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Imagine a boy, small and young but big in his hope, his ambition, his knowledge of all the great things that he will bring, that he will do for the galaxy. His pride in his skill and his training as he waits and waits. Waits for the day that he will be picked, he will be chosen and that he will go forth amongst the stars and do his duty. A galaxy at war waiting for him and he is ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with the heroes.
Not a boy, not a man, with a name that isn’t quite his. Not yet. He’s still stretching it, shrugging it on, filling out the corners. Filling out his boots and drowning out his dreams. Trying out this place then that. This job and that job. Boots made for stomping, for brawling, for dirty work.
A boy left behind and lost, the world torn and left bloody and red, echoing in screams and screams and screams. The screams are his own. His hopes shattered smaller and smaller with each fallen body around him. Passed over once to be thrown aside, discarded by the galaxy. Small in his loss, tiny in his hopelessness.. Where is a lost soul supposed to go when even his heroes couldn’t stand?
Here the man – barely a man, still young, still awkward, still filling out the edges, blurring out the last shreds of he was with who is - finds a place. A place for now, with drink and warm bodies, work to keep his cup full and his mind blurred enough to keep the screams of the past at bay. This place will do for now but not for long, it’s too close to the past, the past is here, the past was here. Battles and deaths and bodies burned together when the galaxy turned against them. It gives him a headache.
A boy idle in a cold, consuming galaxy, with no home – where is home? Nothing to do but follow whispers and the cries, here and home. This way, this way, there has to be a way. A way to peace and wholeness. A place to belong that will fill him with hope again, where he can finally become what he was meant to be.
Making his way down the ramp of the most recent hunk of junk transport, the man stops and shivers. It’s a port like any other port, like the last three, six, ten, on just another backwater planet, decaying and desolate with hissing tookas. The war didn’t come here – the war didn’t care. But there is a whisper of a lost name on the other, the smell of smoke and ash and buried memories.
Not here.
If he hurries he can get a ride to Not Here before the next rotation. Pushing his way past pilots and smugglers, a throng of species scattered with a few humans; too few humans, he would stand out, even in his blindingly nondescript spacer garb and cocky grin to match. Shoving past a wan twi’lek boy, a holo-console burst into a cloud of static and sparks making him jump back. Definitely not here; away. When he remembered to check, the boy was gone. Good. Kanan isn’t in the business of saving people.
Lost and lost and lost, there are hazy memories of light and smoke and pain. But still nowhere to go. Ports and ships, stations and new worlds but none of them are ever right. If he keeps following the screams and the whispers, keeps tugging at that lifeline - life. Sometimes the screams follow rather than lead. When he gets ignored, when he gets lost. When they won’t help him get home. Sometimes they don’t get home either.
Another world and another job. Well paid for once, they were desperate for grunt workers after some poor idiot made a hyperdrive miscalculation and dropped their transport into a sun. Too bad, but the galaxy is a bitter place. None knows that better than Kanan Jarrus. Sometimes it’s less bitter for some as he make his way to the imaginatively named Asteroid’s Tail. Asteroid’s Ass, the cantina is a dive but with cheap drink and decent creds in his pocket Kanan can comfortably drink his mind empty and still afford a bed for the night.
Definitely a man now, defined and sure, it doesn’t take long for him to throw his smiles, his hips and his interest in the direction of a smiling nautolan. Three drinks deep, and his dread grows low and low in his back; five drinks in and he should have been gone, lost in drink and another’s body. Ash and watching eyes and names, and names lost somehow murmured in the crush of bodies, the shiver of the woman’s tentacles wrapped around echoes down and down his spine but not pleasantly.
A loud crash and a cacophony of yelling from the far corner of the cantina. Kanan squeezed his eyes shut, wrapping his fingers around one of the nautolan’s tentacles. Concentrate on nothing, concentrate on feeling, on now.
You’re not safe with her.
A murmur, an impossible murmur from across the cantina whispered in his ear. Dead words. Kanan’s eyes flew open, seeing only a twi’lek boy. Small, serious and too too young, a face of three. An impossible boy.
Unravelling himself from the nautolan, he stumbles away. Away. Away to anywhere, crashing and smashing echoing through the cantina as he goes.
Connected and unconnected, a boy that travels the galaxy alone, unquestioned, untouched, in places he should never be. Always following those voices, searching for that path. Again and again one voice whispering louder, running further, faster. A thread, a rope, a way. A way home. No one would run so far without knowing where, how. A boy that will do anything, everything to know.
Another job, another grubby station. Just passing through and then back, back to the Ghost. His home, now. A home and a bunk and a captain smiling at him as she goes over the the job. He’s Kanan, and he’s something approaching whole and defined, all but for that carefully boarded over hole where his past once was. And yet his fingers trace over the pieces of his lightsaber at his waist, normally buried away and hidden; he doesn’t know why he wears them today, hadn’t realised until the Ghost’s ramp was lowered, shivering in the squall of a faulty air vent.
Moving fast, efficiently, perfectly in sync, the job is a quick drop, in and out. Drop the goods, get the payment, stick it to the Empire. In and out, except for the growing dread in Kanan’s spine, the rising scent of ash and smoke and singed wool as he waits for Hera to return from finalising the job, to come home. The halls had been bare, empty, the station little more than a passing point for those running under the radar. No one stays here, not ever.
Caleb.
Flashing blue roaring bright before he knows it, spinning as his attacker pounces: a pale tooka, bristling and hissing, teeth bared. A crash, a smash, the roaring of the faulty vent. Not faulty. Kanan turns - Caleb - to see a twi’lek boy. The twi’lek boy with the face of three, wan and frowning.
Ignorance.
His lightsaber is dragged from his hand, thrown across the derelict hangar. Kanan can hear light footsteps approaching, the warmth and brightness that is Hera making her way back to the Ghost.
She’s bad luck. Cursed.
‘I won’t run. Not this time’ His body is screaming run, away, away. Run padawan.Not now, not any more. Kanan Jarrus isn’t in the business of running.
Sparks and static, crashes and shattering, torn wires and howling wind and ash and ash and ash until he chokes, falling to his knees, the tooka crouched by his hand. The twi’lek boy moving closer to the Ghost, chaos in his wake.
‘Stop, Sammo.’ Sammo, his friend, his cohort-mate. Sammo who had worried and fretted, who had defeated him sparring again and again. Sammo who had been left behind, who had still been waiting for his time at the Temple. Sammo who is, who had to be, dead. ‘Stop.’
You’re just a kid, Caleb.
‘I’m Kanan Jarrus. He- he’s dead. He died a long time ago.’ Watching eyes, cold and blue, a hangar in suspense as he waits. He’s waited so long, he’s waited a moment longer. ‘This is mine. Sammo, this is mine. The Order- everything was ruined and destroyed, they- they killed Master Billaba, but I found this. It’s mine.’ The tooka lets out a yowl as the hangar doors jerk open, Kanan’s head snapping up as Hera walks into the hangar, smile fading into a quizzical frown. The console burns, but the smell of ash has gone. The boy is gone.
‘Ready to go, love?’ There are a multitude of questions there as Kanan pulls himself up, knees sore and head pounding, spine trembling as he stoops to collect his ‘saber, quickly stowing the pieces at his waist.
‘Always.’ His hand meets Hera’s, his home, as they make their way up the ramp, small pale tooka bounding ahead of them.
Imagine a boy, one of three, one left behind. Small and untethered but tethered, tied to a galaxy that doesn’t want him. He doesn’t want it. Small in his eternity, vast in his bitterness and his loss, raging his way to nowhere, drawing back and back to a dead boy’s home.