Child Soldiers
Chapter 1. The Argument


As a quick reminder, S.3.11 was Visions and Voices, where Kanan and Sabine follow Maul and Ezra and are possessed by the Nightsisters.

Also, Kanan does what he really did not do much of in the series which is actually EXPLAIN STUFF! :D He presumably explained some of it offscreen, but the man was a bit of an oyster regarding Jedi and indeed all the weird stuff that follows from that. Given Sabine's Mandalorian, it is unlikely that any of the early tales she might have heard about the Jedi were good at all. Take that and weird stuff happening plus a nice dose of possession by ancient evil forces, and it's enough to throw anyone off-balance!

So mostly family/friendship/HC if I must! Also, poodles, I didn't quite realise it would post right away, so some quick editing and proofing now before it goes live, cough...


Ezra sat down on the brown sand outside the base, a couple of feet from his meditating Master. He didn't say anything; the man was blind, but that didn't mean he didn't know what was going on around him, even while meditating. He wasn't inclined to break a trance quickly for anything less than actively important however, and anyone not projecting urgency generally had to wait a few minutes. The Jedi holocron was placed in front of him, the edges cracked and scorched from the force of its joining with its twin. Ezra wrinkled his nose at it with a frown. He hoped rather guiltily that it would still project the Kenobi hologram and Master Skywalker's duel.

Besides, he wasn't that anxious to start speaking anyway. It had been a rough day for all of them. Sabine had seemed her usual jaunty self immediately after they left the caves, but she had been a bit quieter than usual during the meal and retreated to her room to paint soon after. Ezra got that. Seeing his friends possessed was one thing (and something he'd probably dream again when things got stressful), but he'd started mulling during the meal about what being possessed was like and had found the whole question more disturbing the more he thought about it.

Sabine trying to kill him while her eyes glowed green did creep him out. Absolutely. But as exceptional as Sabine was, she wasn't a Jedi. Those things – the Nightsisters, had taken Kanan over just as swiftly. He or she or it wasn't able to utilise the Jedi's skills efficiently fortunately, or the mission mightn't have ended as well as it had.

"Doing alright?" Kanan's voice broke the silence, indicating that he was ready to be communicative again.

Ezra shrugged and exhaled. "Yeah, I think so. I wish I knew where the "planet with twin suns" was though. If Maul knows..."

"Then he knows." Ezra frowned again. He always found the whole calm acceptance thing hard going. He wanted to go off after Maul, do something about it, rather than sit here and accept it.

Of course, since neither of them knew where Maul was going or had any start on the planet with the twin suns, he supposed Kanan's response was as useful as his own.

"Thanks," he added abruptly. "For trusting me."

Kanan nodded once.

"..You put a tracker on me though," Ezra added.

Kanan nodded again. "Yeah, I did. That was before we knew what was going on. I couldn't be sure if Maul was using some trick on you or whether he was planning something. He's cunning, and if he kidnapped you – or was able to influence you to act against your nature, like with the guard earlier, I wanted to be able to find you."

Ezra digested this for a few moments. Kanan had no reason – at all – to trust Maul. And Ezra's word for it…hadn't gone well for either of them in the past. He grimaced, glancing over.

"I wouldn't have joined him. Not…now, I mean. Or then. I mean, I've been..tempted. I could open the Sith holocron. And I know I get frustrated and – lose my temper." Ye-eah, and most of those were somehow connected to Maul. Well, maybe not always.

"But I don't want – that. What he wants. What the Sith want. I want to destroy them."

Kanan stayed quiet for a bit, presumably thinking. Ezra chewed his lip and then plunged forward again.

"Look, als-" (good start – "look"?) He charged ahead anyway. "I mean, I know what he did. And that it was my fault – that I trusted him to begin with and if I hadn't…" he made a complicated gesture that indicated that Kanan might not be wearing a mask for a start. "I've said some things I don't mean, but I've learned a lot from you. I didn't know I was using the Force back on Lothal, it was just I could do things that kept me alive and I…" He frowned. Jedi words, find the Jedi words. "Accepted it passively and didn't question it?"

"You knew it as part of you and acted in harmony with the Force," Kanan summarised consideringly, sounding like he accepted the idea. Ezra figured he'd translated into Jedi correctly.

