1/2!
Being unable to find Samantha had shaken Jacob - which was a massive understatement, because shaken sounded like something mildly annoying at most, like when his mom would shake him awake the few times he’d sleep through his alarm or turned it off and fell asleep, on mornings when he’d been out late because it wasn’t late on the other side of the world, and he’d forget and then sleep in too late and miss his first classes and Mom would come in and shake him awake... and this, this was nothing like that at all, this was like a ten on the Richter scale. Yet to be recorded, he remembered reading, studying earthquakes in school, there had been a chart of information on the scale, and it said there had never been a ten on record before, and that’s how this felt - this was the worst thing that could happen, worst thing that ever had happened.
He’d never lost anyone, before. He didn’t know what to do with that, wouldn’t have even if it hadn’t been Sam. He should have been able to do something to stop it, he was sure - heard her call for help, something, even if he couldn’t feel her distress in the Force (and for the millionth time he wished he was like the normal Jedi, who could sense things without trying, without having to focus on yet another enhanced sense when he was already running thisclose to sensory overload; if he’d been normal like James and Izzy, like everyone else, he would have known she was in trouble, he could have done something).
This, this was why he didn’t want to do what his father did. He hadn’t put much thought into it, before, had just brushed it off as a maybe someday, maybe after college, maybe... - but now, he got it, he understood why he’d never felt that spark of this is what I should be doing that he could see in his father, when he went out to help people. Jacob couldn’t handle this sort of thing, this feeling of failure. He couldn’t be a superhero if he couldn’t even keep his best friend safe; if he couldn’t even stop people from getting hurt in their own kitchens.
He’d almost lost it, after he’d left his mom’s apartment, no plan ever really made other than permission for him to help, and he’d been so frustrated, so panicked, he’d needed to do something. There had been a long, blurring moment where everything felt stifling and loud, too close and too intense and too empty and he’d just wanted to tear everything apart, convinced for one blinding second that it was the solution - that if he did, he could fix this, find her, and then everything would be okay. The destructive darkness had passed almost as soon as it had come over him, and left him even more weary without that extra surge of energy. He’d almost fallen out of the air, still making another attempt, senses all straining for her and he’d gotten dizzyingly tired, dropped about fifty feet before he caught himself and brought himself safely to the ground, legs collapsing when he tried to stand.