The escape on the bikes was almost anti-climactic after the rush to get the crates safely out of the warehouse. They were shot at, of course, but they didn't give any of the stormtroopers time to get bikes of their own and all the troopers could do was fire wildly as they zipped away.
Ezra felt near-drunk on adrenaline. They'd done it, they'd really done it. Two crates full of blasters acquired, the Imperials humiliated, and all almost without a scratch. Even when some of the excitement wore off and his cheek started to ache where he'd smacked it into the crate it couldn't dim his enthusiasm. Sure it would have been more impressive if he hadn't flubbed the landing, but he made it, he didn't screw up, and they were going to be rich.
Kanan was oddly quiet as they loaded the crates and bikes up into the hold of the ship, but Ezra figured it was just his way of coming down after the excitement. It wasn't until everything was stowed that Kanan spoke up.
"You knew you'd be able to make that jump?" Kanan asked, sounding hesitant.
"Well yeah, I mean most of the rooftops in the city are closer than that and I don't usually have so much cargo, but I've done it before," Ezra said proudly, reaching up to rub his cheek and then stopping when the touch made the ache flare. "I wasn't just trying to show off or be reckless if that's what you're thinking."
"That's what I was afraid of." Kanan said solemnly, which did nothing to help alleviate Ezra confusion at his reaction.
"What, why? We did it. We didn't get hurt. Why so glum?" Ezra asked, not understanding why Kanan looked like something had gone terribly wrong.
"You got hurt a little," Kanan pointed out. "Want an ice pack for it?"
"This? This is nothing. I've gotten worse falling out of bed. Uh, wouldn't turn down the ice pack though," Ezra admitted.
Kanan got up, vanishing back into the ship and then coming back to the hold with a frozen gel pack. Ezra took it gratefully, pressing it gingerly to his cheek. He hissed under his breath at the sudden cold, then relaxed when it started to numb the ache.
"I'm not worried about the bruise. I'm… ok. How do I put this? Do you ever get weird feelings about stuff? Like you know things other people don't? Maybe you're a little luckier at some things than others are, learning new things comes easy to you?" Kanan asked awkwardly, and Ezra blinked.
"Yeah, but I mean, that's normal, right? I'm not stupid," Ezra said defensively, and Kanan held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
"I wasn't trying to say you were stupid. I mean things like… knowing something bad's about to happen before it happens. Or knowing someone's bad news and not knowing why," Kanan tried to elaborate.
Ezra rubbed the back of his head awkwardly with his free hand. "Now that you mention it, I mean yeah. I have good intuition. You kind of have to if you want to survive. But I do get weird feelings sometimes. Like about you."
"You had a bad feeling about me?" Kanan sounded shocked, looking faintly guilty.
"No, not a bad feeling," Ezra hastened to explain. "Just a weird feeling, like I knew you from somewhere or something unusual was about to happen. I can't even describe it. Anticipation maybe?" Ezra crooked up the corner of his mouth in a half grin. "If I hadn't, I wouldn't have tried to pick your pocket. You didn't look like an easy mark, but if you were important..."
"And I knew you were reaching for my pocket before you ever touched me," Kanan pointed out.
"That was kinda odd. Wait, are you trying to say you had a weird feeling someone was going to pick your pocket?" Ezra asked, curious.
"Something like that. What do you know about the Force?" Kanan asked.
"I know it was something the Jedi could use to do amazing things." Ezra said.
"And what do you know about the Jedi?" Kanan pressed.
"The official information in the Imperial schools was just a footnote taking about dangerous cults. Charlatans who claimed their religion could work miracles. Growing up though, I heard… people said they were real but that they must have died in the war," Ezra said, not entirely sure where the conversation was going.
"Not all of them did. A few escaped, went into hiding. I don't know how many still live, if they were caught or died some other way." Kanan spoke in the flat tone Ezra recognized, the way someone sounded when they were trying hard not to remember something painful.
"You sound like you were there." Ezra tried his best to keep his words gentle, not wanting Kanan to clam up.
"I was. Come with me, I want to see something." Kanan abruptly started back into the ship and Ezra scrambled to follow.
Kanan opened up a door and motioned for Ezra to go inside. It was a fairly stark sleeping area, double bunk up against the wall and a little storage and nothing more. It didn't look at all out of the ordinary, but something put the hairs on the back of his neck up. Without thinking about it he went over to the bottom bed, sitting and reaching down to feel for a hidden catch. A compartment slid out easily and Ezra automatically grabbed at the metal cylinder. A faint echo of the same jolt he'd felt before tingled its way up his arm and he held the hilt up, fingers automatically trying to find a comfortable grip.
"Easy, don't turn it on. Not inside the ship. I'd rather not have to explain any weird scorch marks," Kanan spoke up. Ezra flushed a little, not even realizing his fingers had found what was probably the power switch.
"Sorry about that. What… is this a lightsaber? It felt like it was calling me, I know that sounds fake, but..." Ezra offered it to him and Kanan stepped forward to take it.
"It does sound fake, which is why you need to be very careful saying stuff like that around anyone but me. Understand? The Empire wants all the Jedi dead," Kanan spoke so seriously that Ezra shivered.
"But I'm not a Jedi," Ezra pointed out.