"Mhm, it was instinct. But now I realise what it is- I mean, what it can do. Which you taught me – some of it anyway," he added with a flash of the irrepressible grin.

Kanan paused again, but not so much to consider what to say as rather there were at least two completely separate conversations from that he wanted to have with his padawan, and he wasn't sure which to go for.

"I wish you didn't have to learn so much from it from war," he said after a moment, which was neither as it happened. Ezra was a bit taken aback, although he hadn't been sure what he expected Kanan to say. He shrugged, flicking a pebble down the hill.

"It gives me plenty of practice," he offered, although he immediately suspected that wasn't the right thing to say.

"Only in fighting. There's lessons there, yeah, but it means your training is rushed. And focussed mostly on battle, in a way that encourages your connection to the Force to be strongest through battle. And war brings out the passions that the Dark Side feeds from."

Ezra had been trying to develop more patience with the Jedi ways. He found them slow and frustrating. Indirect and pointlessly confusing. But sometimes they made sense.

"We're different people though, you seem to be more connected to the Force through uh..the Jedi calm thing. I guess I work with it more when we're fighting. It all happens fast and it's instinct."

Kanan's forehead wrinkled under the mask. "It's the same for any other odd Jedi and their padawans out there." If there were any more out there skimmed past unsaid. "Or those that were padawans fifteen years ago. Ability to fight, escape or blend in were priority. There's no time now to bring up children with a link to the Force and train them in gradually; you're in at the deep end and if you use your Jedi abilities, the Empire…notices."

Ezra nodded. It made sense – and if that meant he connected more to the Force through battle than meditation, he was good with that.

"But…"

Ezra looked over suspiciously.

"I find it naturally through battle too. It's not personality being different. It's that the Force-sensitive attract the Dark Side, and the anger and hate felt by a powerful Dark Side-user can destroy worlds."

Ezra blinked. That had escalated. "Whoah. Uh." Well, yes, but…those were Sith. He flicked another pebble, looked over, and said so.

"It's the same connection, Ezra. Meditation, the Masters' teachings – those are the tools to defeat the Sith. Not to add to their ranks. Their power, their connection to the Dark Side of the Force is through anger, hate – and causing suffering. The Code and teachings are to control the temptation to reach for that side of the Force."

"It's weird that I kinda understand that." He was surprised that he did. Mostly. "But does the Force have to be so cryptic?"

"I really wish I could explain that," Kanan responded ruefully. He shrugged. "I don't know. I forgot many of the old teachings. I just know that some things are important and some of those things have been lost already."

There was a soft sound behind the pair and Ezra glanced back. His master didn't.

"Sabine?"

The shuffle stopped. Nervousness, Kanan deduced, partly from her feel through the Force being …it was shifting, uncertain. The Mandalorian girl was often a slightly disruptive element in the Force, a person driven often by emotion, but nervousness was rare. Also, Sabine didn't shuffle. In her movements, she was naturally almost as graceful as a trained Force-sensitive.

So while he wanted to talk to his padawan, he could feel that Sabine needed companionship too and his voice was welcoming as he extended his hand to pat the dirt beside the pair, inviting her to join them.

"Not interrupting ancient Jedi wisdom?" she asked nonchalantly as she sat into a cross-legged position. Ezra frowned a bit, but Kanan smiled.

"Insofar as I still remember it," he replied. "But no, you're not interrupting."

Now Sabine's finger scratched the dirt and Ezra looked over again, his mild annoyance at the interruption fading as he really looked at her this time.

Sabine didn't look like she was dealing as well with all this as he'd first thought and he felt a pang of guilt. He opened his mouth and then glanced again at Kanan and slowly closed it.

Kanan felt the silence, and more, could feel some level of emotional turmoil from both teenagers. Beyond the usual turbulence of being a teenager.

Kriff, they're so young for all this. The thought flew across his mind, and not for the first time. It was easy to forget in the field. Both of them, in their own ways, more than held their own. They held their own alone better than most groups of adults would. Both had more than enough reason to be confident in their not-inconsiderable abilities. He and Hera were proud of them both – and worried, and guilty when these moments arose, the moments that they were so obviously still child soldiers in a war that spanned a galaxy.

He hated that this was what was done to them. And so many others. But he couldn't help those others right now, and these two were sitting with him.

"Rough day," he said quietly, and heard soft noises of agreement from both teenagers.

