He's Our Son:

D2/3 BBY, Lothal

Kanan could only watch in trepidation as the Darksider held a single bladed red lightsabre to Sabine's throat. He decided the boy couldn't possibly be a real Inquisitor because that was most definitely not a standard issue circular, double sided blade. And he'd never seen one so young either. He wished he could do something, anything, to remove her from the boy's hold, but even one slightly wrong movement and she would be dead.

All he could do was call out a challenge.

Fortunately, the boy accepted. Kanan hoped that he would just let her go. But that's not what he did at all.

Kanan tensed as the teenager moved, but all he did was take Sabine's helmet off. He blinked at the strange behaviour, but decided it was better than killing her.

And then, as the boy looked at Sabine with what could only be called an expression of awe, Kanan swore he saw the boy's eyes turn entirely blue and his Force signature warmed considerably. What the kriff?

The Darksider, who might not be as Dark as Kanan thought, made Sabine sleep and then gently lowered her to the ground, eyes never leaving her face until he looked up at Kanan.

As he rose from his crouch and walked towards Kanan, the yellow bled back into his eyes and completely took them over. Kanan shivered as a wave of cold hit him and he braced himself against the onslaught of Dark energy the boy was now channelling.

They studied each other for a moment, assessing stances and strength in the Force.

Then the boy lunged at him and Kanan had to call on every ounce of training he'd ever had just to hold him off.

Apprentice played with his opponent; lunging and jumping and parrying and clashing their lightsabres together again and again, enjoying the sound of the laser beams hissing against each other.

The man was decently trained, but he had nothing on Master in terms of skill and brutality. Nevertheless, Apprentice allowed the man to do his best to defeat him. He had no wish to end this too quickly, since playing with the prey was so much more fun.

The Dark side liked when Apprentice channelled its energy. The Dark side was whispering for him to make the man suffer. Slash him a little. Make him hurt. Make him beg. Make him plead for his life like a beaten mooka.

But Apprentice had learned long ago how to ignore it but still use it as HE saw fit. Master had beaten him to a whimpering pulp any time he tried to channel Light side energy to do what Master wanted so he'd learned to compromise in his own way. Perhaps, if he'd been raised by Master from the very beginning, he would be just as cruel and merciless as Master. But Apprentice had spent the first seven years of his life with his parents. And they had been GOOD people. People who taught him the difference between right and wrong. People who LOVED him.

No matter what Master did to him, no matter what the Dark side whispered to him, no matter what assignments he was forced to do, Apprentice would always remember where he came from. The memory of his parents would always stand between him and the worst of the Dark.

But just because he wouldn't torture the Jedi in front of him before he killed him, it didn't mean he couldn't have fun taunting him. "Is that the best you've got, old man? I've practiced with DROIDS who had more skill than you." This was accompanied by a Force push that sent the man flying backwards a dozen metres or so. "I had hoped someone as old you as would have at least made me sweat a little." Apprentice stood with one hand on his hip and wiped his brow with the back of the other and then inspected his glove. "Yep, dry as a bone. So disappointing." Apprentice sighed dramatically and twirled his lightsabre absently while he waited for the man to recover from where he'd smacked into a dumpster.

Kanan oooffed as the air was pushed from his lungs by the impact with something hard and smelly. Fighting past the temporary light-headedness, he pushed his loose hair out of his eyes and strode back to where the insolent brat waited for him.

Who was this kid?

At the moment, his eyes were half blue again and he was smirking at Kanan like he was enjoying a good game. And was it just his imagination, or did he look like someone Kanan had met at some point? He just couldn't figure out who right now. "I'm not that old, you whelp. I'm just hitting my third decade."

Apprentice rolled his eyes as he casually parried the man's attack. "Ohhhh. You're right. You're not OLD old. Just a little old. I'll have to keep that in mind when your bones start creaking and take it easy on you."

Kanan near growled as the kid flipped over his head, easily blocking the slash Kanan directed at him as he landed. He had to remind himself to keep his calm and stay focused or he'd never win against the sort of Dark side brat who was quickly becoming one of Kanan's least favourite people; right under Palpatine, Vader, Pryce, and Kallus. And at this rate, the kid was going to surpass Kallus on the list.

Apprentice danced around Kanan, his lightsabre a blur as he twirled it around his hand again and the yellow took over his eyes completely once more. "Oh, wait. I'm already doing that." The whispers of the Dark side rose again, telling Apprentice to kill him, kill him.

Apprentice brushed them back again, but he knew it was time to end the game. "Time's up, old man," he said in a deadly whisper. His features settled into serious as he went on the offensive, driving the man down the alleyway with vicious slashes of his lightsabre.

Kanan finally understood that he was seriously outclassed. With the boy now moving like the wind and the Dark side surrounding him like a stormcloud, it was all Kanan could do to stay on his feet and keep his sabre between himself and the red blur of the boy's.

