Control Alt Delete

by nogreateragony78

That Time Travel AU where An 18 year old Ezra Bridger wakes up in his pre-series 14 year old body approximately 3 months after the death of Kanan Jarrus, and tries, less than successfully to ditch both The Ghost and her crew for their own good...

4. Chapters 11-13

You shall know the truth and the truth ...

Chapter 11: Shall set you free

Wooo...this is actually one of the firstparts I ever wrote for this story. Thanks to DarthBreezy (Feel Stronger Every Day Dear One!) and OpalSong both for a ton of hand-holding and encouragement. We are now approximately 1/3 of the way through the greater arc of the story.

TW: please be aware this scene contains one all-out brawl between Kanan and Ezra that devolves at one point into Ezra getting a short but quite literal ass-whupping from the older Jedi as a way to bring said brawl to an end. (Kanan would claim he did so largely in both desperation aswell as self defense.) Such will not be a regular occurrence in this series, just a right feeling one-time decision on Kanan's part at the time which best fit the needs and tone of the particular situation. Nonetheless lease be aware if spanking is an issue for you that this specific section many be potentially triggering.

***Note: the author is a parent of two children herself and very much does not condone spanking as a particularly healthy or effective means of discipline in most cases. That acknowledged, please be aware that the subject of what happened in this part as well as its impact (no pun intended) will be discussed quite frankly in the aftermath by those involved, and in the next section in specific Kanan will actually offer Ezra an apology for what occurred. Both characters are under extreme emotional stress in this particular segment, and stress, due to to its very nature, does not always promote wise decision making, but Kanan in particular will take a mindful approach in dealing with the aftermath as best as he can, within of course, the context of his own cultural history on the subject of discipline.)

Chapter Text

The problem with impulsive, emotionally driven plans like this trip out to The Temple is that nine times of ten they are initially driven by sheer adrenaline. Adrenaline which inevitably crashes like a kriffing speeder wreck once the initial high wears of. Ezra Bridger is sadly more than a little aware of this fact at present.

Case in point: the way that hours into their trip, and even after nearly six hours of sleep, he's still physically fighting to keep his hand from shaking and his knees from knocking even as he shoulders on his backpack, climbs out of the transport and stands there strangely breathless and panicked, gazing up at the heavily shadowed temple which is mostly obscured -despite the two waning moons - by still the surrounding darkness.

"It's beautiful isn't it, Chopper?" He murmurs, his voice hushed even as he turns his head to look over his shoulder at the astro-mech. "The truth is that I've only ever been out here during the daylight hours until now. We never had the time for an overnight stay. As serene as it is right now though, Force I wish that we had *made* the time to camp out just once. Kan…my master, he would have loved this view of the sky-scape. I remember that he could talk for literal hours about the stories linked to various star systems' constellations if you got him going on clear nights like this one."

"Affirmative. S1 would no doubt enjoy that activity as well. Astronomy is a long time personal hobby of S1 from S3's own previous past experience, and so long as there are minimal bugs to contend with, Kanan Jarrus has also found sleeping out overnight to be occasionally cathartic."

Ezra quirks his lips up a little at that reply, turning his head back toward The Temple again, "Well then whenever he gets out here on his own, Chopper you ought to suggest the possibility to him. He never takes as much downtime as he probably should – there's just too much of the hardwired workaholic in both Hera and him for it. He could really afford, though, given what's coming up in the years still ahead, to work on building up a peace account instead of just a massive sleep deficit."

"S3 will tell him you said so. Or better yet, S6 can tell Kanan Jarrus that himself, if S6 returns to the Ghost after we are finished with this portion of journey. Or if S6 still insists on finding different passage off of Lothol instead, then S3 will happily record a goodbye for the rest of the crew before S6 leaves the planet and seeks out his Master's old Clone Trooper ally. What did S6 say was Captain Rex's specific designator, again?"

"I never mentioned it actually, Chopper – because some of the Vod can be a little picky about sharing that kind of information. Many dislike talking about where they came from because of all the panful memorues, not to mention many of the stigmas attached to, the later which is especially stupid considering that none of the Vod ever got to actually pick their beginnings. If you're looking at adding the batch number to your little 'eyes only spy file' though, than it's CT-75-67. Just for Force's sake *never* call him that to his face, okay? Use his chosen name unless he specifically requests it. His designator may be what they tried to make of Rex yeah when they tubed him, but Rex is who he made of himself in the end."

The droid gives a satisfied little beeping sound at that addition, his viewing cam shifting over toward the rising arc of the massive temple - most of which is still draped in shadow - for the moment. Then his gaze shifts back toward Ezra once more. "Understood. Call former clone troopers by their chosen call signs and not by their assigned designators. S3 concurs. So what is next on our itinerary at present?"

"Prep work, Chopper. Plus a couple more hours of meditation and or sleep if I can manage to get it. The trip out here took several hours longer than I thought it would initially, and it's going to start turning pretty cold soon. Which means that we need to make a fire for the night and I need to try and eat something more than just meal bar like earlier if I don't want to end up spending the entire night shivering. Not to mention that we need to get this transport parked undercover, preferably somewhere out of sight from above, just in case Kanan and Hera come out this way looking for me based on my earlier site descriptions. Assuming that they don't arrive in the hours before dawn, I want to go ahead and try and access the structure pretty much at first light, since there's no point in dragging out the question of whether or not I'm actually going to be able to get in."

Because yes, Ezra's well aware that there's a high probability that before tomorrow noontime has past, he and Chopper both will have the Ghost and her Crew on their tails. That outcome is just expected at present. Hera may have softened up her stance on the issue of Ezra remaining on as crew thanks to the little ethical wallop that Ezra'd given them the other day up in his tower. (Which the twi'lek pilot still hasn't attempted to rebut, Ezra notes, which means that he'd been right in at least some of his accusative assumptions.) That's still a far, far cry from Hera overlooking Ezra's deliberate abandonment however. If nothing else The Ghost's Captain is going to try to hunt Ezra down at this point just so she can yell at the younger Jedi for being 'fourteen and stupid and unforgivably reckless.'

To say nothing at all about the almost inevitable showdown that Ezra knows he's got coming right now with Kanan. Because his old master, no matter how much Ezra wishes it were otherwise– just refuses to detach and let things go in the way that Ezra hoped he might eventually, with a little reassurance. Instead, Ezra staying on ship for as long as he had hasn't made Kanan's protective instincts calmer, kark if anything it's made things progressively worse and worse and worse.

Which truthfully, is terribly confusing to Ezra most of the time. Nothing about this version of his Master makes any sort of sense to him anymore. Not like it really ever has. Force, some days it's as if he's dealing with a literal pod person.

After all, what else has Ezra had during the past couple of weeks but endless time to look back and reflect, about where he is verses where he'd one been. And every time that Ezra stops and considers everything that's happened since he first met the Ghost crew for a second 'first time around' Ezra can't help but notice how every single one of them has changed.

Zeb is far calmer in this time stream – still wounded, yes, and terribly guilty about what had happened when his world fell and his people had died, but at the same time the Lasat guardsman is also far less raw and vicious in his grief then Ezra remembers him being the first time around. Zeb's much wryer in his humor now, less easy to irritate in small or petty ways and he is also far, far more observant of the details of the world around him then Ezra is even remotely comfortable. Ezra has learned the hard way not to take anything for granted in terms of maintaining secrecy when around him. Sabine in perfect contrast actually seems younger, and fierier – far more vicious in when and how she displays the heat of her temper. She's nowhere near as cool or as unreachable as Ezra remembers her being the first time around. Probably, he admits because now he simply reads her better.

Hera is...well still Hera, for the most part at least. She's honestly changed the least of the rest of them, as far as Ezra can tell anyway. Though she's definitely got a problem some days with a certain level of tunnel vision sometimes that Ezra had never really noticed about the Twi'lek before.

And as for Kanan …?

Ezra sighs very, very deeply, because he has no clue at all how to explain what has apparently happened to Kanan. He has no idea at all how to make sense of the older Jedi and his actions.

Because Karabast and Sith Spit, but Ezra's been left wondering for literal weeks now about the changes in the man that Ezra's been forced to interact on a semi regular basis ever since first waking up here in this time stream. A man who's honestly a kark of a lot more like Kanan became in the years after he was eventually blinded than he is like Ezra remembers him being during their first year or so together on The Ghost

His own younger Kanan Jarrus– reticient, reluctant and almost constantly uncertain about how to go about almost everything, had been the one that Ezra had expected to come face to face with when he'd first re-boarded the Ghost three weeks ago. This Kanan though is almost nothing like him.

His old master had always been good man certainty - fiercely dedicated to his causes and the protection of his self assembled little family, but he'd also been a man who wasn't looking for greater responsibility when and Ezra had first met, or for further members to add on to the already existent Specter crew. He had had no interest in the possible danger that such an increase in number might portend.

When he'd first re-encountered the other Jedi in this time stream, Ezra had been expecting to cross paths with a man who, for lack of a more delicate way of putting it, should have been more than happy under the circumstance to just be rid of him. He certainly shouldn't have reacted in the way he had to the teenager's earnest desire to walk a different path at that point then the rest of them.

How had Ezra put it the first time around, after all, just after their first face to face encounter with the Grand Inquisitor? Ah yes. It had been something to the effect of, "Don't worry about it, I'm letting you off the hook, all right? Luminara or no Luminara." Because after all, Ezra had never been stupid, and he'd known by that point how to recognize the ways that other people looked and reacted to him when enduring his presence finally became too much of an ongoing burden.

And true, it had hurt like the burning Sith Hells to say the words that first time around - to recognize his presence had become not a help but a hindrance to the older Jedi at that stage in their lives, but that didn't mean that Ezra hadn't meant every word he said, or that he wouldn't have left willingly if that had ended up being what Kanan had actually needed or wanted from him at the time.

Instead though, whether for better or for worse, something about their first encounter with the Grand Inquisitor had flipped some kind of invisible switch inside his previous Master's head, bringing about a permanent shift in their personal dynamic.

Ezra had always thought, at least with the benefit of some hindsight that that had been because of the immediacy and realness of the sudden threat. The knowledge that each of them had acquired on that day about how much danger they were all going to be in if they didn't stop sweating the petty details instead of getting straight down to business.

That had been the point at which the older Jedi's previous methodology had abruptly shifted from something unstructured and largely nebulous to something much more focused and fundamental and even just a little bit vicious.

It still hadn't been an easy transition of course. Kriff the first three months or so after their initial encounter with the Grand Inquisitor, Kanan had literally driven them both nearly to the point of exhaustion teaching Ezra every childhood meditation and kata that he could possibly think of between various holocron based lectures, while also pushing himself as well with the help of the Holocron's vid saber training library in order to increase his own skills, and they'd both experimented with how to increase their personal shielding by using each other as essential guinea pigs.

It had been a mad sort of dash toward survival, basically - reckless, rapid and completely unabated, and it hadn't truly ended until after the mess off Ezra's fifteen birthday, when Kanan had abruptly backed off, presumably as reward for what Ezra had finally revealed the truth about he'd lost his parents. Though of course Ezra's first brush with the dark side while fighting off the fyrnocks had unsurprisingly required a bit of tactic reanalysis and brooding from both of them. Thankfully, their subsequent trip out to the temple not long after that had happened, as well as Ezra's finally earning his own lightsaber crystal had seemed to smooth out most of the rough edges of doubt that had still lain between them as the two of them finally learned to function as a real combat team against the enemies who'd spent the next several years hunting them.

And the Kanan of this time? Has essentially morphed into *that* Kanan already - at least in terms of his general perceptiveness and ongoing tactics in dealing with Ezra now. He had much of older Kanan's general steadiness.

Because for some reason, the focus and the self confidence that Kanan had struggled to grow into as a master the last time around had simply come to him almost effortlessly in this particular time stream. Not because of the sudden terrifying reality of being confronted by the Grand Inquisitor this time around, but simply because Ezra had opted to drop into the Specter Crew's lives for a very, very short time before walking deliberately back *out* again. Ezra had even gone so far as to attempt- completely unsuccessfully - to limit their actual interactions to one successful, if admittedly dangerous mission, and then after that he'd done the very best he knew how to ditch them.

And somehow that one choice on Ezra's own part; like some kind poorly balanced domino in a multilevel cascade, had inexplicably changed everything else that had concurrently happened. His decision to leave The Ghost had scattered a future which he had just assumed would roll out like a gently kicked carpet in front of them into a bizarre mix of both chaos and commonality instead.

The younger Jedi had been forced to watch absolutely bewildered, as the same group of people whom he'd spent the better part of his first year convinced were going to dump him at their very first even vaguely convenient opportunity morph from that into a bunch of seeming lunatics instead. A group of five frustratingly stubborn near-stalkers who'd literally trailed Ezra around Capital City as if he were some kind of naughty lost puppy they'd decided that they wanted to adopt. All while bandying about endless jokes about the merits of kidnapping and press ganging.

Despite Ezra's best efforts and his use of multiple distancing strategies, the rest of Specter Crew has flat out refused to actually disengage and just go about getting on with their own lives. And frankly? At this point the whole experience has been just short of outright infuriating. Because now it's like Ezra doesn't even know the rest of them anymore– has possibly never really known them - even though he'd known them for four kriffing years in his original timeline, he utterly fails at predicting them. He's gone from having to abandon a close knit family he'd adored enough that he'd been willing to give them up in order to save them to utterly failing to ditch a group of near total strangers instead.

And the only clue that he has concerning the source of all that change all roots straight right back to the current changes in this time stream's own Kanan. To the older Jedi who quite perversely seems to care more, engage more, fight more in the face of Ezra's continued, insistent refusal of his assistance than Kanan'd ever done so in response to the younger, more vulnerable Ezra who'd initially both desperately needed and wanted him.

'Everybody always wants what they can't have, as my Dad used to tell me.' That old adage proves true yet again, rather painfully this time around. And now the sheer absurdity of his life in this timeline makes Ezra want to literally weep in ironic frustration.

After all, what is it that Ezra's doing right now but deliberately walking away from a group of people who've made it abundantly clear that they do want him in their lives? Everything he'd most wanted at fourteen, Ezra's now got in spades...

Not that it really makes a single bit of difference anymore in this particular situation.

Because after all, he can't keep it now can he? Not in any kind of good conscience. Ezra'a abandonment of the others in this case *is* his proof of his love for them. It's also just the kind of personal sacrifice that none of them are currently capable of truly understanding. Because after all, they'd have to know the truth about his time traveling to truly understand what he is trying And once they did really grasp the reality they'd only fight him tooth and nail in terms of letting him go through with it. Kanan in particular, Ezra is more than aware, would likely to go completely nuclear if the younger Jedi tried to takeoff once the older Jedi actually understood what's been happening. The older Jedi'd go to war over the issue - gloves off, no holds barred, combat to the metaphorical death.

And Ezra honestly can't imagine how he'd ever survive that kind of prolonged battle of wills with him, not when the current lesser one has left him so fundamentally exhausted. Better to keep Kanan in the dark as much as possible instead.

Which is why he'd essentially begged Chopper for his patience earlier today. At least until Ezra has finally gotten out to the temple and received a little personal confirmation one way or another as to what this path he's taking will end up costing him specifically in the end. Who and what is he anymore under the current circumstances? What's the final price of this deal that he's making with the Universe at the moment?

Ezra knows that he has to find out one way or another - before he goes mad with the wondering, and if the very worst happens and the temple flat out refuses to acknowledge him at all when he reaches it because of what he's become, well then Ezra figures that he at least deserves a little space to privately grieve over the life he's willingly abandoning.

"S6 is bleeding. Is S6 aware of this fact at present?" Chopper's sudden words make Ezra jump in shock, then glance down once he realizes that yes, the droid is right - his hand is bright red and stinging. His nails have dug unintentionally into the meat of one of his palms and now the viscous red liquid is falling in thin dribbles over his moon lit skin and down onto the shadowed grass beside him.

"Sorry, Chop. I just got caught up in my own thoughts for a moment or two there, that's all. Are you okay to park our ride on your own if I focus on collecting some brush so that I can get a fire going?"

"Affirmative. Does S6 have all the supplies that he will require until S3 can return?"

Ezra smiles wryly. "Everything I need that's still currently available, yes, Chopper. Including my flint stone and plenty of food and water from in town. Though I do notice that we are suddenly mysteriously without the rest of my previous bottle of Brandy."

Chopper whirs in affirmation softly. "Than S3 will go and check in on you shortly. And Ezra Bridger? For the record, S3 is very, very sorry."

Ezra's brow wrinkles up in confusion. "Sorry for what Chopper?"

A deep base voice speaks up then, from the pitch black shadow stretching out from one side of the temple. "Most likely, Kid? For not warning you about *me.*"

x0x0x0x0x0

Ezra backs up a quick step in shock, instantaneously slamming up his full scope of shielding even as he does so, praying like kark the whole time that he hasn't been projecting his thoughts over the past minute or two. Because after all, the words that he's just said aloud have already been more than bad enough.

Kanan knows now - about Ezra's plans after this to find another route off of the planet. And kriff…Chopper had gotten Ezra to tell him Rex's, designator as well.

Which means that Kanan… that Kanan knows everything now.

Well okay maybe not everything – thank kriff that Ezra's obsequious just by habit now when he's speaking to others about his old Master. Still, he takes an involuntarily step backward, in preparation to bolt even so. Because he's definitely said enough at this point to end up dead and buried in the very, very near future, judging by the way that Kanan's body is practically radiating with a combination of disbelief and fury at the moment.

"How in Force did you…"

"How did I get all the way out here before the two of you did?" Kanan grits his teeth, rolls his shoulders – takes a single, distinctly menacing step forward. "Chopper sent us the coordinates earlier., Ezra, while you were still sleeping. Not to even mention that the Phantom is a kark of a lot faster than anything that was available at the point that you and Chopper decided to go transport jacking." The older Jedi takes a step forward, working his jaw, his eyes ice cold. "You and I are overdue a long chat right now, Ezra, clearly."

"Kanan…" Ezra hedges, taking an involuntary half of a step backwards.

"Be. Silent. Ezra!" The words are thunderous in their quiet determination, and again, for just the space of a heartbeat or so the younger Jedi seriously considers bolting –his eyes scanning the distant hills for escape routes or for adequate cover in the low grass. But ultimately, he's just too kriffing tired to even bother at the moment. This week has been literally karked to hell and back, and ultimately, Ezra has to believe that this man is still ultimately Kanan – whose better angels Ezra's always trusted when he's had to. It's probably better in this case to just let the older man take the necessary pound of flesh until his temper cools down, and after that, they can at least try and talk about the subject rationally again.

So Ezra exhales, and then he drops his head nearly down to his chest with a quick nod, letting his supplication show in literally every line of his body. "Okay, Kanan. I'm sorry and I'm listening."

"No, you're not, Ezra," Kanan's voice is biting when he finally replies. "Not to me. Not to the Force. Kark - not even really to yourself at this point, as much as you're trying to deny it. Force kid, it's like you've been playing a high stakes game of mental Sabbaac for so karking long now that you don't even seem to acknowledge what the contents of the pot are anymore. Even though the stakes are so high for you at this point that you're bleeding yourself out just trying to cover the buy in."

Kanan gestures down toward Ezra's still blood streaked hand as he walks down the hill in order to stop all but directly in front of him, the moon illuminating the planes of the older Jedi's face as he stares down at the younger man determinedly, "Only Ezra?" his voice heavy with equal measures of promise and warning. "The game is *over.* This table? Is closing down. Hand in your karking chips, Kid, you are cashing out, for the indefinite future at this point. Because you no longer have the kind of creds required to cover the kind of debts you are presently writing. The only tender you have left that's worth a damn anymore, Ezra is straight up, unvarnished honesty at the moment."

Ezra's head jerks sharply up and down again, "I understand, Kanan."

