A/N: Woo, new chapter.

. . . I feel like now is an appropriate time to reiterate that this story is 100% self-indulgence, and extremely critical of the way the crew treats Ezra. And, uh, the crew in general. As people. And I should also probably emphasize that I hate Star Wars: Rebels. The only reason I'm writing this is because I'm pissed off enough on behalf of the one main character I actually like to do something productive with all this salt.

Chapter 4: Entanglements

In which Evren screams internally a lot.

o.O.o

"I don't like this."

"I've been getting that impression, yes," Hera says mildly.

Kanan manages to make the process of sitting down in the copilot's seat look agitated. "If you could sense him in the Force . . . Hera, time travel or no time travel, he's exactly the kind of evil the Jedi are supposed to fight against. And we're giving him a ride."

"Because it's the right thing to do, love." She checks over the ship's diagnostic results and adjusts the power draw to the starboard engine. "Besides, he did help Ezra."

"I know." Kanan presses his fingertips to his eyes for a moment. "That's part of the problem."

"From what Ezra said, he needed the assistance."

"I know," Kanan says, irritated.

Hera raises an eyebrow at him. "An explanation would be nice."

"Ezra . . . doesn't understand what it means to be a Jedi. Not really. He doesn't understand how dangerous the dark side is. I didn't talk about it, at least at first. Not until the Inquisitor brought it up. I thought . . . But he's angry, Hera, he's full of so much anger and fear, and if he doesn't let go of it, he'll become something terrible."

"And this Sith could push him over the edge."

"Exactly." Kanan looks grim. "Ezra was supposed to learn that, in the temple. And instead our new passenger destroyed it."

Hera swivels her seat around, faces Kanan. "I won't pretend to fully understand the Force, but I do know people. He isn't an immediate threat to us—to Ezra. In the absence of any other viable plans, we don't have much choice but to drop him off at the spaceport. After that, we can worry about the implications of—"

"There's always a choice," Kanan mutters.

"Kanan. What else can we do?"

"I could take him."

"Really?" Hera says sharply. "When the Inquisitor has nearly killed you over and over again? If Sith are worse—no. I don't want to lose you. Ezra can't afford to lose you. We're taking him to the spaceport and then we will figure out what to do if he shows up again."

Kanan looks at her for a long moment, then deflates. He cracks a sheepish smile. "You're right."

"Glad you noticed, love."

"It's just . . . with everything that's happened, it's—" He heaves a sigh. "I need to meditate. A lot."

Hera reaches over, touches his upper arm gently. "It's all right. I'll wake you up if I need help with anything."

Kanan's face softens. Then he puts on a wounded expression. "I haven't fallen asleep meditating in years!"

"Of course, dear."

o.O.o

Even if the Ghost wasn't pretty small to begin with, Ezra wouldn't have to look far to find Evren. He's gone and parked himself at the edge of the corner booth in the lounge, elbows on his knees, head bowed. He's staring at the deck plating like it contains the secrets of the universe.

Ezra clears his throat. "Um . . . Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Evren looks up, seems to shake off whatever had him so distracted. "Of course."

"Why did you help me?" Ezra asks. "I mean—Kanan said Sith and Jedi are enemies. Or they were. We were. Whatever. And if you're from a war between them . . ."

"A war I'm tired of fighting," Evren says dully. "And I mean no offense, but you're not a Knight. Even in my time, you'd still have a few years before you were sent to the front lines. Hopefully."

"Never stopped the Inquisitor from trying to kill me."

"The Pau'an in the temple?"

"Real one's even meaner."

"Charming."

Ezra folds his arms and leans against the ladder up to the shuttle bay. He pokes at a scuff mark on the floor with the toe of his boot. Neither of them seems to know what to say—Sabine strides out of the galley and gives a little wave on her way to her room in the long, long silence, and then Hera announces takeoff over the intercom, and the Ghost judders as it goes airborne.

Eventually, Evren says, "What's it like out there?" He makes a vague gesture. "This new Empire—anything I should worry about?"

