Chapter 1: Confrontation
"I'm sorry." Ezra's voice cuts through the taut stillness of the locked room. "I wish I had better to give you, Kanan, I really do. I know that those words coming out of my mouth are probably the last thing in the entire kriffing Galatic Rim that you want to hear. But right now they're all that I've got: one of the two truths left that circumscribe my present galaxy. So I'm. Karking. Sorry. Kanan. Jarrus. I just wanted to make that absolutely clear."
"Ezra, let me out of this room." Kanan's voice it tight, but the pressure in his mind isn't panic. Instead, his whole body feels like the leading edge of an oncoming thunder storm: a slow-moving wave of building power and fury. It is in both of their interests for his Padawan to let him out of here, and *quickly*, before he loses his temper and cracks open the festering magma chamber in his chest irreversibly.
"I wouldn't even if I could, Master. Which I can't at the moment." Ezra's voice is soft – apologetic, but it's also eerily clear. The voice of someone who knows that his last dance at the Great Ball is done and over, and now it's time to settle up with the piper. Kanan's *not* unaware of the irony of his brain attaching to that particular analogy.
"Chopper's the only one with the passcode to this place right now, Kanan. The only one who specifically even knows where we are beyond 'out clearing the air.' Hera provided the shuttle that got you here, yeah, but then that's hardly surprising, given how often she's been hinting that it is time for us to talk. Still, she more condoned than arranged any of the specifics of this."
Kanan can hear booted footsteps coming toward him, where he currently stands in the warehouse's double wide entrance– Ezra takes another deep breath before he speaks again, sounding weary and apologetic beyond his twenty years. "I'm also sorry this took so long for me to arrange, Master, given how much we both know you've been hurting and how badly it was needed. If I could've I would've figured out a way arrange for this sooner. But then I guess we both know we don't always get what we want from this life. Hell, that's just being alive in general, in my personal experience."
Kanan hears the light rustle of fabric then - of something heavy but soft landing on the cement floor to his Padawan's left. It's probably the new winter coat that Hera keeps trying to shove the kid into whenever he manages to leave the Ghost ever since they returned to Lothal, even though there is no need for Ezra to wear it on planet this far into spring. It always makes Hera feel better when Ezra puts it on, though, and so he wears it without struggle or comment when Hera's there to pester him. It is, Kanan knows, just one of several dozen small ways that the Kid keeps asking forgiveness, when he didn't bother to ask permission.
Frankly the meekness implied in the constant gesture on Ezra's part makes Kanan want to put a boot in his ass.
Hera'd been terrified at first, after both of Ezra's bilateral kidney transplants had been successful, of post-surgical infection or the onset of organ rejection. That worst case scenario hadn't occurred, thank Force…probably because they'd been able to clone with tissue from his own badly lacerated organs, but it doesn't make his lover's lingering paranoia about such things happening feel any less. The last nine months after all have been absolutely brutal for all of them.
There's the further squeaky sound of leather and rubber a dozen meters out in front of him as his Padawan bends down to - wait a minute - is he actually untying and removing both of his shoes like they're in some kind of common training salle? The kid speaks without looking up from his boots as he continues untying them.
"So – just for the record, they cleared me in medical two days ago –" One boot and then the other skids with a screech across floor, thudding into the wall closest to Kanan's left side. "And I'm supposed to officially report back to active duty at ten a.m. on Monday morning: Though I'm not sure to which squadron yet. Apparently, there are a few folks in Command Staff still arguing with eachother over that particular subject..."
Before Ezra can finish his sentence Kanan finds himself in motion - rushing forward with a strength and speed he doesn't even consciously process as he catches his Padawan with a fist in the fabric of his tunic and slams the younger man into the nearest bulkhead.
"How. Dare. You." Kanan literally shakes the twenty year old- his face and voice a maelstrom of grief, fear and anger...
"Kanan…"
Ezra tries again.
He slams him again. "How. Force. Karking. Dare. You. Ezra Bridger!"
Kanan's breath is heaving now in both terror and rage. For thirteen and a half months he had thought – they had thought that Ezra was *lost*…
"How dare you do what you did to all of us - to me!"
Actually technically speaking it had been even longer than thirteen months, if Kanan were to go strictly by numbers. It had been eighteen months now since his Padawan had first slipped away in the middle of the night and silently gone undercover, while Kanan and the rest of the Spectre crew had been left scrambling around in the dark - confused and gutted and ignorant to the reality of his Sith damned *top secret mission.* Left to a rebellion command staff that hadn't known or had chosen to say nothing.
And now eight and half weeks after his real mission had been out, six weeks after they'd recovered his dying body from a filthy hotel room two critical major surgeries to save his life later - now was when Ezra was finally apologizing for what had happened!?
"How. Dare. You." Kanan growls the words yet again.
"I'm Sorry, Master." Ezra's voice is soft – apologetic as he repeats the entreaty. It's not enough. Not after the sheer hell that the group of them have all been through in the last year and a half. Not after the way that Hera cried, and Sabine had destroyed several of her most treasured personal paintings, not after Kanan's own grasp on both his hope and his sanity had slowly splintered under the agony like a weak pane of spider-webbing glass.
