A/N: Yay! Here's a new chapter! I hope you love it as much as I do...Oh, and this chapter picks up the same night as Chapter 24 leaves off. Several people have remarked that Ezra is a little different here than in the show. I really tried to get inside of him and find that good little kid that he was before he had to "put on" the facade of "mouthy street kid." I figure that good side was within him all along, it just took Kanan, Hera and the rest of the crew to "wake it up" or bring it to the surface. :)

25.

It was night, and the Grand Inquisitor was meditating inside the quarters he currently occupied on Lothal. He had been here for the last few days to oversee reports of rebel activity in the sector; it was just supposed to be a quick fact-finding mission until he'd felt the presence of the Force-sensitive boy. For some reason the boy had been watching the Empire's complex and he'd sensed the child immediately upon arriving.

The boy had a strong presence in the light side. He had shone as brightly as a star until he'd sensed the Inquisitor's push inside his mind. Then he had hid, just like most of the Jedi cowards had done. In fact, with the skill it took, the Inquisitor was almost certain that this boy had to have a Jedi mentor somewhere. They'd been catching them since the Purge, hiding like Loth-rats all over the galaxy.

He'd quickly commed Lord Vader that he would need a few more days on this planet, assuring him that there was something worth investigating here. Then he'd set up his network of troopers and spies. He did think the boy had to be homeless, an orphan with no records in the Empire's network, but he was willing to admit that it was just a feeling; he had no explicit data to go on, yet.

About an hour ago, he'd begun to feel a disturbance in the Force. The balance between light and dark seemed uneven, listing toward the light. Something had happened…

Ezra woke up feeling warm. That was unusual...nights on Lothal were cool, even in the warm season. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the communications tower around him, but realized that wasn't where he was at all.

A bunk on the Ghost.

Memories came back in quick flashes.

The Jedi box-thing glowing blue.

Kanan and the others finding out about his abilities.

His fear.

His heart tried to beat double time, but he took a breath and calmed himself. After the bad moments last night, the moments where he'd been sure that they were about to call the Empire and turn him in, something amazing had happened…

Kanan and Hera had asked him if he wanted to live on the Ghost. He had narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out why they would offer a place to him. No one did anything like that without expecting something in return, or did they?

He went with his first thought. They cared about him, but this was most likely a job offer. He didn't want to assume anything wrongly, so he nodded eagerly. "I promise I'll work really hard; you won't be disappointed with me, and I don't take up much space. I can just sleep somewhere on the floor out here... I won't eat a lot and I'm not lazy...I'll do whatever you need me to."

"Oh no, love." Hera had looked over to Kanan; her large green eyes shone with emotion that Ezra hadn't understood.

Kanan's face looked equally as pained. He thought a moment, then went on to explain. "Ezra, if you join the crew, you'll have your own bunk. We don't expect you to be a servant. You're a part of the crew. One of us." Kanan searched his eyes. "Do you understand? I mean, you have to do your fair share…We all follow Hera's lead because this is her ship, but we're not. . . ."

Ezra knew his face had shown his incomprehension, because Kanan had trailed off, then put a hand on his shoulder. "Kid, I think I can speak for everyone on board when I say, we want you to become part of more than just the crew. We want you as a part of our family."

"Family?" Ezra murmured.

"Yeah. Family." Kanan replied.

"You're a good kid." Hera said, reaching out to ruffle his hair.

"And you hate the Empire just as much as we do." Sabine offered.

"You're somethin' pretty special if you can get along with me, kit." Zeb offered with a hearty clap on the shoulder. "So I say we keep you."

Chopper, who had rolled in the room during the conversation, gave a whistle of agreement.

Then, Ezra had looked to Kanan, who had just simply nodded.

"O..okay." Ezra said, a little dazed and still disbelieving.

And just like that, he now had a family. It was both amazing and terrifying at the same time. He genuinely liked each of the Ghost's crew and didn't want to do anything that might make them change their mind. He thought of each of them in turn. In addition to being beautiful, Sabine was strong, outspoken and intelligent, just like Hera. Zeb was fun to hang around with. Ezra could tell he would be a great friend and listener.

And Kanan. The only other person he knew of that was like him. And he was a Jedi. Well, a student, he'd said, but still…a Jedi! Kanan had lost family just like Ezra, himself, had and he fought the Empire. Kanan knew what it was like to be afraid and alone. Kanan had pulled him close and told him that he had nothing to fear. He hadn't heard that from anyone in a long time and it seemed to do something to him…it twisted up his heart in a good way. These loyal, smart, and brave people trusted him to become part of their family. It still puzzled him.