"What happened?" asked Sabine quietly, tapping the dirt in the middle of her little image with a nervous, staccato tattoo.

"They are… were called the Nightsisters," Kanan said slowly. "There's not a great deal of information about them, at least not that was taught to a fourteen-year old. Powerful force users; some called them "witches", for what that's worth. I've heard them called the Children of Dathomir, although I can't tell you why. Of course Maul would have a base with them. Who else would live with ancient, crazed Dark spirits?" There was a twinge of something in his tone that made him realise that maybe he wasn't entirely okay yet either and he sighed, his fingers touching the dark green mask over his ruined eyes.

Ezra glanced over and then back to the ground, now feeling an intense spike of guilt. Why had he trusted Maul again? Well, he hadn't, not really. But why was Maul so insistently chasing him across the galaxy? Hadn't he done enough damage?

"Maybe he had some connection with them, and that protection extended to Ezra. Obviously, it didn't to us."

"Uh…" Ezra grimaced. "Actually, it was a trade-off. He promised them... uhm.. flesh and blood and in return got…" He moved his fingers helpfully. Sabine saw it and looked a bit green.

"Lovely," replied Kanan flatly, but nodded. "Makes sense. They needed corporeal forms and I'm afraid you and I walked right into it, Sabine."

Sabine grimaced. She wasn't doing alright. That sensation of her mind, her sense of self being subsumed, being destroyed, being enslaved. Her body used to attack her friends, her mind lost in darkness and cruelty. And that even Kanan had fallen didn't so much reassure her as terrify her more.

"Why does this keep coming for us?" she ground out, unfamiliar fear converting to anger. "Every time the Force gets involved, all this weird kriff happens and I don't understand it."

Ezra started momentarily as this time he picked up something from his master. Kanan was usually an oasis of calm, especially since… he glanced up at the mask again, but this time noted the tight lips underneath it. Guilt had roiled a moment through the still waters.

Kanan exhaled quietly. "They come because of us," he admitted. "This was the risk of allowing anyone to be aware that any Jedi were still around. Empire, Dark Side. They both want us."

Sabine's lips tightened, but even with the fear of the day just past, she kept control of herself, knowing instinctively that she could do a great deal of damage if she lashed out. These were Kanan and Ezra. Not the enemy.

But it still scared her.

"It's…" She sighed. "Mandalore has its own legends and stories. Its own heroes and darknesses and evils and all the rest of it. But most of it is…well… it's things normal people can handle. This is… we were possessed!"

"I know. The Dark Side was strong there. Strong enough to affect us both."

Ezra drew his finger through the brown dust of Atollan's surface. "Are you alright?" he asked after a moment, looking to Kanan a little hesitantly.

Kanan glanced at him, surprised. "Of course," he responded, perhaps with less thought than he intended. It was the natural reaction of the adults on the ship to keep their own private nightmares off the shoulders of the "kids". He felt a stab of anger from Sabine, her aura within the Force roiling again. It was nothing like a Dark Side user, or even a raging Force-sensitive. But it was there, at least to a blind Jedi that had to "see" in the Force.

"Of course!" she snapped. "You're used to this stuff! I'm not! You two go off and do kriffing Force-stuff and the next thing is we're being attacked by Force…demons and being chased across the galaxy! By, as far as I can tell, everything!"

She wasn't sure when she'd sprang to her feet, and she realised far too late that she was shouting. She had barely time to either regret her words or even entirely figure out what she was saying, when Ezra was on his feet too, face flushed.

"Hey, we're not the only ones with a past and enemies from it, Sabine Wren," he snapped. "Only difference is that we're hunted for what we are and you're hunted for what you did!"

Oh shit. He'd just said that. And the words were out and loose, almost visibly hanging in the air between them, and Sabine was staring at him, her face going from red to white to red again.

"Ezra! Sabine, enough." Kanan felt that this had very suddenly gotten way out of hand and also that his words were probably too late.

They were. Far too late.

"This never happened before you came along and he showed a beacon to the entire galaxy!" she yelled back, her hands clenched into fists against the shaking. She felt like she was falling, her mouth no longer under her control. Like when the spirits had forced their way into her and made her do and say things that weren't Sabine.

"Sabine!" Now Kanan was on his feet, standing between them. If Sabine had been in a saner state, she would have realised that the hands held up between them, keeping the two furious, upset teenagers apart, were protective rather than admonishing.