Force, Kanan's still so angry – so wrecked, that his arms are literally shaking with the emotion. He shakes his padawan briefly like a ragdoll. Ezra just accepts it limply. "Do you have *any idea*, what we all thought, Ezra? When you just disappeared and the rumors started circulating they'd found a vessel with your lightsaber still on board adrift in space. Do you grasp what you nearly let those *morons* take away from all of us?"
"Yes. I do. That's why we're *here* Kanan. Because I know exactly what I did and what it meant to the rest of you. And now you… need to do whatever it is you need to do to settle up my tab so you'll be able to move on – before you literally drown in your own anger. I screwed up Kanan, and I know it, and I deserve whatever it is you think that I have coming so take your best karking shot already. Settle up and get us both free of this mess."
And Kanan pulls him back slightly, slams him back against the wall harder. Because this? This force damned disregard for danger? Ezra's complete ease with the concept of using himself as both the sacrificial altar and its almost inevitable victim? *This is the problem.* This is what led all of them to this moment in the first place.
So Kanan goes for explicit: tries to use slow and simple words, because really what does he have to lose any more as he finally lets the fury bubble up and out of his chest, accompanying each burst of words with a harsh shove of Ezra's back against the ceramacrete behind him as Kanan speaks - no outright hisses - the next words at him.
"Stop being -thump!- so damn careless -thump!- with the life of -thump- my Padawan, Ezra Bridger! -thump! thump!- Stop endangering – thump- And devaluing.-thump!- my kid!"
Force now he's practically hyperventilating he's so incandescently livid, but if he could be Kanan would also probably be *weeping* right now - and apparently he's no longer alone in that extremity of emotion. Ezra is crying as well- silently, and like his own heart is either similarly broken or breaking. Well good: that means that he's *finally* got his Padawan's undivided attention for sure. It's time then, to put it to good use - because as outside his norm as this side of his temper normally is, Kanan is *not* living through this kind of nightmare again.
So he moves into Ezra even more - close enough that the two of them are nearly standing nose to nose - until he can feel the slow in and out exhalation of every puff of Ezra's ragged breathing, and when he speaks his words are in equal measures both a promise and a threat. "Pull that kind of banthashit ever again within my arm's reach, Kid and I will literally *whup your ass*. You'll go back on active duty when you're dead! Do you get me, Ezra?! Or do I need to try and say it in another couple damn languages? Because I can if I have to. I know at least seven."
"We're clear." Ezra gasps out. "I hear you, Kanan. I understand and like I said, I'm sorry. I just…there weren't any other viable options when I left. I just couldn't find any functional way around it. My departure was necesssary."
Kanan drops him to the ground, ice in his lungs freezing over at the comment. "You actually mean that." He says and he can also feel it in his gut and his chest . Beneath Ezra's guilt, there's a deeper undercurrent of conviction - of assurance that Ezra had been right to leave, had been *justified* in doing it. That feeling of moral righteousness in his Padawan is absolutely steadfast and terrifying because of what it almost certainly means. There is something big here none of the rest of the Ghost crew understand yet. Something lurking in the shadow's just waiting to pounce on all of them again.
"Yes." His padawan's voice is still scratchy with tears, but his tone is unapologetic. "It was necessary. I'm sorry that it happened, Kanan, and sorry that it hurt you all so much. But I would absolutely go back and do it all again if I were to find myself in the same position again."
Kanan growls low in his throat then because there's only one thing for him *to* say in a moment like this. He points a demanding finger. "You have exactly five seconds, Kid, to open your mouth and start spilling like you should have from the first. And I mean everything Ezra. Absolutely everything." His Padawan has got five seconds maximum to start using the sense he should have used from the very beginning.
"I have a brother." Ezra speaks so quietly that Kanan almost can't hear him to begin with. Then he murmurs, "And he's truth two at the moment."
"What?" Kanan asks the question more to verify he'd heard it at all than for any request for more volume or greater clarification.
"I. have. a. brother." Ezra repeats. His knees are pulled up to his chest now, his face more than half buried in his arms. "Major Sanders…the guy who recuited me into the role on Corellia...he got me on board in the first place by coming to me with incontrovertible proof of both his potential endangerment and his existence."
"Proof?" Kanan repeats.
"Imperial birth records." Ezra chokes, "And a couple delivery room pre and post birth monitoring videos. Baby boy Bridger, birth parents Mira and Ephraim, incarcerated political prisoners of the Empire. He was born almost two years before the escape attempt that ultimately caused both of my parents' deaths."
Kanan's brain literally reels at the news, upright dominoes in his mind suddenly collapsing downward loudly into new and totally different spreads and configurations, but Ezra hasn't stopped talking, instead he has his hand up and clenched in his hair and he's trying to regulate his ragged breathing as he continues speaking. "They took him from them at birth and he was shoved directly into the Imperial fostering system. They didn't even let them give him a *name,* Kanan. I have no clue what to even *call* him which is driving me insane. He - his Midiclorian levels were noted at birth as elevated just like mine probably were apparently - I know my parents got mine removed from the system, and he was flagged for further testing between ages five and seven. He's about five and a half now.
