people, millions of them, just like those Younglings. I don't know how, or when, but you will save millions of people one day and I hope I'm there to see it."

Sixteen years later, those words stung like never before. If Kanan hadn't been in a vision, he might have burst into tears right there and then.

"You can try to stop helping people, but if I know you, then you won't be able to stop yourself from doing what you know is right," she insisted. "So promise me that you will never try to stop. The world is going to need you one day, Caleb. It will always need people like you."

"I promise."

The vision ended, and Kanan was back in his cabin, alone and blind. Tears had already started falling down his face without him noticing, but he didn't try to wipe them away. He let them fall as he buried his face in his arms.

Somehow, over a decade after Sidious was long gone, Ahsoka's words still hit home. Did she know? Had Ahsoka known what was going to happen to the Order, to Kanan? It hurt too much to feel like an accident. Maybe Ahsoka didn't know all of this would happen to him, but there had to be something. Maybe the Force had inspired her words with this exact moment in mind. Maybe it really was a coincidence.

It still hurt. No matter what had happened that day, it hurt right now to know that he was still scared, that he had lost the Order, that the Jedi temple wasn't safe anymore, that he was trying to save millions of people, and Ahsoka wasn't there to see it. It hurt to know that somehow, he was exactly back to where he started.

He promised. He had promised her that he would never stop trying to help people, people that he couldn't even see anymore. It's what he did, it's who he was, and he was sitting in his cabin crying. Kanan wanted to run again; he wanted to run back to a time where he felt certain again. Just a week ago, that was all he wanted. One week, and he would be a new Jedi Knight again with all the hope in the world.

If Depa could see him right now, what would she think? What would she think of her apprentice, who felt so lost and confused only because he couldn't see what was right in front of him? What would Ahsoka say if she knew what he was thinking? What would she say if she knew he wanted to run?

"I'm sorry," he whispered into his arms. "I'm sorry."

Yet in the darkness, mercy remained. Ahsoka's wind wrapped around him again, and Kanan swore it felt like she was hugging him again from beyond the grave. 'It wasn't your fault, it shouldn't have affected you, but you were, and that's not your fault.'

'It wasn't your fault.'

'It wasn't your fault.'

Kanan sat there, unmoving, trying to believe those words again.