KNOCK FIRST

by ardavenport

Eyes flying opening, Kanan gasped.

The ceiling above was too low, gray and metalloid. What happened? Rooms didn't shrink. Had it collapsed? How could a disaster like that ever happen? It was impossible. He sat up, looking around wildly. He hadn't heard anything. How could anything like this happen to the Jedi Temple . . . ?

Kanan Jarrus hastily stopped himself from falling out of his bunk. His eyes darted around his plain gray cabin on the Ghost as if looking for a way out. His brain slowly caught up to the present and fell into his current reality.

A tear leaked down his cheek.

He had not dreamed about living in the Jedi Temple in years.

No Temple. No Master Billaba. No Republic. No Jedi.

The deadening cushion of time and distance vanished, exposing the memories. His throat tightened. Another tear ran down his cheek. Shirtless, wearing only loose pants for sleep, he sat up, bare feet on the cool deck. The ship was quiet, no hum of engines. The air was different, scented with sand and heat. They were planetside, at Chopper Base that was still being set up by the Rebels.

It had to be the vision he experienced back in the Jedi Temple on Lothal that brought it on. Was he a Knight now? Could a vision in the Force bestow that upon him? He hung his head down, eyes shut, squeezing out more tears.

Yes, it could. He felt it. If only his Master . . . .

Bending forward, Kanan covered his face with his hands. He had gotten good at passing over that loss. He did not talk about it with other people. He did not talk about it with himself. But it was different this time.

She should have been there, when he was Knighted. She should have been part of it. There was knowledge that two Knights shared that was never discussed between Master and Padawan. And despite his Jedi vows to disdain all attachments, Kanan still craved the advice, the friendship of his long dead Master.

She should have been there. . . .

Hssssss-sssttt.

"Kanan, you told me - - - "

Kanan looked up at Ezra Bridger, coming through the opened door of his cabin.

" - - - that your holocron ha - - - "

Ezra froze.

The flare of anger inside Kanan died, perversely extinguished by an intense satisfaction at the look of terror in his student's eyes.

He dropped his head, exhaling. Neither anger nor fear was acceptable for a Master. A Jedi Knight. He pushed himself up off the bunk and crossed the cabin. Ezra remained fixed in place, but his wide blue eyes followed him. Kanan retrieved flimsy cloths from a small storage of personal items, blew his nose and wiped his face with them.

Ezra still hadn't moved, caught between wanting to flee and stay.

Fine.

Kanan went to the door, conspicuously walking around Ezra, and hit the switch on the wall. It hissed closed. No reason for everyone else on board to see him falling apart.

Going back to his bunk, Kanan sat down, closed his eyes and took a long calming breath. It helped a little.

The Temple. He thought he was in the Jedi Temple . . . . The memory pierced him. He held it out from himself. Detaching . . . . It was a dream. . . . Fading . . . like the rest of it. A dream . . . .

. . . . Running with Sabine and Zeb through the great halls of the Temple, being chased by giant multi-leggers. Kanan - - no, he was Caleb then - - and his Master and two other Padawans that he had never gotten along well with and had not thought of in years chopped them up, lightsabers flashing. Long legs flying everywhere and the remaining central bodies still pulsing and wriggling toward them and Sabine kept yelling 'Eyes! Eyes!' and shooting but only hitting them one out of every ten shots and they would pop and splatter black when the energy bolts hit them and then Zeb picked up a leg from the huge piles, took a bite and declared them tasty but they needed more sauce and there wasn't enough even though there was a great vat of red-sauce nearby bubbling and spilling onto the hall's patterned floor and it looked like Human blood which made Caleb feel ill, and someone sent Chopper to clean it up, which meant it wasn't going to get cleaned up at all. Blood on the Jedi Temple floors. Everywhere on the way to his room . . . .

. . . . A dream . . . . A dream . . . .

Strange how a person always believed what happens in the moment of dreams, no matter what mish-mash of events were in them.

Ezra was fidgeting.

Without moving, Kanan finally ended the wait with a curt, one-word demand.

"What?"

"Hunh?"

Kanan took another deep calming breath.

"What did you need to talk to me about this early that couldn't wait for you to knock first?"

Ezra was careless about knocking, but this time he had outdone himself with his bad timing.