"Where do I even start?" Ezra says. Which isn't actually a rhetorical question—how is he supposed to prepare someone from thirty-five hundred years ago for life in the Empire?

. . . Maybe start with how to stay alive. "Okay. If you don't wanna draw attention, stay away from the Imperial military. The soldiers—stormtroopers—they wear white armor. Officers wear grey or black—basically, anybody in monochrome is probably bad news."

That gets a smile. "Monochrome is bad. Understood."

"Don't use the Force or your lightsabers where people can see. The Jedi were almost wiped out, but the Empire still has a standing bounty on them—us. They probably won't see any difference with you."

Evren's eyes widen. "Wiped—what happened?"

Ezra grimaces in apology. "I don't know the specifics—nobody really does, not even Kanan, and he was there—but all the propaganda vids say the Jedi betrayed the Republic and tried to overthrow the Emperor—uh, Chancellor, then, this was right before the big changeover. Anyway, he declared them all enemies of the state. Any Jedi who survived their troops turning on them had to go into hiding."

Evren stares at him. "Oh. I—I'm so sorry," he says. "That sounds—awful."

"I was just a baby when this all was happening," Ezra says with a shrug. "Didn't even know I was Jedi material until a few months ago, when I bumped into Kanan and the others on a job."

"A few months?" Evren squawks.

"Yeah, so . . .?"

"That's—you—" Evren pinches the bridge of his nose. "Months. Right."

"I can handle myself just fine," Ezra says, annoyed. "But anyway, that was how the Clone Wars ended—aaaaaaand I should probably tell you what that actually was in the first place . . ."

"Please do."

History's not really Ezra's thing, but hey, he knows enough to get by. And it's not like anyone's gonna quiz random apparent citizens on the exact chain of events leading up to the rise of the Empire.

"Just tell people you're from some backwater out on the Rim if there's a problem," says Ezra, after nearly an hour of rambling punctuated by increasingly worried questions from Evren. "Lots of worlds don't have much Imperial traffic, so there's plenty of people who don't pay attention."

"That, at least, hasn't changed," Evren says. He rubs the back of his neck. "Thank you."

"Hey, you saved my life. It's the least I can do." And then Ezra hesitates—they're a little over an hour out from the capital, and Evren is the first Force user Ezra has ever met besides Kanan and the Inquisitor. He has more questions than he has seconds left to ask them, and once Evren leaves, that's it. He might never see another friendly Force-sensitive again.

Ezra takes a deep breath, shifts on his seat across the holotable. "Can I ask you something?"

"What about?" Evren says warily.

"The, uh. The Force."

Evren frowns slightly, tilting his head to one side. "By all means."

Which, well, that's great, but—stars, what can he even say?

". . . You made it look easy," Ezra says. "Using the Force, I mean. Making a connection. And I just—it's ridiculously hard, for me, it's like my brain just won't shut up most of the time, and I was wondering . . . How?"

Evren opens his mouth, then closes it. He looks down. "It's . . . Long practice, primarily, I suppose—but, erm, I'm told that the dark side is easier to access if not to master, so that might also be a factor . . .?"

He sounds so uncomfortable—Ezra cringes. He doesn't even know what he did, but—stars, he didn't mean to—

Warmth. A feeling like—like curling up under all his blankets in the old comm tower, watching a storm roll in across the grasslands. The Force is warm. Heat without light. It's . . . nice. Reassuring. Evren . . .?

"It's all right," he's saying. "You did nothing wrong, Ezra, I'm just uncertain how to help." He glances towards the cockpit, then back at Ezra, cracking a wry smile. "Jedi Padawans don't usually ask Sith Lords for advice."

"Don't know if you noticed, but I'm not all that great at being a Jedi Padawan," Ezra says. It's supposed to be a joke. He sounds bitter even to himself. Fantastic.

"In fairness to you," Evren says lightly, "you are a beginner at all of this. Any Force discipline takes years of practice to truly master. Give it time. You'll figure it out."

He's not that new at Jedi-ing. And he has to learn fast if he wants to survive against the Inquisitor. There's just no time to sit around and figure it out. Still, Ezra wishes there was. Maybe if they were under less pressure, if it wasn't a matter of survival, if they weren't being hunted, if the Jedi Order never fell . . .