"So you say, Kid. We'll be seeing. Because I have a list right now about as tall as you are, of stuff that still needs some additional... discussion. But in the meantime, Ezra." Kanan takes another step forward then, his jaw twitching hard, his eyes flaring hot as he speaks. "Let me make this crystal clear, just for the sake of clarity from the onset. 'Captain Rex,' I believe was what Chopper called him? You vaunted master's old Clone trooper buddy from his war days? His chances of becoming you substitute guardian Ezra, instead of Hera and I? Just went from slim, to literally non-existent. You can set your current relocation plans *on fire*, Ezra. Because your former master, if he'd had any real credibility in my eyes to begin with - which he really, really didn't - lost it completely the moment I finally realized that he was at best a narcissistic asshole that I wouldn't trust with the safety of a plant which I happened to like, or at worst an expelled knight of the order who died and nearly took you along with him in the process of falling to the Sith. Either way you will go near any of your old clone trooper 'friends' at this point Ezra, the day after I am literally *karking dead and buried beside him.*"

Ezra doesn't consciously remember making a choice then to actually hit Kanan. He just takes a swing, feeling his fist and Kanan's nose connect, hot blood spurting, as both his mind and the link in his head explode in simultaneous fury. Because Kanan Jarrus? Is an absolute moron who clearly does not understand anything, who has *no clue at all* what it is that he's actually implying. He needs to shut up right now. And if necessary? Ezra will kriffing make him.

Everything gets distinctly fuzzy for a couple of long minutes after that– the whole world shifting into a wild blur of blows and epithets, of Force Shoves, Force Jumps and desperate parries - and all the while through it all, everything is knife sharp and blood red with with the force of Ezra's fury. The grief and pain growing sharper and sharper until it's a relief, when just a few minutes later Ezra abruptly collapses downward under Kanan's final order to 'sleep.'

It's underhanded, Kanan supposes, for him to set up their initial round of conflict so that it cripples most of Ezra's strengths while also maximizing all of Kanan's own at the same time. Nothing in the world right now, can change the fact that in straight up hand to hand situation Kanan's way kriffing bigger than Ezra is, after all. But right now, especially in light of Chopper's most recent round of bombshell revelations, Kanan doesn't care about being fair in this confrontation anymore. No, what he cares about right now is *force damned winning.*

Because Ezra - damaged, stupid, far too trusting of his Master, Ezra Bridger - has apparently been planning for all this time to offer up his neck to the universe by throwing himself literally on the mercy of a bunch of former GAR Clone Troopers. Like this is somehow a remotely *tenable* option.

And that? Is not going to happen. Not unless Kanan Jarrus is literally dead and buried first. Everyone has their breakpoints, after all. And he just hit his own, for the moment.

The first part of their fight passes predictably fast and brutal – finally ended not by an actual resolution of hostilities so much as via Kanan's forced sleep suggestion. When Ezra drops, the Older Jedi literally slumps for a moment in relief. Because frankly speaking by that point Ezra has clearly moved well past even remotely rational for the moment, and Kanan needs a second or two to check a couple of his ribs on the left side. Because that kid force shoves like a kriffing Gundark once he's a certain level of angry. Or maybe like a pack of them truthfully.

Once Ezra's finally unconscious – well at least for the moment anyway - Kanan lifts the now sleeping boy over his shoulder, carrying him back up the ramp and into the hold of Phantom, leaving open the boarding ramp and plopping the kid down across several of the rear folding seats. His other hand digs around in the lower compartment where he knows Hera keeps several packs of hydrating sports drinks for several seconds. He knows at this point that he needs to drink a couple of the bottles just as a precaution as hard as he's been sweating in the last fifteen minutes, and if Ezra's been hard lining Brandy all the way out here to the temple then that's probably doubly true for the kid, who is the walking talking definition of hot mess at the moment.

He drops a blanket over the smaller form then settles in on one of the seats across Ezra so that he'll be in clear line of sight whenever the teenager finally opens his eyes - along with two bottles of the aforementioned sports drink as well. Because yes, whupping the kid's ass from here to Capital City at this point if that's what it takes to keep him safe is all fine and well at this juncture, but Kanan karking draws the line at unnecessarily dehydrating him.

Kanan empties two bottles of the too sweet green fluid in a row, drinking slowly as he does so, and then he closes his eyes and tries to begin re-establishing his own center of calm, first through deep breathing and then eventually through meditation. It's not an easy task though. He's been all but twanging with rage, disbelief and something very close to outright panic ever since Chopper first tricked Ezra into unintentionally outing Rex and his brothers when the two of them first arrive.

Ezra had actually intended to...to...Kanan can't allow himself to actually finish the sentence.

The older Jedi reminds himself then, that the men in question probably don't even know that Ezra even exists yet, depending on how long ago they'd actually known or regularly interacted with his former master. The assurance either way that regardless of anything else they will never have the chance now to meet Kid completely and utterly unguarded is a comfort that Kanan can at least cling to for the moment .

Kanan doesn't meditate for all that long truthfully - maybe half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, before he finally hears the sound of a low groan from the other set of chairs. After that, there's a pause and a low growl of disgust before there's the sound of a gingerly shifting body and the distinct 'schick!' sound of another bottle of liquid being opened.

When he opens his eyes half a second later, Ezra is glaring at him dourly as the younger swallows down the last of Kanan's offering in a seated position. The kid wipes his hand over his mouth before speaking. "Yes, you are an asshole Jarrus, and apparently about as perceptive as a blind, deaf flatworm when it comes to drawing reliable conclusions, but I'm still not attacking anyone when they're actively meditating. My former master? Was a very, very good man. He was absolutely *not a Sith.* I know that much for certain, because on two separate occasions, the two of us actually met and tangled with some, and believe me Jarrus, said men were very distinctly different! 'F' for faulty and generally dumbass assumptions. Also, thank you, I suppose that I'm now obligated to say, for sharing the Karabast drink."

Kanan just rolls his eyes. So then they're back to just verbally sparring again for the moment? Fine, he can deal with that. "I'm touched by your apparent retention of some personal standards, Kid." He points to the second bottle still at Ezra's feet. "Drink the other one too so you don't end up anymore wrecked in the liver then you already are. I repeat for the record, Ezra - booze is not just water that's taking vacation."

Ezra snorts at that comment, his voice derisive, though he also does reach down and pick up the drink in question. "I can't believe it's actually come down to me having to explicitly say this to your face, but you are neither my Master nor my *mother,* Kanan Jarrus - no matter what in kriff is currently shaping your delusions."

'Tell me that when you're not addressing me by the title whenever you're under the influence, kid. In Vino Veritas.' Kanan can't help but think in the moment, before he speaks up again, "Arguable Bridger. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, yadda yadda yadda. Like it or not I'm the closest thing that you've got to either one of the above at this point." Kanan cracks his own third bottle of liquid open, "And you clearly still need both at the moment, so you might as well just quit while you are actually ahead."

"Odd - I don't remember actually requesting re-assignment for either position," Ezra snaps back at him tightly.

Kanan just shrugs his shoulders a little bit philosophically before replying. "Yeah, funny thing about that Ezra, is that the roles in question are usually assigned not requested. Admittedly normally from birth or shortly after, but hey – sometimes you get stuck with an awkward replacement. If you don't like the situation Kid, then you can always file a complaint about it when you finally reach the actual age of majority and be let off the hook at that point - well assuming that you're both reasonably healthy and self sufficient and not say a drunken, over-reactive kriffing mess. When you're still fourteen, half starved and still actively recovering from massive psychic trauma on the other hand..." Kanan makes a shaky up and down motion with one of his hands in Ezra's general direction, "You're pretty much out of luck for the moment. I personally suggest that you just zip your lip and deal with it."

Ezra blinks at Kanan for a long moment in response to that analogy, and then he laughs, high and more than a little bit hoarsely. "Force, you are certifiably insane! You do know that right, Jarrus? As in you are literally rounding the bend right now on the road that leads to the asylum."

Kanan's returning grin is just slightly feral - although this time around it's also less angry then before. "Well if I am Kid, then you better get used to the view from the bed in the room that's currently directly across the hall from me." He shrugs his shoulders "Because as Hera so kindly reminded me just a couple of weeks ago I'm a kark of a lot more afraid of ignoring the will of The Force concerning all of this Ezra than I am of fighting with you if it's necessary. I'm smart enough to know who's the better boss here, Kid, in terms actually knowing everyone's better interests. Which means that I'm going to actually pay attention when the Force makes clear where and what it wants me to be."

"The Force wants you actively attempting to give me an ongoing ulcer, Kanan? Because I have to question that conclusion, quite frankly."

"Sounds like a topic for you and the Force, Kid, not one for you and me in specific at this point. I suggest you try adding it to your next meditation..."

"I've already been doing that for literal weeks now. Hasn't helped much, Kanan, believe me."

"You've been meditating on the situation for that long Kid, and despite that you're still claiming right now that you can't sense...?" Kanan motions to the space in between the two them for a moment, his head tilted, his jaw working in pure frustration. "Ezra, you have to know - if you're actually in tune at all at this point, that this...this is not at all how we're supposed to actually work, Kid. Something's off kilter here. It's completely, as you once put it yourself, Ezra, 'hinky.'"

"Yes." Ezra acknowledges then, finally tipping back the contents of the second bottle. "'Something is off kilter, Kanan. That something would be me. Because I can't - no, I won't walk down this particular road again, willingly for love or money. Because I already saw an earlier matinee of this show as I've mentioned before, and believe me, Jarrus, the final camera roll is pretty awful and messy."

Kanan snorts, "Wow ... do you want me to maybe grab you a towel or something there, Kid? While you literally sit there drowning in a pool of your own self-pity? Because I have to tell you, Erza, that right now the constant whining about it all is seriously starting to grate on me."

Ezra clenches his fists at his side, "You have no idea what you're actually talking about right now Kanan, as we've already established, so why don't you just shut. the. kark. up. about. it. already!"

Kanan snorts very softly in response to that claim, "Ezra, nobody in Karabast creation knows this particular sob story better than I do at present. You're basically the new and not particularly improved edition of me. You start out walking a road at some point earlier on in your life, because it's clearly yours and it's where you belong until suddenly said road turns brutal and ugly and abruptly ends up costing what you assume is too much. And so you run, and you drown yourself in intoxicants for a decade or so until one day you suddenly wake up to discover that surprise, surprise - you are still who you have always been no matter how much you might want to run it. The path is still there in front of you and it's still yours to walk, same as ever Kid. It always has been it always will be. Only now on top of being a wreck you also get to deal with the realization that you've just wasted ten years on literally nothing but hiding from your life that could have been spent instead on ...get this, *actual healing.*"

Kanan takes another sip of his own drink. "Yes, I know...it hurts like kark to endure what you just have, Ezra - I'm not going to try and claim otherwise. But guess what, if you're in the process of actively running away from your life instead of running towards it even as hard as that can be at times like this, then it *is* still just a big pity party on your part, and it will never be anything else until the day that you finally *stop hiding* and start actually dealing with the necessary."

"I am *trying* to 'deal with the karking necessary!'" Ezra cuts him off at a near shout. "As you so tritely just put it. I am trying desperately to build something better right now…" Ezra points an accusing finger at the older man. "Newsflash, Jarrus! You are the one who is repeatedly *not letting me!*"

"You're trying to build something 'better...'" Kanan puts the last of the word in sarcastic air quotes, "By willfully ditching the only other living Jedi that you know of at this point in your life in order to go and live with a bunch of former Clone troopers instead. Men who you don't even know as anything but the shadows of your master's memories. " Kanan reiterates, "Whose 'brothers' wiped out all but a likely pittance of our order about the same time as you were born - assuming that there are any other Jedi left out there alive anymore at this point other than just you and me."

"You make it sound so karking personal, when you say it that way Jarrus." Ezra groans sharply into his hands. "It's nothing against you personally at all, why can't you seem to understand that?! None of this decision is about you, all right? My reasons for doing this are ultimately all about me."

"It is personal, Ezra!" Kanan snaps back, looking for a moment like a nearly rabid wolf. "Unlike you, Kid, I've actually met actual Clone Troopers before. And I was there when they literally cut down my master right in front of me! Are you really that naive? That fundamentally blind to the details of your own cultural history? That kind of decision on you part will never not be anything but a suicidally stupid direct slap to the face to someone like me!"

"Other clones may have been a threat to the Jedi at one point, yes, Kanan, but these three are different, I'm telling you! None of them having karking chips that work anymore. How many times do I have to tell you that my master trusted Rex with his life explicitly! That Rex called For kriff's sake, Jarris, for three years he worked with the man repeatedly! Well after the completion of order 66."

"I don't care at this point if your former master trusted the karking Emporer himself, Ezra. As has already been stated, he is no longer with you anymore, I am. Which is clearly a pretty big step up for you at this point, Ezra, since as already I already stated earlier, he was clearly less than a looming pillar of light judging by the absolute mess that he left after he died as his legacy!"

Ezra literally to starts to shake again with barely repressed rage at those words. He points at the older Jedi hard with one of his pointer fingers, shoving forward to the very edge of his bench. "Don't you dare disparage his name that way in front of me again, Kanan! Don't you dare presume at this point in time that you even have the right right now to bend over and kiss his karking feet! You know nothing about him or about the life he chose to live, Jarrus! Literally, absolutely nothing!"

"Oh, I already know everything I possibly need to know about the man by this point in time, Ezra." Kanan rises to feet then, and spreads his arms out mockingly as he continues to speak. "He may not have a name, but he was a literal God among mere men apparently. So much so that you're literally running like a mynock out of hell into the arms of potential murderers right now to avoid even taking the chance that you might actually belong with another Jedi instead! So clearly the man was a moral bastion who cared for you as you deserved at the very same time that taught you how to recognize and appreciate the value of having both cultural past and a family!"

Ezra explodes up and off of the bench in response to that particular dig, pivoting sharply once he reaches his feet and stomping back out of the open back entrance of the shuttle and out into clearing between the Phantom and the Temple. Kanan pivots and then follows him out and into the darkness, his own jaw set, because they have apparently reached the start of physical round two. And it it's about karking time to speak very frankly.

Because truthfully, yes: Kanan had always intended to bait Ezra into another round of fisticuffs or brawling if he could do so. He had meant to drag out the younger man's anger, and shove them toward another round of actual physical reckoning. He all but needs the kid to take another swing at him once they're both clearheaded. Both because the kid has got to eventually acknowledge who had the position of top dog right now, and because, on an even more fundamental level Ezra isn't going to survive if he doesn't eventually acknowledge the truth. If he can't face up to and start to purge some of his lifetime's worth of both terror and grief. If he can't acknowledge what his relationship with his former master had actually made of him.

Kanan genuinely hadn't known until that moment in front of the temple though, though perhaps he probably should have, what would ultimately be the final lynch pin in toppling both Ezra's guise and his emotional composure completely. All Kanan'd really needed to do in the end was exactly what he'd wanted to do for literal days now...

...Start taking pot shot's at the Kid's old Master apparently.

Because Ezra Bridger comes for him then, the moment that Kanan's just a few yards clear of the Phantom. Not with strategy or tactics no - but mercilessly, rapidly and silently - with more power behind his eyes and in the air around him than Kanan Jarrus has ever karking seen. With the exact kind of raw unfiltered force potential that if left unchecked long enough could probably level or raise entire cities. It would probably honestly be the most terrifying thing that Kanan's ever encountered in his life up to that moment honestly, if it weren't also the most stupid, pointless bull-rush of a charge that he's ever karking seen.

Ezra after all, is at best one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet - if even that. The kid's head barely touches the top of Kanan's shoulder - his power may be great but grappling physical combat isn't currently his best way to employ it. With Kanan rooted in the Force for balance as he is, and without either of them currently bearing a blade the kid may have power yes, but with this particular type of attack Ezra is essentially just headbutting against a wall like a kriffing battering ram. This isn't isn't a real fight, no– this is him just purely venting his fury.

Which is too bad for Ezra really, at least for the moment. Because after all battering rams usually require more than one blow to actually work. Battering rams aren't effective on targets that are easily mobilized and battering rams sure as kark don't usually aim at walls that can actually fight back. Stopping Ezra is almost painfully, ridiculously easy for Kanan under the circumstances. The older Jedi simply shifts his torso as Ezra finally draws closer, grabs the younger man by the back of his jumpsuit and tosses him, using the teenager's own forward momentum from the charge in order to fuel most of the necessary motion. Then he puts his hands on his hips, as Ezra lands face down in the high grass. "Sloppy, Bridger. Really, really damn sloppy. Try again, Kid- and little a harder next time around. For Force sakes don't waste our kriffing time if we are actually going to have to do this."

Ezra growls in reply, flipping from him stomach onto his back before swiftly kipping back up and onto his feet. The kid's next attack is far more controlled but really no more effective. The force shove Ezra sends in his direction slams Kanan back a fairly decent distance yes, but the older Jedi never truly loses his footing, and when Ezra tries to use the resulting distraction in tandem with burst of force assisted speed in order to jump, flip and land behind Kanan's back, the he merely makes a derisive sound as he spins around swiftly in return, planting a boot as he does directly in the center of Ezra's ass and very deliberately pushing.

"So is this an actual fight Bridger? Or just a five year old's temper tantrum? Because I honestly can't tell at the moment, judging by the way that just keep on bull-rushing me. It's like you're not even actually trying. I'm guessing your esteemed master's advice would have been something like, 'do karking better.' If he'd have cared enough to have an actual opinion at all, I mean."

Ezra growls at him again, though this time around he doesn't take any further initiative than that. Instead the younger Jedi simply holds his own ground for the moment, trying to steady breathing. Kanan tilts his heads to one side, "Are you ready to cede now?" He asks mock conversationally, raising an eyebrow even as he voices the question.

Ezra's own response, besides just a slight shift of his stance is a long string of increasingly crude multilingual obscenities. The older Jedi snorts hard in almost automatic reaction. "Well come on then.' he motions the teenager forward with his hand. "I'm going to want to stop and eat eventually, you know. This stuff tends to burn a lot of kriffing calories."

Ezra's eyes are wet and wild now – a potent mix of frustration and fury, and Kanan, looking at the way that the kid's whole body is starting to shake again just with the sheer effort of trying to repress his emotions, figures they've both had just about enough of this essentially. If this goes on for too much longer Ezra's almost certainly going to stroke out from high blood pressure or something.

Which is why when the teenager comes at him this time around, Kanan takes the blow instead of simply deflecting it, with only a little grunt for his effort as he does so. The older Jedi pivots hard and drops them both to the ground - with Kanan absorbing most of the impact as he does so, before rolling swiftly over and pinning the younger man's arms to the ground on either side of him. He grunts a little as Ezra bucks, adjusts his crouching lower body. "This is over, Kid. I win! For kriff's sake, Ezra, just cede!"

"Let me go!" Ezra grits out in desperate reply, his voice cracking with the weight of unshed tears even as he struggles and fights the hold on his wrists with equal measures of both terror and panic.

"Kid, how many time do I have to say this: That. Is. Not. Karking. Happening." Kanan calms his tone, speaking as steadily as he can possibly manage, aiming for in control in his tone but not for authoritarianism or further cruelty, seeing as how Ezra probably doesn't require any more goading just gentle to truth to finally break him completely. "I know that it pisses you off to hear that, and frankly probably scares you to death, but I'm sorry Kid it's still the literal truth, and you're just going to have to try and get used to it eventually."

"Force, I karking hate you!" Ezra spits back in reply, spewing still more profanity, even though right now his eyes are clearly starting to glisten, though the moisture blurring his vision thus far refuses to actually spill over.

"Yeah, so you keep telling me, Kid." Kanan replies, watching the tears well up in wide blue eyes, "But news flash for you, Ezra – that doesn't actually change anything! At least not in terms of how it's going to be! You can karking hate me if you need to right now! You can run! You can try your best to shut me out - and I'm still going be here two steps directly to the left of you all the way. Because I karking well know right now that that's where I'm *meant* to be Force Damned be!"

Ezra bites down so hard on his lower lip that it literally bleeds then, before the teenager brings up a sharp, desperate knee – no doubt aiming for Kanan's groin as he does so. The older Jedi deflects the attack without any difficulty, though he does have to pause and readjust his grip on the struggling body after a couple more moments. Ezra's back to being more instinct than he is reason right now in his struggles. The shields around the kid's mind are finally cracking under the strain, Thank Force, the emotions underneath literally swirling and boiling in their sheer desperation. Almost there. Almost done. ' Well hopefully'

When Ezra attempts yet another groin shot, his eyes slamming tightly shut against the building flood, Kanan finally curses softly, releases his hold for the barest number of seconds, then flips the teenager over in the grass and onto his stomach so that Ezra can't make the same kind of attempt to unman him again. So close...so karking close. 'Just a little further.'

"Enough Ezra." He repeats one final time, pinning the younger man's torso in place with most of the weight of his upper body. "Just let it go already, Kid. This is not a fight you are going to be allowed to win, do you karking understand me? Just. Let. It. Go. Kriffing Please!"

