HUUUUUUUUUUGE props to Lewa Neor who literally predicted parts of this chapter happening and wrote me an adorable fanfiction OF MY FANFICTION. *sparkles* THANK YOU SWEEEETIE
Director Krennic – Very good question. Sorry if I hadn't made it clearer. Thrawn doesn't go rescue Eli because he was warned that attempts to rescue him would result in Eli getting tortured (at the end of chapter 8). So Thrawn knows where Eli is in space, but he believes the ship is part of his fleet, and will attempt to return (to avoid getting caught, because then a missing ship would be reported and the identity of the ship known). So Thrawn is trying to play it smart by figuring out the names of all the ships which were on missions to the planet delivering supplies or whatnot, comparing schematics with Eli's description of the room he's in, and then probably comparing those to other signs, like which ships need what kind of supplies (a ship that had to jump to hyperspace probably needs more fuel than would be needed for planets just going to the planet surface). Plus if Thrawn sends the Chimaera after this ship, there's nothing saying Eli's kidnappers wouldn't kill him if they felt they were in a corner. So Thrawn is trying to out maneuver them. Hope that answers your question, and again sorry that it wasn't clearer in the writing! I may go back and edit it.
Lewa Neor – THANK YOU SO MUCH – Thrawn is surprisingly fun but EXTREMELY challenging to write! Like, I couldn't do the entire "internal monologue" thing that he does at all without feeling really self-conscious. So thank you! 😊 And yes, there will be Eli. And Thrawn. And hopefully they'll get to reunite. Soonish.
Eirian Erisdar – OMG I want to know what a trope-cocktail would taste like? XDDDD And thank you so much deary! 😊 And yeah, this villain has been amazingly good fun to write! The kind of cocky, calculating kind of guy I like to write! The only draw back to writing Thrawn is that you just don't get the same kind of fun with him because of his subdued personality. And dude, you KNOW I HAD to include Kallus in here, right?
doodly-squat – OMG DOODLES! 😊 😊 😊 Thank you so much! Honestly there are some times where I'm just thinking to myself to throw in the towel, and then I get reviews like yours and I just keep on writing! So thank you! As for your questions – OMG so much uncertainty! You'll see 😉
Ignite the Stars – Thank you sweetie! But you know Eli can't get rescued tooooo soon, it is a moomkin fic after all 😊
JH24 – SO GLAD YOU HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS! 😊 I feel like that's the sign of a good writer, is if the reader is asking questions.
It wasn't until he was debriefing with Hera that Ezra realized there was something off about Thrawn. Something more 'off' than the fact that the alien who wanted to defect to the Rebellion had forced one of the rebels to kill himself.
But unfortunately, Hera still looked shocked at how their supposed ally had acted.
"There was something else, too," Ezra said quickly. "Thrawn was alone."
"Alone?"
"Yeah, Eli wasn't with him."
Only he and Hera had seen the two officers working together on Ryloth, but the entire Ghost crew had heard Eli say that he and Thrawn were practically inseparable. Was that enough to account for the complete shift in character?
When Ezra had first seen Thrawn, he had been cold and calculating, yes – but also fairly compassionate. At least to the suffering of the innocent. He'd called out a fellow Imperial officer on stealing from the starving. But this time, on Lothal, the compassion was gone. He'd moved into unforgivable territory. Murder.
It just didn't feel right.
"Something's wrong," Hera said. "We handed Eli over to the Empire."
"Did we?" Ezra asked. "What if that shuttle wasn't the Empire? Maybe Thrawn thinks we double crossed him?"
"Calm down," Kanan interjected. "Just because Eli wasn't there in the factory doesn't mean something bad happened to him."
"Well then where was he?" Ezra asked.
"I don't know," Kanan said, straining for an explanation. "He could have been sick."
Ezra shot his master an annoyed look, which of course Kanan couldn't see. Granted, the chuckle from Zeb on the other side of the holocall gave it away.
"Yeah, I tend to murder people when my friends are sick, too," Ezra muttered under his breath. "There's something more behind this, I know it. You don't go from defending starving refugees to murder like that. Maybe the Empire figured out they were going to defect. And they're using Eli as collateral? Hera?"