After he'd agreed to join them, they'd sat up late, going over their plans to leave Lothal, but Ezra, exhausted, promptly fell asleep, his head on his arm. There'd been something about a rendezvous with a prospective "client" on a planet called Ylix, but after that he'd drifted off, feeling safe for one of the first times since he had been on his own. It had been a good feeling.

There was a hazy memory of Kanan picking him up, tucking him into a bunk and telling him to just call out if he needed anything. He'd promised they would come if needed. But Ezra slept deeply, more deeply than he had in a long time.

As he sat up in bed and looked around him in the early morning, he recognized that he was in Kanan's quarters. Hera must have finished with his clothes, because they lay at the very end of the bed, laundered and folded. He hadn't seen his jacket that clean in a long time. When he pulled it up to his nose, he could smell a faint scent that reminded him of fresh laundry from home, when he was little. He hugged it to his chest for a moment, closing his eyes tightly as memories of his home, parents and better days swept over him.

Once dressed, Ezra made his way out into the quiet of the ship. The lights were darkened and the silence seemed to say that he was the first to wake up. He tiptoed up toward the cockpit of the Ghost, passing by an open doorway. He peeked in, to see if anyone was awake and saw Hera and Kanan in the bunk.

They were in sleep clothes, the two of them curled up under the blankets on the Twi'lek's bunk. Kanan had an arm draped over Hera's shoulder, pulling her close to him. His face was calm and his breaths were deep and even. In sleep, one of Hera's lekku was loosely curled around Kanan's wrist and he held her hand in his own.

Oh! They're a couple, he realized with a blush. It hadn't occurred to him before, but it made sense. Seeing them together made his heart twist again, this time with a bittersweet pain. His own parents had cherished each other deeply much the same way; Ezra thought he would give up everything he had just to see them for one more day. Nothing would make up for missing his parents, but seeing Hera and Kanan so obviously in love eased the throb of grief in his heart for reasons he didn't fully understand.

He tiptoed past the room, making his way to the cockpit to find Chopper in standby mode. He tapped the droid lightly on his metal dome and then said "Shhh…." when Chopper began disturbing the quiet of the morning with loud beeping.

"Hey...can you give Kanan and Hera a message from me?"

Chopper replied that he could indeed give a message to Captain Hera. Ezra could tell by the droid's attitude that the moody astromech cared much more for Hera than Kanan. There was most certainly a backstory there, but Ezra was pressed for time.

"Tell them I'll be back soon. I need to go back to my . . .place. . .to get some stuff." He had been going to say home, but it didn't feel right to call the communications tower home anymore. That was weird, but in a good way.

Chopper whistled an affirmative. Without making anymore noise, Ezra made his way off the ship and had slipped through the mostly empty port into the early morning that was full of new possibilites.

"Kid must have been beat." Zeb said, as he forked another mouthful of space waffles into his mouth.

"You know teenagers. They love to sleep." Hera replied, leaning back against the counter and taking another sip of the strong, dark caf that she and Kanan favored. It was morning, and they were enjoying the time to relax without a mission yet hanging over their heads. Their meeting on Ylix was tentative, depending on what Hera would hear back from her potential client. She tried to schedule downtime as much as she could, which had given the crew time to bond into a tight knit family. After last night, they all were pretty eager to talk to Ezra again and get to know the newest member of their crew better.

The Mandolorian came out of her room, yawned and made her way into the kitchen for some caf. "Even Sabine's awake though..." Zeb pointed out in response to Hera's comment.

"Not yet, I'm not." Sabine yawned, poured a cup and brought it to the table. She set the cup down, sat down herself and then pillowed her head on her arm after taking a sip.

Kanan walked over to his room and palmed the door, intending to check on the kid. "Ezra...Might wanna wake up before Zeb finishes all the waffles..." He stopped speaking when he noticed the bunk was made, and the kid was no where to be found.

He could hear Zeb in the background. "Hera, I'm glad you decided to have the kid on the crew. He's a good worker and there's just something about him that I lik-"

"Kid's gone." Kanan returned to the common area, brow furrowed.

"Gone?" Hera asked, looking up quickly.

"He said he was gonna stay," Zeb said, disappointment clear in his voice.

Hera called toward the cockpit. "Chop. Locate Ezra."

The droid rolled in and began beeping in reply. "Chopper says Ezra left the ship about 0500 hours. Kid said he was going to pick up his things at his place and that he'd be back."

Kanan checked his comm. "That was three hours ago."

Sabine, Zeb and Hera turned to look at him. "Maybe it just took the kid a while to pack." Zeb offered, not sounding convinced himself.