Ezra just fights him even harder, his palms clenching into tight fists, though he doesn't call even once on the assistance of the Force, Kanan notes. And then the older Jedi's hand smacks down hard at least a dozen or more times on the teenager's upper thighs and backside with more than enough force behind each blow to sting. It's less than delicate Kanan acknowledges, but the best he can come up with for breaking the desperately overfilled emotional at the moment.

Kanan can feel the emotional barriers in Ezra's mind finally crumble in response as the teenager beneath him starts first to shake and then to sniffle repeatedly - his whole body quaking in response to both the chaos in his head and the far more literal pain in his body - well all the while Kanan keeps up a pattern of repetitive swats until at last the fabric beneath his hand grows warm from the repeat application of friction and Ezra's previously tense form goes suddenly utterly limp against the ground. All of the fight finally dropping out of the smaller former as the tears inside the kid finally make their escape, spilling hot and ruthless out of Ezra eyes and onto the soft grass that's directly beneath him.

Which is the exact moment at which Kanan finally releases his own hold on the struggling boy, backing off immediately, just far enough for the time being to give Ezra plenty of room to roll off of his stomach and into another position if he chooses to. The teenager responds to Kanan's retreat by flipping instinctively onto his side then and curling up into a tight compact ball of abject misery.

"...Ezra." Kanan's voice is soft now as well as as soothing as he can possibly make it even as he reaches out a careful hand to stroke through the dark head of hair. Which Ezra accepts without so much as a flinch. "It's all right...you're going to be okay, Kid. I know that it doesn't feel that way right now but I swear to Force, it's going to start getting better. It's going to be all right, you're not alone anymore. I'm right here and I swear to Force, Ezra that I'm always going to be if I have any say about it. This is just a new beginning okay? It isn't any kind of end."

There is no reply to those words really, short of the teen curling in even tighter on himself in response, his breath still ragged with the force of his grief and the intensity of his weeping. Kanan watches him for another moment or so, feeling utterly helpless, before finally sighing very deeply, and reaching out to gingerly shift the kid a little closer and ease him into a very gently hug. He's fully prepared to back off if Ezra stiffens or tries to push away the offered comfort instead. It's always a possibility after all, Kanan knows, that the normally standoffish teenager isn't going to want to be touched for awhile - by anyone under the present circumstances, and as much as it kills Kanan to even think about it, if that's what happens then the older Jedi is going to have at least try and respect it.

Instead though, Kanan is almost immediately rewarded for taking the chance at all when literally three heartbeats later, Ezra curls his whole form forward into physical reach of the larger man's body – the younger man's hands digging into Kanan's shirt front for a moment or so in silent, pleading desperation.

Sighing in, relief, Kanan stretches out his legs in front of him, then gingerly crosses them. It takes him another moment or so to arrange the smaller, trembling form into a semi comfortable position on his lap, but eventually he's got the kid essentially curled up half resting against him, one side of Ezra pressed against Kanan's broad sternum. Ezra's dark head of hair is tucked in under Kanan's chin for the moment, as the older Jedi strokes through the younger man's hair several times methodically before eventually wrapping both of his arms around the smaller shakig body, murmuring basic nonsense reassurance all the while, while he sits and waits for Ezra to eventually find his center and hopefully start to calm down again.

The teenager doesn't stop crying though - not after five minutes, or fifteen or even twenty. In fact if something doesn't change relatively soon, Kanan realizes by around minute twenty-eight, the kid isn't going to manage to calm himself down at all, so much as literally cry himself into an utterly exhausted sleep, cry straight through his dreams, and then wake in a couple of hours with an awful dehydration headache to deal with on top of everything else he's struggling with at the moment. Ezra Bridger is probably going to keep on crying, Kanan realizes, until the river inside of him literally runs dry. Assuming that that's even possible for the kid at the moment.

And no one deserves to be left fighting that kind of prolonged agony all alone, at least not in Kanan's own opinion anyway. So he draws in a deep, steadying breath, releases it and then very, very carefully brushes his own mind against the teenager's now paper thin shielding. Not demanding information as he does so, nor even really requesting entrance, just offering a steady mental flood of warmth and reassurance, while making his offer of assistance very, very clear to the both of them. Kanan is here and he wants to help... he *will* karking help, he swears to Force he will, if Ezra will just trust him enough to finally *let him in.*

He waits there, gently testing the barriers, until at last they fall away like a thin sheet of silk, allowing Kanan to slip almost effortlessly in past the outer edge of Ezra's mental safeguards and into the center of the teenager's mind, bringing a literal flood of love and comfort and reassurance right along with him.

Only for both of their bodies to suddenly jerk in reaction as if they've been suddenly contacted by a live wire as Kanan's mind reaches out to wrap itself around Ezra's own with a warm rush of healing and praise and 'Yes, it's okay. I'm here. You're not alone...' Only for him to feel the Force literally thunder in the depths of his own head in sudden reaction, before sending a sharp rush of sudden, almost unspeakable power literally streaming into psychic cores of the both of them.

And then Kanan is spasming in repeated shock as well as the energy ensnaring both of them abruptly ripples: once, twice, four times in a row - each surge of power carrying with it further rightness and finally allowed restoration. As a training bond *already present*- faint and strained and terribly, terrifyingly fragile yes but also *already karking there* because this thing was *forced willed*, right from the start and how in Force had Kanan *not* previously recognized it?!

The bond flares from a narrow strand of intertwining gossamer threads into something as thick as a cable even as he instinctively reaches toward it. Toward a binding secure and solid and right and so incredibly relieving. Like Kanan's just discovered something of himself again that he'd never even consciously realized before now was actually missing.

The link roots in deep - not beside, not above or below but literally atop where Ezra's old bond with his previous master had been. While the teenager in his lap keens with relief and terror both, his whole body shaking, as ripple after ripple of power flares repeatedly through the both of them. Well all the while the influx of energy continuing to build on the bond, linking the two of them together, over and over and over, binding their minds and fates into an interdependent, and hopefully long enduring journey.

"Sith spit. What in the… what in karking hell just happened?" The words come out as a strangled gasp through Kanan's own lips. He doesn't even realize that he's speaking until Ezra literally flinches hard in reaction, curling in on himself as best as he can even as the trembling fourteen year old tries to scoot backward like a beaten child out of his spot on Kanan's lap.

"I'm sorry." He babbles, "Force Master, I'm so, so, so sorry. I tried, Kanan. I swear to force that I did. I did everything that I could possibly think of to stop it, to keep it all from just starting up again. I really, truly tried to take a higher road on this second time around, Master. I did..."

And yes - despite it all the kid is still kriffing crying.

"Hush Ezra." And Force but Kanan doesn't understand most if not all of what is happening at the moment. He still doesn't grasp any of the reasons for the almost limbic level of fear that he can now sense connected to Ezra's desperate rush of nonsense words. But it's all there where Ezra can't hide it anymore nonetheless. The terror for the teenager is real, and it's violent and it's literally crushing him to death. Ezra's genuinely terrified for both of them right, and Force but in the face of that very real panic Kanan literally can't help but respond with instinctive, protective parental reassurance.

"It's fine, Kid. I promise you. It's going to be all right. We'll figure it out."

Ezra lets out an almost manic giggle in reaction. "No, it isn't going to be all right, Master! Force, Kanan! You say that like you actually know – like you have any karking clue at all! But this is not my first time at this particular carnival, all right!? I've been on this damn ride at least one time around already over the past four years and I'm telling you by the end of it only one of us will still be alive. And at least half way to permanently out of their mind!"

Ezra buries his face in Kanan's chest again then, clinging like a young child who had just been woken by night terrors. Kanan frowns deeply, considering that statement for a couple more long and hesitant moments, turning the words over in his head before finally pushing the teenager just far enough back in his lap that Kanan can see Ezra's face as the two of them continue speaking.

"You've been having swarms of Force visions haven't you? Ever since The Ghost first came into orbit during that first mission? Ones where the two of us ended up as Master and Padawan, and then I ended up dead or something? And something very similar happened just before your first master died?"

Ezra giggles - this time outright hysterically, "Yeah. Sure. Whatever. I suppose that if you need a kriffing explanation for all of this then that one is as good of one as any of the others. Because Karabast if *I* understand exactly what the kark is really happening!" He giggle-whines once more, and this time, from Kanan's vantage point inside the teenager's crumbling mindscape, he starts to truly grasp just how close Ezra's been for literal days now to outright breaking. To the kid's sanity literally crumpling like wet paper under the sheer weight of the wrongness of the world that's all around him. A world simultaneously real and yet also not his own.

This...this is more than Kanan first grasped isn't it? This is about far more than just Ezra losing one Master and then finding another even though he's terrified to have anotherat this point in his life. This is about more than his parent's disappearance all those years ago or even the damage that's been wreaked on his psyche by a previously shattered force bond. This is about more than just the link that is currently forming - no reforming - rapidly between the two of them at the moment.

"Ezra what in kark is actually going on here?" The words are quiet but also very intense when Kanan finally finds his voice again, the question equal parts demand and plea for any kind of coherent information that might help him start to truly understand the actual situation.

His Padawan only replies to the question by outright giggling. Though not defiantly exactly, Kanan notes instinctively at the same time. There's just nothing stable left of the kid that can answer anymore, not in the wake of their recent fight and Ezra's following cry and the way that the older Jedi has just finished up literally spanking the tears and the truth both simultaneously out of him.

"You probably wouldn't believe me even if I did tell you, Kanan. Kark, I'm the one who's living through it at present and even I don't believe me sometimes. I keep expecting to wake up strapped to an interrogation table in a star destroyer or something with Thrawn or on of the inquisitorius standing over me laughing. It would certainly be no less illogical for that to be the reality right now than what actually seems to be happening!"

The words make something pang hard in the center of Kanan's chest - and rocks the teenager carefully even as he continues to speak. "You'd be surprised what I'd believe right now Ezra, under the current circumstances. Seriously, Kid - just spill it already. Tell me what you know, at least from your own current perspective Ezra, and I absolutely promise you: I will not judge you, just help make things better if I can."

Ezra shudders, then giggles yet again, drawing in another deep breath. "Fine. Don't say that I didn't warn you, though. Welcome to crazyville, Master. I am eighteen karking years old, Kanan! Or at least I was until about nine weeks ago anyway. Which is about the time that I fell asleep in a chair on the Rebellion base on Yavin because Sabine and Hera kriffing sedated me in the wake of *your* death, both insisting I that I was actively killing myself from insufficiently treated exhaustion. And then I woke up here, Kanan. In this time and this body, trapped in a dream that I can't quite seem to wake up from, no matter how hard I try to do so. No matter how much I want at this point to truly not be asleep."

Ezra lifts his hands to his hair then, digging them into his scalp, hard enough that Kanan raises one of his own hands for a moment to try and ease the grip just a little, before the teenager's fingernails can break the skin, or even worse yet, before Ezra actually manages to pull any of his hair free in large clumps. "Easy, Kid. Easy." Kanan murmurs, debating for a moment if he should wait on the rest of this explanation and put Ezra back under for awhile instead. He settle for sending pulses of calm and reassurance into the kid for now, instead- as strong and constant as he can possibly manage to keep them for now given his own inner turmoil at the moment.

Because Force, yeah Ezra was right...the teenager absolutely does sound crazy. Sith hells - he sounds insane at a level that would normally require a course or two of locked-ward psychotherapy. Except for two things other things that Kanan also can't help but be blazingly achingly aware of at the moment.

Number one….Neither Ezra nor the Force itself - which is still wrapped around the two of them, sharp and bright and pulsing as it continues to weave more and more psychic strands between the two of them- is giving any indication at all that the teenager is either incorrect or deliberately lying at present. Ezra truly believes every word that he's just shared, and the Force …? The Force isn't even mildly contradicting him. If anything it's doing just opposite, really: humming True True True True repeatedly at Kanan.

Two… Kanan can literally sense both the depth and age of the bond that's currently forming between the two them. No, he corrects himself, not forming like it's new…restoring back to whatever strength it had originally been before...before Kanan'd died. Which only moves this entire mess from seriously, epically karked up just in general terms to a new and likely profound level of *Shatterpoint* crazy.

Because Ezra is speaking the truth - at least as far as he can consciously comprehend it, anyway - and as a result all around them the kriffing galaxy is literally shifting and bending and remaking itself in front of his eyes while he literally clings to the boy who lays at the center of this apparent chronal hurricane while all the while the currents of time shift in larger and faster ripples around the both of them.

Kanan just sits there for the moment and he holds on to Ezra for dear life - because the younger Jedi is slipping right now – slowly, steadily, if not irrecoverably just yet. And honestly Ezra probably has been ever since the very first moment that Kanan laid eyes on him all those weeks ago. What's teetering over the precipice right now isn't his Padwan's alignment to the light or the dark side, though. No, Kanan realizes, a little panicked with realization, this is about Ezra's sanity. Because no one - no matter how young, how brave, how fucking resilient can endure this kind of mental dissonance alone indefinitely without eventually completely cracking under the strain of carrying around this kind of secret alone. Not when reality at its most basic level of is based upon a world of shared time, place and memory.

"How in the karking Force?" Kanan mutters into his hair, squeezing his eyes shut before exhaling raggedly, "Did you not literally flip your lid the very first moment that you set your eyes on all of the rest of us in that market, Kid? Because Ezra, I would probably have gone completely *psycho* at that point if we'd been in opposite positions."

Ezra giggles in reply to the question, reaching up to wipe his eyes with his sleeve. "Psychological detachment maybe? Or enough time to adjust at least a little bit beforehand to everything that was happening before the rest of you arrived on planet? When I first woke up in this time stream, Kanan, and I realized that I wasn't going anywhere I kind of ...well I guess that I just kind of lost my kriff for a bit. I did a lot of yelling at no one initially, a lot throwing things and screaming at the sky. Tried to 'wake myself up' about every half sane way that I could possibly come up with. Without any luck. Tried more then one less then sane way as well,truthfully." He wipes his eyes, again, finally. "Then one afternoon while I was getting food I ended up stealing a bottle of Whiskey from one of the shops in town just to try and turn it all off for awhile. And well...I woke up on the floor of my tower with said bottle empty about a day and a half after that." Ezra chuckles then, sniffling wetly, nose wrinkling in remembrance, "I have to admit, Kanan, I genuinely thought when I first regained a decent measure of consciousness that the hangover from that particular decision was going to end up literally killing me by the end."

Kanan makes a distressed sound in response to that confession, tightening the hug, but Ezra isn't done speaking quite yet. "As it turned out though, that dry out period helped out a lot in the long run, Master. Because I was too physically and mentally flattened to go out and get more booze at that time. I didn't have the physical strength or the psychological focus to manage another trip into town for almost two days, and there was really nothing else that I could do after the worst of the vomiting passed except just lie there wherever I happened to fall and try and meditate in order to fill up the hours, as my head gradually started clearing. At which point I finally realized Kanan, that if this really was going to be my 'life' for the foreseeable future ...if this was all actually happening and I couldn't prove that it wasn't then you and the others were going to be showing up on Lothal in a little more than four weeks time. And so I better sober up and get my ass back in gear. Because if I didn't you guys were all going to die or be captured by the Empire during the course of our original first job together because I was a drunken loser who couldn't handle doing my part this time around. Which no..." Ezra shakes his head. "Just no to infinity. Like Kark was I just going to clock out that way and watch them take you guys away helplessly in the same way that I had to watch when they took my parents from me."

"And after the mission was over, Ezra? When you apparently decided to dump us all off to the side like we were so much useless baggage?" 'For reasons I still don't entirely understand? But about which we will *definitely be talking?*' "What exactly was your plan for after that, huh?"

Well other than more excessive drinking apparently: which Ezra had already had an ample start on when Kanan had first relocated him and dragged him out for breakfast that first morning in the market. When he'd found about the Kid's shattered training link. A link that no doubt had been constantly trying to reform despite the Kid's best efforts to stop it ever karking since.

Ezra shakes his head, shrugs his shoulder, doesn't bother to look up. "Basically, Kanan I figured that I'd just duck and stay under cover until Hera got restless like she normally does after a couple of day and you guys finally jumped back out of the system. At which point - I don't know, I planned to finally re-emerge and start acquire enough funds to get off of the planet in a few months and start living life on my own after the resulting divergence."

Ah yes, Kanan scowls very deeply at that particular admission. Recalling Ezra's apparent plans to dump the rest of them like so much unwanted bagged before ultimately seeking out and throwing himself on the mercy of a bunch of 'they who shall not be named…'

Kanan blinks hard as another thought registers. This Rex? Was some Ezra actually had met. Who he claims Kanan had grown to consider a friend. Even though right now that whole idea is nothing short of ridiculous.

Ezra laughs wetly as if aware of Kanan's current thought processes, "Only then, surprise surprise, you guys refused to leave when you were supposed to after I first disembarked. Because I'm apparently cursed Kanan, and you're all a bunch of stubborn idiots."

Kanan cuffs the back of his head in reaction to that claim. "Pot. Your name is kettle." The older Jedi growls. "Just the record right now, Ezra, I'm still debating whether or not I ought to be spanking your damn ass again! Just given the sheer amount of blatant self-destruction that you've been recently displaying! I mean, do you have any clue at all concerning the level of damage that you've probably managed to cause in your own mind over the past couple of weeks just repeatedly fighting off the damn reformation?"

Kanan runs a hand down his face, "If you'd kept it up for very much longer, Ezra you probably would have ended up with permanent psychosis on top of severe psychic scarring. And the pull that both of us felt toward each other? Would have still been there forever Ezra, regardless of how hard or how long you fought against it. Did other me really never teach you at least that much about force willed links like ours is, Ezra? What the kark do you know that I don't right now that could possibly justify this reckless and stupid of an ongoing decision?!*"

Ezra's next breath is definitely tremulous before he finally answers, "I was thinking that we were back to being basically strangers, Kanan. And that you didn't appear to have any remnants of said psi-link, okay? Only I did! And when all was said and done, at least under my present circumstances, Kanan, that may have actually been a considerable blessing…."

"Ezra…" The older Jedi tries to cut him off with a deep frown,

But the teenager remains stubbornly insistent, "No, Kanan. My turn to talk for now. Look, until that first day in the market, Master, you literally didn't know me from Adam. But I still knew and loved all of you, all right? And given that I'm the one with the mind that's been kriff'd to Malachor and back as a result of everything that's happened, forgive me for assuming that deliberately chaining you to the chair beside me on the crazy train wasn't and still isn't a particularly 'good' or moral thing."

Kanan has a lot to say in response to that particular load of banthakriff right now, but nothing that Ezra's actually capable of really hearing yet, and so instead he settles on hugging his padawan even more tightly, at least for the moment, continuing to channel broad streams of comfort down the link as the kid relaxes more and more completely against him.

After another minute or so Ezra glances back over at Kanan, his lips finally quirking at his master, just a little. "Also for the record while we are on the subject of the past few minutes, Jarrus: in defense of my continued sense of dignity and my ability to look in the mirror on a semi regular basis I regret to inform you, that I apparently blanked out just shortly after I tried to knee you during our fight a few minutes ago, Master, and I don't currently remember anything that happened after that until after I started crying. I'm currently susceptible to minor bouts of selective traumatic amnesia, apparently."

The look that Kanan gives him in reply to *that* particular comment is some strange mixture of affectionately bemused and absolutely unimpressed. "Start talking banthacrap about running off to live with Clone Troopers like you were doing before, Ezra, and I promise you that it won't be a problem, for either of us for more than a couple of seconds. Because I will just immediately and painfully refresh your memory as to my views on that particular subject."

"Duly noted," Ezra answers, gingerly shifting his weight on Kanan's lap with a distinct wince of discomfort.

"Still a little sore right now I take it?" Kanan asks him abashed, a little horrifyingly amused a moment later by the teenager's far too awkward expression. Though thankfully he isn't apparently the only one currently using some distinctly wry humor in order to help himself cope with everything that's just happened.

Ezra's shrug is easy even as his lips quirk up wryly at the corners as he glances again at his Master. "What can I say? You hit like a force damned shovel, Kanan. And it's been...quite awhile now since anyone has actually spanked me, frankly speaking. Plus at this point in my life I tended to bruise like a damn yogan. My bruises are probably going to have bruises by morning unless I miss my guess, though that trait'll thankfully recede as I get a few more pounds on this frame hopefully."