But it did. There's nobody else left. Just Kanan. And Ezra is doing a bang-up job of keeping the Jedi legacy going. He couldn't even pass his first test. What makes it even worse is that he knows why Kanan took him to the Lothal temple—it wasn't about readiness, it was about Anaxes, about his brush with the dark side. He was supposed to prove he was Jedi enough to still be worth the effort. Prove he wasn't going to screw up again. And that worked out so well.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Ezra says. Confesses, more like. He can't believe he's even saying it out loud, but—who else is there? Kanan? He can't tell Kanan, he can't disappoint his master again—how many more times can he disappoint Kanan before it's one time too many, before Kanan gives up on him? And the others . . . They wouldn't understand.

Total stranger it is, then.

Evren's looking at him with another one of those weird non-expressions. It makes Ezra want to squirm. Or maybe melt into the deck plating. That'd work too. Evren takes a breath. "Ezra—"

"GET BACK HERE!"

Ezra jumps as Chopper rockets into the crew lounge, clutching a spanner and honking gleefully. Zeb careens after him. "When I get my hands on you—"

"Human brat + Lasat brute = think fast!" Chopper jeers, hurling the spanner. At Ezra. He raises his hands instinctively, manages to catch it before it hits him in the face—Chopper twirls around midair, trailing exhaust, and then reverses direction, blasting past Zeb as he overshoots and nearly runs into the ladder.

Zeb snarls in frustration. He skids to a halt and stomps a few steps after Chopper, then rounds on Ezra. "Give that here," he says. "I'm gonna take that tin can apart piece by piece—"

"Okay, okay!" Ezra says, fumbling the spanner. It clatters to the ground. His face burns as he scrambles to pick it up again—and then he yelps as his head bangs into Zeb's.

Zeb recoils and falls on his backside, clutching his forehead. He glares at Ezra as he surges back to his feet and lunges to grab him by the shirtfront. Ezra tries to slip out of his grasp, but he's cornered, and Zeb drags him in close and gives him a shake. "Clumsy little—hkghkk!"

Zeb seems to choke on nothing. He doubles over, hacking and wheezing, losing his grip on Ezra's shirt. Ezra scrambles back a few paces. The Force is—there's something off, like in the temple, when Evren broke through the door—

"All right, there?" Evren's saying, slowly uncoiling from his seat. He moves towards Zeb, all friendly concern. "That sounds unpleasant—do you need a drink?"

Zeb waves him off, though his eyes are watering and he's still coughing every few seconds. "'M fine," he gets out. "Just—spanner, give it here—"

"Of course," says Evren, and the spanner flies from the floor to his hand. He offers it handle-first with a wry smile. "How go the repairs?"

"Ugh," Zeb says shortly. He takes the spanner, hefts it a little, and looks over at Ezra. "Watch it next time, will you?"

"Yeah, whatever," says Ezra.

Zeb rolls his eyes, turns to leave. Then he spins around, moves like he's about to rush Ezra again—

Ezra skips backwards. His leg clips the side of the holoprojector. He falls.

Zeb bursts out laughing. "No wonder you couldn't complete your little Jedi test thing." Shaking his head, he finally, finally leaves.

Ezra stares after him. He bites the inside of his cheek and blinks hard a few times. Then he picks himself up, inhales sharply, and kicks the holoprojector, hard. Which . . . doesn't actually help; all it does is make his foot hurt.

And make him look like a bratty kid. Way to live down to your creepy hallucination's expectations, Bridger.

"So," he says, and it's too bright and too cheerful and fake, fake, fake. "Uh. That happened."

Evren exhales. "So it did." He eyes the corridor for a minute, then focuses on Ezra and says, "Does that happen often?"

Keep it together. "Zeb and Chopper fighting?"

"You being dragged into it."

Ezra snorts. Keep. It. Together. "All the time. It's just how they are. I don't think Chopper likes me much, but then, it's Chopper, and I'm pretty sure the only person he likes at all is Hera. And Zeb is . . ." He shrugs. "We get along okay. Most of the time."