Ezra gulps in a deep breath, raising his face at last. " That's *why* I…" He shakes his head, "Sanders said if I made it into the topmost tier of the Imp Data group on Corellia with my cover still intact then I'd likely get database access at a high enough priority to find out where they sent him after he was taken from the prison. I couldn't save my parents but I have a *brother* Kanan and I have to try and find him…"
Of course Ezra does. That's just the nature of the whole situation. And Kanan doesn't doubt for a second that the banthashit Sanders knew it. It doesn't make Ezra's agreement to take the job any less stupid, mind you, but it does make it more…understandable? He'd been a victim of straight of tactical psychological manipulation. "Why didn't you come to the rest of us with this right from the start. We would have helped you." Ezra had to have known that. He had to.
"There was no time." Ezra all but groans. "Sanders warned me that there was a tight, tight window of opportunity for a post infiltration if I wanted to do it at all. I either went in right away while there was a slot open in one of the lower tiers or Imperial Data services would note the delay and there would be…a lot of unpleasantness. Which could have made it next to impossible for years to find another road in." Ezra draws in a deep breath again, lets it out, "My brother, Kanan. If his force potential really manifests and his latent force gifts start to swarm like mine did at around the same age - if someone from Inquisitorius or Imperial Security Forces were to catch wind of it-"
Force the kid is so worked up right now from fear of the possibilities of what could happen that he's nearly hyperventilating just thinking about all of them. Kanan reaches out to put a hand on Ezra's shoulder, applies a liberal burst of calming Force Suggestion, "Kid I need you to pause for a moment okay, and just take a deep breath." While Kanan tries for a moment to wrap his mind around their actual current situation.
Damn it if Major Sanders from IntServ were still alive at present then Kanan would be punching him right between the eyes, and then dragging the man's ass home to Hera. He's pretty sure that Phoenix Sqadron;s Captain would have had her own thoughts on how to justly handle this, and that it would have involved a multitude of small bloody pieces.
"What do we know from the information they've decoded from the data center so far?" Kanan's use of the world 'we' is emphasized and deliberate it this particular context. Damn right it's gonna be 'we' from here on out. This is unquestionably now *family business,* a point he's pretty sure he literally just pounded right into the kid's stubborn head.
"I was able to trace the records right before …before I got myself out of the Data Center about 9 weeks ago. My brother went from the prison medlab to a foster placement service that also arranges long term guardianships for wards of the Empire with less than a day." Ezra finally lifts his head from his knees, draws a deep breath, and continues speaking. "As I said I'm supposed to be reporting for duty on Monday, Kanan, but as soon as I do I'm only going to be staying long enough to turn in my immediate resignation. Because as soon as passage can possibly be safely arranged back into the Imperial Core, I have to get to Capitol City and that Service's main offices on Coruscant."
Kanan growls down at him in response, bearing his teeth just a little. "Rethink your pronouns there, Kid, regarding who's going to be involved in this little ongoing rescue mission, unless you're actively looking for the round two of this talk previously mentioned.."
"Hey, at least I'm giving fair warning this time. You've gotta at least give me that much, Kanan."
"The only thing I'm going to give you if you keep talking so stupid, Ezra is a kick to the *ass.* You are not going to Capital City...or anywhere in the central planet belts alone again while we sit and twiddle our thumbs waiting for you to stumble back home with a five year old. The rest of us are all getting a choice on whether or not we will be coming with you."
"It's CORUSCANT Kanan. Not a waltz down to the corner store. You're all needed here. Hera kriffing commands Phoenix squadron. Sabine's got responsibilities to her mom right now...You guys can't just up and leave like me with no real warning for no good reas…"
Kanan puts a hand over his mouth, cutting of the rest of his protest completely. "Kid think very, very carefully about how much you value my calmness before you finish that sentence. And then maybe just stop talking completely."
Ezra, wisely on his part, obeys.
Kanan reaches down then to grab him by the shoulders then, and Ezra's teeth rattle with the force of how hard his master shakes him for about ten to fifteen seconds. "Let me be explicitly clear here, Kid. *You are not kriffing asking us to come along as if it's your decision instead of ours what we are going to do next."
There is no Sith spawned way that this kid – whose scars from his healing surgeries are still newly healed light pink -is going to go sibling hunting in the Imperial Capital alone. Hera and Kanan wouldn't allow that kind of insanity to occur on even Ezra's most rational and well argued of days. And today after his Padawan has just literally let Kanan bludgeon him into a wall as both an apology and a likely attempt to say goodbye before going on what may well be a suicide mission?
Yeah no. Ezra's current plan is *not* happening.
"How long exactly until Chopper comes back to let us out of here?"
Ezra blinks. "An hour or two I think."
"Fine. Then we're seeing if this place has water in the meantime, we're both getting a glass if it does, and then you're sitting and telling me everything you know, Ezra. And I mean everything."
It's only wise, Kanan knows, that he starts putting together a mental tactical file as quickly as possible, to better help prepare for the unavoidable briefing. Because no way in karking hell, he knows as well as he knows how to breathe, are Rex or the rest of Specter Crew going to be sitting out on this newly emerging mission.