Ezra knew appealing to Hera was the smart move here.
Though defending Thrawn felt strange, even to him. Sumar had been a friend of his parents. He had been helping to stop the Empire by sabotaging what he made at the factory. But deep down, the shift of character continued to stick out.
And, as Hera had confessed to him, the Rebellion could certainly use a military genius like Thrawn on their side.
"We have the call sign of the vessel we gave Eli over to," Hera mused.
"Wait a minute, we weren't even sure if we were going to help them in the first place," Sabine pointed out. "We can't just go searching for a ship when we have plans for a new kind of TIE fighter being made right now on Lothal. This is something tangible."
"Speaking of these plans," Hera said. "How did you get out of the factory with them if Thrawn wasn't helping-"
"I guess we could thank Agent Kallus-"
-SWR-
"And when we find our spy, and we will find them, we shall turn them from an obstacle, into an asset. Wouldn't you agree, Agent Kallus?"
"Your strategy is without flaw, Grand Admiral," Agent Kallus murmured. "As always."
Thrawn let the threat hang in the air for a moment, before dismissing Governor Pryce. He smiled slightly in victory as Kallus's body tensed up even more. So he really had been helping the rebellion? An interesting development. One that seemed to surface at precisely the moment Thrawn needed a secret way to communicate with them.
Once they were alone, Thrawn began.
"I know you helped the rebels escape," he said, choosing his words carefully. "And-"
Thrawn growled. Kallus wouldn't even let him finish. The ISB agent wheeled around, charging, ready to fight. Thrawn waited, seeing what he would open up with, quickly analyzing the best method to pin Kallus long enough to talk.
Kallus threw a punch, which Thrawn dodged easily. He ducked down underneath Kallus's out-stretched arm, grabbing his wrist as he did so. He then stepped back into Kallus at a crouch. Simultaneously standing up and pulling on Kallus's arm, he managed to scoop up Kallus onto his back. And before the agent could resist, he'd flipped over the Chiss and landed with a thud on the ground.
Thrawn didn't let go of the arm, but rather used his hold to flip Kallus over onto his stomach. Before the agent could figure out what had happened, Thrawn twisted the arm behind Kallus's back and fell on top of him, pinning him to the floor. Just the tiniest amount of pressure on Kallus's elbow was enough to inflict debilitating pain. Kallus only tried to resist once and the lesson was swiftly learned.
"Listen to me," Thrawn said calmly. "I need you to contact the rebels."
"I'd just as soon let you execute me for-"
"You misunderstand me, Agent Kallus," Thrawn said. "Commander Vanto is being held as a hostage by members of my own fleet."
It was painful to admit openly that he'd been backed into a corner, but Thrawn braced himself and went on, "His life is contingent upon me acting upon their whims, and I will not stand for it. Your rebel friends were the last to see Commander Vanto before he was abducted. I wish to ask them for information on the ship they released him to. I will let you up now."
Thrawn was convinced that there would be no fight left in Kallus after explaining himself. Still, he raised an eyebrow in confusion when Kallus got to his feet and put some distance between them. Perhaps he was still in shock.
Agent Kallus searched Thrawn's face, as though trying to determine whether or not this was a trap. Thrawn calmly returned his arms behind his back. The men merely stared at each other.
"Will you contact them?" Thrawn repeated his request after he grew tired of waiting.
"And if I did?" Kallus asked, still skeptical. "What then?"
"We all have our assigned roles," Thrawn said. "Unless of course, you plan to defect."
Kallus continued to stare, disbelief on his face, "That's… it? You'd just let me go."
"In matters concerning loyalty to ones' friends," Thrawn said. "I would be prepared to sacrifice much."
-SWR-
Eli opened his eyes slowly, and grumbled to himself.
He hadn't been asleep that long. No matter how much he told himself that he urgently needed sleep, it was turning out to be impossible in his current situation.
First of all, he was freezing. The captain had told him he was no longer fit to wear the uniform of an Imperial officer and took it, leaving Eli in nothing more than his undershirt and drawers. He tucked his arms into his shirt, wrapping them around his chest, in an effort to stay warm, but it did little to help.
