Okay. This time, I'm not gonna bother drowning you all in sorrys and apologies (rest assured though, I DO feel guilty and horrible for not updating), and all I'm gonna say is that life can sometimes get in you way. And government testing. And a whole bunch of other schoolwork... But anyways. I'm hoping my schedule will be back to normal though (I seem to be saying this a lot, but it never actually happens), but I wouldn't count on it. My drama group is performing our plays on May 8th, and in the days until then we're staying at school until 6 every day. So chapters are probably gonna be a little slow in coming again, but at least this time you got a warning.

Dat season 2 trailer dough!

Disclaimer: I don't think Disney freaked out as much as I did when the trailer came out, cuz, you know,they made it...

Ezra hadn't wanted Kanan to leave. Not in the slightest. He had just wanted to stay there, curled up in his Master's warm hold, oblivious to the rest of the world. Kanan had just brought him back from the dead- the dead -and all Ezra wanted to do was to sit there in numb disbelief until he could completely comprehend exactly what that meant. He wanted to stay in this warm and fuzzy, comforting hold, to ignore the pain from his body and just lie there.

But, of course, Ezra rarely got what he wanted.

Not because of some cruel twist of fate or anything dramatic like that, mostly just because he'd lived on his own for so long that Ezra had it ingrained in him like a second personality to get the surrounding chaos handled before indulging himself in any sort of self-comfort.

That and the pain from his limbs and torso hadn't gone away. Ezra might've just been resurrected, but that didn't mean his injuries were miraculously healed.

His left arm throbbed. His head pounded. His throat was aching, inside and out. Bruises were blossoming on his back like parasitic flowers, and Ezra could feel at least half of his bones screaming out in protest, even without movement. All in all, he was worse for wear than he'd ever been in a long time.

But he hadn't stayed alive by learning to baby himself. First came the surroundings. You deal with everything around you, and then you're allowed to worry about injuries. It's no good tending a wound in the middle of a fire-fight.

And if Ezra stopped to indulge his childish wants for comfort, they would all be hurting like him, and most probably all die if they didn't get a move on things.

Both Kanan and Ezra were still shaking when Ezra managed to choke out:

"Ahsoka. You have t- help her." Damn it. Apparently whenever he needed to say something important, some kindly Dark-side user had already horribly mutilated it. He could barely even cough out the words. Like Master like Apprentice, he guessed.

Evidently, Kanan had not been prepared to respond to words that quickly- well, he probably figured Ezra would say something along the lines of: 'Oh my gosh I'm alive now, thanks'. And that would have been the case- if Ezra had been stupid, or if they weren't currently in a fight for their lives.

Ha- that phrase seemed sort of obsolete, now.

But no matter that Kanan had brought him back from the dead; for now, Ezra could only be grateful that he had been given a second chance, and pray he wouldn't be so careless as to die again. And that neither Kanan or Ahsoka would, either. Miracles could only go so far.

"I can't- Ezra you-" Even with a fully functional throat, Kanan seemed to be having as much trouble with words as Ezra was. Knowing that he'd probably have to kick Kanan into gear, Ezra shifted- painfully - in an attempt to get out of the warm hold he so desperately wanted to stay in.

"Hold off- on the sappy stuff till we're home." Ezra hated how pathetic his voice sounded right now. Scratchy and coughing, it was undoubtedly making it harder for Kanan to relinquish his hold.

"You-"

"Go! Ahsoka- needs help, and I can't deliver! Go!"

Kanan breathed in deeply, pressing his right hand against Ezra's cheek as he increased the pressure of his grasp just slightly for a second, mimicking a hug. Ezra did not struggle against it.

"Don't do anything stupid." Kanan said as he pulled away, gently leaning Ezra up into a sitting position against the wall. Ezra flashed him a pained, cocky grin.

"What, like bring back the dead?" Kanan just pressed his forehead against Ezra's, forcing a smile onto his face.

"Don't let me lose you again." That, Ezra had no response to. He simply nodded, swallowing thickly as both of their heads moved. And then Kanan was gone, running towards Vader and Ahsoka, who did indeed need help. Considering her opponent, Ezra wasn't surprised.

Ezra saw Kanan collect his lightsaber hybrid from the floor where Vader had knocked it out of his hand, and Ezra grimaced as his neck throbbed in painful recollection. He was panting. Whether that was from pain or just his body's response to being alive again he didn't know. And Ezra had a feeling he would never know how Kanan had managed to bring him back, not truly anyways. He was more than grateful and shocked, to say the least, that it had happened at all, and he had a feeling Kanan didn't much know exactly how it had happened either.