"Of course you're on his side!" She clenched her fists against a bizarre rising lump in her throat. "What are the rest of us anyway? We can't do all the Jedi stuff, and we're just pulled along into it when you attract it! We get no explanation as to what the kriff is going on and are just expected to deal with it! Now we have enemies hunting us, monsters that we can't just shoot or blow up, that most of us are nothing against! That even you can't defeat. They can control our minds! And Jedi can too! I can't even be sure that I'm here because I chose it! And we're just going to be collateral damage in this fight against something I can't even understand!"

Rage flowed through her, rage against an unfair galaxy, against an Empire that hunted them. Would hunt her friends, her family. She felt rather than heard a ringing in her ears and although she saw Kanan's lips move as he tried to speak to her, she couldn't hear him over the fury of her own emotions. Sabine Wren didn't often lose control. But control had been wrenched from her today and she was still unbalanced, confused, hurting.

"Hey, I saved your life," snapped Ezra and she turned on him.

"You endangered it in the first place," she snapped back.

Something of the last few moments filtered through her consciousness as she realised what she'd just said. Ezra looked white and shaken. She glanced a moment at Kanan's face but the blank facemask told her nothing. She felt a pang of guilt herself. She wasn't the only one to suffer from this. And if she was honest, she hadn't suffered as much as the two Jedi.

There was nothing like the sinking feeling that she had gone way over the top to aggravate her more. But she didn't dare say more. Not after what she'd already said. She wheeled and stalked off into the darkness blindly, ignoring the calls of her name after her.


.

Ezra was still on his feet, taken aback at the storm unleashed, his own emotions roiling and bruised. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Breathe, Ezra," his master said calmly and Ezra struggled with his escaping emotions. It would be so much easier, and much more satisfying, to just let rip too. But Sabine was gone and Kanan wasn't really a suitable target.

"I need to… go meditate for that," he mumbled, shoulders still tense and angry. Kanan nodded once.

"Then meditate here. She's had a rough day, Ezra. I don't think she meant it. But the…" He pursed his lips a moment, trying to find the right words to explain that Sabine was hurting while also not leaving himself open. "Possession like that is disturbing. It's absolute mind control, like a Sith's brainwashed slave. She's hurting. Don't think too hard on what she said. Although you both owe each other an apology."

Ezra's lips tightened mutinously. Okay, maybe he'd gone overboard. But in the face of a lot of provocation.

"We're not monsters," he muttered.

"No, we're not. And she doesn't think so either. But early training and the scars of old wars run deep, even if none of us were born when the Jedi and Mandalore had their final battle."

"…Is that what they really think though? Are they… afraid of us?" Ezra folded his arms tightly over his chest, thinking of his crewmates. His family. The thought that they might harbour resentment, fear of what the Jedi attracted. That they might blame them for it. It hurt. Ezra hadn't had a home for so long, was it selfish that he wanted to keep this home he'd found a place in?

"No. Including Sabine." Kanan mulled it a moment. "Ezra, I need to go find Sabine. But I want you to find Hera."

"Find Hera?" Ezra looked confused and rather worried.

"And talk to her." Kanan's voice softened. "There's only so much I can convince you that this is our place, that the Ghost is our home."

Ezra started and looked up at him suspiciously. He hadn't said a word about that. How did Kanan know his thoughts?

Kanan had his head tilted slightly, still waiting for a response.

"How did you know..?" Ezra asked uncertainly. Sabine's words probed uncomfortably at his mind again.

"Because she knows us both well enough that her anger knew how to hurt us when she lost control. This is our home, Ezra, mine and yours and hers and Zeb's and Hera's. And, kriff help us, Chopper's. But since this went to our being Jedi and all that entails, just my faith in that won't be enough without your talking to Hera or Zeb and finding out how they really feel. I won't see your place here poisoned by self-doubt. So I'm saying to you to go confront those doubts – without anger." The hand on his shoulder squeezed gently and Ezra slowly nodded.

"Okay…I guess I see where you're coming from," he replied quietly. "I…I'll go talk to her. In a few minutes. I need to calm down first. I'm not apologising for what I said though. She attacked us for something we can't help!"

