Chapter Text
Repairing his lightsaber hadn’t been the first thing on his mind when the Phantom had landed back on Atollon, or even the second, but as the days wore on, Ezra grew frustrated. By the light of only the Sith holocron, he sat in his bunk, surrounded by bits of metal and cracked pieces of kyber crystal, trying to fit the pieces back together.
It had never even occurred to him that lightsabers could break; once he had assembled the pieces, his lightsaber became an extension of himself, and as long as he was still breathing, the Force should be flowing through it. He had tried asking the Sith holocron for instructions, or at least advice, but the most it offered was a weak, red light that elongated all the shadows of the room. What a waste of a mission—of two people’s entire lives—and he couldn’t even figure out how to put these pieces back together. Lightsaber? No, this was a pile of scrap metal.
His patience wore thin, and he collected the pieces and stuffed them back into his dresser, slamming the drawer shut once and then again, because the metal-on-metal crunch was just about the only satisfying thing he’d felt in more rotations than he could count.
Ezra knew he was going crazy. When his eyes were open, he stared robotically past everyone, looking over their shoulders instead of in their eyes, and stumbled through whatever menial task he had been assigned. And when his eyes were closed, he saw everything that happened on Malachor, like he was watching a tape—a sped-up tape that looped endlessly—and he couldn’t change the channel. Ezra wasn’t ashamed to bargain; he wished he hadn’t brought his blade up to deflect Vader’s. He wished Maul had betrayed him and let him fall into the chasm of the Sith Temple. If the Force would just grant him this one opportunity to go back and make things right, he would take it without hesitation. He’d let himself fall into the abyss; he wouldn’t even try to fight Vader; he’d sacrifice himself so Kanan and Ahsoka could escape. He’d pay his debt, and he’d be free.
Since returning, he and Kanan had only talked once, a hurried conversation in the middle of the night on the only path either of them walked with any consistency: between their beds and the ‘fresher.
I don’t blame you, Ezra, Kanan had called through the dark.
I wish you would, he called back before Kanan could say anything else. He shut his door and bolted it for good measure. Why did Kanan insist on lying to him? There were a million reasons why the mission had failed, and they were all his fault. Ezra didn’t listen; Ezra didn’t understand; Ezra was naïve and foolish, too trusting of Maul and not trusting enough of his Master. It was all his fault, and why did everyone else insist on pretending otherwise?
Ezra abruptly let go of the handle on the drawer. He had to get out of here. Out of this room, off of this ship, off this planet, preferably even out of this system. The only thing that mattered to him now was finding a way to destroy the Sith, and he wasn’t going to accomplish that sitting on this dusty backwater world fending off spiders. He needed a new lightsaber—not something constructed from the wreckage of his previous one, but something entirely new.
There were no junkyards on Atollon to salvage scraps of metal, and he had no reason to believe he would find a kyber crystal here either. It was time to go. The thought of leaving began to clear some of the fog from his head, and as he threw a spare set of clothes and some ration packs into a bag, he felt more alive than he had in weeks. He wrapped the Sith holocron in an old shirt and stuffed it into his bag as well, then pilfered some of the emergency supplies from the Ghost’s cache; sooner or later, someone would notice the thermal blanket and glow rods were missing and replace them.
There were two final things Ezra had to do before he left. He found Hera in the munitions storeroom, comparing an inventory list on her datapad with the latest shipment of supplies they’d received from another rebel cell. The last few weeks had been hard on all of them, and Hera was no exception. Her eyes were tired, and her lekku seemed less animated than usual.
Ezra coughed once to get her attention.
“I’m leaving,” he said flatly and without introduction, staring at a point over her shoulder.
She set the datapad down on a crate and turned toward him.
“Ezra?”
She took a step toward him and reached for his elbow. He flinched and shrugged her off.
“You don’t—you don’t have to, you know?” she said.
“I do.”
“There has to be another way, right?”
“There isn’t.”
She sighed, and even without looking up, he could feel her eyes on him. He found her curiosity invasive and her kindness offensive.
“Okay. I believe you. But take Chopper, too, please?”
“Fine.”
He met her eyes for a second before turning around and walking mechanically out of the storeroom. Now he had another task before he left: avoid Chopper. The astromech was arguably Hera’s most beloved companion, and Ezra had already caused enough damage to Hera’s loved ones.
That just left the final, and most difficult, task. He knew he would never forgive himself if he left without saying anything to Kanan, but as he stood outside the door to his Master’s cabin, his mind was blank. He had nothing to say. He was leaving, and he wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back. Ezra knocked.
The door slid open, and it took his eyes several seconds to adjust to the darkness. Kanan was seated in meditation in the center of the room, his back to the door.
“Hey,” Ezra said softly, wincing at his choice of words as he spoke. They hadn’t talked in weeks, and that was the best he could come up with?
“What’s on your mind, Ezra?” Kanan asked.
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are you getting there?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Sit for just a second?” Kanan gestured to the space beside him.
Ezra’s knees nearly crumpled there in the doorway, but he forced himself to walk forward, sinking to the ground as the door closed and the darkness swallowed them both. He felt directionless and disoriented without any visual reference, and the sound of his breathing—of both of their breathing—filled the room, louder than it should have been. More than anything, he wanted to reach out toward Kanan with his hand and steady himself. The world had always made so much more sense with Kanan as a guide.
“I have to go,” he said again. “My lightsaber—I can’t fix it. Not here, at least.”
He heard Kanan shift beside him, and then the glow of a datapad filled the room. As Kanan entered something on the screen, Ezra took the opportunity to really look at him. He stared rudely; gone was the familiar, carefully maintained goatee he’d become so accustomed to seeing. In its place grew a rough, uneven beard, framed by stringy clumps of hair; the usual ponytail was also gone. The air in the room was so stale that it almost hurt to breathe.
Kanan handed him the datapad.
“What is this?” Ezra asked, looking at the screen. All it contained was a set of coordinates.
“A starting point. And a better ship.”
Ezra didn’t typically help with navigation, and even if he knew where Kanan was sending him, he wouldn’t have been able to tell from just the numbers.
“Hera won’t miss that junky old freighter we picked up on Garel. Take it there—it’s a junkyard on a planet called Kaller, you’ll see—and tell the owner that Caleb sent you, and he’d like his ship back.”
“Who’s Caleb?”
“The owner’s name is Janus Kasmir. He’ll help you.”
“Who’s Caleb?”
“You should get going before someone else decides to take that freighter.”
Ezra stood up, accepting that he was not going to receive an answer.
“Okay.”
No one had flown that ship since they had established Chopper Base. There was no urgency. But it was still time to go.
“Goodbye, I guess.”
“Goodbye, Ezra.”
As Ezra left the room, he looked over his shoulder as the door closed behind him, and Kanan’s back disappeared into the darkness once again. His lungs felt like they were full of icy water.
From his own bunk, he grabbed his bag and spare supplies and made his way out to the dockyard. The ship was small as freighters went, and a quick sweep told him the cargo hold and the cockpit were both clear of Chopper or any other stowaways.
The engine whined as he prepared the ship for takeoff, and soon he began to climb through the atmosphere. Ezra watched as Chopper Base disappeared below him. He kept his eyes on it until he could no longer distinguish it from the forest of plated tree coral that covered Atollon. Soon he cleared the planet’s atmosphere and sat in orbit, empty space stretching out in every direction before him and a hyperdrive computer with coordinates to an unknown planet.
“Here goes nothing,” he said to no one in particular as he punched the hyperspace drive. The stars elongated, and he was gone.