Easy bruising probably indicates a basic case of chronic malnutrition as well as probable scurvey. He's going to need to start getting a multivitamin into the kid then, as soon as he possibly can. "How long is 'awhile' exactly, Ezra?" Kanan's genuinely curious to hear an answer for any number of reasons. The most obvious of them right now being that he's really, really hoping that what he'd had to do to Ezra a few minutes earlier hadn't actually been a regular thing that the two of them had to deal with in the day. Though yes, Kanan's also well aware that Ezra's more than capable sometimes of hitting outright self destructive levels of stubborn, and Kanan'll still take actively kicking the kid's ass on any day of the week over the alternative of him actually losing him..

"How long has it been since I'm been spanked before today, you mean?" Ezra raises an eyebrow at the question, his eyes going far, far away. "Force not since before the Empire took away my parents, Kanan. So well over a decade according to my memories...and eight years at least from the perspective of my current body. "

Kanan relaxes slightly, "So then you're saying that the other me never had to do the same then...?"

"No!" Ezra snorts, "Though I won't say that he probably wasn't ever tempted to do so, Kanan. I was definitely a handful sometimes, especially when the two of us first met."

"'Was' a handful you say. And Hera didn't ever do so either?" That's a little hard for Kanan to believe that right now, honestly, just given Ezra's sheer levels of ongoing recklessness, snark and bad language. Four years is a very long time to share a small space after all, Kanan knows. Especially a small space like a kriffing space ship.

Ezra snorts, "No – she didn't ever have to either, Kanan. Though there were quite a few times during our first few years together that my 'free time' ended up involving an awful lot of extra chores and scrubbing instead."

"Neither of us? Not even once?" Kanan regards the younger man with a small amount of disbelief as the younger man nods and shrugs. "When exactly, Ezra did I qualify for sainthood in your original timeline?"

Ezra actually snorts with laughter in response to that comment, then shakes his head before finally wiping his eyes on more time with a wry. "I guess you can just say that I never screwed up badly enough that it became a necessary option for either of them. There were always extenuating circumstances involved when I went this far off the rails, so to speak. But then again, Kanan," Ezra smirks just a little bit at no one in particular before finally continuing, "Please don't make the mistake of thinking that fourteen year old me was actually *anything* like I am right now, okay? I was a kark of a lot less socialized for one thing initially, when the group of us first met, and I was far warier of losing my place on the ship, whereas here my entire goal was the opposite. Look, I know that I don't really look it right now, given my present body, but still I remind you that in terms of years actually lived, I am technically just a few weeks shy of turning nineteen."

"You were physically eighteen before you came back in time, maybe, Ezra." Kanan corrects the statement gruffly. "But sadly for the state of your rear at the moment, you've clearly been demoted from that particular position..."

"Well I'm certainly too old for spanking anymore." Ezra snorts in soft reply. "At least in most cases, anyway."

Kanan raises an eyebrow, "In 99.9% of situations, Kid? Yes, I agree that you definitely are. For a very few select forms of recurring stupidity though, I'm prepared to still whup you ass... either figuratively or literally, whether you're fourteen years old or twenty-five or fifty. If you don't like the idea that much, Ezra, well then your 'dignity' will either have to learn to cope with that reality or better yet start promoting less self destructive decision making processes. Cause the way I figure it, Kid if you're old enough to *repeatedly* display truly epic levels of stupid then you're also karking old enough to know about and live with the possible consequences afterward."

Ezra snorts very softly in reply to that assessment, bemused. "Kriff sometimes you sound like you grew up in the feudal middle ages, Kanan, you do know that, right?"

"My Master was a Knight, Kid." Kanan reminds him very, very dryly. "And you better karking believe that the only punishments that we faced at Temple were not just meditation or chores for particularly serious offenses. Force, Ezra, the leader of the council carried around his own personalized whacking stick."

"I guess." Ezra shrugs one more time, "Though, for the record, I really don't think that it'll likely be an issue again anytime remotely soon, Kanan. Because yes, while my parents did spank me when I was little, at least on occasion, mainly because I could be pretty stubborn sometimes, apparently..."

"You? Stubborn? Never." Kanan shoots back blandly, earning a mock little huff of affront from the still red faced teenager in immediate reaction.

"Still as a general rule, Kanan, it rarely comes down to power struggles that like for me most ofthe time, because literally nothing's a bigger deterrent for me in most cases than just having to live with other people's ongoing anger, sorrow or disappointment. The payout of winning stupid fights under that kind of toll in very, very rarely worth it to me." "Good to know. I'm guessing that your folks and my other self probably figured that out pretty quickly too, and then learned to actually make talk if you did suddenly become so recalcitrant, if your doing so wasn't generally something that commonly happened." "For the most part, yes...as you've probably already noticed I prefer compromising, bargaining, or such as that to get what I want or need, Kanan. Because in my own experience at least it's easier when everybody wins. Not that that mindset would have helped much in terms of resolving our previous situation. What I wanted you simply weren't going to give me at a price I could stomach anymore." The teenager clears his throat, then, "Though truthfully, speaking with a little hindsight here, I'm also guessing that what happened earlier – not just the eventual spanking, but the fight you and I had about everything before it as well as the week leading up to my leaving was basically you all just trying to drive me insane in order to get me to finally blow up or restart my waterworks or something?"

Kanan shrugs a little, "You desperately needed it, Ezra. You were so emotionally repressed - so defensively closed off to listening to anyone but yourself because of your fear and grief that it was literally destroying every effort that the rest of us made to try and help you cope. And nothing else was actually working, Ezra. Believe me, Kid, I tried, at least a dozen different ways. "

"No, I get that." Ezra allows, shifting awkwardly again. "It's all ultimately good for the soul, Kanan, if admittedly also kind of rough on the dignity."

"Not to mention on the gluteus maximus." Kanan adds in then himself, speaking very, very dryly.

Ezra shoots him a glare. "Kanan, right now with those kind of jokes, you are not even remotely close to funny.'

Kanan snorts aloud. "On the contrary, Ezra...I'm kriffing hilarious. " He informs the younger man. "You're just mad to be made the literal butt of the joke at the moment."

Ezra groans aloud at his master's repeated use of the pun. "You are awful, Kanan." he informs the older Jedi after a moment. Then he reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose hard, sighing deeply. "And kriff I am so tired right now. This headache is absolutely slaughtering me. I would seriously kill for about four fingers worth of whiskey at present."

Kanan's scowl is fierce in reply to that particular statement. "Yeah well, you're not getting any, Kid. So don't even think about it. You are drying out, Ezra - excepting prescription meds. And when I say dry I do mean dry, Kid. Completely. We will rediscuss the subject again when you actually hit you next physical majority *if* you can actually stay clean until then. Thoug yes, just for the record, Ezra, I will be making occasional exceptions to that rule for religious toasts to the dead or very specific emergency medical situations."

Ezra lips twist up at that announcement, clearly unhappy. "Kanan, like I already told Hera when I first came back aboard: I don't actually drink alcohol on any kind of a regular basis. For one thing, I kriffing loath the taste! Though okay, yes - last week I will acknowledge that there were a few times that I was particularly tempted by the idea because of how much you all seemed to be constantly baiting me. It's not…it's not an addiction, though, Master. I don't regularly crave it. In fact as a rule I only drink at all in times of ultimate need. Like, say for example when my brain is literally trying to kill me like it actively is at present."

Kanan narrows his eyes at him, unimpressed. "Kid you just told me a moment ago yourself that you went through a full bottle of Whiskey in a little under *two days.* That the hangover might have easily killed you. That does not strike me as a minor problem, okay? Frankly Ezra, I'm surprised after that initial bout of stupidity your liver didn't literally try and crawl out of your body and join the Ghost crew all on its own. You are absolutely *cut off* from any mood-altering substances that I don't give you myself, Ezra, do you understand me!? At least until I'm reasonably sure that you are completely and truly past this most recent round of ridiculously self-destructive behavior!"

"Yes Master, I hear you." Ezra sighs again very softly. "Though for the record, Kanan, I still think that you're probably massively over-reacting in terms of seeing problems that aren't problems."

"Yeah well after the last couple of weeks, Ezra, I am more than entitled to it."

There's a brief pause then, and then a tired sigh. "Yeah, I suppose I can't argue with you there. Well okay I could but 1) it wouldn't help If I did at this point and 2) I'm not going to even bother because it's starting to get unbearably cold out here and on top of that I think I'm hungry. Not to mention, like I just said my head is trying to murder me at present."

Kanan huffs sympathetically, "Have you got an actual migraine this time around or is just a normal headache, Kid?"

"The former, I'm pretty sure. I tend to get them after a long hard bout of crying like the one I've just had. Or when I'm particularly dehydrated or my body doesn't agree with something that I've eaten."

"Well then I guess that it's a good thing that Hera packed plenty of food and fluids for us, Ezra before I left The Ghost. And that I currently have both Amalyn and Morphine ampules packed on the chance that either or both would be needed."

Ezra raises an eyebrow at that. "I thought you just said that I wasn't allowed any more mood-altering chemicals from here on out, Kanan?"

The older man shakes his head. "No...I said no meds that aren't prescriptions, Ezra. And none that I can't literally feel how badly you need just straight down our kriffing link. Your shields are still pretty permeable at the moment, Ezra, even as hard as I know that you're trying."

Ezra nods, and then he sighs again, pausing for a moment or two to close his eyes and try and fix that as best as he can, before he opens them again and rapidly changes the subject. "When does Hera not pack us way too much to eat, Kanan? I mean this is her that we're talking about! I swear to Force that my first time around I spent over a year and a half aboard the ship fighting off various nutritional shakes and awful tasting protein booster products from that woman. The whole experience was seriously traumatizing! Also Kanan - I do not now nor will I ever like immune boosting supplements of any sort or kind. So please do not let her waste her money buying that kriff in the markets when she sees it. Three of the last four nutritional supplements that she tried to force on me actually made me vomit repeatedly before she finally gave up and stuck with letting me eat more actual normal food. I might be a loth-rat yes, but I actually have a pain in the ass of a sensitive preemie-kid's stomach."

Kanan chuckles at that rush of words. "If Hera really finds your present state of health that personally offensive, Ezra, then there's really nothing that I can do for you at this point in time short of giving you two good pieces of good if admittedly basic advice."

Ezra side eyes him, "Those pieces being?"

"Take what you're given without initial complaint unless it makes you sick, Ezra. Just tell her outright when it does. Eat meals with people other then her to avoid any unnecessary fussing." Kanan looks the kid up and down, mentally guessing his actual weight now that he has some frame of reference, and calculating that to at least guess Ezra's current BMI. The resulting rounded result makes him openly wince. "Also, as soon as humanly possible it probably best that you find something that you do like to eat that's reasonably healthy and roughly the size of a Purgil, Ezra, put your ass in a chair and then get started eating."

Ezra blinks at him a minute, his nose wrinkling. "Seriously? That's the best that you can do for me right now, Master?"

"It's the first rule of any long running conflict. You only ultimately win if you also learn to pick your battles, Kid. The same applies in this situation. Resist Hera hard enough when she's got actual reason to worry and you might get stuck on one of Captain Terrible's actual food plans. It isn't worth the suffering that that will inevitably bring you, Ezra *believe me.*"

"You sound like this is a matter of past personal experience." Ezra observes then, his lips twitching up a little wryly.

"Jedi healing doesn't fix everything instantly" Kanan informs the younger man very stoically. "I've been injured myself more than a time or two on mission or lost some serious weight when sick.

"And?" Ezra sounds almost afraid to voice the question.

"And if you don't heal to Hera's satisfaction within what she deems an acceptable amount of time the woman is ruthless and completely unavoidable. Considered yourself warned and just act accordingly to the above information."

"Yes Master. As you say, Master." The boy replies, as he climbs out of Kanan's lap, rising to his feet and bowing slightly ... only half in jest, before he finally disappears once more through open door of The Phantom.

Chapter Management

Chapter 12: Confronting Reality (Updated and Expanded)

There are three things which Kanan realizes about his Padawan (And Force, Padawan, it's *official* now – which is both amazing and terrifying!) within less than half an hour of the teenager waking up beside him in the Phantom the following morning...

1) Ezra, unless he's had literal lakes full of caff first, is not even remotely what one would call a 'happy morning person.' Pretty much the opposite.

And 2) The teenager, once he's finally unhindered by the need to keep up a guise of any kind for any longer, talks to himself - as well as most of the inanimate objects that he interacts with, almost as much as he does to actual people when they're in the same room with him.

And 3) whether Ezra's actually conscious of it right now or not, his Padawan is obviously, inherently and massively skin hungry. As in literally starving for touch to a degree that's more than a little painful for him to look at if Kanan is actually correctly reading the younger Jedi's body language.

Kanan's seriously starting to think that someone - Hera? Chopper? Kriff, even the older Jedi himself, if the kid is actually willing to let him) - really ought to spend the next few days cuddling the proverbial stuffing out out of the kid. Especially considering the way that Ezra is unconsciously hugging himself whenever he's not actively doing something else with his hands, the way that he's relaxed intermittently all morning - at least just a little, whenever Kanan reaches out a hand to to squeeze him on his shoulder or even passes him in the hallway and absently musses his dark mop of hair.

To say nothing of Ezra's behavior since their fight yesterday evening, which has been muzzy and tired and also sadly uncertain in terms of what to say or where to be at present. Because no - Kanan definitely hasn't missed the way that the teenager's been hovering just at the edge of 'close but not too close' to the older Jedi's personal space ever since they woke this morning, as Kanan's wandered around the Phantom completing the ship's standard morning diagnostics. Ezra's both out of his element right now, and all but drift essentially.

It's a little bit like owning a new puppy, Kanan can't help but think to himself a little wryly, once he finally confirms that yes, Chopper has taken the other vehicle back to the city within the last six or so hours in order to dump it and then rendezvous with the rest of the Ghost Crew. Or maybe more precisely , it's like having a still half feral tooka, who hasn't figure out yet that it essentially owns you, and thus deserves to be petted pretty much on demand - one who's currently wild but also a little lonely as well, so it settles for following you from room to room a great deal like a fakely disinterested stalker, trying to live vicariously off of the dregs of its clearly dimwitted person's affections.

Kanan only wishes at the moment that he had enough personal reference to Ezra's own history to know for certain whether the Kid has always secretly been this way about craving touch and just usually hides it better, or if this is all just an intense but temporary trauma based reaction to their shattered bond's clearly long overdue reforging. The older Jedi figures that the odds for either are basically fifty-fifty at the moment.

(Kanan rather unsurprisingly under the current circumstances, had found it all but impossible in the earliest hours of the morning to sleep even after Ezra finally did so, thanks to a heady combination of both relief and regret. He'd spent a couple hours meditating while Ezra rested instead – methodically reviewing and rewriting his interpretations of the last few weeks day by day and when necessary hour by hour. Which had been incredibly helpful in him helping finally get a real grip of their actual situation.)

He kind of wants to kick himself presently about how dense he'd been about some things. Hindsight as it turns out can be both enlightening and almost epically frustrating.

Because with the benefit of a broader scope of context, Kanan's pretty sure at this point, that Ezra's subconscious mind has been reaching out for Kanan's own repeatedly since the very first moment that the Ghost had flown back within broadcast range of the planet. Which completely explained the larger the normal amounts of restlessness that he'd felt during that initial round of pre-mission planning. Kanan had wondered more than once about his repeated urge to simply go off on a seemingly random on walkabout before the start of the Capital City snatch and grab, his vague sense at the time that he should be doing some sort of seeking. The link, even as weak as it had been at that point had actively been tugging at him to take notice, to sense something had changed, to actively willfully pay kriffing attention.

He hadn't really, at least not the way he really should have, until well after Ezra literally jumped down on top of them.

Oh yes he'd gotten there eventually, right about the time Ezra had gotten himself and his cargo up and onto the ship, but then the stubborn little banthashit had spent the better part of the following few days actively fighting back his own mind as it reached out insistently toward his former master in order to protect Kanan's mind from any possible psychic spillover damage. Which really, even as much as it pisses Kanan off to think about at this point, also explains a kark of a lot about Ezra's sheer depth of acute psychic damage by the time that Kanan had eventually broken down and hunted down the prodigal teenager, locating Ezra in the market and then dragging him out to breakfast.

Where they've had actual real conversation, as well as a brief and highly painful first skin contact. Touching Kanan while actively shielding against his mind at the same time while the bond lay broken between them had evidently really *pissed off* Ezra's half of their psi link.

Kanan should have thought to have asked why Ezra only seemed to hurt when it was Kanan who was touching him.

And after that? Well on the bright side the Amalyn that Kanan had generously provided to Ezra in order to help him with his headaches had also started to act as an ally and enabler to the teenager simultaneously – dimming down the constant screaming from the unresolved bond to the degree that it was at least vaguely tolerable, so he could both eat and sleep, at the exact same time that the medication had also started to help heal some of Ezra's lingering psychic damage, at least in minute ongoing increments.

But even then, real progress had come painfully slow, because new damage from resisting the pull to open up and repair the break had been both constant and on going for Ezra, especially once they'd located what Kanan had assumed at the time was the kid's peak dosage and started to tittering down the meds, decreasing both the rate of healing and the help that the higher dosage of the neuro-inhibitors had provided Ezra in dealing with the discomfort caused by the entire situation.

Which clearly also explains the kid's ongoing propensity right now for severe breakthroughs of pain anytime that Ezra overextends himself either physically or psychically. His mental landscape is still a tapestry of only half healed wounds. And emotionally speaking, the kid's still a gigantic karking mess.

No wonder the Ezra's been so tired, no wonder he's been coping so poorly. He just stopped injury himself repeatedly within in the past twelve hours or so, and now he needs time to actually heal, with the bond finally back in place and actually quiet instead of screaming at him constantly: flooding Ezra's body with massive amounts of adrenaline and constantly battering his psyche. No wonder right now half of the kid reads as kriffing exhausted and the other half as thrumming with almost hysterical relief.

All that acknowledged, Ezra's body language right now is still deeply troubling and more than a little telling to Kanan. The two of them both still have some issues to work through pretty clearly. Because after all, from most of what Kanan has read on the subject over the years in his various psychology classes, there generally isn't a child in the entire karking galaxy who isn't instinctively wired to reach out their parents for physical and emotional reassure when they are feeling overwhelmed even uncertain.

What's more there are practically no situations that Kanan is currently aware where a child's repeated failure to seek out said comfort or reassurance from their caregiver when it's needed doesn't indicate that some level of abuse, fear or dysfunction actively present in the relationship. Which brings him back to the current dynamic between Ezra and him.

Because after all, Ezra has just spent the past four years on board The Ghost with the OtherSpecters, for lack of any better way to describe them. Which means that Hera and he must have functioned, in the other time stream at least, as the teenager's all but adoptive foster parents.

Foster parents whose roles would have included the regular provision of things like comfort when it was needed, provided Ezra had accepted that that option was available to leaves Kanan with the Ezra who is currently standing in front of him … A fourteen year old boy is currently hugging himself repeatedly. Who's made no effort to ask his master for anything but the current location of breakfast since he first woke up this morning. Who's hovering close right now, yes but also seems all but afraid, at least by the read of his body language anyway to reach out and actually try to touch Kanan.

Because while yes it's true that Ezra hadn't tried to crawl out of Kanan's lap for more than an hour after their initial tussle last night, that doesn't just mean that the two of them are now just instantly okay and comfortable in each other's personal spaces. Especially not in the wake of Kanan giving the kid what had to have been a wickedly hard spanking.

After all, at the time that it had been happening Kanan hadn't even bothered to pull his punches. He'd been far more intent in the moment on ending what had amounted to his padawan's near hysterical tantrum while also pushing the kid into actually expelling some of his nearly life crushing reservoir of repressed emotion to be delicate about it, not as long as the exhausting conflict had already dragged out for the both of them.

And as a result, Kanan'd literally whaled the tar out of the poor kid - half out of grim desperation, half out of basic self defensive instinct in the face of Ezra's continued angry flailing. Only after the kid had finally broken under the extra layer of more pain had Kanan finally backed off and then gently coaxed the weeping kid into a tight embrace to comfort him. Never mind the fact that the last time Ezra Bridger had been hugged - to say nothing of a touch more unkind then that - by his former master, had no doubt been in the days just before OtherKanan's death.

