Kanan Jarrus

Breathe.




Just breathe.


Once, this was a meditation room. There was one Master Billaba had preferred, after her months in a coma. A creek bed was built into its floor, winding a path through the room, dark water trickling over the smooth stones set beneath. The windows were tinted, hiding the city lights of Coruscant beyond, and a constant garden of lycandis, zeka grass, and honeyblossoms was cultivated to blanket the floor. Entering was like walking into a forest glen on a warm night, and it was easy to find peace there. Or to drift to sleep in the sweet-smelling grass. It was hard to think of the blasterfire raining down on other planets, or even the explosions that had rocked the Jedi Temple around them.

Something that makes you feel safe –

It was ashes now. He could only imagine that. The creek was dry, the stones cracked, honeyblossoms dust. Maybe the Empire had transformed it into something else entirely. He could only imagine – Kanan doubted he would ever see that place again. Maybe he even knew he would never see it. Like Master Billaba. That place could no longer protect him. He couldn't feel safe there.

a person, a place, a situation

This room is small, simple, bare. Not entirely unlike his quarters as an apprentice in the Jedi Temple, but he didn't think on that. There was a door along the far wall, just a few meters from him. Low benches lined the walls on either side of him, and two bunks were built into the back. He's sitting on the thin bedding of the lower bunk, his fingers curled gently along the edge. No windows, stale recycled oxygen with the tinny scent of steel. Beneath his boots, the floor vibrated faintly.


focus on that image



There's a flicker of movement to his right. A shadow on the floor, along the wall.





I'll . . . try to get in -

The sound of crates clattering from a neat stack into a haphazard pile resounds from the cargo bay, followed shortly after by contentious voices -- and bleeps -- raised in a chorus of 'he did it'.

Kanan rests his face in his hand for a moment, eyes closed.

"Do you think they'll clean it up, or are they going to pretend we couldn't hear them and have no idea who could have made the mess?"

They can get back to mission planning in a minute, and should. But --

It's the unexpected resurgence of old loss that stings, and he can't seem to shake it. Even knowing about the existence of the Inquisitor, and that he's not going to stop coming for them -- for Ezra -- lacks some immediacy in the upwelling of a fresh feeling of being alone in the galaxy.

He'd thought for a minute that someone else was out there, someone experienced, a leader who could --

Admit it, Jarrus. You wanted someone who could take over for you, so you could go back to being a padawan, or maybe not even that.

It's going to stick with him, that frustration with both the situation and himself, and in order to try to do something productive with it, he goes to find Hera.

(He always goes to find Hera.)

"Did we get a signal out yet?"

There's a lot to think about on the walk back from finishing the deal with Vizago: plans to free the Wookies, how they're going to be able to eke out the most resupply from their halved reward of credits, and . . . the kid.

Kanan scrubs his hand through his hair as soon as the thought crosses his mind, wishing desperately that this problem could have happened to someone else, but --

He also doesn't. Which is why he turns to look at Hera, hoping that doing that will let the words actually come.

Or convince her to drag them out of him.

Kanan's gotten out of the habit of carrying every burden alone.