"Yeah. Maybe." Kanan muttered, more to himself than to them. Everything felt a little wrong, unsure. He felt himself reaching out for the Force, and its uneven flow did nothing to make him feel better.

"If he's not back by 0900 hours, we'll go looking." Hera assured him.

"Yeah. I'm sure it's fine." He nodded, and took another sip of caf, trying to seem calm. In reality he wanted to go out and search the city for Ezra. Had the kid changed his mind? Did he run away to hide from them, afraid that they weren't to be trusted? Hera read the worry in his face and as she moved past him, she squeezed his hand before going into the cockpit with Chopper.

She laid a hand on his metal dome. "Chop. Do me a favor and monitor the trooper frequencies. Just in case there's something we need to know about, okay?"

Chopper signaled an affirmative, and Hera made her way back to the common room. She wished she had given Ezra a comm last night, but it hadn't crossed her mind. When the kid came back to the ship she was making sure he got one so that they could keep track of him.

When Ezra came to, he realized he couldn't move. His head throbbed and he felt sluggish, as if he'd been stunned. He opened his eyes to a bright light, and laid there, blinking and letting his eyes adjust.

He remembered feeling elated as he headed through the still-dark town toward the communications tower. Hera and Kanan had seemed so happy when he said he would join the crew-no, not crew...but family. They had said he was family now. He felt the waves of excitement washing over him...mostly because he had a place. A place to really call home. Not to mention he'd never been off planet before, and the idea of space flight thrilled him.

And he had a million questions for Kanan. How did people become able to use the Force? He'd always heard people were born with the power, but he didn't know anything for sure. What had it been like to be a Jedi? Had Kanan lived on Coruscant? Did he have a lightsaber? He wondered how many fights Kanan had been in. The former Jedi seemed like he could take care of himself.

Ezra remembered asking his father about what was now known as the Jedi Purge. He'd seen something on the holonet about it on his birthday, and he hadn't understood who the Jedi were or why people hated them so much they all had to die. Ezra had been lying on his bed, the stars from his revolving bedside lamp casting golden shadows all around his room, and he remembered how worried his father had looked when he'd asked all of his questions. His father had reached down and taken Ezra into his arms as he sat on the bed.

"Ezra," he had said reluctantly, as if he wasn't sure what to say. "You've asked some good questions." His father had always talked to Ezra in a way that showed his thoughts and questions were important. After thinking for long moments, his father went on. "Do you remember my friend Jacobson, that owns the farm where we went to see the baby nerfs last spring?"

Ezra remembered smiling and nodding. The little nerfs had nuzzled him, licking his hand with their warm pink tongues while their breath tickled his skin. He'd petted them, thinking they were the cutest things in the whole world with their large dark eyes. Even better than tooka cats.

"And, you remember about the Loth-wolves, right? Well, Jacobson has to watch every spring because the Loth-wolves will come down from the hills and eat the new baby nerfs if he doesn't. See, Loth-wolves are predators. They take what they want, regardless of right or wrong. I know you remember Jacobson's dog." Ezra nodded. "Jacobson and his dog stay with the babies each year until the young nerfs get old enough to protect themselves. Do you understand so far?"

Ezra had nodded again, eyes wide at the idea of the wolves gobbling up the little nerfs.

"The Jedi were also protectors, Ezra. They protected the people by fighting off predators, just like Jacobson and his dog. Still with me?"

Ezra had nodded once more, seeing it clearly in his mind.

"If the Loth-wolves could get rid of Jacobson and his dog, do you think they would?"

Ezra nodded. "So they could kill and eat the little nerfs without no one stopping them?" Even today, years later, he remembered the cold shiver that had gone through him at the thought of the ravenous Loth-wolves.

His dad had nodded gravely. Ezra's eyes stood shiny with the threat of tears. "It's sort of like what happened to the Jedi. Through no fault of their own, evil swallowed them up, Ezra." As the boy remembered, he could see his father's sad, thoughtful expression in his mind. "But you have to remember this...all of the good they stood for still remains. Now we, the people, have to be our own protectors. It's a hard job, but some of us have to do it. We have to."

Ezra remembered thinking deeply, looking down at his father's arms around him. Suddenly something seemed very clear in his mind. "I think I want to be a protector. Like the Jedi were."

His father had pressed a kiss against the top of Ezra's thick, dark hair. "If that's what you want to be, then you will be, son."

Ezra wasn't sure why that particular memory had come back to him, except for the obvious. Kanan had been a Jedi-a protector of others like his father had described all those years ago. Back then, when Ezra said that he wanted to do that, it had been without thinking...just like some kids said they wanted to be a pilot for the Empire or a spacer on a freighter. He'd been a pretty naive kid and things had seemed so much simpler. Since then, experience had taught him that the world was a cruel, unfair place and no one protected anyone else. Everyone was too busy surviving to care.