And yes it's also true, that Ezra hadn't voluntarily pulled away from Kanan's grip in the aftermath of his his eventual break down and far far bigger revelation, until the kid had finally seized on a joke to finally all but flee back to the interior of the Phantom. Still, for all the that Ezra's stayed within arms reach of his master ever since, Ezra hasn't even once attempted to touch or be touched by Kanan since. Instead the teenager has just stood there for hours now, aggressively self-comforting, miserable looking and exhausted but also silent in terms of acknowledging any of the above to the man currently just across the room from him. And Kanan, who finally has the kid -right along with a nice newly reformed, twitchy-as-hell training-link, is bitterly aware in the rising light of mid morning that he currently has no clue at all how to properly respond to what he's currently seeing correctly.

'If your kid doesn't hug you when he looks like he needs it in the aftermath of a conflict like we had yesterday,' he wonders just a little ironically, 'Should you then hug your kid instead?' Or should Kanan at least be asking if a hug is appropriate right now? Should be offer a hug if Ezra wants on instead. What if he does ask and Ezra straight up lies to him or refuses the gesture, out of fear, or lingering awkwardness or embarrassment? Because yes, for now at lease Kanan will be able to sense at least that much if happen until they both relearn how to better shield their seperate ends of link? What the kriff is Kanan supposed to do in this karking situation? Call Ezra out if he lies? Reassure him that yesterday was Kanan's last ditch effort to keep Ezra from having a full on mental breakdown and that in the absence of such high, pratically life and death stakes, Ezra won't ever be touched by Kanan again without his permission? Force right now is the older Jedi just completely over thinking all of this? Is everything going to now feel this hopelessly complicated? Has he screw everything up already, and if so, exactly how deeply or badly?

Because seriously, Kanan has been a master now for less than twenty- four hours, and he's just realized that he literally doesn't even know how to go about properly the kid when Ezra looks like he might need some reassurance at the moment unless he's just actively finished spanking him. And Sith Spit, if this is parenthood than clearly Kanan's awful at it.

"You can breathe again now, you know." Ezra mutters from a few yards away from him. The teenager's voice is still a little early morning raspy at this point but his tone also holds more than a little bemusement. Kanan jerks his head up to stare at him. "Huh?"

"You. Can. Breathe. Now." Ezra repeats the words very slowly. His Padawan's still hugging himself, most definitely, but Ezra's posture is also slowly loosening up by degrees as he stands there studying his master, and yes, Kanan realizes, that's definitely amusement right now that's coming down through Ezra's end of their link.

"Huh?" He repeats the word one more, lost to the whole conversation, at least for the moment. He's just relieved that the kid's actually attempting to actually converse with him.

Ezra's eyes twinkle, even as the younger man stoops up to pick up the remains of his drink from the floor. "It's nothing, really. It's just...well I *know* that particular expression. Kanan Jarrus: look seventy-three. Panic Variant. Also known as 'Oh kark oh kark, I just let Chopper push Ezra off of the top of The Ghost at over 10000 feet and now he's falling - probably to his literal death!'" Ezra smiles then, just a little, "And yeah, I know that things are kind of weird right now - for both of us quite truthfully, Master. Still, I really don't think the current situation really merits quite that overall level of panic."

"I let Chopper do what?!" Kanan gapes at him, speechlessly.

"Well it wasn't exactly deliberate, Kanan. I got distracted by other things at the time, even though I really ought to have known better when we were actively practicing. It was a genuine accident. So Bygone, I mean to to be completely fair you did catch me and get me back up and onto the again after well before gravity got the chance to make a pancake out of me."

And then Ezra Bridger karking grins, at the recollection of this apparently fond little memory. "I'm just…well I'm just trying to let you know that whatever's got you tied up in knots right now expression wise - it's probably not as bad really as you're current assuming. I mean seriously Kanan, it's all good at this point, I'm already too damn used to being entertainingly mangled by life at this point to be even half as breakable as you're currently assuming I am. Case in point? That day I just mentioned was actually the start of really a good mission, Kanan: in which we both met the Grand Inquisitor for the first, nearly died fleeing for our lives from his presence and then later? Basically bonded over the whole experience. Chaotic yes. Crazy yes. Death defying yes...but survived and thankfullly learned from. Hence nothing to really worry about in the grander scheme of things."

"We encountered someone called the Grande Inquisitor." Kanan says just a little bit blankly. "On the same day that I let Chopper send you literally plummeting to your death?"

"Yup. Well we met him the first of several times more truthfully, though we can probably skip over most of that drama, I hope anyway, if you're willing to bypass a pretty obvious wild goose chase initially. But then again to be honest," Ezra shrugs, "Mr 'Let Me Torture You With The Truth,' will almost certainly be coming to Lothal eventually, so we can't put off introductions indefinitely. Not unless you want to pass on a major trove of classified information ..and let at least one innocent civilian die really, really horribly."

Kanan blinks for a moment at this long string of flowing words, his expression growing more and more incredulous with each passing minute, his mouth best described for the time being as widely agape.

Ezra pauses, studying Kanan, and then he waves an awkward hand in older Jedi's general direction, "And you know what, come to think of it, I'm actually probably better off stopping right there...with this entire conversation. Because it doesn't look like it' reassuring you in quite the way that I was hoping that it would. You just ...well... you kind of looked like you were having a moment there Master when I first spoke up, and I guess, well, I just wanted to help if I could."

Ezra had wanted to 'help him.' *Kanan Jarrus* had looked like he was having a hard time right now, and so his Padawan had thus attempted to 'help him.' With earnest stories of fighting off Grande Inquisitors together and being knocked off of ships in the lower atmosphere during he and Other-Kanan's training. Because this is apparently 'comforting' in the teenager's eyes.

And Karabast yes, Kanan is completely over his head right now in kriffing all of this.

"So...what did have your undergarments all twisted up if I'm allowed to ask?" Ezra inquires after a moment, taking another slow sip of his drink. "Because not to be nosy...but now I'm stuck wondering, about the issue I mean…and vague instead of specific panic is probably going to bug me, I think…"

"...You looked like you might need a hug, Ezra." Kanan finally spits out the words just a little bit gruffly. Because after the last few sentences his previous mental crisis now just seems ridiculous. "You have ever since you first got up this morning, but you haven't actually said anything about it, and I wasn't sure whether I should offer you one, not under the current circumstances."

Ezra raises a brow at that admission, "Uhm sure…I mean I don't generally mind hugs if they're currently offer...especially if that's your thing suddenly at the moment. Uhm, frequent casual displays of affection weren't really in your otherselves' back in my originating time stream previously, Kanan. But then again now that I actually think about, I wasn't exactly what you'd call a 'big hugger' myself initially. So maybe I'm wrong and other you was huggier than I realized but the two of us just sort of fell into an unconscious pattern. Though," The teenager raises an eyebrow, "I also have to admit that I'm not exactly sure what 'under the current circumstances' is actually supposed to mean in thisparticular context."

"...Ezra." Kanan says the name very slowly and patiently, as if he's about to explain the obvious to a very small or very slow child who has somehow failed to grasp what should have been obvious at this point. "I have touched you or *tried* to touch you precisely four times now since the two of us first met. Well, outside during medical treatment anyway, and you were not what I would call particularly welcoming of or receptive to any of it. The first time - just after we'd rescued the Wookies, Ezra I tried to reach out and lay a hand on your shoulder, just as a gesture of solidarity and thanks for your help. And in return? You skittered backward away from me like a fur rumpled loth-cat. The second time was when I took you out for breakfast when I caught up to you in the market that morning. You nearly ended up passing out at that point when I impulsively reached out and flicked you on your forehead because, well..."

"...Unresolved, seriously pissed off broken training link."

"Yes." Kanan, pauses then for another moment or so, speaking up again only after shaking his head for moment, as if he's literally clearing it of cobwebs, "The third time, at least as far as I remember it anyway, was at the end of our fight yesterday evening, when I not only tossed you around like a sack of karking grain while insulting you and your 'master' repeatedly, I pinned you to the ground after that and pounded on your ass so hard you were literally sobbing. After which Ezra, you still *miraculously* decided to let me hold and try and comfort you anyway. Which I am currently calling contact four at the moment. That's it, unless I'm somehow forgetting something?"

Kanan raises his brows at the teenager as he asks the question. Ezra considers then requested input and then shrugs noncommitally, "There were probably a few casual pats and stuff in there along the way that you're forgetting, but yeah. I still don't understand what that has to do with right now with anythings, Kanan..."

"Ezra!" Now Kanan's voice is more than a little bit exasperated. " Are you really all that surprised after I just mentioned all of that, that I might be worried right now about whether or not you may be in need of a little bit of comfort?"

"I guess not." Ezra mutters, his face beginning to subtly redden.

Kanan just presses on, "And do you also understand why I might be a little bit concerned at this point whether or not I might be the last kriffing person on the planet right now that you'd actually want to *go to* for said comfort?"

Ezra face is now a bright, beet red. "Yeah no, I get it. And look, Kanan, I'm really, really sorry. The thing with the Wookies initially wasn't meant as an insult or anything - I wasn't trying to act like an asshole, I just...well I wasn't coping very well at that point with the ongoing situation, and you touching me again would have only..." Ezra shrugs, then abrupt shifts the topic again. "Look, what happened in the Cafe wasn't really either of our faults either, Master. We didn't know what was going to happen when you touched me. As for our fight last night and…and the inevitable aftermath. Look, at this point I'm just basically calling bygones in regard to the whole karking thing. I mean yeah you provoked the fight deliberately sure, but Kanan, I knew that. I knew you were baiting me, even knew why, at least to some level or extent. But even so, I still threw the first karking swing."

The teenager lifts his eyes from his drink then, where they'd fallen as soon as his face had started to redden. His expression is earnest, more than a little bit embarrassed even as he continues to speak. "Look the truth of the matter is that I have no interest in holding grudges or anything like them at this point in my life, Kanan. If only because they're way too exhausting on top of everything else that I'm currently trying to keep track of to even be remotely worth the ongoing effort. Especially when at the moment it literally hurts to even sit down for more than a couple of minutes at a time and and on top of my head's still a kriffing mess even without the constant throb anymore from the previous damage to the training link. I just ...I just don't have the energy required to stay angry at present..."

"Ezra..." Kanan begins, but the teenager only continues to babble, growing closer and closer to outright verbal flood now that he's finally uncorked the proverbial bottle, has finally given himself permission to actually admit to such things.

"I mean the Temple's trials are already going to be hard enough to deal just on their own at this point, Kanan. Even without trying to also deal with the fact that I'm now back to fighting off sudden random bursts of crying like I was when I first arrived in this time stream without me deliberately trying to carry around more useless angry banthashit. Look, I know…I *know* that the past few days especially have just been bad for both of us, okay, but If you ever want to hug me then just ask. I can't always promise you that I'll actually be in the mood, but you're also not going to somehow piss me off just by inquiring I promise…"

"May I hug you?" Kanan finally cuts in, bluntly interrupting the increasingly erratic stream of words.

Ezra's nod is accompanied by an emphatically stated "*Yes.*"

Then Kanan is finally doing just that: larger arms reach out to wrap around the smaller form tightly, pulling him forward and into a welcoming embrace. And Ezra? Outright whimpers in relief at the contact, his eyes sliding involuntarily shut in reaction even as his head drops forward to rest for the moment against the older man's sternum.

"I just don't get it." Ezra grumbles after a couple more long seconds of just clinging on to his master, "I mean I thought that you knowing...that the link finally being back in place would set everything to right again, Kanan. Not leave me feeling as twitchy as an injured loth-wolf with an unguarded den right in the middle of welping season! I mean this morning I literally teared up when I *dropped the karking toothpaste* on the floor of the fresher. I'm getting pissed off at stuff like the flavor of my damn fruit drink. Everything's just so kriffing *raw* right now and..."

"I get it, Ezra, I get it." Kanan interrupts him softly, "It's similar, if not quite channeled the same way right now when it's coming from my own end."

Then Kanan is stepping backward with the kid still firmly in his grip, bumping into the fold-down seating where he carefully plop down on one of the folding benches and then gently coaxes the kid down along with him as well, Ezra essentially straddling Kanan legs for the moment in a way that allows the teenager to tuck in close without further aggravating his already sore places. The hug that results is a little awkward at first, maybe but not too bad, Ezra's face ends up buried between Kanan neck and his collarbone, his thin arms linking behind Kanan's back. The dark haired boy shudders hard, his whole body trembling as his breath audibly hitches. "I am not going to cry now." He mutters into the silent air more than a little rebelliously. "I am not a kriffing kid or whiny karking baby."

"It's okay if you need to, at the moment, Ezra." Kanan informs him very, very gently. "Look, Kid - psychic bonds are tough things. Yeah they have some wonderful advantages, in terms of teaching and for things like allowing easier communication, but they can also be incredibly complex and finicky even on their very best of days, and you..." Kanan's arms tighten briefly around the smaller form again. "Ezra you just survived a literal hell on earth all right? It's normal under the circumstance that you're seriously feeling it. Look, I know that this is probably a piss poor analogy in a lot of ways - talking about psychic phenomenon can be hard to adequately describe in most cases, but from a certain perspective what just happened to your mind - to your karking soul, Ezra, was the psychic equivalent of somebody essentially ripping off one of your limbs. After that it was essentially left completely untreated for almost two months from what I've been able to sense, before finally treating it scattershot with rubbing alcohol, codeine and a couple of mostly sterile bandages." Kanan's hand comes up then to cup the back of Ezra's head a little protectively, "And just as that psychic 'stump' finally started to heal and maybe hurt a little less thanks to the Amalyn, someone drug you unexpectedly back into surgery Ezra, and they grafted on a new karking limb."

The teenager chokes out a laugh in response to that analogy before his entire body starts literally shaking. "I will not cry," he repeats again. "It makes me feel like a brainless idiot. Not to mention that it doesn't in the history of ever actually fix anything."

And Force but the sheer stubbornness of this Kid at the moment. Kanan sighs heavily - considering all his options thoughtfully before he shifts his right hand just enough to find a bit of exposed flesh on his Padawan's right forearm and pinch at the same time that he buries his nose in the kid's dark hair, and literally swamps the bond with a mini-tsunami of affection.

Kanan's pretty sure that Ezra doesn't consciously make the connection between the unexpected sting of pain and the sudden larger flood of psychic and physical comfort, but the effect of the act is immediate. The tears in Ezra's wet eyes flow over, helplessly, and there's no hope - or point at all of holding them back once they've actually started to fall. At least as far as Ezra seems to be concerned at the moment. Another ragged breath woofs out of the kid's chest, shaky and tremulous as wet eyes abruptly spill over and then once again the teenager is weeping.

Kanan rocks him silently for several long minutes before finally speaking up. "I'm sorry, Kid" He murmurs at last to the still keening teenager, "That I'm the source of any of your pain at the moment. If I could find a way to do so, I'd remove it all from your shoulders entirely."

Ezra's arms tighten around him convulsively. "It's not your fault either, Master." He gets out with a little hiccup after another moment. "You're not any more responsible that I am for any of what's happening."

"Not even for your sore rear end, Kid?" Kanan asks the question more than a little bit wryly. He's basically messing with the Ezra's head right now, trying to provide him with a little distraction away from the much larger grief that's currently got it's claws in him. But Kanan does feel like they need to talk about this at least one in a serious manner. Because the older Jedi does know that he owes Ezra an apology for his actions last night, if maybe not for the the reasons he'd taken them.

Ezra meanwhile, just thumps Kanan's torso with both of his fists twice. "Bygones, Asshole, as I already told you! Also, you big jerk you just kriffing pinched me!"

Kanan sighs very softly, but still nods his head in admission. "Yeah. Yeah, kid, I did. You've already got way, way too much pain in the head of yours to hope to carry it around safely. Anytime that I can manage to get some of it out and into the air instead I'm going to do so, if I only have to play a little bit dirty to do so. Because at least once it's out it loses most of the power it has to hurt you."

Ezra thumps his chest one more time, "Oversized Asshole of A Jedi Shaped Bully."

Kanan just chuckles in reply to that. "Guilty as charged," He admits. "At least when I'm dealing with fourteen-year-old time travelers masquerading as Loth-rats who don't seem to know when to get their karking asses home in an actual crisis."

Ezra laughs between his sobs at the comment. The teenager's tears are finally slowing down, albeit gradually. Eventually, Ezra pulls back just far enough to wipe he face with the edge of his shirt sleeve. "Force, but I karking hate crying, Kanan. It makes me both look and feel like I'm literally five years old again."

"Which you probably still pull off better than most of us do Ezra, with that baby face of yours, I mean." Kanan teases him gently, cuffing the back of the kid's still slumped forward head one more time then smoothing the hair atop his head before speaking on more time. "You've got more call than most of us right now for the occasional bout of weeping. And let me tell you, Kid, that stuff is a whole lot better vented than left stuck inside your skull like some kind of pissed off, trapped tooka that's ripping the hell out of your mental upholstery in retaliation."

Ezra snorts with laughter at that, his hand swiping over his eyes again. "Jarrus," He volleys back, "Do I look like the kind of person who currently has or has ever had upholstery? Honestly, I sleep on a bench with a bunch of old blankets."

"It's *Kanan,* Ezra. Or Master. Whichever you prefer at the moment is fine. Enough with this continual 'Jarrus' kriff... I already know that you have only ever used it as an an ongoing attempt at distancing."

Ezra shrugs, "Less just that then...well...some way to maintain some level of separation between the two of you, Kanan. Because if I'm not really careful about the names and pronouns and yous vs thems, Master then things in my head can start to get really, really muddled. In a way that sort of defies easy explanation. I mean you're 'him,' yes Kanan, but you're also not him at the exact same time...And I'm not really me back when I was this age the first time around, but I still remember all of this me's history and memories...so it's not like I'm really losing anything, not exactly, instead it's more like there's a four-year gap of extra living in there now, that no one remembers but me anymore. The life that me and The OtherSpecters lived together. That I'll maybe sort of live again with all of you, or it could all end up unfolding completely different. Because after all, it's all going to depend both on big choices that people make and a bunch of little tiny things that have these huge unexpected consequences even when you don't really expect them to." Ezra snorts very softly to himself. "I try not to think about it all that often if I can possibly help it."

Kanan thinks about all of that for a moment: about the complexity of the parallel lives that Ezra is constantly trying to balance, and then he just sighs and cuddles the teenager in closer - letting the boy's smaller head work as a headrest for his own chin. It's no wonder that the kid is feeling so skin hungry right now, he realizes after a couple seconds of silent contemplation. The entire world has to seem constantly disorienting to Ezra at the moment, and touch when the Kid can manage to get some, at least roots Ezra firmly within in his body, centers his Padawan in the now, for lack of a better way of putting it.

And as it turns out, that same centering effect that he's just noted, probably doubles or triples when Kanan's the one making the contact with Ezra. Because on top of everything else the kid is dealing with right now, their remade bond is still essentially settling and rooting back in.

Ezra's mind, in particular, keeps poking at the area where the bond lays between the two of them almost obsessively. Which is is probably the psychic equivalent of repeatedly poking at the same area of bruising, Kanan guesses. It's constantly uncomfortable for him to do so but also something that his Padawan can't consciously stop because it amounts to an ongoing traumatic compulsion.

When he and Ezra touch each other right now, though, it makes Kanan's mind easier for the younger man to sense, allowing the same kind of check in on the bond without the need to poke the bruise, which is still pretty sensitive at the moment. Kanan realizes all of this in the space of one moment, and then feels a little chagrined that he hadn't made the connection before now. Because honestly this is an issue that has a *ridiculously* easy fix.

Relaxing consciously, Kanan draws in a deep breath and gradually but deliberately thins his own shielding around his end of their link. The effect doesn't actually leave him vulnerable to anything right now but more of Ezra's specific mental 'background chatter,' but the effect that the change has on the teenager in his lap is still hugely gratifying. Ezra blinks, clearly surprised, but then just seems to psychically lean into the effect, in the same visceral sort of way that a normal child might findcomfort in resting their head against a parent's chest when they're feeling lonely in order to soak up the constant sound of a reassuring heartbeat

"Better?" Kanan finally asks the question softly.

"Yeah." Ezra nods, "Though I can't say for sure what it is that you even just did, Kanan."

