(A/N)- Hello hello lovelies, are we ready to resolve last week's cliffhanger yet? Lol.
Quick review reply to my guest reviewer from last chapter (I really wish FFNet had a way to let us review reply directly for anon reviews, darn) who said, "Ezra really should have killed Maul when he knocked him out. It's unlikely he'll have that chance again. He's killed plenty of stormtroopers in combat, double-tapping a Sith Lord wouldn't be a bad thing. If Jedi weren't meant to kill people, they wouldn't carry weapons that can slice a person in half, right?:)"
I hate to be all, "That's not the Jedi way." buuuuuut... yeah that's not the Jedi way. Killing in combat is different from finishing off a downed, defeated opponent, and the Jedi have a pretty solid track record of granting mercy even at the very end. (Otherwise it would not have been such a horrible thing for Anakin to summarily execute Dooku after he was unarmed and helpless.) And at that point, at least for Ezra, it would be straying closer to revenge killing than eliminating a threat to his person. So I didn't really feel like it was in character for him to even attempt it. I hope that explanation follows. Thanks for your review, it's always fun to discuss this sort of thing!
I'll not keep you from it any longer, let's dive right in!
Warning for joint trauma.
Disclaimer: Good grief why am I so hungry so late at night? I don't own. Now excuse me I need a snack.
Turning To Attack
Ezra clenched his teeth so hard they rattled as he ran, his breaths frantic through his nose. His lungs were aching within minutes but he didn't stop, turning down corridor after corridor, dizzyingly.
A thousand regrets echoed through his head.
I should've ran sooner. I shouldn't have believed he'd let me go, he thought. He never should have allowed Maul to imprison him. He should have fought harder to escape.
Burning heat stung at his eyes.
I should have just gotten over myself on Corensia.
If he hadn't wussed out like a scared tooka none of it would have happened. He wouldn't have been kidnapped, he wouldn't have been terrorized and hurt, he wouldn't have used the Dark Side.
His chest hurt and tears blurred his vision.
I'm sorry Kanan, he thought again, on horrible repeat. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
He blinked to clear his eyes and then immediately had to about-face as he'd blundered down a dead end. He skidded, turning back around, his heart pounding so loudly he could hear it in his ears.
The rhythm pitched even shriller as he almost ran straight into Maul. His throat pinched. His heels skidded; he stumbled around the corner and scrambled to gain distance up the correct tunnel, his heart shooting right up into his mouth.
The brief glimpse he'd caught of Maul's expression was absolutely murderous, a spitting growl sounding behind Ezra, the creek of thunderous metal footsteps gaining on him.
Ezra panted, pumping his limbs, straining to run faster as he heard Maul catching up. His chest burned and a stitch dragged at his side, panic ringing in his head.
A loud snarl came and a heavy weight slammed against his back, toppling him face forward into the ground. Maul's arm tightened around his chest, restraining him.
Ezra twisted, kicking out, near-feral in his anger and fear.
"Let go!" he screamed, scratching out with his nails, wrestling against the hold. "Let—"
Maul shifted his grip, both hands latching around Ezra's upper right arm, pulling and pulling and pulling back, twisting until—
"Aaaah!" Ezra shrieked, feeling his shoulder give with a sharp wash of hideous pain.
Maul let go.
All the fight sagged out of Ezra instantly; he curled up on the ground, clutching his dislocated shoulder and pressing his mouth tight, whimpering as the pain reverberated through his arm and chest. He clenched his eyes against tears.
Apparently not satisfied, Maul reached down, seizing Ezra's collar and hauling the boy forcefully to his feet.
Ezra flinched but all that Maul did was get up in his face, spittingly angry, a furious storm in his yellow eyes.
"I am... this close," he snarled, his teeth baring through twisted lips, "to killing you for this defiance!"
A hot rush of anger hit him. "Then do it!" Ezra blurted.
Maul silently released his shirt.