"Uuuuh, uuuuh."

Another flush of satisfaction passed through him and Kanan did not feel guilty about it at all. It was said that tears were the weapon of actors, poets and other professional manipulators. He was not about to trade in his blaster or lightsaber, but Kanan could see how they might be effective.

Ezra had obviously forgotten what he had come in for, but he had not completely lost his voice.

"Uh, um, are you okay?"

Opening one eye, then the other, Kanan was rewarded by the sight of a suitably contrite cringe from his both too young and too old apprentice.

"No. But I'll get over it."

He never would have willingly invited Ezra to see an emotional crisis, but that pride of Loth cats had already jumped out of the box, so he would settle for making this as uncomfortable a lesson as possible.

"Oh, ah, okay. I mean, you didn't look so good a minute ago . . . and I guess I thought I'd ask . . . . I mean, if you want to talk about it."

Kanan could not think of anything that he would less want to talk about with anyone.

"No. I don't want to talk about it."

That statement got a more normal reaction out of the kid. "Well, why not? I mean whatever's bothering you, it looks like it's pretty important to get you all upset like - - "

"I am not upset!"

" - - like that. You never talk to me about anything important."

Ezra's confusion had dissolved into petulance. The lesson was not going as planned.

"Really? I don't talk? What about you?"

Ezra put a hand on his chest as if he was innocent. "Me?"

"Yeah. Do you ever tell me about living on Lothal with your parents? What they were like? Dreaming about being in their house and then waking up and finding out it's all gone?!" He was yelling at the end and he did not mean to.

Ezra flinched back, but he did not lose his purpose this time. "Well, no I guess not. That would be . . . . pretty hard . . . ." Then his dark brows lowered with a look of confusion. "Wait. You were dreaming about being in my house with my parents?"

"No!" He meant to yell that time.

Backing up a pace, Ezra took another moment to catch up.

"You, you were dreaming about when you were with the Jedi?"

Kanan turned his head away, an admission as good as a spoken word.

"But, isn't that good?"

'Good?' Kanan mouthed, a little appalled.

"Yeah! If it was about the Jedi, maybe it was a vision." he exclaimed with far too much enthusiasm. "What was it about?"

Zeb eating. Sabine yelling. Chopper not cleaning not-blood. If that was a vision, then the Force was broken.

"It wasn't a vision!"

"Well, how do you know? Maybe you don't know. Maybe if you tell me, we could figure it out what it means."

"It doesn't mean anything, Ezra. There's nothing to figure out. It wasn't a vision!"

Ezra drew back, his face suddenly serious. "It made you cry."

Kanan was speechless. Ezra stood before him, out of reach and fully dressed in his usual clothes. Kanan was sitting on his bunk in his underwear. He turned his head away again.

The lesson was definitely not going as planned. "Is this what you came here for?"

"No."

Eyes lowered Kanan did not look back until Ezra surrendered this time.

"I was thinking, if we're going to Malachor when Ahsoka gets back, maybe we should get as much information about it as we can before going. Maybe there's something about it in your holocron."

Kanan sat up. That was not a bad idea. Collect as much intel as they could before going there. But . . . . He shook his head. "There's not going to be anything about Malachor in the holocron. The only information the Jedi had about the Sith was kept in the Archives. And only Jedi Masters were allowed to see it."

"Well, have you checked?" Ezra queried, undeterred.

Kanan shook his head. Why would he look for Sith information in his dead Master's holocron? But the Jedi Archives were gone; where else did they have to look? He turned and reached for the holocron by his bunk.

Ezra came forward and plunked himself down on the bunk next to him. Kanan grit his teeth. But the kid didn't knock; why shouldn't he make himself at home, too?

Sitting for a moment with the holocron cupped in his hands in his lap, with Ezra eagerly peering down at it, Kanan did not feel his mind quieting enough to fully reach out to the Force to open it. The holocron reminded him too much of his Master, the Jedi Temple. Aside from his lightsaber, it was his most tangible connection to them.

Ezra started fidgeting again.

So, Kanan did what he now realize all Jedi Masters must have done when they might not feel up to a demonstration. They gave it to their apprentices to do as a 'lesson'. He held the holocron up under Ezra's nose, startling him.