Kanan squeezes him a little tighter, "Nothing major, I just, well, made it easier for your subconscious mind to find and track me right now essentially. Which will hurt less for you at the moment. Your mind's still constantly picking at the trauma sight over and over, just like it was before you started the Amalyn...and it tends to slow the healing of the psychic bruising when you do that sort of thing. "

Ezra groans softly, "I swear that I'm not *trying* to do anything right now, Kanan."

"I know that Ezra. It was just an observation for the moment, not something that I meant as to be taken as any kind of actual criticism. Though I am starting to think, that before either of us try and enter that temple you definitely need another full round of Amalyn infusions."

Ezra blinks "Uh...why before instead of just afterward, Kanan?"

"Besides the obvious fact that temple trials are generally a tremendous mental and emotional stretch, Ezra and you're still literally and figuratively exhausted at the moment?"

Ezra sighs deeply, "I'm fine, Master...or I will be soon enough anyway. You worry too much, Kanan..."

The older Jedi gently cuts the sentence off before Ezra can say anything more on the subject, "That is another lie that you need to stop telling on rote, Kid - both to yourself as well as to me. You are *not* fine, Ezra. You are freaked the kark out and emotionally as vulnerable as kriff at the moment. Which I only made worse last night, albeit with basically noble intentions. I was completely focused when I first caught up with you again on getting you to face up to and release some of the overwhelming pain that I could sense even through the best of your shielding, because I was afraid at the time that it was going to end up genuinely killing you if you didn't. The truth of the matter though, is that I didn't have all of the background information that I really needed to understand the cause of said pain when I did so Ezra, and on top of that I was seriously pissed off and agitated. And then on top of that you just happened to smash down hard right atop one of my current biggest triggers... Which yes, definitely messed up my ability to remain completely objective. It still hurt you either way no matter the causes of my actions at the time and I'm really sorry as I've already said about the way that the truth coming finally happened."

"Yeah about that, Kanan, "Ezra sounds more than a little wryly guilty himself. "I was actually thinking about that myself this morning after I first woke up, while I was meditating, and Kanan, I'm pretty sure that I also owe you a massive apology as well. It wasn't a deliberate move on my part - well not consciously at least - but looking back at it now I'm pretty sure on some level that I knew exactly what I was doing when I told Chopper Rex's designation. I mean, I should have been able to sense your presence by that point in time, Master. Kark some part of me probably did subconsciously and still just chose to do it anyway. I know that now, just not why exactly I was deliberately provoking you in the way I ultimately did, Kanan ..."

Kanan actually chuckles softly at that admission. "My guess on the subject Ezra? Is that there has always been a part of you in all of this mess that was actually looking for that ass kicking, or at least for some kind of wake up call instead. This may sound strange from the outside, but most of us aren't as blind as we like to pretend that we are…especially when we're in terrible ongoing pain because of our choices. Bluntly stated we all get tired of dealing with our own bullshit eventually."

Ezra harrumphs. "I was certainly itching for a fight by the time that you showed up, yes, Kanan. I mean you guys had all been pissing me off on the regular for better than a week by then. But what I don't understand is this, Master….a brawl is generally easy to find or provoke in Capital City. But I had to go and pick a fight with the one person on the entire kriffing planet who can regularly literally wipe the floor with me even when I'm using my force gifts or lightsaber? Instead of one of the literal hundreds of people who couldn't? Which means that I basically set myself up to get my own ass kicked, Kanan, at least as far as I can figure. "

"And I repeat - you weren't actually looking for a fight. You were looking for a wake-up call, Ezra. They aren't precisely the same thing, you know. Yeah both are good in the sense that they allow for the venting of some rage, but whether you want to admit or not Kid, when you strip away all the rationalization and the fear that you've been shoveling lately about why the road you were taking yesterday was the right one, that didn't mean that even your own brain was completely prepared to agree with you."

"So what...you're claiming that my subconscious mind basically attacked me last night? Decided that it had had enough of my excuses and then karking betrayed me?"

"Yes." Kanan answers him bluntly. "Though Chopper also definitely helped along the process as well, if only by aiding and abetting your breakdown until you finally reached that point."

"Well then my subconscious is a bantha's ass, Kanan. And so is the murderbot while we're on the subject." Ezra grumbles crankily. "He threw out more than half of a perfectly good bottle of liquor, yesterday. Which I actually kriffing paid for. When I see him next I fully intend to retaliate by kicking him."

"I ...may have encouraged the process along just a teeny tiny bit as well." Kanan informs his Padawan very, very dryly.

"Great. Then my life is full of assholes right now apparently." Ezra snipes back, while also half smirking at him

"But intelligent assholes, Ezra." Kanan shoots right back. "Who have a clearly vested interest in maintaining both your long-term health and your long term sanity."

Ezra sighs deeply. "I really don't like the idea of us having to wait to go into the temple, Kanan" he mutters. "I know that you still think that we should, and I completely understand why, but I'm the one with the extended set of crib notes on what's ahead in the days to come, and I'm telling you Master, that there are a whole lot of reasons why my initial plan for handling things probably would have been a lot more safe and beneficial for all of you in the long run."

All of 'you' not all of 'us.' Kanan doesn't for even a second miss the importance of Ezra's pronoun choice. He sighs softly, running a hand through the mop of dark hair several more times. And yeah, the kid definitely has a serious touch deficit going on right now, because they've been cuddled up together for quite awhile and Ezra still isn't showing any inclination at all to pull away even though Kanan knows that Ezra can sense him much more clearly at this point.

His voice is purposely gentle when he finally speaks up again, "Ezra has it even occurred to you, yet, that your crib notes as you charmingly called them, are actually growing more and more useless every day now. I mean, yes, they'll help us anticipate and prepare for some of the coming big moments down the road, but at the same time you also have to know already that this is not just your past four years verbatim. The moment that you first woke up here and started interacting with the world as your new self rather than your old one, Ezra literally everything rapidly started to change. The way it was...who you were before, who we were as well and what's still coming up ahead, none of that is ever really going to be the same."

"I know that." Ezra mutters very, very softly. "And I'm not going to get a full night's sleep for at least four years, given a lot of what I know is still on coming, but at the same time at least hopefully this time around we both get to live with the price of that particular exchange." His whole body shutters hard. "Which believe me is still preferable to the karking alternative."

Kanan makes a low comforting sound at that, rocking the smaller body in his grip a little tighter. He's really, really starting to have his doubts about the wisdom of them trying to access the Temple right now. Not because he believes the Force to be particularly cruel or unreasoning in its judgement, but simply because Kanan doesn't even like the idea of Ezra trying to cope with something as simple as a fist fight by himself at the moment. Not without a few days more real rest and a hell of a lot more time for their bond to actually settle in first.

"Ezra." Kanan chooses his next words carefully, not wanting them to be misconstrued as judgment or criticism if he can possibly help it. "We...Look I really don't think that we should be trying to enter the temple right now. We need to postpone our excursion for awhile. This is just... It is not the right time, all right, Kid We'd be better off packing it in ...for a couple weeks at minimum, at least. Maybe even as much as a month or two. After we've both had more time to readjust we can always return to try again."

The body in his lap goes board stiff in a little under half a second. "Kanan..."

Kanan makes his tone extra firm then. "Ezra, I am dead serious about this at the moment. I am not saying that you don't deserve a lightsaber of your own, or that I don't think that you'll end getting one whenever we eventually come back. But there is such a thing as good timing, Kid, and Ezra, this is not it. Right now trying to access the temple in this state isn't just risk it's outright, stupidly dangerous."

Ezra tries to scuttle backwards then, clearly defensive and frustated, but Kanan only allows the teenager a set amount of distance. Namely just enough that they can make and keep steady eye contact. "As I said before, Ezra - bonds are incredibly tricky things, Kid, and ours has been in place less than twenty-four hours now. It needs time to stabilize...and your mind needs more time to actually heal. Not to even mention the fact that, well...at the moment at least I really don't think it would go well for either of us to try and undergo temple trials that typically require at the very minimum, individual participant separation."

Ezra curses heartily under his breath but then nods his head... "I should have tried to come out here and get this done before you guys ever arrived back on planet. Karabast."

That thought causes a sharp stab of ice cold dread in Kanan's gut in reaction. "No, Ezra, you shouldn't have." He very carefully replies. Because while no, Kanan doubts that the temple...if he understands the situation correctly, would have let a vulnerable unsupervised minor into the temple for a trial without a master there as well excepting in some very very special circumstances, Kanan's not technically sure if Ezra is a minor as far as the Force is concerned . It is a very thin line in this particular situation. Or at least it had been until Ezra had once again had an active and function training link.

The fact that said bond has reformed so fast and so strongly...along with Ezra's recurrent slips during various moments when he'd called Kanan his Master since that first day up in the Tower have pretty much cemented Kanan's own opinion on whether or not the younger man, regardless of his age, is truly ready to operate on his own at the moment.

But if Ezra hadn't so badly lost his mind when he had first woke up...if he'd come out to the temple on his own immediately instead of waiting until this point, with a soul that had eighteen years of experience at the time? If he had presented himself as someone whose master had died recently and who was now seeking guidance... What if anything might have happened to the kid then?

Kanan frowns a little, feeling a deep chill of cold in his chest. If Ezra had, as he'd first said, come out here with OtherKanan and the two of them had been granted access to the structure together, then it's very clear that the temple had let Kanan in himself that first time around under very similar circumstances. Ezra, odds are, would have been granted access to the temple at that point - if he'd come to the structure alone before the Ghost had arrived on planet. And what would have happened...could have happened at that point to his Padawan is deeply, profoundly unsettling to Kanan.

After all, Ezra is actually stabler now then he'd been when he'd first woken up in this time-stream. He's received at least some measure of healing thanks to the ongoing Amalyn treatments. He's tired as kriff but mostly in his right mind at the moment. If he'd gone into that temple alone initially, though, would the place have helped to heal his fracturing mind, or would it have simply broken him instead, unintentionally, thanks to all the increased stress, creating a different sort of shatter point and an utterly different kind of future spinning the rim and the galaxy into chaos around them?

Kanan is guessing that he knows, or at least has a pretty good suspicion, judging by the way that the hair on the back of his neck feels like it's literally standing on end just imagining that set of circumstances.

Ezra sighs, "Ah well, I guess. It's not like I didn't go bladeless at this point in the time -stream the last time around. I'm generally good when I have to at adapting - and there's always my slingshot or maybe some blasters if I can manage to get a hold of a few. Now to just figure out how to deal with my lists in the meantime."

"Your lists?"

"Yeah…you know, of the things that really mattered the first time around, in terms of the time stream's overall continuity. I'd assumed up until now that I'd be dealing with all of that kind of stuff on my own – but well things have changed a bit, obviously. "

"Deal with what on your own?"

"Just…well, stuff, Kanan," Ezra says, shrugging more than a little bit helplessly.

Kanan frowns, considering everything that Ezra's just said, and his eyes narrow suspiciously. "And where exactly were you planning to go, Ezra, when the Grand Inquisitor arrived here on planet?" Kanan asks him suspiciously. "If you'd managed to get the rest of us 'safely off Lothal', I mean?"

Ezra winces, his eyes dropping abruptly like he already knows exactly how much Kanan is not going to like hearing what he's got to say, though he makes no attempt to actually deceive. "If I'd had any real say in the matter at all, I wouldn't have stayed in Capitol City for long, Kanan. But, well there's helping Jai and Zare... and stealing that tie fighter that might be necessary for a small rescue mission later, plus saving the Sumars who are important to the Lothalian resistance down the road. And of course there's that info on Kallus' computer that we'll need – cause we needed it before, and that's all currently at the Imperial Academy."

"Ezra…" Kanan's left temple is starting to throb in frustration, but his Padawan just keeps right on talking. Because the Kid enjoys giving Kanan small cerebral strokes apparently. Because honestly, *seriously?* How many missions exactly had Specter crew ended up running together in the previous timeline which Ezra, before his secret had involuntarily been revealed, had essentially committed to finishing up by himself, regardless of their danger or their apparent complexity?

Ezra meanwhile, is still talking, "...plus *someone* would have had to stay here and get to Tseebo out of my folk's house on Empire day when the Empire starts up the manhunt for him, Kanan, because the specs in his head are crucial to the resistance's work down the line," Ezra chews his lower lip, before glancing up at him, with an oddly bemused expression. "Hey look, this may sound a little strange Master, but if you and Zeb ever meet a man named Londo Calrissian at a sabaac table just do all of us huge favor and walk the kriff away!"

"Ezra, enough. I repeat, what exactly was your plan to secure *your* safety after the rest of us left Lothol, especially if you knew the Grand Inquisitor was going to be coming?"

"Er…Other than the obvious trip out here?" Ezra shrugs his shoulder again. "Well there was the Rex related plan that we've agreed to avoid talking about full stop anymore because doing so makes your jaw twitch. I really was intending to leave Lothal, Kanan, after I just, err...tied up a couple of small, loose ends."

"Define 'tied up.' Kanan murmurs more than a little bit dangerously. "And loose ends."

Ezra rubs at his neck a little, "Just ah …dealt with things, you know? The kind of basic mission stuff that involves data recovery or prevents a lot of permanent-imprisonment or otherwise dying."

"Permanent imprisonment..." Kanan's voice drops off sharply suddenly, his eyebrows drawing closer together. Then the older man's jaw drops as his head lifts again and he looks at Ezra incredulously, "Wait a minute. You knew that Zeb was going to ditch you during our initial escape attempt because it's happened to you one time before, and even so you *deliberately* let it happen again!"

Ezra shrugs, "Really wasn't an option to do otherwise, Kanan. When and where exactly do you think that I got the information during my first time around? My memory's good sure – but it's not completely photographic. I had to make certain that I hadn't forgotten anything important before we went after the Wookies in terms of times, and dates and actual locations. I mean it's been four years since last timeI heard all those details, Master, and there's been a lot of details for me to remember since then."

Kanan is going to kill him. Kanan is *literally* going to kill him. His other self? Was clearly a saint for never having actually broken and ass whupped the hell out of this damn kid.

Ezra, meanwhile, just tilts his his head at Kanan's expression, and then quirks his lips in a wry little smile that's probably meant to be kriffing ironic. "If it makes you feel any better this time around, Kanan, at least before I came on ship to warn you guys that it was actually a trap, I left the Holocron safely *on the Ghost* instead of taking it with me like I did the first time around. All I really had on me when I boarded the vessel this time was my multi-tool and a bunch of overripe yogan."

Kanan draws in a couple of very deep, very carefully measured breaths, desperately seeking both his center and his ability to speak without actually yelling. "Ezra." He informs the teenager calmly, "You are grounded. On bread and water. For the rest of eternity."

"Kanan..." Ezra just sighs, almost bemused, in all too patient reaction.

Kanan cuts him off with a single pointed finger. "That is a very, very generous offer at the moment. I suggest you accept it. *And quickly,* if you know what's good for you kid."

Ezra's lips actually quirk up a little, but at least he nods silently in response, before speaking softly. "All right, Kanan, I understand."

Kanan keeps on pointing his finger. Very emphatically. "I'm serious, Ezra. And when I say grounded, I mean *karking grounded, Kid.* Which means no more going back to the tower on your own anymore. No practicing your shoplifting skills in the market. No leaving the ship unaccompanied at all without explicit permission from either myself or Hera before you do so, no disappearing constantly when you get annoyed into the vents of the ship. " Kanan shakes his head several times, still trying to wrap his mind around the intensity of the recklessness that the teenager had just admitted to – horrified by the way that Ezra risked his life by blindly trusting in the unshakable commonality of a timeline that they'd both just stated several times they knew was diverging.

After all, there had been no guarantee at all that Ghost would have returned for Ezra this time around if anyone's vote had suddenly changed for some reason or if something happened to the ship mechanically during their escape. Ezra could've been...well pretty much anything basically...

Kanan slams his eyes shut, shaking his head again at the thought, and then he looks over at his Padawan again, "Force Ezra, the first week or so, don't even expect to be let out of my sight for more than a couple of minutes at a time initially unless you're either in med-bay with an IV, you're using the bathroom or you're meditating." And yes, Kanan admits - that may be a tad bit extreme. Right now though, he really doesn't much care. His damn nerves are all but shredded at this point, especially after this particular conversation. Ezra's got some serious ground to cover right now in terms of actually regaining Kanan's trust before he's going to be fully trusted to look after his own safety again.

Besides, with the bond still so new between them right now, and with them both tending toward emotional strain and overreaction Kanan knows that it's probably wise for them to stay in reasonably close proximity until the link has had a few more days to really settle and finish up rooting in.

Ezra crosses his arms and then tilts his head. Not defiantly, though – more as what looks like part of a conversational habit as the younger Jedi studies his master for a moment or two, before he finally speaks up almost curiously. "You know, you didn't really freak out about our first few months this much my first time around, only now you totally are and it's kind of weirding the hell out of me, Kanan. Not complaining, just noting that for the record."

Kanan stares right back at him, completely unashamed. "Oh Kid, I definitely freaked out then too. I absolutely guarantee it. Albeit from what little you've told me Ezra, I'm guessing that said freaking was done in my quarters at the time, subtly and much more *privately.* For what it's worth, links like the one that we've got now tend to take time to evolve to full strength, Ezra…yours and your former master's likely developed slowly over months whereas we," he gestures between the two of them, "just re-recovered a good part of what probably initially took us years to build in one night, and so now it's going to take both of us a little time to readjust and get used to the necessary levels of shielding."

Kanan jabs his still extended finger at Ezra, one more time, "But all of that admitted, I'm also assuming at this point that my other self could at least comfort himself with the knowledge that even if you were, as you put it yesterday a 'handful' when he was first getting to know you, your younger self almost never did something so ridiculously stupid!"

"It's wasn't stupid. Kanan. Just necessary." Ezra's voice is deadly calm in its rebuttal.

"Banthashit," Kanan snaps back without even the slightest hint of yielding. Ezra switches the cross of his arms, shifts his balance from one leg to the other, raises an eloquent eyebrow and then speaks again, with far, far too much karking surety.

"'If the only life you defend is you own, Kanan than your own life counts for nothing.' Now I don't completely agree with Hera's philosophy, as you already know, but I also don't reject the sentiment completely either - Hera was right that time, at least in that particular situation. Yes, I took a calculated risk by letting myself get captured, Kanan but that risk was probably far, far less dangerous than the one I took the first time that I boarded that ship, because at least this time around I actually had a pretty damn good idea what was actually at stake. I knew the possible costs of what I was doing in full when I did what I did the other day, Kanan. I just judged the prize at the time to be absolutely worth it."

Force damn it, Kanan thinks. How many times has he asked Hera to be careful about using that particular phrase so damned indiscriminately? Yes, Kanan acknowledges that the sentiment does have some general merit, but it's also tone deaf as hell when coming from a person who seems completely unaware that having others who are willing to sacrifice in order to save your life is actually a sign of personal privilege in most cultures, and that for some people at least, fighting for their own lives is actually one of the highest forms of courage in a society that has declared them essentially worthless. His own Padawan is a walking talking example of just that concept, as teenager had rightly pointed out the other night, not that Ezra currently seems to be practicing what he preaches.

"You could have just warned us what was actually coming, Ezra," He points out after another moment or so. "Could have warned us that the information we had wasn't necessarily to be trusted. You did not need to deal with the situation as recklessly as you did."

Ezra snorts aloud, "And I could have told you guys what exactly? That I somehow knew you were walking into a trap, but I could help you get more accurate information about the wookie's real location if we just flipped their proverbial table and used their own game against them instead? No one in their right mind would have ever believed me, no matter what I'd said, Kanan. Even if I had claimed to have secret ears somewhere inside Vizago's organization. How much trust were you guys going to give a loth -rat who'd you'd just literally scooped up after a speeder chase like some kind of exotic pet who'd you found left out on the street the exact same day who miraculously just started talking? I am not an idiot, all right Kanan, I know my own capacities to convince people to believe me, and doing so in the situation would have been completely beyond my ken. Besides, any temporary personal danger I put myself in during the short period I spent on board that vessel was still minuscule compared to what could have happened to all of us if I'd just stayed home on Lothol and tried to bust you guys out later, much less tried to change things even more than that from their original iteration. Which I at least remembered and had the capacity to use said memories to our mutual benefit. Do you have any idea - any kriffing idea at all how deep in Banthakriff you all would have been at that point in time had I not stepped up in the way that you did? You probably would have ended strapped to another kriffing imperial torture table, Kanan, and let me tell you, Master I don't currently have the hidden tie fighters or the contacts and weapons available that would have become necessary to launch the required rescue operation!"