Where were the others when he needed them? Seriously. They could show up any second now.

Like an answer to a prayer, Ephraim and Mira dropped down on either side of him and raised their blue lightsabres against the boy as well.

Apprentice paused and studied the masked and hooded figures; one tall like the first man and the other decidedly shorter and most likely a female judging by the size of her boots that he could see under the hem of her encompassing cape. And what was even more interesting was how all three of them had no signifagant Force signature; even the man who most certainly did a second ago. Someone was incredibly good at shielding, and he now understood how they'd escaped his Master and defeated so many Inquisitors. That was a very useful trick to have. He smiled grimly and pulled the Dark side a little closer, demanding more power, and wreathed himself in its shadows, making himself much harder to see. They weren't the only ones who could use tricks. "Finally," he snarled. "A real challenge."

Before he all but disappeared from their sight, Mira and Ephraim were both studying the boy intently. And once again, Mira felt that hint of familiarity, until it melted away into the cold mask of the Dark side. Her hand trembled as she held back a gasp. Her son. Her precious son. What had that monster done to him?

Ephraim was standing frozen almost in shock, because for one very brief second, he'd seen a reflection of himself from when he was a teenager, but with yellow eyes and a scar. Could this really be his son?

A niggle of danger had Apprentice dodging to the side just in time to avoid being shot from the lasat standing on a roof.

"Stop!" Mira cried.

"No, Zeb!" Ephraim yelled at the same time.

"What?!" Zeb yelled back in surprise.

"Get Sabine!" Kanan ordered. "Take her back to the Ghost."

Zeb looked way down the alleyway and saw Sabine's colourful prone form lying on the ground. "Got it." He bolted across a couple roof tops and then dropped down to the ground and ran as fast as he could for her.

Apprentice froze for half a second when he realized that someone was going to take his prize away. "No!" he screamed.

Abandoning his fight with the Jedi, since he could track them down later, he ran after the lasat, using Force speed to run like a bolt of lightning.

Before the purple lasat could touch the girl, Apprentice flung out a hand and sent the lasat flying through the air until he smacked into a wall, leaving a dent in the durasteel, and then he crumpled to the ground.

Kanan, Ephraim, and Mira chased after the boy, but they weren't fast enough to stop him from scooping Sabine off the ground, tossing her over his shoulder, and then leaping up onto the nearest roof before bolting back towards his ship.

They pursued him in time to see him drop down into his TIE and slam the hatch shut.

At this point, they probably could have stopped him by jumping on his TIE and slashing through the wings, but they all hesitated just long enough for the TIE to take off.

Shaking their heads at their own failure, they jogged back to check on Zeb.

"Out of curiosity," Mira said to Kanan. "Why did you hesitate?"

Kanan glanced at her and grimaced in apology. "Would you believe me if I said I had a good feeling about how things turned out? I saw his eyes go fully blue when he looked at her earlier. She might be the only thing that can bring him back to Light side. I just hope he doesn't hurt her before that happens." He jumped to the next roof and raised a brow at his team members. "Why did you hesitate? And why did you tell Zeb not to shoot at him?"

Mira and Ephraim stopped and looked at each other through their masks, confirming mentally what each of them had concluded.

"He's our son," Ephraim eventually said to Kanan.

"Ezra?!" Kanan said in disbelief. "Your Ezra? The one Vader stole from you?"

"The one and only," Ephraim said sadly.

Kanan thought back to what he'd seen of the boy and how he looked familiar and how his signature was all over the place. "That... explains a lot." He face transformed into a smile. "Now all we have to do is get him and Sabine back."

Apprentice leapt into his TIE from further than he should have, but he was feeling rather desperate and pursued. Fortunately, he made the jump and managed not to hit his precious burden on the edges of the hatch on the way in.

He laid her on the floor behind the seat carefully but quickly and then started hitting buttons to get the TIE going before he even bothered to sit down.

As he took off, he noticed the three Jedi standing at the edge of a roof and staring at his ship. He wondered why they didn't try to take his fighter down while they had the chance, but shrugged it off as their essential goodness or incompetence or something. The man's face that he could see definitely looked conflicted in the brief glimpse he'd had of it.

Jedi were strange.

After making a quick jump in hyperspace to nowhere in particular, Apprentice brought the TIE to a dead stop and just let it drift in space. Then he basically fell out of is his chair and onto his knees beside his new treasure.

She was so beautiful.

He'd never seen such perfection in his entire life. Scooting a little closer to her head, he moved into a cross legged position and gathered her up so her body was lying across his legs and her shoulders were supported by his arm. Apprentice sighed in contentment as he felt the first glimmer of warmth spread through him in nine years. For that alone, he never wanted to let her go.