Ezra screwed his eyes shut as a bout of pain swept through his arm and spine; he grasped at the middle of his dislocated upper left arm with his right almost subconsciously in a futile attempt to block out some of the pain that was drowning out his other senses. When they got back, Hera was going to throw an absolute fit over all of them. If they got back.

Wrenching his eyes back open, Ezra saw Kanan was taking on Vader alone; Ahsoka was a little ways away, cradling her left leg as though it were injured. He wasn't afraid for his Master- well, other than for his life, anyways. Ezra wasn't afraid of Kanan losing control again, though. The miracle he had somehow performed had ground him back into reality, and with Ezra safely out of danger- immediate danger -Ezra knew Kanan would stay in the Light. That didn't mean Ezra wouldn't be giving a lecture to his Master later on, though, even if it was supposed to be the other way around. Again, though, if they got out alive.

His bones screamed out at him again, and it was all Ezra could do to keep himself from curling into a ball. Definitely fractured my arm, a few ribs, and probably some of my spinal column. He smiled grimly. At least I'm not paralyzed. Though with the amount of trouble he was having just enduring being still pretty much told him he wouldn't be moving anywhere quickly without serious repercussions. If we have to make a quick exit I'm screwed. Ha- we're all screwed as it is, if we continue on like this.

A tremor wracked Ezra's body and limbs as a cough died before it could surface from his throat. Ezra realized he couldn't take a proper deep breath. At first he just assumed it was because of the current condition of his throat, but underneath the shaking rasp, Ezra could feel a kind of wet gurgle bubbling up.

Damn, that's a punctured lung, isn't it. Ezra leaned his head back against the wall, aware that he most likely had a concussion as well. Well, with the amount of force he'd been flung with, he would be shocked if he didn't.

Come on, can't a guy get a break around here? Ezra looked up again, seeing Kanan performing an extremely complex fighting maneuver, only to be yet again blocked by his Sith opponent.

Although I guess a break would mean our luck's being spent on something other than just surviving. He watched Kanan battle through pain-glazed eyes, silently hoping and praying that they'd all make it out alive.

Please.

Over the fifteen years that Vader had been weeding out the Jedi, there had hardly ever been an incident which had actually surprised him. He was smart- cunning, ruthless, and he knew how his enemies thought. Such a combination did not make for someone easily caught off guard; by much of anything.

So, no, he was not shocked that the rogue had reentered the fight, or that he had come in the nick of time to prevent Tano from being beheaded, or even that he wasn't showing any more signs of letting the Dark consume him. While not being the most expected results of the fight, they were still an acceptable and predictable outcome, and most definitely not outside the realm of possibility.

What was was that the Bridger child was alive.

Vader had felt the boy die himself. It had been just after Tano had jumped in and the rogue had gone running that his life-signature had faded from the universe, and Vader had felt a detached pleasure that the Jedi would experience a small amount of the extreme pain he had gone through when everyone close to him had been forcibly wrenched away.

But... the boy hadn't... stayed... dead...

He had only noticed it now, when the rogue had just barely spared Tano from a quick death. The Jedi had shown no signs of pain or distraught, and Vader had felt no seething anger or drowning despair emanating from him. In fact, there had been nothing stemming from him.

Not just that there were none of the major emotions- there had truly been nothing. That had been when Vader cast out his awareness, to see if the man had just simply been concealing his signature- and instead, felt the boy, living and breathing once again.

Vader glanced at where the rogue had come running from, and saw that yes, the boy was sitting propped up on the wall, his eyes glazed with pain and his right hand clutching at his bloodied left, but he was inexplicably alive.

Vader hadn't been surprised by many things in the time he had been Vader. This astonished him.

Vader turned his attention back on the rogue and the blue stun blasts he was firing out of Bridger's lightsaber- he must have picked it up when he charged. He could see nothing extraordinary in him- there was no blaze in his eyes, there was no teeming with the Force, there was no excess of energy... in fact, more than anything, the rogue looked as through he was bone-dead tired.

So what force in the Galaxy could have possibly resurrected a child from the dead?!

Vader studied his new opponent even as the man continued firing shot after shot out of the curious gadget his apprentice had created. Yes, he certainly looked exhausted- even as he ran, his shoulders were drooped ever so slightly, his eyes were lowered in both weariness and wariness, and his own lightsaber was perilously close to slipping out of his right hand's grip. It was a wonder how he wasn't curled up next to his Padawan on the wall.

The rogue ignited both lightsabers, and dual blue light sources illuminated his face eerily, making it appear as though there were bags under his eyes and just enhancing the image of his complete and absolute exhaustion.

Vader held his blade up, single-handedly blocking both of the lightsaber strokes. Even though he was hardly remaining up-right, the Jedi still had enough power behind his strokes to moderately press back on the blades, though the strange thing was he was pressing with slightly more pressure than he had been before, even in the beginning of the fight.