'Currently.' The words register in Kanan's head, just a little bit numbly. He licks his lips in order to wet them, and then he speaks up quietly. "And how old were you when you did first have all the resources to first make that sort of thing happen?"

Ezra blinks at the question, clearly startled. "Uhm...fifteen and a half? Not that it was really just all me. But that's not really the point at the moment, Kanan. Look, I made a deal with Vizago back then in order to get the info from him that we needed to get you back from Mustafar and then with a little help from our friends in the resistance, we managed to get you out and get us all home again. The point that I am trying to make here is that I am *not* voluntarily going to live through that kind of nightmare again if I don't have to! Not if some reasonably calculated risks on my part mean that I can prevent it from ever happening at all. Because let me tell you Kanan, I preferred you uncaptured and my face unscarred by light sabers at least for the moment!"

Oh no… Fifteen years when that had first happened is definitely the point, at least as far as Kanan is concerned right concerning all of this. Well, that and Ezra's explanation just in general because seriously, what in the karking kriff?! At fifteen and a half years old *Ezra* had been the one who had been dragging *Kanan* off of Imperial torture tables. The one making deals with local arms dealers in order to secure needed information as if that was a totally normal, acceptable thing for a fifteen year old to be doing when his 'parent' disappeared into the hands of the enemy? And apparently, everyone else in the world had simply gone mad and apparently let him?! If they had been working in tandem with the rebellion by that point then surely there should have been some adults around to do…well, the actual adulting!

Kanan draws in a deep breath, "You're right, Ezra." He acknowledges after a moment or so, carefully rising to his own feet to come a little bit closer to the younger Jedi. "By the sound of it from a completely neutral outside perspective, you made a judgment call that you believed was the best one available to you at the time. Because you're absolutely right, Kid, that we didn't know you on that 'first day' from Adam."

Kanan takes him by the shoulders and shakes him, just once, hard. "But Ezra, guess what, Kid - you are still kriffing grounded, anyway, because even if I didn't know you at that point, Kid, you karking damn well knew me!"

"What?" Ezra stares at Kanan, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

"I...the other version of me, was your Master for four years, Ezra! Before he died the two of you must have had, from what I can see of the wreckage still in your mind right now, a strong and incredibly attuned training link. Kark even now, when it's still at just a quarter of its original size at the time it was first broken, our mental affinity still seems to be so fore-damned strong that I'm betting the Force started literally howling in your head the moment that the Ghost came back into the solar system, regardless of whether or not I was shielding at the time. Am I wrong?"

Ezra drops his gaze down to his feet and very deliberately says nothing.

"How long were we on the planet, Ezra?"

Again Kanan is greeted with total silence.

"How long were we here, Ezra, *before* the day of the robbery?"

"...about a day and a half." Ezra finally mutters, distinctly unconvincingly.

Kanan reaches out and shakes him gently by the shoulders, "Wrong answer. Don't try and lie to me right now, Kid. I know better. HOW MANY DAYS WERE WE HERE ON LOTHAL, EZRA?!"

"Almost five okay!? You guys were here almost five, Kanan." Ezra's voice is cracking with strain, and good – because it should be. The kid should be just a little bit afraid and guilty right now because Karabast is the older Jedi is going to allow this situation to just pass unchallenged.

"Almost five." Kanan agrees, stepping back enough to give Ezra just a fraction more room in which to shift on his feet in reward for his eventual honesty. "Before that 'first day' Ezra, we were parked on outskirts of the Capital City, just like we have been the last few weeks. We were reachable by foot with just a little effort on your part and we were certainly reachable if you'd chosen to 'borrow' a speeder. So don't just sit there right now acting like you had only one option available to you before you met the rest of us and so you just chose to do 'what you had to do' at that point when the truth of the matter is that there were five days before the actual robbery in which you could have tried to come and find me first so we could find a way to do what was needed without you brazenly risking your life."

Ezra's breathing ratchets up a notch. His eyes are still locked on his feet, at least for the moment. He draws a deep breath, then lets it out whispering the next words not exactly defiantly. "I still had no way to know for sure at that point that you'd believe me, as I've said, Kanan. If you hadn't and you'd tried to leave me behind thinking I was some kind of security risk to the rest of you...I ...I just wasn't willing to risk it at that time."

"'My previous master's name was Caleb...But then he never really went by that moniker while I knew him.'" Kanan puts his words in quotes, "Or Hera says that's what you told her when she was poking at you about the subject the other day." He shakes his head with a small snort, "There was no way in kark that you just threw that name out at random like I originally thought you must have when Hera first told me what you'd said; you were deliberately kriffing with us - try to knock me in particular temporarily off balance because I was pushing you too hard and you were starting to get angry. But still, you know some or all or some of my birth name. What was the name of my own master, Ezra?"

Silence.

"Ezra!"

"Depa Billaba."

"And what was the name of my Grande Sire?"

"Mace Windu."

"Who taught me the smugglers craft in the years after after Order 66."

"Janus Kasmir. Or at least he claimed that gave you a foundation of the basics"

"Where and when did I meet Hera, Ezra?"

"you met her on Gorse."

"And what happened there?"

"I don't really remember the details. Something about some kind of lunatic and a moon, Kanan."

"Yes." Kanan emphasizes the word with another quick shake of Ezra's shoulders. "As I just said - you knew me at that point in our lives, Ezra. Whether or not I knew as much information about who you were didn't really matter. And you're not stupid Kid - you had to have had at least an inkling given that treasure trove of personal information about me that it would have taken you less than *three minutes* once the two of us had met for you to ensure that you had my attention for at least one or two serious conversations, even if I hadn't initially noticed that you were also another force sensitive! You also knew full well at that point that generally when it's something so potentially important, no matter how odd or strange something seems, that I'd have at least stopped to meditate on the situation for awhile, and that if I had then The Force would have karking well confirmed what you were saying just through the reformation of our training link!

Kanan steps forward again then, unerringly shifting the kid to one side and then toward the wall of seats now behind him. "But you didn't want me looking closer did you, Ezra? Didn't want me poking into the currents. Didn't want me asking any relevant questions about who you really were. You definitely didn't want me taking the time to stop and meditate over the situation. Because after all, you already had your own plan for how you were going to handle things at the time, didn't you, kid? And that plan initially hinged on keeping all us so karking off balance during our initial first job together that we would end up looking at anything and everything but you! Never mind that decision also involved continuing to walk down a path that involved indefinitely repeatedly psychically ripping apart your own damn mind scape!"

A firm hand against the teenager's shoulder doesn't shake Ezra this time. Instead, Kanan simply pushes the younger man down almost deliberately, forcing Kanan's increasingly pale Padawan into the seat across the aisle from the larger man, the fourteen year settling down against the cushioned bench with a distinct wince of pain. And yeah, judging by Ezra's face when he sits the kid most definitely still has some bruising on his rear from last night. Kanan's going to see in just a couple more minutes if he can find Ezra some Bacta Cream to help with that problem once they're finished up here. In the meantime though, Kanan just drops down to his own knees in front of the now sitting, teenager, lifting the younger man's chin from where it's come to rest against his chest and making sure they've got real eye contact again before continuing, his voice gentle but also absolutely no nonsense. "*That's* why you're grounded right now, Ezra. Because for *five force damned days* you held your tongue when you karking knew that you were meant to be talking to the people who were meant to be sharing in the burden fairly. You and grounded, Kid, because you risked your own life needlessly, rather than actually share the responsibility that shouldn't have been all yours to begin with, and it could have ended up with you dead, Ezra. You do it again Kid, and you will not like the consequences! You are done with playing these kinds of games, unless you want my boot metaphorically or otherwise, planted in your rear again!"

Ezra drops his eyes, hands fisting on his lap, "We're clear, Kanan." He finally answers back softly. "I get where you're coming from, I really do, Master and I..." His voice cracks sharply yet again. "Kanan, I'm really sorry. I was doing the best I knew how to do, what I thought was the most ethical thing at the time, I just…"

"I know." Kanan raises a hand to the fourteen year old's shoulder then, squeezing it comfortingly, "You allowed yourself to be blinded both by your ongoing sense of personal isolation and the risks that you thought that the rest were facing, Ezra. But you weren't alone then, and you certainly aren't from here on out either, and you better learn to kriffing remember that next time. Because I swear to Force, if I ever catch you trying to pull this kind of kriff again deliberately, then the next 'conversation' that the two of us have concerning this subject will be a hell of a lot less pleasant than this one has been. You are not expendable, Ezra no matter what you seem to assume, and you need to stop giving me heart attacks by being so needlessly reckless all the karking time."

"I know." Ezra replies. "And I'll try. I really will Master, I promise. I just ... When the stakes get really high, then get tunnel vision sometimes."

"I know. Which is why we're having this talk in the first place, and laying down some safe limits. None of which means I'm not still proud of you for everything that you've survived over the past couple of months. Nor does it mean that anything else I told you yesterday is going to change - not ever, much less for the moment. Yes, I'm mad at you right now, Ezra for the way that you've been so casually treating your own life over the past couple of weeks, but that doesn't mean that you've lost my respect or the right my protection, because you literally can't loose either at this point. I'm just trying to protect you from your own greatest enemy - namely you - at least for the moment."

Tears well up in Ezra's eyes then, spilling over unwillingly at the words. He nods, utterly silent. Kanan responds by reaching out with one of his hands to gently wrap around the back of Ezra's neck and squeeze affection. "You going to be all right? Need a water or cuddle or something like that, Kid?"

Ezra makes a face, wiped his eyes with his shirt again. Kanan really needs to find the kid some kind of kriffing handkerchief. "I'll be fine. Really I will, Master. Like I said earlier, Kanan I've just been like a karking faucet all morning, no matter what I do. It's stupid as kriff not to mention really, really annoying."

"Happens to the worst and the best of us both, I'm afraid at the moment. Ezra. Is there anything right now that you do either want or need I might be able to help with?"

"A less kriffed up brain?"

Kanan smirks gently in reply to that, "That'll come on its own, Kid. Just give yourself a few days and in the meantime, try to go a little easy."

Ezra makes a face, "Believe me, right now it feels like I've already given way more time than I even like to think about."

Kanan sighs and then he gently squeezes his Padawan's shoulder yet again. "Look, I know that it's hard, Ezra, and that you're tired right now as well as frankly worn out from all the ongoing 'drama' – but in truth it's still been less than twenty-four hours since our link's much needed reforging. This isn't an abnormal response on your part at all, okay? The bond's just settling in, and on top of that your mind's trying to deal with all the damage that still needs sorting through after all these weeks of ongoing pain and repeated injury. It will get a little better tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that."

The blue-eyed teenager sighs then, rolling his eyes heavenwards, "Well in that case then, couldn't someone like, just put me in a coma or something and wake me up in a couple more weeks when I've finally lost this sudden penchant for being constantly weepy?"

Kanan laughs at that complaint, he really, really can't help it, and the bell like sound makes Ezra's head come up sharply in response, his blue eyes staring at Kanan and blinking, just a little bit dazed. The older Jedi raises an eyebrow at the younger man's almost bitter expression, the chuckle cutting off. "Are you... Ezra, what is it?"

"Nothing. I...I just..haven't seen you do that in a while, that's all, Master."

"Laugh?"

Ezra shakes his head a little, "Both look me in the eyes and smile absolutely genuinely."

"Sounds like I turned into quite a curmudgeon by the end then." He observes after a moment, "If that's really the case, Ezra."

Ezra shakes his head a little. "No. Not at all. Other you was always hopeful, Kanan…if maybe a little bit tireder as a rule. He had a very similar kind of humor to yours, at least most of the time. Life just well, got harder as time marched on over the past few years especially. It's the nature of wartime, I guess. The work just never seemed to end it seemed like. Someone always wanted or needed our help. Kriff in years before I woke up here in my Tower on Lothal, I don't think that I'd actually…" Ezra voice drops off abruptly, his face a little stunned.

"You don't think you'd what?"

"I don't think I'd had more than one day off in a row for over a two years honestly, Master. There was always just too much to do at any given time."

Kanan chews that bit of news over for a long moment, considering as he does so what it actually says about the place that Ezra came from, about the other life they'd all been willingly living, and all its apparent responsibilities and costs as well as privileges, where Ezra was concerned. Somewhere along the way it sounds as if the fourteen-year-old street rat had become an eighteen-year-old child soldier, instead. Kanan's not sure at the moment how he really feels about that.

The thought makes Kanan wonder, as he kneels there studying the teenager, if maybe some of the Ezra's ongoing soul sickness hasn't been just about OtherKanan's apparently brutal death. Maybe on top of that trauma, Ezra's also just plain tired over all, as any soldier can become in a long ongoing conflict.

"Well on the bright side, Kid, we've got nothing else on the schedule for awhile now that we've located and freed the Wookie prisoners. Well unless the coffers get too low or Hera gets particularly restless, or get a call from one of her rebellion side contacts, I mean."

Ezra chuckles. "Which means, Kanan, that we'll be running for our lives sometime in the next couple of days. At least historically speaking."

Kanan snorts. "Yeah, yeah, you pint sized little cynic."

Ezra snorts right back, "I prefer the term 'Realist' Master."

"Snarky stubborn, little bull-dog..."

"More like kriffing wolf, thank you very well. Or maybe semi well adjusted time traveler instead." Ezra immediately shoots back, and then he suddenly pauses, tilting his head to one side and raises the pointer finger of one of his hands.. "Wait a minute: just for the record, are we technically throwing and rebutting insults here or criticizing lifestyle decisions? Because do not blame the whole time travel on me at least for the moment! Because I sure as kark do not remember purchasing this ticket to crazyland deliberately."

Kanan rolls his eyes "You're not actually outright crazy yet, Ezra."

"No just teetering on the knives edge at this point, I think."

Kanan waves his hand, "Nah, you're a little tested, chronologically speaking is all, Kid."

The teenager's eyes narrow, "While you? Are an obviously failing amateur comedian these days, Kanan."

"You wound me, Kid."

"Yeah, well cry me a karking river..."

"No...I think I'll leave that one to you for now, Ezra, you pull it off better. So... do you currently need another hug or anything?"

"Need no - but I'll take one anyway if one's currently on offer." Ezra snorts softly to him, "Kark I think I'll try anything at the moment that makes me feel less like a kriffing kicked puppy."

"You do kind of have the face for the role these days, Ezra."

Ezra's returned pout is dry, "Hardy har har, look Kanan – why don't you go back to working on the jokes for your truly act for awhile, well I ...I don't know, go take a nap or meditate for a couple of hours or something."

"Hey maybe I'm actually great most of the time for a laugh, Ezra. Maybe you're actuallly just a lousy audience, you ever consider that particular possibility.?"

Ezra's look is distinctly skeptical, "I find that highly, highly unlikely, Kanan."

"Why's that?"

"Because I for the most have a great sense of humor, Master Mine. Whereas you? Deal in terrible Dad jokes almost exclusively."

"That's a horrible thing for you to say to guy, Kid, you know that?"

"Well what can I say at this point Kanan, other than that OtherYou always advocated honesty in our ongoing relationship..."

"Well OtherMe must have been a real jerk most of the time to be around, then."

"Wonder who he learned that from," Ezra mutters back very wryly.

"Probably Zeb," Kanan replies all but instinctively, smirking right back. And then he pulls the kid back into his arms for one last lingering hug.

Chapter 13: Briefings

To say that Ezra is cowed right now in the wake of their most recent conversation is perhaps a massive sort of understatement. For the last couple of hours the kid has been literally the quietest that Kanan's ever seen him since the two of them met.

(Well in this time-stream's particular iteration, anyway. Which for Ezra, Kanan supposes counts as their second first meeting. Which Kanan is now going to stop thinking about right now in favor of the actual present before his brain starts to literally steam.)

Regardless after Kanan pulls back from the hug he'd given him, his Padawan barely seems to register, much less protest against the way that Kanan wraps up the rest of the normal morning stowaway and then turns the Phantom back toward Capital City. Indeed, by time that Kanan gets the ship up in the air and then glances back over his shoulder to check what the teenager is up to, he finds Ezra still half slumped over where he left him initially. The kid's eyes blurry, his face slack and his general posture listless.

Frankly stated the kid looks like hell at the moment -exhausted and overextended even after eight-plus hours of sleep. And it doesn't really get all that much better even after Kanan makes them both caf and instant meals as a sort of early lunch/late breakfast. Ezra honestly reminds Kanan of a slowly deflating balloon at the word for lack of a better description. Albeit one who's keeping his air – or his thoughts in this case – utterly silent as they bleed out of him and into the quiet of the room.

Kanan watches until the boy, after a full two hours of essentially staring at the wall, finally rises from the seat he's sitting in, throwing his empty trash into the trash compactor. Then Ezra starts clearing off a spot on the floor – presumably to either do his daily stretches or more meditation, and Kanan rises and catches him by the arm, very gently. "I think you'd be better off hitting the sack again Kid for a few hours. At least for the time being."

Ezra blinks at him a moment. "I've been awake less than six hours now, Kanan." The younger man observes quietly, without even the faintest trace of real challenge in his voice.

"Which has nothing to do with how much downtime your system actually needs right now with the training bond both healing and sealing. What's your pain level at?"

"Seven or eight."

Not as bad as it could be, but not great either. "How's the state of your shields, Ezra?"

"They need some work, Kanan, but I've been letting it slide because it actually hurts less with them lower at present."

Kanan figures that makes sense. At least with just the two of them out here for the time being.

"You're probably dealing right now with some pretty significant blow back from everything that happened yesterday, Ezra. Which is why I think that we're going to start you on a short run of Amalyn again like I mentioned. Just to help with the pain and the exhaustion. Any objections?"

A shake of Ezra head's is the only real answer Kanan needs. "Fine. I'll go make up my bunk again."

Well that's the only real indication that Kanan needs of how awful Ezra must actually feel at present. His Padawan doesn't even attempt argue with the older man, just waits as Kanan goes and digs out the supplies quietly.

The Phantom's medpack does in fact provide several IV insertion kits and Dextrose bags when Kanan checks, in addition to the ones that he already has in his bag. Hera had apparently taken their last encounter with Kallus – and Ezra's general ongoing medical situation - as an excuse to both reload and revise the Phantom's med kit to a rather amusing level of over-preparation.

She's clearly already very proactive when it comes to anticipating their 'youngest's' needs.

The thought makes Kanan smile a little, warmed by how much easier that natural affection that Ezra seems to pull out in all of them will hopefully make things in the coming weeks. Not that this new reality they've someone crash landed in without noticing isn't going to require several complex and likely involving future conversations.

Kanan chokes out a laugh at the thought of how he can begin at least one of said conversations. 'Well, the good news is that I finally reeled your much coveted final crewmember, Hera. But in doing so I also appear to have netted myself a rather…err… high maintenance, Padawan. Who comes equipped with a slightly mind bending talent for time travel.'

Hera – she's gonna. Force. When Kanan tries to imagine sitting down and explaining all of this to her in any reasonable sort of manner he starts to get just slightly hysterical. Because at least initially, Kanan's pretty sure that his lover is going to assume that he and Ezra have both gone completely around the bend. Should he maybe just take a cue from Ezra and not tell her at first while he tries to figure out the best way to do so? He considers the option for all of half of a second or so, then shudders in an instinctive, all too knowing 'don't be outright suicidal, Jarrus' reaction. If he hides this, for any length of time successfully, and the Twi'lek pilot finds out about it in retrospect than Hera will literally hang him up in the docking bay by his gonads.

There is, in Kanan's experience with Hera, keeping secrets -which is generally fine- and hiding things from her. Which will result in instant dismemberment and death.

This…all of this. Ezra, the training bond, his future knowledge, the Shatterpoint Kanan's pretty sure he saw occur – all of that is going to require explanation. And Hera isn't going to be any happier about what Ezra's done than Kanan initially was, once she works through her own trains of logic. Though it may take her a little longer to work it all out - to accrue enough understanding to really grasp everything that's happened. Which will only make the resulting storm ten times worse when it finally hits.

Because if Kanan's not reading the wind wrong - and he really doesn't think that he is - then it's incredibly likely that Ezra spent four years on the Ghost with the both of them in his other reality. Which made OtherHera and OtherHim both, for lack of a better term, the kid's defacto parents.