Evren's still frowning, though. "You flinched when he moved towards you."

"Well, yeah, Zeb's like three times my mass."

"Exactly." The Force around Evren is—it's like with the giant fyrnock. The moment Ezra pointed it at the Inquisitor and told it to kill. Not the exact feeling, but the threat, the pressure of something terrifying and powerful waking up. After a few strained seconds, Evren closes his eyes. Slowly, slowly, the sense of danger fades, until it's—not gone, but . . . quieter. "You did not deserve that," he says. "Any of it."

"It's not a big deal," says Ezra. And it's not, or it shouldn't be, but the fact that Evren . . . did something to Zeb and made him stop? That's . . . it means a lot. And it probably shouldn't because Ezra is pretty damn sure that was the dark side, but—

"Are you hurt?" Evren gestures at his head.

"Huh? Oh—nah, just bruised," he says. "It'll be fine."

Neither of them says anything for a while. Ezra rubs the painful bump on his head and tries to come with something, anything to say. If he's not careful he'll start blathering about every single awful thing he saw in that temple, just to get it out of his brain, and that's—yeah, no, not doing that.

"You sure you have to go?" Ezra blurts out instead. Which is almost worse.

Evren swallows visibly, pulls a tight-looking smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "It's not my decision. I can't just . . . I'm sorry."

". . . I wish there was more time." It comes out small and pitiful, and Ezra could kick himself—he doesn't know Evren, not really, and why should Evren care about some random wannabe Jedi? Guy's got enough to deal with already.

"If I ever figure out this time travel nonsense, you'll be the first to know," says Evren. The smile shades a little more real, and the Force goes warm again, a brief flare of—affection? Concern?

Why?

o.O.o

All too soon, Hera announces that they're coming in for landing. Ezra runs back to his cabin and returns with a drawstring bag, black and printed with an eerily familiar six-spoked insignia in white. "For your lightsabers," he says. "Since you don't have anywhere else to put them and all."

Evren accepts the bag, touched but uneasy. "This symbol . . . what is it?"

"Empire," says Ezra. "Snagged that while I was undercover as a cadet at the Imperial academy—long story."

And no time to tell it. Evren detaches his sabers from his belt and stows them away. Tries not to dissolve into worry at the sadness in Ezra, the way he grows quieter and quieter as the minutes tick down.

"So, uh. Any last tips?" Ezra says, all too brightly.

Stars, he deserves better.

Maybe Evren can still help, a bit. He's seen too many Jedi pushed past breaking point, and if that torture temple was any indication, Ezra's mentor is hardly up to the task of preparing him for the realities of existing as an emotional being. Evren takes a breath. "At the risk of—no. Contrary to what the Jedi believe, fear is not your enemy. Nor is rage, or hate, or pain. You will experience 'dark' emotions; it's inevitable. All that matters is that you do not use your passions as an excuse to hurt people. You, and you alone, decide your actions."

Ezra coughs. "Right. Um. Okay."

Evren winces. "Too melodramatic?" he says ruefully.

"Liiiiittle bit."

"Sorry."

"Pffft. I—I think I get it, though. Thanks."

"Your feelings are valid and important and they do not make you evil," Evren says, almost sing-song. Ridiculous, yes, but—remember this, please, remember this and don't destroy yourself for them—

"I get it, already!" Ezra laughs.

There's a metallic thunk, and a hiss, and . . . and they've arrived.

Kanan and Hera emerge from the cockpit; Sabine wanders out of her quarters and punches Zeb in the arm on her way towards the lounge. Chopper rolls into view from . . . wherever he was lurking, muttering to himself.

For a long moment, the entire crew waits in the corridor, eyeing Evren. He stands, smiles, and bows to Hera once more. "You have my deepest gratitude for your assistance," he says. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she says, sounding a bit taken aback. She clears her throat. "All right, people, let's offload our cargo and pick up supplies. I want us out of here before dark."