Knowing that Tano would be a few more moments in recovering from her leg wound, Vader focused his attention on the man before him. There was an odd serenity about him. Not happy, not the calm peace that many asociated with family and love, instead the kind of peace that showed absolutely no emotion.

"Constantly an enigma, rogue. One moment abandoning the teachings of the Jedi, the next following them out to the extreme."

The man said nothing. Instead, he disengaged the lightsaber block by jumping away a pace, then sprang straight back towards him. Vader easily blocked that stroke as well, though he was intrigued by the man's new fighting style. It was not wild and chaotic like before, that hadn't been any fighting style. Before then, when he had been thinking straight, his strength had been in defensive manuevers, following Form III, and his offense had been... lacking.

Now, however, he seemed well-blended- though Vader could not fathom why. Nothing had changed- except that a dead child had been brought back into the folds of the living. Perhaps that had been what had made the difference, Vader would not know. Everyone he had loved was irresolutely dead. They could not come back.

Well, technically, neither had the Bridger child been able to come back-

Fire burned in Vader's remaining limbs as the full implication of the situation hit him- the boy had been brought back from death. The laws of nature- of the Force itself - had been gone against. Beyond just straying from the teachings of the Jedi or Sith, this act went straight past those, past the rules of the universe itself.

"How is the boy still alive? He was dead." The rogue again remained silent, instead choosing to start executing a complex offensive stroke Vader would have though above his level of capability.

The rogue leapt forward and slightly to Vader's right side. In response to Vader raising his lightsaber in a vertical defense position, he crossed his right blade over it, forming a 't'. Then, hardly even a moment later, he sprang just a step to the left, still keeping pressure on the crossed lightsabers, but swinging his free one- the left blade, his Padawan's -to make an attack on Vader's unguarded back, using the lightsaber crossing in his right as a device to ensure Vader couldn't block his attack.

It was a brilliant move, one that any lesser lightsaber combatant would have been unable to avoid injury with. Far beyond the level of talent Vader had observed from him beforehand.

As it was, the Sith changed the angle of pressure he applied on his blade, angling it downwards and over the rogue's blue one even as he was moving in to attack from behind. With the red saber tilting downwards, Vader was able to lace it through to the other side, wrapping under the rogue's second lightsaber as he was plunging it forward to attack. With his red blade hooked under it, Vader violently swung to the left with his blade, traveling down the underside of the blue lightsaber and forcing the rogue to change his angle of attack in order to avoid being skewered. The blue blade was now completely vertical, while the sword in his right hand was horizontal, and both were being crossed by Vader's single blade.

All of this happened in less than two seconds.

The rogue, instead of staying still and engaging in the battle-banter he had been partial to earlier on, continued on with his offense. The lightsaber in his left hand- the one with the blaster built into it -was vertical, and he used that fact to his advantage by squeezing the trigger and firing three balls of blue energy at Vader in close quarters, forcing the Sith to disengage his complex lightsaber lock in order to avoid and reflect the shots.

Vader realized the rogue's face was utterly blank. Not with concentration or even fatigue, just... empty. Devoid of emotion, even pain and lethargy, there was just nothing on his face. Which, coming from a man who had witnessed a child he loved back from the dead, was unusual. There should have been elation, wonder, confusion, anything, but there wasn't.

"How was the boy brought back?" Vader demanded once more, but again the rogue didn't respond, facially or verbally. He just began making more offense attacks, using both blades to their full advantage over Vader's one. The Sith didn't know what to make of it. From what little he had seen of the man and what the events surrounding the his past suggested, he was not one to simply zone-out, or even to be fighting while meditating. He should not have had this level of skill. He just shouldn't have it.

Yet another reason why Vader was intrigued all the more.

That, and the fact that this man- with no notable Force skills -had witnessed the flow of the universe change and the reversal the nature of life and death. If a much more powerful Sith Lord, with dominance over the Force, knew what had happened and how, what would stop him from commanding that power at will?

It was a ridiculous hope. One that Vader would have attributed beforehand to dreaming mongrels with no other goal in their life. But he had seen- and felt -the supposedly impossible. Who was to say it couldn't happen again?

Padmé could be brought back. She could have life in her veins once more. She would live. She would live.

That very notion was all the Sith could say was his fighting purpose. If she was brought back, everything would be as it should be; everything would be right in the galaxy. The consequences of the Jedi and their betrayal would be nullified, obsolete...

Just the thought that there was even a minuscule chance Padmé could be saved made Vader all that more determined to wrench the answers he sought from the Jedi before him.

Even if he had to wrench those answers from him on an interrogation bed.