Meeting the Ghost crew had shaken his belief and now, he didn't know what to think.

When he reached the tower, he climbed to the top of it. He tripped the door and then and began packing. What few spare clothes he had were folded into his backpack. He checked to make sure the metal parts still occupied the bag, then he added his other items.. He was just tucking his stuffed Tooka that he kept from childhood into his backpack when he heard the woosh of the door. He'd turned and seen a few troopers and a figure dressed in black… then there had been pain and darkness...

"I see you're awake." Ezra blinked, pulled back to the present, as his eyes began to discern the outline of a face. His blood froze when he saw it was the Pau'an.

"And I see you're ugly." Ezra shot back, feeling his stomach clench with fear. The gray-skinned Pau'an actually smiled at him, showing a mouthful of sharp teeth and made a motion over his shoulder.

The hovering interrogation droid moved closer as the Pau'an beckoned it. "I am known as the Grand Inquisitor. Let us not play games, boy. I know you are the Force-sensitive I've been looking for. How you survived this long without discovery is fascinating. It suggests that you may have certain skills or abilities that would be...useful to the Empire."

"Yeah, being useful is just not my thing. You can tell the Empire to shove it."

"Oh, good. You want to do this the hard way." There was a smile on that dead-looking face that chilled Ezra to the bone. At a motion of the Inquisitor's fingers, the interrogation droid used a spray hypo on him. A burning sear of pain made its way from the injection point, up his arm and to the rest of his body. Ezra moaned, squeezing his eyes shut and struggling against the bindings.

"You will be trained to serve our Emperor. I can sense you are strong in the Force. You will be even stronger once turned to the dark side. Who taught you to use Force-stealth?"

The white-hot burn of pain was bad enough, but the Pau'an raised his hand and hovered over Ezra's face. This time, the pain that shot through him was an agony that seemed to build and build to a crescendo that made him feel as if his skin were being peeled from his flesh. Ezra could feel the breath of the Pau'an on his face and see the yellow eyes full of lust. The thing was enjoying his pain—feeding off of it. It made him feel nauseated.

"I...don't...know what...you're talking about." He growled through clenched teeth as he felt the Empire's agent pushing his way into his mind. The utter wrongness of feeling the creature in his thoughts made him sick. Through no fault of their own, the Jedi were swallowed up by evil...his father's words echoed in his mind.

"Oh, I think you know much more than you're telling, Ezra Bridger," the Pau'an purred, his eyes drinking in all of the boy's struggles and suffering. "I can feel it in your mind. Perhaps I, myself, will see to your training...personally."

"I just...don...don't th..think we're gonna get along." Ezra lifted his chin, met the Pau'an's dead yellow-black eyes. He could feel his whole body shuddering under the pain. "We...we're t-t-too diff...different."

"Oh, well then. Maybe you'd like my student to train you. The Seventh Sister would enjoy that. She loves working with the young Force-sensitives that we've collected for the Emperor. You could say she has a certain gift..."

Ezra let out a groan as the Pau'an's continued to leer. "Is she as kriffin' ugly as you?" His head rolled back against the interrogation board holding him upright as more waves of pain cycled through his nerves. The interrogation droid had hit him with another injection at a wave of the Pau'an's hand.

The Inquisitor smiled, showing his pointed teeth. "You are remarkably defiant." He continued to push, while Ezra fought to keep him out of his mind. "You are hiding something...something important. Who is the Jedi, boy?" the Grand Inquisitor narrowed his eyes and Ezra whimpered with the pain of the mental onslaught.

Ezra squeezed his eyes shut and pushed back intuitively, shoving the Inquisitor out of his thoughts, not even really knowing how he was doing it. He did know, however, that he wouldn't be able to keep it up for long.

The Grand Inquisitor's mouth turned down in a sneer as the boy actually fought him off. He backhanded Ezra across the face, using the Force to cause his blow to land more heavily. Ezra could feel his cheek and eye swelling, and warm blood dripped down his face. The Inquisitor was breathing heavily from their mental battle.

"You will find cooperation much more agreeable," he snarled, before landing a few Force-assisted punches on Ezra's side. At the agony of it, Ezra realized they must have broken some ribs. "I will let your pain argue with you, boy." Abruptly, the Grand Inquisitor turned and left. As soon as he was gone, Ezra let out the groans that he had been trying to hold in as tears streaked through the blood on his face. He was going to die, he thought, as the scene before his eyes began to gray out from the pain. In mere moments, he sagged in the restraints as he lost his hold on consciousness and became blissfully unaware for a long time.