61

A FORCE leap would not save him.

His lightsaber would not save him.

Nothing would save him.

Kanan stared downwards in terror as the ice beneath him shifted and splintered to pieces. He realized instantly that, in the next five seconds, he would meet a dark, freezing, and watery death.

So this was it.

This was how it all ended.

When Kanan Jarrus had joined the rebellion, he had always known what lay at the end of such a treacherous path: death. And not only his own - many deaths, the deaths of innocents. Whether he succeeded or failed, people would inevitably die because of the choices he and his rebel cell made.

But that was all for the survival of millions more.

Long before that time, during Order 66, Kanan had believed that he would die, along with thousands of other Force-sensitives in the Republic. On Cynda, he had believed that the mildly psychopathic conspiracy theorist and explosives expert he'd been forced to cooperate with would blow him sky high. Thousands and thousands more times, Kanan had thought he knew how he would die: shot full of holes, tortured to death, crushed, talked to death by a Gungan, ejected into the lifeless vacuum of space, vaporized, dropped into acid, eaten or sat on by a wampa, dissected by a lightsaber, or, perhaps most of all, blown up.

But no.

Kanan was fated to die failing at his most important mission of all: getting Ezra back home, safe and sound.

And that was the worst death he could ever possibly imagine.

~

Ezra Bridger groaned softly. He shook his head in an effort to clear it as he slowly propped himself up on his thickly gloved palms, then looked up.

The first thing he saw was the Jedi he had been sent to eradicate standing on a broad patch of rapidly crumbling ice.

Ezra's azure gaze locked onto that sight, and time suddenly ground to a screeching halt.

Excellent. My mission is complete.

No... not.. him!

Silence. This is your duty. This man is a stranger, a Jedi, your mortal enemy. And your duty is to watch him die.

A blistering agony seized hold of Ezra's brain with an unrelenting iron grip. He cried out and gripped at his pounding head.

I need to help him!

NO, YOU DON'T!

He ISN'T A STRANGER!

WATCH HIM DIE!

"NO!" Ezra screamed, leaping to his feet and breaking into a stumbling sprint across the ice before he even knew what he was doing. "KANAN!"

Out of nowhere, an incredibly powerful force of brute strength crashed into Kanan's side. He was hurled out of the way and collided hard into safe ice.

With a muddled groan of pain, Kanan raised his dazed head just in time to witness Ezra standing where he had been but a moment before. Ezra stared straight at him, and Kanan would see tears streaming down his face beneath the visor of the boy's helmet.

And in the very next instant, the ice shattered... and Ezra was gone.

Gone...

"NO!" Kanan barely felt the pain of Ezra's hard shove or the violent gust of shard-flinging wind as the Inquisitor's freighter pulled away and soared off into the black sky. "Ezra- Ezra!" He scrambled over to the jagged edge of the hole that had swallowed up his Padawan. He stared into the dark depths, trembling, eyes blurred by stinging tears. The only sign that Ezra had just vanished forever was a tiny, fading ripple. "EZRA!"

Kanan squeezed his eyes shut.

"No.." he whimpered.

My Padawan.

My friend.

My son.

The journey, the desperate search for Ezra, was over.

But he had never thought that it would end like this.

Ezra would die so quickly down there.

Anyone would.

The water was indescribably freezing, and incredibly deep.

But none of those facts at all mattered to Kanan except for the first.

In he dove.