"You could be. And if I had to bet, that's close enough."
"What are we going to do?" Ezra finally prompted, as Kanan quietly put the lightsaber back away in its hidden compartment.
"That's what I've been trying to decide. What I'm willing to do, what you're wanting to do, there's not an easy answer," Kanan said quietly. "I'm not sure I want to teach someone, for one thing."
"Yeah." Ezra wasn't expecting a small pang at the words. He wasn't under any illusions this wasn't anything other than a temporary partnership, and if Kanan didn't screw him over it would be better than most of the times he'd tried working with others. There wasn't a whole lot to encourage loyalty in this kind of work.
"And who knows, maybe if there was a reason we were encouraged to meet. If. It was just to warn you to keep your head down and try to tell you how," Kanan warned.
"Maybe, but look. I know there's not any promises between us, ok? You could fly out of here tomorrow and that'd be it. Vizago would probably call me an idiot who can't learn not to fall for a flashy story and yeah, it would suck. I'm not some kid you can dazzle with fairytales, but… but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious," Ezra admitted. "And it's not like I don't know what the Empire does to people."
Kanan took a deep breath, looking like he finally had an answer. "Then I'll try and teach you the basics, you can decide for yourself what you end up doing with the knowledge. I do know there's a difference between living like you are now, and living when you know you're actively being hunted, and that's why I've been keeping my head down."
"I know, and I'll take your word for it." Ezra tried not to let it show how much he wanted to know. He wasn't planning to do anything foolish, but he'd grown up with hearing about the Jedi. He'd seen footage once, banned and officially considered holo trickery and propaganda, of a wartime news cast, of a figure in brown robes with a near blindingly bright laser sword taking on an entire battalion of what looked like some sort of droid. The Jedi had cut effortlessly through them, untouchable. He also knew if they were really that powerful, whatever the Empire had used to kill them all must have been much worse.
"It's not going to be easy, before… before people would spend their entire lives learning, and we still have work to do." Kanan glanced towards the hold.
"The weapons for Vizago. What are you going to do with all those credits anyway? Your part of them at least" Ezra pounced on the topic change, not wanting Kanan to potentially talk himself out of deciding to help.
"Food and fuel," Kanan said simply.
"That's it?" Ezra was a little incredulous.
"Annoying fact of life, the more stuff you have to earn credits, like a nice ship like this, the more credits it takes to keep them running." Kanan motioned at the ship around him. "A job like the one we just did gives me a nice cushion, but it's not going to last that long."
"As long as I didn't have an emergency, three thousand credits would last me a long time." Ezra wasn't even sure what he'd spend that many credits on. Maybe new clothing, his jumpsuit was getting worn out but as long as it was still covering him it wasn't on a high priority.
"I'll bet." Kanan was quiet a moment, then sighed. "It's late. Well, early. You want a lift back to wherever you're staying, or want to bunk here and get some sleep?"
Ezra glanced at the top bunk, making up his mind. "I'll stay here." He didn't think Kanan would just take off now that he had the guns, but the possibility and the exhaustion creeping up now that the heist was done and the tenseness of the conversation before was over decided him.
"Then you can take the top bunk." Kanan started unbuckling his armor. "Going to need another ice pack for your face?"
"Nah, it feels fine now. Thanks for before. " Ezra watched for just a moment and then bent down to get his own boots off before he climbed up to the top bunk, searching for and finding a blanket folded up and stored with the bunk. It wasn't exactly luxurious, but it was a great deal better than padding over crates and he unfastened his few hard armor pieces to tuck nearby as he settled in.
"Ready for the lights off?" Kanan asked.
"Go for it." Ezra closed his eyes, but even as tired as he was from staying up until dawn and narrowly escaping a firefight with the Imperials sleep didn't come easily. Kanan was a Jedi. He hadn't come right out and said it, but the implication was clear. It was hard to reconcile the image of the scruffy part time criminal with the near mythical figure in the holo, though he supposed if he was a Jedi on the run he wouldn't try to look like a Jedi either. Trying to put himself in that place didn't work any better, he was no hero. He liked disrupting things for the Empire when he could, making it a little easier for the citizens of Lothal, but he was under no illusions that anything he did actually made much of a difference.
Maybe though, maybe if he could do more. Could he save people? Or would he just end up like his parents, getting himself killed? Even though the questions had no good answer they stubbornly refused to leave his mind and Ezra spent a long time laying in the dark, listening to Kanan's steady breathing below. Those were all even assuming Kanan was telling the truth and didn't change his mind about teaching him. It was awfully convenient he'd shown up, but maybe that was how things like this worked. He wanted to believe, but it had been a very long time since hope had brought him anything but disappointment. Still though, that stubborn part of him refused to give up that maybe, just maybe, things might get better. Eventually exhaustion caught up with him and Ezra slept.
.
Author Note: The official canon statement from the Empire is that the Jedi never existed and it was a big galaxy so the likelihood of anyone actually meeting a Jedi was very low so there would be no reason to doubt that they were a myth. However, that didn't make sense to me as news holos are a thing and plenty of people would have seen Jedi fighting during the Clone Wars. So I'm changing a bit that most information on them is banned and the official statement is that the Jedi were a Republic hoax, rumors of their deeds were all wartime propaganda and trickery.