"And her past hurts her more than you can understand, same as she's in the dark still about much of what hunts us. You didn't say that to her because it was the truth; you said it because she hurt you and you lashed back to hurt her. That's why you also owe her an apology. Same as there was some truth in what she said."

"We're not –" He sputtered into silence as the hand lightly squeezed again. "No, we're not. But it is true that all of them face dangers that they wouldn't if we weren't part of this group. We can help protect them from a lot of ordinary dangers, dangers that they can fight. But that comes at a price now and…"

Ezra glanced up as the voice faded a moment. "…And?" he asked uncertainly, unsure that he wanted the answer.

"And we may not be the ones to end up paying it."

Ezra felt cold run through his veins. They had been lucky so many times. Even if… he glanced up again at the mask covering burn scars that he had seen briefly when they were newly raw and blistering. It was a memory he'd taken some pains to try repress, after a period of morbid dwelling on it while guilt ate at him. And before that there was Mustafar.

"..Haven't we paid it enough? Haven't you paid it enough? Or is it just going to be… this forever, until we're both dead?" The teen's voice started indignant, but ended rather forlorn, Ezra looking back down at the Atollan dirt, his shoulders slumped.

Kanan sighed, wishing he could answer that. But the truth was that the Empire would hunt him and his padawan until they were both captured or dead. And so would the Dark Side. And he might not be able to protect any of crew if that were to happen. And if he was honest, he hated telling Ezra any of this too. But that was the problem. They weren't kids anymore and hadn't been long before he'd met either of them and they needed to have an awareness of the situation. It just couldn't be a hopeless one. And he was starting to really think that despite all the setbacks, all the losses, there just might be some hope now.

"Another reason to fight, Ezra. So people like us out there have a chance to live too. But the Empire will hunt us until we destroy it."

Until we destroy it. Four simple words that so vastly oversimplified a galactic mess. And with Ahsoka now almost certainly dead, he and his padawan probably really were the last of their kind, at least the last of their kind to be trained in how to use their abilities in the service of the old ways. He had no illusions about what happened to the youngling Force-sensitives that were born these days.

"Ten thousand Jedi couldn't stop all this from happening."

"Ten thousand Jedi had no idea of what they were up against and were betrayed and cut down almost immediately. And two have survived all that has been thrown at us so far. Kriff, Ezra. I'm not going to lie to you. Our chances aren't wonderful and never were. I wish you'd been born in a safer time for Jedi – for Force-sensitives. Hells, I wish I was. But we weren't. This is what it is. And I'm starting to think as well as hope that we actually can. We've shown that the Empire isn't invulnerable. And we have helped to create something here, something that is a real threat to the Empire. Your message, from that tower on Lothal, that spark ran across the galaxy. It ignited rebellion. We have to see it through now, for that hope that we gave so many people."

Hope. It seemed so distant, so lost. But it was there, a thin rivulet of clear water under the mud of the galaxy's chaos. Ezra sighed, looking down at the ground, but nodded.

"I…sometimes understand," he responded softly. "Mostly. Sometimes…I just wish all this had never happened."

"I know. Me too. But here and now, we're alive, and we have family."

Ezra nodded slowly. "I'll talk to Hera. I'm okay, really. Are you?"

Kanan nodded. "It's been a rough day. But we're all out of it alive and safe. So I'm okay."

Ezra nodded again. "I'll talk to Hera. Soon. For now.." He turned to sit down, instinctively moving over a bit to take where Kanan had been sitting. For some reason, it felt slightly more comforting. Kanan nodded to him.

"I'll see you later. May… The Force is with you, Ezra. Feel it now."

Ezra closed his eyes and attempted to relax, attempted to reach out to the Force around him and within him. Attempted to let go of the feelings roused by Sabine's anger.

Kanan stayed facing him a moment as he felt some of the turbulence in the Force slowly start to relax as Ezra calmed his emotions. He placed a hand briefly on his padawan's shoulder again before straightening up to turn and seek Sabine's signature in the Force. She likely wouldn't be too hard to find.


Some of my interpreting exactly how Kanan "sees" and uses the Force (and understands the Force, given his own limited training) may not be entirely correct, but a lot does seem to be left fairly open to interpretation! So take some of it with a pinch of salt and bear in mind that Kanan himself both never learned all the secrets of the Jedi Order in the first place and deliberately forgot quite a lot of it too until he had to start facing who he really is again through the course of the show.