The sleep deprivation was nearly as bad as the thirst. Or the hunger. It had been days, probably, since Eli'd last see his captors. And as happy as he was to see them go, the more time dragged on, Eli wondered if they'd just left him to die.
At least he'd outsmarted them.
The captain had turned off the commlink the moment Eli shouted out that he knew the captain's name. The idea had just popped in his head as a desperate effort to stop them from hurting him. It worked.
The captain had wheeled on the two stormtroopers, demanding to know which one of them had been so careless as to mention his name in front of the prisoner. Eli had smiled to himself – he'd made the whole thing up. He'd never heard a name. But it was enough for them to cut the communications. Enough for them to stop hurting him. To spare Thrawn from hearing his cries.
It took a few long minutes for the captain to realize Eli had outdone them. Of course Eli had given that away. Even while whimpering off the last remnants of pain, he had had a stupid grin on his face. But by then it was too late for the captain – he'd snapped the rank plaque in half.
They'd dragged him out of his cell. To be brought before their holoprojector. To continue their call to Thrawn.
And then Eli'd paid for it.
The only way Eli was still alive was because his captors had been on the spot with the bacta. For a few terrifying seconds, Eli truly thought he was going to die. It wasn't just the beating, even though he'd had his fair share of that.
There was the gruesome moment – when one of the stormtroopers had grabbed a fist full of his hair, pulling his head back, exposing his neck, and the next, Eli was released. He slumped forward, holding himself up with trembling arms. And watched with horror as blood poured out onto the floor.
It hadn't hurt, and it took a moment to realize that the captain had sliced his neck open with a knife. The sight of bright red blood – his blood - sprayed all over the floor still made Eli a little queasy to think about. Eli had gripped helplessly at his neck, trying to apply pressure to the wound, to stop it.
The captain just loomed over him, patiently waiting. The seconds were painfully long, drawn out. Until Eli made up his mind that he really was about to die. And then the next moment, his captors came to his aid. Applied a bacta patch on the wound, holding him steady until the worst was over.
And the captain's explanation? "This is what he gets when he speaks out of turn."
Eli was still in shock when the captain dragged him back into his cell.
He had no idea when they'd healed the rest of his injuries, but he woke up without a mark to show for all they did to him. Unfortunately, it didn't mean he was feeling any better. The sleep deprivation was slowly eating at his perceptions of reality. His eyes were aching with fatigue. Not to mention the thirst.
As much as he wanted to call out and beg for water, in the back of Eli's head, he knew it would merely be a call for attention. Attention Eli certainly wanted to avoid.
So… he tried a Thrawn tactic. He planned.
When the nameless captain wheeled on his two storm troopers, thinking one of them had slipped up and said his name, Eli picked up some things from the conversation. He was almost entirely sure the captain wasn't a captain at all, but a storm trooper disguised as an officer.
They spoke far too comfortably to one another for there to be a proper officer-enlisted relationship. Unless the storm troopers were actually officers in disguise. Either way, these were all very close friends, and someone had to be out of uniform. Was that important? Hopefully.
Now how to communicate that in a simple sentence?
Eli was fairly confident that if he did enough screaming, the next time they brought him out to be tortured for the Grand Admiral, he could mask a message in Sy Bisti for Thrawn. If only he could think of the right information. He'd only be able to risk a few words.
No matter what he came up with, he had to think of a solution fast.
If the captain was already at the level of slitting his throat, Eli dreaded to think what he would do next.
HEY EVERYONE. SO UMM… if there's anything weird about htis chapter, it's because the time right now is 0226 and somehow I'm awake and writing/posting fanfiction. (gotta go to beeeeeeeeed)
Also you guys are so sweet here's a longer chapter!
Also if that throw Thrawn did was really confusing, I swear I can make a video of it and post a link to it in my next chapter. Because… that was really hard for me to write out and I'm not sure if it makes sense.
Also also also - if you want a horrible visual of the neck slice-y, youtube clint malarchuk. It's gruesome but he lives, so yay.