One by one, the Ghost's crew and passenger clamber down the ladder to the cargo hold. The docking ramp lowers, and they spill out into the open cylinder of the hangar bay. Above, the circular slice of sky still visible is the aching blue of afternoon, cloudless and perfect; syrupy gold sunlight slants partway down the sides of the hangar walls but leaves the ground in shadow. Evren shoulders the bag, lingers at the base of the ramp.

"Watch your six, Straik," Sabine says airily, loping over to the hangar's stash of repulsorlift pallets.

Zeb gives a desultory wave and follows suit; Hera gives a short nod. Kanan, though, steps closer to Evren, stops on the razor edge of hostile distance. "Stay out of trouble," he says, green eyes hard.

Evren smiles wider. "Of course, Master Jedi."

Kanan's gaze drops to Ezra. "Come on," he says brusquely, jerking his chin and then turning away.

Ezra hesitates, though. He glances at Evren out of the corner of his eye. "Will you be okay?"

He's three and a half millennia out of time, his very existence is a threat to the new powers that be, and he has no idea what to do. He grins. "Of course. Take care, Ezra."

"Yeah. You, too."

o.O.o

The Lothal spaceport is quieter than Evren expected. Even under occupation, it's not a hub of Imperial activity—a few patrols here and there, the odd aggressively military shuttle coming in for a landing or taking off from the hangars, but otherwise occupied near-exclusively by civilian ships.

On the one hand: good. They'll be no threat to him, unlike these new Imperials. On the other, he admits privately, he's not looking forward to interacting with them. Or . . . anyone, really. What is he, here? Nobody. Nothing. He's terrible at people, and the only people he knows anymore are this ship's crew, and they don't seem too keen on keeping him around. Except for Ezra, but . . .

And there's a lovely mess of unanswered questions and unvoiced worries and if the Jedi of this time are, or were, anything like those of his own . . . and he doesn't know this crew, not really, but the interactions he has seen are hardly reassuring—

And he needs to find a way home. Without knowing where to begin. Without knowing how he got here in the first place. Without any of his old allies or resources or even rank to fall back upon.

. . . He can't think about that yet. Prioritize. Focus. Find a safe place, find a means of supporting himself, avoid official attention, work from there.

Evren looks back at the Ghost, or at least the parts of it he can see through the hangar access doors. Sabine and Zeb appear to be loading crates onto a pallet, and the droid is doing something to one of the landing struts. The others . . . He can still sense the edges of Kanan's hostility. Hera's quiet reserve.

Ezra's turmoil.

Evren wants to turn around and give him the basic outline of how to shield his mind. Or possibly yell at Kanan for failing to do it himself. But that might very well make it worse for Ezra . . .

He shakes his head hard, faces forward, and keeps walking.

The concourse is hardly crowded; the staff and commuters going about their business barely glance at him. Convenient. Even on Nar Shaddaa, people noticed the Sith in their midst—but then, on Nar Shaddaa he always wore his lightsabers openly, and Force-sensitives of either faction were a common sight.

No longer, apparently. And that's . . . he's not sure how to feel about that. Sad? Horrified?

Later. He'll figure it out later.

He shoulders the drawstring bag and sidesteps a very large Weequay in a business suit. The spaceport's signs are few and far between, but soon enough he orients himself and sets off towards the exit.

He hasn't gone more than a few meters when he sees a flash of white out of the corner of his eye. White armor. A lot of white armor. At least a dozen soldiers—stormtroopers—stomping along purposefully. Evren keeps his stride measured and calm, and gives them a wide berth as they proceed . . . back . . . the way he came . . .

"Be prepared for anything," one of the troopers says, his modulated voice cutting through the ambient noise of the concourse tinny but clear. "This ship matches the description of a freighter involved in the terrorist attacks on Empire Day. There may be fugitive Jedi aboard."

Evren angles off to the side, finds shelter between the wall and a scraggly potted plant. He breathes. Reaches out through the Force towards the shaken but still-bright presence at the very edge of his range.

Ezra, incoming!

Then he wraps the Force around himself, shrouding himself from view, and darts after the advancing stormtroopers.

o.O.o

tbc