What that means in the literal is nothing at all. What that means figuratively however is that - surprise, surprise- Hera Syndulla had/has a son every bit as much as Kanan had/has a padawan. One that Hera's already proven to be almost inordinately fond of after having only known Ezra for about three weeks now. And now Hera's going to learn that three weeks of acquired affection from her side was literally four years' worth of the same from Ezra.

All that kept in mind, Kanan somehow strongly doubts that Hera's going to be able to easily swallow the knowledge that a child whom OtherHer had loved and who had obviously loved OtherHer in return, had then not only found himself cast back in time with no explanation but then preemptively attempted to dump his entire family out of his life 'for their own good' less than a day after he'd also allowed himself to be captured deliberately by the enemy in order to make sure that Kanan and Hera both got the data that they'd needed for their ongoing Imperial trap/Wookie rescue mission.

Hera is, unless Kanan completely misses his guess, literally going hit the kriffing ceiling.

And Ezra? Is going to be eating a large and varietous amount of crow in the days to come, if his lover's feeling *generous.* Hera is literally going to put the fear of hellfire into the kid once she figures all this out, it's all but virtually guaranteed. Even after Kanan makes a point of letting her know that he's already 'handled' the topic in terms of needed disciplinary action.

Kanan doesn't have the faintest clue honestly, how it's all going to come out even after he tells her that. Because Hera after all isn't going to be capable of fully appreciating Ezra's viewpoint or decision making tree just yet. Oh, she'll at least try to, because yeah she lost her mother young too, but Hera can't quite on a visceral level quite understand Ezra's grief in the same way that Kanan can right now. She doesn't know what a psychic bond is like. She has no concept of what it does to a mind when they're broken. She'll need to have it explained to her very clearly and gently that passive suicidal ideation and ongoing PTSD probably played just as much of a role as teenage arrogance and recklessness in most of Ezra's recent mission-related decisions.

At which point once she understands Hera won't likely yell at Ezra anymore - much anyway, but she'll definitely ramp up her overall level of monitoring and worry about the general situation.

Kanan, on the other hand, knows exactly why Ezra made the choice he did at first, when he woke up and found himself in this time and this place. He understands how fears for Kanan's safety, Ezra's concerns about his own sanity and the thought of having to live through a link break again could have led Ezra to make such stupid self-destructive choices. Especially when the kid could wrap it all up neatly under the guise of calm, moral, rationalization. Mind you, Kanan doesn't think that Ezra's choices were right in the slightest: note their previous conversation. Still he understands the mindset involved, and even more importantly than that, he knows right now what Ezra needs more than anything else is simply time. Time to hear that he's all right. That this isn't a dream. That he's not simply going to wake up one day and once again be alone and in horrible pain.

Ezra needs to hear those things, and he needs time to start actually believing them.

Which is why Ezra, for the next few months at the very least, is going to be getting as much mercy as Kanan can possibly dig out of his own heart. Kanan's going to be practicing both forgiveness and empathy as vigorously and as often as he possibly can. With a few small but notable exceptions of course -again please note their previous conversation. Still, considering that said exceptions thus far have basically included, a) you may not hit me except in self-defense, b) you may not run away to live with clone war troopers and c) you may not needlessly endanger your own life without suffering severely unpleasant consequences for that decision, Kanan's pretty sure he's not doing too badly at this whole Guardian Ad Litum thing. No matter how awkward he'd felt at the beginning of the day thanks to the whole 'to hug or not to hug' thing. Kanan may have in fact overestimated generally on how badly he's going to suck at all of this.

All this in mind, Kanan carries the IV supplies back to where Ezra is already lying down on his side half asleep, and proceeds to drug the kriff out of his over stimulated, over exhausted, completely overburdened mess of a kid. And then he goes to make a comm call back to the Ghost from the front of the ship.

"Kanan!" The Twi'lek's smile on the com is wide as her head appears on the viewscreen. But the expression quickly fades as Hera leans in to get a slightly better look at him. "I didn't think that I'd hear from you until after you were done at the temple, and you said that might take a day or two. Kriff...wait a minute..." Hera squints, "Kanan is your… Love, your nose looks like it got broken?"

Oh yes. Kanan had forgotten about that little detail. He sits back a little in his chair shrugging, "Yup."

"And how did that happen?"

" Ezra." He replies. Not even blinking.

Hera winces in reply, "And how did all of that go exactly?"

"About as well as could be expected. He had a lot of repressed anger, Hera. I helped him unrepress it by releasing a little anger of my own. We both yelled. He hit me. We tussled. He took an involuntary nap. He woke up again and we talked some more and then ended up tussling again, and then I handed him his ass in exchange for the broken nose and repeated attempts to unman me." Kanan shrugs his shoulder a little, his lips quirking up. "Overall Hera, you could say it was a 'bonding experience.'

"…Some anger of your own." Those words aren't anything but a request for further clarification on Hera's part.

Kanan calmly steeples his fingers in front of him as he looks at her. "Let's just say that I expressed some...serious reservations, Hera... about the fact that Ezra's apparent 'life plan' after he ditched yesterday us involved him leaving Lothal on his own to try and track down a few of his previous master's clone trooper buddies."

Hera's face pales at that announcement. "He was going to what?!"

"Show up on some GAR Veteran's doorstep and see if they wanted a pet Padawan essentially." Kanan sighs heavily. "He shared his plan, albeit completely involuntarily. I objected to it. Things escalated - rather loudly and swiftly."

"…Is he?"

"He's fine Hera." Kanan is quick to assure her, "Not sitting very comfortably right now as a result of some of his poorer life choices, maybe, but as he put it 'bygones.' We're fine. Well okay not fine precisely but getting there and definitely on to dealing with bigger issues."

"You actually...?" Hera shakes her head then, snorting a little. "You actually literally ended up spanking the kid? Cause I have to admit, Kanan, I didn't actually see that one coming. Some fisticuffs erupting between the two of you yeah, but..."

"It was self-defense for the most part on my part, Hera. I put Ezra on his stomach and tanned his hide after he repeatedly tried to knee me during our ongoing fight. After which he finally broke and then cried for over an hour. And as it turns out for Ezra at least, tears are a whole lot more effective then sparring in terms provoking general catharsis. Please also note for the record Hera, that this is *not* a complete summary of what actually happened, I'm just reading off the cliff notes basically and will happily extrapolate later to your complete contentment."

"I understand. Keep going." Well at least far Hera's face is concerned so far, things don't look too bad. There's a lot concern there, a little judgement, but mostly just understanding. At least so far, "We also talked a lot about his former Master , Hera - both after and in the middle of all of that, and well after I kicked his ass and he cried he also let me hold him and he finally relaxed enough that I was able to get through his top layer of shielding." Kanan draws in a sharp breath, because here they go, "Which is when I realized that we already had - have, a very old and active training link, Hera."

"But...but how is that possible?" Hera looks absolutely flabbergasted at the information. "It's old you say?! You'd never even met him before, Kanan, during the few times that we've actually visited this planet!"

"Yes, I know. But Hera, here's the kicker...You know how he mentioned that one time that he was with his master slightly more than 4 years? Well, the last date that Ezra currently remembers living in occurs in YOE18." Kanan informs her calmly.

"What?!" Hera repeats again. To be fair it currently is only Year of The Emporer 14.

Kanan shrugs, "You know how you used to always tease me about what you called my time travel book and holovid obsession?" Kanan lets out a distinctly wry little snort. "Well, that just turned out to be ironically relevant, Hera. The Force is pretty clear in its confirmations, Hera. He's definitely not lying. Which means that I was, I *am* Ezra's old Master, apparently."

Hera stares out through the viewscreen at him for a long, awkward moment completely mute. Kanan draws in a deep breath…"Look Hera - I know okay, and I understand that you have every right, right now, to be skeptical. Why do you think that Ezra didn't say anything to any of us for so long? Death of his OtherMe aside that he had to witness, he knows that it all sounds completely insane and beyond belief. He's a kriffing mess at the moment because he's spent so long trying to cope with the reality of it all by itself. But it's definitely...look the Force is just really clear, Hera, in ways I can't really even describe. And even if it weren't he knows things…details that he should have no chance at all of knowing. Unless he's actually telling the truth."

Hera softly cuts him off then with a softly murmured. "Cham."

Kanan blinks at that, "Huh?"

Hera looks up at him from her hands, "He knew what my mom's name was, Kanan. As well as Cham's."

"He did?" Kanan leans forward a little, blinking at this unexpected revelation.

Hera shrugs her shoulders, "When he was on the Amalyn about a week ago…he asked me at one point when I was sitting with him how long it'd been since I last gotten to visit home – to see Cham. I...I thought he was just babbling when he said it, Kanan, like stringing thoughts randomly together. Or that maybe he'd been talking to you at some point and that you'd told him my Dad's name just because he was curious about me in general but..." Hera's eyes have been far away as she speaks, but now she looks up and stares at him. "You rarely mention my father Kanan. Ever. Certainly not to someone we don't know well. And then later on that same day, Sabine brought up the fact that a panel in the hall outside Medbay was making some odd sounds and Ezra mumbled out something under his breath about checking a particular circuit panel to fix it. Which Chopper and I had modified ourselves at one point during some patchwork renovations. There was no way in kriff, Kanan that he should have known how to properly diagnose that problem...!"

Hera reaches up to rub at her brow, then, "Not only that either - I was talking to the others about it earlier, and well, Kanan apparently Sabine and Zeb have both been noticing a lot of similar strange little coincidences too. Oddities that Ezra brought up when he was drugged. Little details he just seemed to know about us or the ship that have been making them edgy and or very confused. I thought at first it was lingering guilt on Zeb's part and...well Sabine is tired of being the baby of the crew, Kanan. She may be angry at Ezra right now yes, but she also wants Ezra on board intensely right now reasons she can't even explain herself. It's driving her a little bit nuts. But your explanation. If it's all true, Kanan than suddenly it all makes a lot more actual sense."

Kanan nods, Blinks at her a little incredulously. "Wait a minute...are you actually saying that you just outright kriffing believe me?!"

"Oh I won't go that far. Not quite yet anyway. I still want blood tests ruling out foreign agents in both of you. And I think I'm coming out now to get you just to be on the safe side since you are acting a bit 'off' for me to be particularly comfortable with you flying my ship at the moment. But if the labs come back clear Kanan, then..." She shrugs. "At this point, Love, any coherent explanation - even this one, with the sheer tint of weirdness the world has taken on lately, would almost be a relief..." She shrugs her shoulders, helplessly. "Because I never imagined before he came aboard that I would ever say this, Love, but apparently there can actually be too many complete coincidences in the world..." Hera rubs at a lek again then, giving him an awkward smile. "And Congrats, I now sound every bit as crazy as the both of you do, I think."

Sitting there, Kanan honestly doesn't know whether to laugh right now or cry in literal relief. He reaches out instead and puts a hand on the view screen wishing he could touch her. "If you want to come and get us Hera that'd be great, actually. Ezra's doped to the gills on the Amalyn right now and...honestly? I just want to go and crash on the floor next to him for awhile. I know that it's just the bond settling in but..." He shrugs his shoulders a little helplessly.

"You're having separation anxiety right now when you're too far apart aren't you?" Hera questions softly.

Kanan nods his head, a little embarrassed to acknowledge it. "Yes, I think I am."

"Was it the same way with you and Depa? When the two of you first bonded?"

"Yes and no, Hera...our link started smaller, and built gradually up over time. And of course, our link was never broken like Ezra and I's apparently was until..." Kanan lets the words die off sharply.

"Until she died." Hera finishes for him.

Kanan nods his head in response.

"But it felt at least a little similar and gradually settled over time?"

"Yeah." He acknowledges again. "And I assume that's what'll eventually happen to Ezra and I as well. Well, assuming the Amalyn works and Ezra finally manages to get some decent rest first."

Hera gives him an agonizing beautiful smile in reply. "Well then go sit with your Padawan, my emotionally constipated Dear One. I'll comm the Phantom again when we're about 30 minutes out. Oh, and Kanan?"

"Yeah?"

"If Ezra wakes up before we get there, and he lets you, feel free to cuddle the stuffing out of him. Because I absolutely guarantee you that an exhausted fourteen-year-old with lingering psychic damage is no less needy or awkward about trying to cope with all these feelings than you are."

Kanan chuckles in spite of himself, "He keeps telling me repeatedly that he's technically eighteen now, at least experientially. But frankly Hera I'm having more and more of worries about what those years only he has in his head were actually like."

"In what context, Love?"

"It's just...I get the distinct impression he grew up in an active war zone, pretty much exclusively after we found him. Which yes I know happens. Still," He rubs his forehead. "It's a little bit unnerving, Hera, when you find out your Padawan of less than a day - at least in this iteration anyway, apparently once made a deal with Vizago in order to help pull my other self's ass off an Imperial interrogation table back when he was only fifteen years old. Well, his fifteen anyway. Not ours, since he's already strategizing about how to not to let it happen again in this time-stream."

Hera blinks at that. "He made a deal with who?!"

"Vizago." Kanan quirks his lips a little - he can't help it, it's automatic even as he tilts his head and shakes it because his eyes because they're starting to blur a little. "He wanted me to pass on that you don't get to yell at him for it, by the way Hera, when you find out about it. As OtherYou apparently already thoroughly covered that reaction."

"Damn right I did." Hera mutters under her breath. "Or at least I better have. Vizago? Really?! What in kriff was he thinking?!"

"I suggest you try not to think about it, at least not too much for now. I'm the one who wanted him talking, Hera, I'll admit it. But I'm rapidly learning too much too fast down that particular road with Ezra leads only to madness. Kanan yawns deeply. "Okay Hera, unless you need anything else I am officially going to go now and crash."

"That's just fine, Love. Just remember before you do to transmit your current coordinates, okay."

"Sending them right now." He yawns yet again. "Hera - look don't worry if we don't actually reply to that thirty-minute notification, all right? As I said Ezra's literally doped to the gills right now - I have no idea when he'll next wake. And depending on where I am in my sleep cycle when you get here...? It was a rough day yesterday. We're not in any danger at the moment, I promise but we're both pretty drained and draggy at the moment."

"Understood. Do you want me to just not notify you two at all? Let you sleep as long as you possibly can?"

Kanan considers this option for a moment, then shrugs. "It's probably better to at least 'knock' before entering The Phantom, Hera. There's at least a chance Ezra will be awake when you guys get here and he's well... pretty volatile at the moment."

"I hadn't noticed." Hera snorts softly, her eyes crinkling up at the corners as she points to her nose to remind him again that his own is broken.

Kanan just chuckles, then sobers, "Hera, please warn Sabine and Zeb that they're going to need to go a little easy on Ezra for a while okay? He's not violent or anything like he was last night, but he's very very raw right now. And though it horrifies him, he's prone to sudden bouts of crying. As in he actually cried after he dropped the toothpaste this morning, at least according to him."

Hera winces at that confession. "Is that something we need to be seriously worried about Kanan?"

"Only if it continues after the bond finishes repairing itself, Hera. Like I said, it's been a rough couple of weeks. He's running one hell of sleep and mental resources debt right now. It'll help I think, now that we both know and he's not committing so many of his mental resources to constantly hiding and or lying about things."

"…We're going to have a 'discussion' about that with him, Kanan, you do know that right? I mean, he's been taking some very very big chances, and running some serious gambits trying to keep us out of the loop. And to be honest? I'm still not entirely sure I understand why he's even doing it. I mean beyond the obvious difficulty I do acknowledge comes with beginning this kind of conversation. I mean I'd have thought that he'd have gone one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction in terms of how he'd cope. I wouldn't have wanted to let you out of my sight for a moment once we reunited if I'd been forced to watch you die. I guess I'm just a little bit baffled by his head-space at the moment."

Kanan sighs again softly, "We already had the beginning of that particular 'talk' earlier this morning, Hera. After which Ezra was so wiped that I sent him back to his bunk with another dose of Amalyn to help with the blow-back of so much emotional stress overloading his circuits all at once."

"And were you able to figure out what the hell he's been thinking?" Hera tilts her head, studying him carefully.

"Basically? That if he's smart enough and tactical enough and sacrificial enough – at least as far as he understands the definition of the concepts, that he can just find a way to stop the majority of the trauma that he's still coping with from actually happening to the rest of us again. Which to be fair, Hera, is a completely natural survival instinct on his part."

Hera frown, "Kanan there's nothing 'natural' about any of this. I mean I know it's amazing what the mind can actually cope with when it has too, but assuming that this is all true – and I'm really leaning toward the fact that it is... how in Kark is he even still sane at the moment? Because I'd be practically out of my mind trying to cope with everything!"

Kanan laughs roughly, "Believe me Hera, Ezra isn't much better off himself. He tends to fluctuate between random bursts of anger or crying and longer periods of what I think is near emotional disassociation. But I'm also ninety-nine percent certain at this point that it also explains why he's been hitting the liquor so hard. He hasn't just been self-medicating the pain from the broken psi-link, Hera. He's using the alcohol to help him cope when it all just becomes too much for him emotionally."

The pilot scowls at that, "Well he's going to have to dry out Kanan, and soon. He's too damn young to be tempting fate quite this hard! He's going to end up genuinely addicted if he's not careful! If he really needs chemical help to deal with all of this even after we know and can help him process, then we'll damn well figure out how to get him a prescription of something instead."

"I know, Hera," Kanan reaches up to rub at his eyebrow. "It's another topic we've already touched on already too. I'm not going to say he's not going to need some chemical assistance for awhile yet…especially when it comes to pain control issues and trouble sleeping, but he's already been informed he's not allowed anything mood altering unless I personally dose it out for him from now on?"

"…and am I going to get added to the list of people he can take meds from, Love?" Hera asks after a moment, her eyebrow raised,

"Of course you are, especially when he's done with the Amalyn, which has more side effects to keep track of right now which is why I've been handling it, I'm just…." Kanan rubs at his temple, "I'm just trying to train Ezra deliberately back into actually coming to me when he needs help with things. I mean I assume that he did so pretty regularly when he lived with our other selves on the Ghost, but it's been a long few months for him and…"

"And there's been some backsliding."

Kanan nods, shrugging his shoulders. "I suppose it's not really surprising. It's an inherent survival mechanism that's kept him alive and semi-functional while he was trying to hold it together when he was on his own. Now that reinforcements have arrived though it may take us some time to pry his hands off the wheel at the times it really shouldn't be there again."

Hera snorts softly at that observation.

Kanan raises an eyebrow at her. "What is it?"

"Nothing, Kanan - it's just that what you're essentially saying is that he's going to need to learn – or to relearn in this case - how to function as part of an actual team again. Which is probably what our other selves were trying to teach him too the last time around if this is right about the time that we first encountered him. History may not be exactly the same, My Love but it doesn't mean that certain themes aren't still repeating anyway."

Hmm. Kanan hadn't really considered the situation from that particular perspective. "Huh. Well, you're probably right about that, Hera. It certainly makes for one kark of an interesting philosophical discussion. But not one that I think I'm up to at the moment. As I said Ezra's not the only one who's brain fried right now. My own bedroll is definitely calling.

"Then go, Love. Rest up as much as you can. Mother bear Ezra until we get there. It'll make you both feel better. I'll get us back in the air just as soon as I can track down Sabine and Zeb who are currently getting some supplies in the market. We'll see you both again just as soon as we possibly can."

"Thanks, Hera. Signing out."

"Be well until we see you again, Love."

"You too, Hera." Kanan smiles and then he cuts the connection, yawning deeply for a final time, as he stretches out his arms directly above his head, hearing his shoulder blades pop in reward for the action.

Then he rises from the pilot's chair and goes to assemble what amounts to his own makeshift bedroll on the floor beside Ezra's. The teenager's rolled onto his back sometime in the last few minutes and looks none too comfortable for the change. His forehead is knotted, his lips pursed in pain, his hands are randomly clenching and un-clenching in his sleep.

Kanan takes a moment to lay a hand on the dark head, sending a wash of calm and ease down their link, which seems to help considerably, and then he nudges Ezra gently into rolling over onto his stomach for the time being, sinking down after covering the kid up to simply watch him sleep for a couple of moments while he lies there on his side.

And yes, Kanan knows that Ezra is anything but an actual infant, but he can't help wonder for a moment even so if this is what regular parents feel like those first few nights home from the hospital when they creep into the nursery to watch their newborns sleep.

It's unspeakably easing when everything's done to just sink down and slowly close his own eyes. Lulled by the rare moment of real peace for the first time in weeks, Kanan doesn't consciously register the moment that he falls into sleep.