"You'll learn to see again."

He wished he hadn't taken Bendu's phrase literally. But in that moment, the prospect was so tempting, so easy, that he couldn't stop himself from thinking the impossible, couldn't stop himself from hoping for it. But he wasn't going to get his sight back.

He never could.

The thing about being a Jedi, the thing that he had forgotten, was that he didn't need his sight to see. He could sense the life around him. He could feel the tiny air currents that bounced back to him when he moved too close to a solid object like a wall or a tall chair. He could sense dangers that loomed, like a barrage of blaster bolts headed toward him.

The last was somewhat comforting. And not just in a handy-trick-to-stay-alive type way, but more in a remembering-being-taught-this-exact-same-thing-as-a-youngling type way. He had been trained to trust the Force over his eyes. But, as a soldier, he had also been trained to trust his eyes.

And losing them was hard.

He still had his eyes, though they were apparently a clouded blue-white instead of the piercing bright green they had been before. Had he been a part of the Empire, he might have been able to get bionic eyes to replace his, like the one that the clone, Wolfe, had. But he wasn't a part of the Empire, he was a part of the small and limited Rebellion, and so he didn't have access to that kind of medical technology. The medics had done everything they could though, trying everything they could think of to restore his sight, but they didn't have the resources. So they did the best they could for him, rebuilding his eyes so that they were spherical once again, replacing the part of them that had been cut away by Maul's evil blade. And then, after many bacta treatments, they didn't hurt anymore. The medics had reconstructed the bridge of his nose and his eyelids, too, hoping to help him feel as normal as possible. He hadn't even scarred that much. When his fingers explored the wounded parts of his face, he barely felt anything different. The skin did have a slightly waxier feel, though, and he was told that there was a darker discoloration around his eyes, but it wasn't that bad. He didn't know how much he believed them, but he appreciated that he at least looked human. He appreciated that he didn't look as irrevocably broken as he felt, but he covered his wounds anyway, hiding them from the world.

He lost touch with the Force soon after losing his sight. The blanket of nothingness was too thick, too heavy, too oppressive. He spiraled down into it, devoid as it was of any hand- or footholds, anything he could use to climb back out. His family wasn't there for him, either. His mind knew they were on missions, that they didn't want to leave him, but there was a small part of him that argued against that thought, saying that they did want to leave him, to get away from the helpless shell of the man that they used to know. And with every passing day that he was left alone to meditate – or, more likely, to sit in a meditative position as he fell ever deeper into his hopeless depression – that piece of him grew.

But now… now, he might have a chance to be that man again, to fight alongside his family and make them proud of him again. He would just have to learn to do it in a slightly different way. And that rekindled the fire in his breast that had almost gone out.