"You open it."

"Uh, okay." He carefully took the Jedi artifact in both hands, took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Kanan had to admit that the kid had gotten pretty good at quieting his mind enough to open the holocron. It came naturally to him.

The center of the holocron glowed pale blue, its edges shifting as it rose above Ezra's palms.

"Uh, what am I looking for?"

"Malachor."

"Yeah, I know that. But I don't know anything about it. You said it was a place, but that's kind of vague."

"It's a Sith planet. One they ruled and destroyed. Think of . . . think of some place that an Inquisitor might want to vacation at."

Ezra's lip curled and one critical eye cracked open, but he closed it and breathed deeply, refocusing on the holocron. Images above it appeared and shifted. Stars, spinning planets zooming large and then just as rapidly falling back into the ethereal cosmos. After dozens of them passed Ezra's patience ran thin. He was not a natural with that.

"There's nothing here."

"I'm not surprised. I seriously doubt that Master Billaba would have given me a holocron loaded with information about the Sith."

Ezra wasn't quite willing to give up. "Well, there must be something here. Give me something to go on. What do you know about the Sith?"

"Everything you need to know about the Sith is in what you feel whenever we face any of the Inquisitors."

Ezra looked like he had just eaten something sour. The images came faster. Planets, buildings, stars, comets. Some of them were fleetingly familiar from Kanan's long ago Jedi training.

The images slowed. Then focused on an approaching star that grew large, passing out of the holo-image. And a planet with a dark surface covered with lights in big clusters and long strings.

. . . oh, no . . .

The planet surface grew large, resolving into a familiar approach over an endless city plane.

. . . leave it to Ezra . . .

An enormous, flattened pyramid filled the holo-volume, five slender towers rising from the center and four corners. Ezra opened his blue eyes wide.

"Whooooaaa."

Kanan looked away.

No. He had to look.

Calming his own mind, Kanan looked at the image of the past.

"Is that the Jedi Temple? Like . . . .where you grew up?"

"Yes." Only the mildest surprise disturbed Kanan's calm now when only a short time ago a crazy dream about this place had plunged him into emotional chaos. He reached out, palms upward and Ezra let the holocron come to him, the glow drifting gently over his hands. The view zoomed in and out, tiny figures on the roof giving it a scale that showed how immense the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was.

"Why would the holocron show me that when I was thinking about Inquistors?"

"Because the Temple fell. It belongs to the Sith now." After fifteen years of Sith rule, the Temple could be so thoroughly defiled that Jedi would never use it again. He did not know. He had no ambition to find out.

"It's so unfair. That they took your home like that."

"It's not my home anymore, Ezra. It's gone." He let go of the Force. The image vanished back into the holocron that fell into its inert cube shape, into his hands. He rubbed its patterned surface. It always felt very slightly, reassuringly warm.

"It's the Jedi way to have no attachments and no possessions. If something is lost, you walk away from it. And you don't look back."

"But you can't just forget."

"Letting go isn't the same as forgetting. You can remember the past. Learn from it." He held up the holocron with a sad smile. "That's what these are for. But you don't cling to it. You don't try to own it. You move forward. If all you do is hang onto the past, you won't have any room for anything new."

Ezra lowered his eyes. "Yeah. I think I get that," he said quietly after a long pause.

Kanan was not sure what he 'got', but there was still time to reinforce the lesson.

"And since you're so eager this morning, I think we should get in a little training. Especially before Ahsoka gets here." He had said to the vision that had Knighted him back in the Jedi Temple on Lothal as it fell to the Inquistors that he would train Ezra as best he could. And he would. It was all he could do.

"Oh. Ah, yeah." Suddenly Ezra looked a bit less eager, but still willing enough. "What do we - - ?"

"After I get dressed." Kanan held his hands up, demonstrating the obvious that he had still shirtless.

"Oh, yeah." Ezra jumped up. "I'll-I'll just wait outside." He turned to the door.

"Oh, and Ezra . . ."

He stopped and Kanan stood, looking down on his student.

"Next time you want to come in here with a brilliant question, knock first."

o o o END o o o

Disclaimer: This story first posted on tf.n on - - - . All characters and the Star Wars universe belong to Disney/Lucasfilm; I am just playing in their sandbox.