The defiant challenge vanished from Ezra's face as horror washed over him, widening his eyes. He immediately remembered moments before, his certainty that Maul would kill him, and that he'd make the process slow.
His head prickled with horrible tingles.
He swallowed down dry bile.
"I... I didn't mean that," he stammered. His body shook, trembling nervously. "I..."
"Oh don't worry," Maul sneered, a laughing snort under his words. His hand closed around Ezra's injured arm, gripping harshly, tightening with a subtle threat. "There are plenty of ways to punish disobedience," he said ominously.
Ezra looked up at Maul with shaking, fearful breaths.
-SWR-
The X-wings dropped out of hyperspace, immediately moving to attack position.
"All right boys!" Zeb called, gripping the yoke of the craft carefully. He felt rather cramped in the cockpit actually, his knees digging into the dashboard, but he could deal with a little discomfort, for Hera's sake. "Stick close to me," he instructed. "We don't know what we're facing so let's just be..."
He trailed off, eyes widening slightly at the sight that met him.
"...cautious," he finished. "Oh boy."
The Star Destroyers around the planet had multiplied. There were a dozen of them or so at least. None Interdictors, it looked like, fortunately for them. Accompanying the Destroyers and the carriers however, were what looked like construction stations.
They looked uncomfortably like the ones that had been above Geonosis.
Zeb didn't have time to wonder about that, or entertain any dark speculations about why they might be there. "Bloody hell," came Rex's incredulous mutter over the comms. "What are they doing to the surface?"
The Lasat looked past the modules to the planet, flinching as he caught sight of the darkened clouds and scorched surface. The whole middle equator of Lothal looked like it was on fire, the blazes visible even from space.
Zeb clenched his teeth, his hands tightening. That was Ezra's home. And the Empire was destroying it like it destroyed everything. Like it had destroyed Lasan.
He took a quick peek at the Star Destroyer formation before prepping the throttle.
"All right, we're going in!" he declared. "Keep yer eyes out for the Chimaera!"
The X-wings gunned it, streaking for the formation, putting on the speed. They crossed the distance within moments, splitting apart to pick separate targets. Zeb cut loose with his cannons, strafing the side of the nearest construction module.
Several blips detached from the light carriers, moving to intercept. Green laser bolts streaked past the cockpit window.
One pinged off his windshield, making him give a flinch. He hutched over the controls but the barrage didn't continue, the TIE spewing it at him exploding shortly from a burst out of Rex's X-wing.
"Looks like they're not terribly worried or surprised we're here," the clone said.
"Karabast," Zeb muttered.
The TIEs kept coming, at least ten to each X-wing, forcing the small sortie to break apart and evade, skewing left and right, up and down, firing throttle to accelerate and twisting around to avoid the blasts of hot green lasers that dogged their wakes.
"Red Two, cut left, I'll get that bogey off your tail!"
"Watch out! Coming in point oh-seven!"
"Does anyone have eyes on the Chimaera?"
The frantic chatter was noise in his ears he barely noticed, focusing on keeping his fighter out of the reach of the TIEs swarming it.
Finally, he spotted it.
A quick glance at the underside as he blazed up above the fireball of a TIE he'd just shot confirmed which Star Destroyer was the Chimaera.
"There she is!" he shouted into the comms. "Center of the formation, back line!"
"We'll never break through to her!" Wedge said, demolishing his fifth TIE fighter in a flaming conflagration.
Logically, Zeb knew that. But he had never been very good at thinking things through with logic and reason, and looking at the angular lines of that ship—that place that had caused Ezra so much pain—he felt his emotions running hot. Felt primal, instinctual anger taking control.
He made his decision.
"Let's give it a go anyway!" he said. "Form up on me!" he ordered.
The X-wings lined up, diving down with him into the midst of a hellish barrage of laserfire, from the TIEs still being launched from hanger bays and from the gun turrets spewing anti-air defense.