With some awkward fumbling, he managed to pull off his black gloves without losing his hold on her. He needed to see if she felt as soft as she looked. Hand almost trembling, he tentatively touched her bright blue hair.

It WAS soft. Silky soft. Apprentice sighed again as a dopey grin spread across his face. He'd never felt anything so soft. At least not that he could remember anyway. Feeling bolder, he gently touched her cheek with the back of his fingers and let them trail downwards. Oh, wow. Her skin was even softer than her hair.

Sabine moaned as she woke up to the feel of a gentle caress on her cheek. That felt awfully nice. Then her eyes popped open as she realized there was no way in any galaxy anyone should be touching her. It's not like she had a boyfriend, and her crew knew better than to come near her when she was asleep. (She tended to wake with a blaster pointed at whatever idiot had woken her with a touch out of habit.)

As her fingers automatically reached for a blaster that she quickly discovered wasn't in its holster, she stared at the gorgeous black haired boy with the now entirely sapphire blue eyes who was holding her in his arms. Their eyes locked and he smiled at her tentatively, fingers still caressing her cheek. Sabine almost smiled back, but she finally registered that this wasn't right and WHY was she inside a fraging TIE?!

Their last encounter flashed through her mind and she swung a punch as hard as she could at his nose. And at her angle, it most definitely wasn't a straight on hit.

Sabine smirked as it flung his head backwards and to the side. He let her go to hold his broken nose as it started bleeding profusely. "That's for touching me," she growled. Then she rolled off him and to her knees and punched him in the stomach while he was occupied with his nose. His breath let out in a whoosh and he doubled over his middle, gasping. "And that's for stealing me, you kriffing bastard!"

Then, just for good measure, she slammed her fist into his face again, knocking him back upright and then one last time right into his crotch, which was very much exposed in his cross legged position.

He doubled over again, wheezing and bleeding from his nose and a split lip.

Feeling satisfied with her revenge, Sabine sprang to her feet, ready to kill him if he so much as made one move towards her. She narrowed her eyes at him, fists held up and her weight balanced on the balls of her feet. He may have got the best of her before, but she'd die before she let him do that again. "If you ever touch me again without my permission," she snarled at him, "You'll be looking for your favourite appendage in space."

Pushing the pain away and swiping at the blood on his face absently with a sleeve, Apprentice glanced at his right hand, since that was his dominant hand, not getting it at first that Sabine was talking about something else entirely. Then he did, and he started laughing. "Oh Force, I'd like to see you try," he managed to get out through chuckles.

Sabine growled, not amused. She swiped a kick at his head, which he handily ducked now that he was on guard for it.

Apprentice rose to his feet in one smooth motion and froze her with the Force, tapping into the Dark again. Her eyes spat amber fire at him and she was radiating outrage, which just made him think her more beautiful. She was magnificent in her fury.

He found her utterly captivating.

"Let me go!" Sabine spat. "Only a sack of slime not even a hutt would touch would treat a girl like this."

Apprentice tilted his head to the side and stared at the girl who had completely taken him by surprise and fell head over heels in love. "If you promise not to attack me again, I will."

"Never!"

"Then I shall simply have to hold you like this until you change your mind," Apprentice said matter of factly. "I do not wish to fight with you."

Sabine rolled her eyes, straining her muscles to move, but it felt like she was encased in duracrete from the neck down. "Then you shouldn't have stolen me in the first place, nerfherder."

Apprentice smiled. He absolutely adored her feisty side already. With his free hand, he touched his nose and sent some Force Healing to his face, a self preservation trick he'd learned long ago, and ignored what pain remained. Apprentice wiped the worst of the blood off with his sleeve before it dried. "It's been a long time since someone got the best of me like that. I guess I deserved it," he admitted.

Sabine raised a brow at the boy who couldn't be any older than her and snorted. "You think?" Wishing she could cross her arms to demonstrate her ire, she narrowed her eyes at him. "Why'd you steal me anyway? Ransom? Bait?"

Apprentice shook his head and he blushed as he glanced at the floor. "You were too beautiful to kill," he mumbled.

Sabine's brows rose as she took in what he said, a little thrill going through her at being thought of as beautiful, even if it was by a Darksider who'd stolen her and was currently holding her captive in a Force grip. Wait. Was he even a Darksider? His eyes were currently lightly ringed in yellow again, but before they had been all blue. And the evil vibe she usually got from the Inquisitors was missing. "I take it you were supposed to kill me then?" He nodded, not meeting her eyes. "Why?"

Apprentice finally looked up and gazed at her apologetically. "My Master wants you dead. I was ordered to do so. You and your crew."

