Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Star Wars. A series of one-shots which may, or may not, connect with one another. Just scenes that I want to see, or character studies. Spoilers through "Rebels" and "Thrawn: Alliances."

Summary: The Force works in mysterious ways and the universe is both far larger and far smaller than we believe.

Notes: A scene from the Bendu's point of view after Kanan's death. Next up, Kanan talks with Ahsoka Tano.

Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight

The Bendu felt Kanan Jarrus die.

Of course, he would. With so few Jedi left, those that remained stood out like stars on a clear night.

But Jarrus' death had been…unexpected with surprising consequences. Instead of a little more darkness left in the wake of his passing, all the Bendu saw was light. A thousand strands of light led towards the blind Jedi at the moment of his death and a thousand branched away from him instead of ending, rippling outwards after he was gone; different, changed, clearer and more beautiful.

And at its center, a pivot around which one wheel of history turned perfectly, stood Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight.

The Bendu watched the light around the Jedi grow. He watched the woman, Hera, survive from his efforts and he followed her path through the Rebel Alliance and the Force sensitive child she would have.

He followed the boy, Ezra Bridger, as he became a Jedi Knight, the branching lines that led to the Imperial Thrawn's defeat, Ahsoka Tano's survival, and the planet Lothal's purification.

He watched the Mandalorians, the bright Sabine Wren and the fierce Bo-Katan Kryze, as they drove the Empire back.

He watched the Lasat warrior, Zeb, and his unerring path towards the Rebel spy, Kallus, and the rebuilding of the Lasat people.

He watched lines leading to Jedi he had never met and worlds he had never seen.

The course of history was changed at Lothal by what Kanan Jarrus did, by the moment he found, by the events he set in motion. And the future he created was the Will of the Force and immeasurably brighter than even the Bendu had foreseen.

He had seen Thrawn's defeat but not how it would come about. He had seen the Empire lose, the Sith destroyed at last, but not the first steps which would lead to their decline.

He had missed so much of the picture, yet truly the Force worked in marvelous ways and Kanan Jarrus had seen what he had not.

He had listened to the Force and heard its call. He had been where he needed to be, in the moment he had needed to be there. It had never been about him and what he wanted, but about how many lives he could change for the better through his actions.

When the last light from the dying star of a Jedi faded away in the Bendu's sight – ripples spreading out into the universe like waves on a still pond – he could still feel the Jedi's presence, echoes sounding long after he was gone.

A large echo – the howl of a wolf – resided still on Lothal, to guide the Padawan he had left behind.

The Bendu looked around him at the dark, silent landscape of Atollon. Things had been quiet since the Jedi – and his warmongering friends – had left.

The winds whispered through the caves and over the empty, dry ground. The spiders murmured and found and mated amongst themselves, unconcerned with the Bendu. The stars carried on their dance without him. In fact, the galaxy carried on without him.

It had been peaceful before the Jedi. It had felt right to watch the centuries turn and the same story repeat over and over. It did not matter if he intervened or not. But now, since the Jedi, the Bendu's existence felt…lonely.

The only time he had felt truly part of the Force in many years, part of that cosmic dance, was when he brought the storm to Rebels and Imperials alike and halted the Imperial Admiral's complete annihilation of Kanan Jarrus and his friends.

The Imperial Admiral was an interesting convergence in the Force – light and dark, friend and foe, past and future – and the Bendu had enjoyed the glimpse he had seen of the Admiral's fate. He would end where he began, as all living beings must, but which the Admiral feared.

But then the Admiral was gone, and Kanan Jarrus was gone, and the Bendu was alone. "I am the grey," he told himself again, as he once told Jarrus. "I am the balance, and I neither help nor hinder."

But the words seemed hollower than ever. He had felt pity and compassion floweing towards him from the Jedi when he had explained to the young blind man how balance worked, how the Force cared not for light or dark. Pity! From a being whose existence was a mere eyeblink to the Bendu, and whose kind had left the galaxy in darkness.

He neither helped nor hindered. He was both light and dark. He was the balance at the center.

'I told myself the galaxy would go on with or without me,' the Force whispered in the Jedi's voice.

'But when I saw innocents suffering I couldn't just watch it all burn down around me,' the wind insisted.

'Some things are worth fighting for!' The spiders crackled as they formed a semi-circle around him, like a rowdy, carnivorous council meeting.

The Bendu roared and the sky rent apart with lightning. The spiders scattered, and the thunder rumbled the Bendu's displeasure. After the storm passed and Atollon gradually quieted again, the Bendu sighed.

What type of creature reached out beyond death to offer guidance to one who had last sought his destruction? The Bendu silently asked the Force.

"Kanan Jarrus. Jedi Knight," he said wryly, to the wind and the rain and caves. And the Force joined in echoes around his voice.

He remembered a Jedi Grand Master from long ago, weary from battle, ravaged by grief, and fierce as she stared calmly up at him. "Balance isn't good and evil in equal measure," she had said, knowing he was humoring her by listening, that he wouldn't take any of her words to heart, and trying anyway. "It is peace and freedom," she'd insisted, "with a little bit of danger and a little bit of struggle. It is looking outwards towards the lives around us and sometimes looking within us towards what we want and need. It is…" she'd flashed him a mischievous smile than, so at odds with her tired face, "mostly vegetables with a little bit of Braboli and a nice Ryborean gax to wash it down."

She had stood then to look up at him earnestly. "Balance is more complicated than standing in the middle."

She had left him then and he had never seen her again. But the ripples of her subsequent actions continued to flow outwards and he still saw her very presence all around him. She would have been proud of Kanan Jarrus.

The Bendu sighed. It had been many years, millenia, but perhaps – just perhaps – he should seek answers beyond what he had always known? Perhaps he should see what had become of the galaxy in his absence? Or follow the purrgil to the edge of the unknown?

There was a faint stir of excitement inside him at the thought. "That's what comes of messing with Jedi," he grumbled to himself. "A longing for adventure. At my age." He shook his head as though to talk himself out of it. "Nothing good," he decided, even as he knew he was going…somewhere. "Nothing good at all," he finished severely.

But he was smiling even as he grumbled. And he had the strangest feeling the stars were laughing with him.