"And who's your Master?" Sabine was very curious. This boy made no sense whatsoever. For one thing, he didn't give her the creeps like the other Inquisitors had. And aside from touching her while she was sleeping, he hadn't tried anything else funny, which he could have. She was technically helpless against his power. She knew she really was no match for him if he wanted to kill her or... worse. But he was just standing there, having something resembling a normal conversation and he did say he didn't want to fight with her.

In fact, if she was reading this right, he was actually infatuated with her. That was kind of... sweet. Was it wrong that the idea of having a Darksider infatuated with her felt nice? Most definitely. And yet... He was strong, gorgeous, self confident, and had magically shown up in her life just when she was feeling especially lonely.

Was it fate? The will of the Force?

Sabine didn't know, but somewhere inside her, she'd already made the decision to not fight with him anymore unless he changed his current attitude.

Apprentice sighed. He didn't know if he should be telling her this but he so desperately wanted her to understand that his will wasn't his own. And now that he'd defied his Master's orders, he was probably dead anyway. There was no way he could ever make himself harm this girl. "Darth Vader."

"Who's that?"

Apprentice was surprised she didn't know. "You've met him. Super tall, has a mask and cape and dresses all in black. Has a red lightsabre. Feels like you just stepped on an ice planet if you get anywhere near him."

Sabine gasped as a memory from about a month ago came to mind to match the description.

D323/4 BBY, Capital City, Lothal

As they made their way onto the landing pad in the Imperial Complex, Sabine still couldn't believe that the Imperial sleemos blew up Minister Tua. That was just one more reason in a long long list of them for her to despise the Empire.

They'd almost made it the shuttle they intended to steal when Hera spotted some shield generators that the Rebellion was desperately looking for. Everyone stopped and grabbed one. Only a few metres from the ramp of the shuttle, Kanan, Ephraim and Mira all came to a dead stop and looked back towards the door they'd just come through.

"Do you feel it?" Mira whispered.

"The cold?" Ephraim whispered back. She nodded. "Yah, I feel it."

"It's him," Mira whispered in dread.

At this point, everyone had stopped to look back. The air was stolen from Sabine's lungs as the figure in black was silhouetted in the light of the doorway. It felt like an endless moment of imminent disaster. Then the glow of a red lightsabre appeared in the figure's hand, jolting Sabine out of her shock.

She dug in her pack and came up with a couple of explosives and handed one to Zeb. She nodded at the Walkers parked between them and the man that radiated all kinds of evil. "Aim for the legs," she told him. They both flung their bombs and she watched in satisfaction as her inventions clung to the metal legs and exploded a moment later, Walkers falling in the path of the black clothed man.

"Get on the shuttle!" she yelled to the rest of her crew that hadn't already moved their butts in that direction. Sabine was the last one up the ramp, and as it was closing, and the shuttle left the ground, she saw the debris from the Walkers rising of their own accord and the evil man threw them out of his way with the Force. "Holy kriff," she whispered. "What was that!?"

She wasn't the only one who'd seen. Kanan slumped into one of the seats lining the walls. "That was a Sith Lord. I haven't felt a presence like that since the Clone Wars."

Mira and Ephraim looked at each other in defeat. "We've met him before. The day we were arrested. How do we beat someone like that?" Ephraim asked.

Kanan sighed and looked downright depressed. "We don't. We're lucky just to have escaped. If it wasn't for Sabine's quick thinking, we'd all be fighting for our lives right now. And losing."

Wow, was that ever a morbid thought. Sabine was glad she'd had a couple of miracles left.

"That's your Master?! But he's a Sith Lord!" Sabine looked at the boy in shock.

Apprentice rolled his eyes. "You think I don't know that? I've lived in his hell hole of a castle for the last nine years while he forced me to be evil like him."

Sabine looked at the boy assessingly. "I don't think it worked very well. You don't feel evil like the other Inquisitors or your Master. You don't give me the creeps."

Apprentice barked a laugh. "I'll take that as a compliment. It's not like I wanted to be evil. I was stolen by him when I was little and he had my parents killed."

Sabine's heart broke a little for him and felt herself relaxing even more as she realized the boy really wasn't going to hurt her. "That's so sad." She sighed and hoped she wasn't making a mistake as she said, "You can let me go now. I promise I won't attack you unless you try to hurt me first."

Apprentice beamed at her as she was released from the Force hold and his eyes turned all the way to electric blue again. Now wasn't that interesting? It seemed his eye colour coincided with his use of the Force.

"I have no intention of hurting you," he said, stepping a little closer. "I just want to get to know you, and maybe, one day, once you've decided that I'm not so bad, you'll even let me touch you again."

Sabine blushed at the husky quality his voice had taken, but forced herself to meet his eyes steadily even as they stood only a handsbreadth apart and she felt herself yearning to lean into him. Her voice was somewhere between teasing and serious when she said, "Don't get your hopes up, Darksider. I don't associate with kidnapping sleemos."