Red Two went down, catching a broadside in his engines.
"Zeb!" cried Wedge in concern and alarm.
Zeb just growled pushing harder. A pulsing redhot drive pounded just behind his eyes. If Thrawn was on that ship, and they could shoot it down, blast it to pieces, burn the bastard up inside with it—
Another X-wing exploded beside him, forcing him out of his tunnel vision. Zeb looked up with dismay at the spinning pieces of durasteel.
With a sinking heart he prepped to change course.
"Break off!" he ordered. "All fighters break off! Full retreat!"
He hated having to order it. But there were too many TIEs, too much fire between them and Thrawn.
The miserable Imperial sleemo would get to live for another day.
The remnants of the sortie pulled up, breaking off the attack. TIEs dogged their tracks, straining to catch up with them as they soared away, out towards empty space.
Green bolts met nothing as all ships jumped back into hyperspace.
-SWR-
There was a hullabaloo when he landed, but not the one he was expecting.
As technicians and mechanics rushed to check the X-wings for damage and he pried himself from the cockpit, his knees knocking against the steering yoke painfully, a young voice called out across the field to him.
"Captain Orrelios!"
Karabast. Zeb looked up to see Mart rushing across the hanger, a frantic expression on his face. He pushed past the mechanics, standing under the X-wing.
"You gotta come quick!" he said.
Zeb glanced towards where Rex and Wedge were getting down from their own fighters, also spotting Mon Mothma's aide looking anxiously after them, clearly wanting to whisk them away into a debriefing as soon as possible.
"Can it wait?" he asked, his feet finding the ladder and then stepping heavily down. "Rebel Command'll want our intel right away."
"It's Kanan," Mart blurted.
Zeb stopped still on the last step.
"What about him?" he asked, ice entering his heart.
Mart came alongside the ladder, rushing through his explanation. "He felt something I think, I dunno, we were all in the galley getting some food together and then all of a sudden he stiffened and collapsed and—"
Zeb took off in a sprint, bounding across the hanger for the bay doors, and Mart was left scrambling in his dust to catch up.
The Lasat ignored the calls behind him as he ran outside, straight towards the Ghost, bounding up the ramp and thundering his way into the freighter's living room.
Kanan was sat up in the wooden chair, Hera and Sabine hovering anxiously over him. Hera clutched one of Kanan's hands in her own, her other arm around his shoulders, holding him steady. Gooti was dumping out first aid supplies from the medkit onto the dejarik table while clipped voices from the kitchen told him Kallus and Jonner were busy boiling water. Kanan himself looked pale, his face pinched tightly, staring down at the floor, mask off and forgotten on the floor next to his ankle.
"Kanan!" Zeb cried, moving into the room with a horrible, creeping dread building in him. "What is it? What's wrong?"
The Jedi raised his head, expression gaunt and fearful, fixing on Zeb from across the room.
"Something's happened to Ezra," he said, voice trembling.
-SWR-
Ezra could barely feel anything, his body almost numb as he lay on his side on the floor, save for the persistent throbbing ache in his dislocated shoulder. He stared blankly across the ground, dried tear tracks on his face.
His throat was dry and strained from screaming. Maul had put him through the void again. Kept him under so long Ezra had lost all sense of time, a painful reminder of exactly why the mere suggestion of the threat of being subjected to it had kept him in line so long.
And he'd thought he'd prefer going back through it if it meant Maul wouldn't get his way. Ha.
He'd been stupid. So, so stupid.
It had hurt so much. He'd been so desperate for it to end that he'd cried out through the Force, trying to reach Kanan, breaking the last rule Maul had set for him.
Maul had not liked that, pulling Ezra out from the void just briefly enough to slam a fist into his chin.
He'd stayed quiet after that, biting his lip and writhing through the pain until it was finally over.
Consciousness had eluded him at first. He'd floated in and out of awareness, vaguely cognizant of Maul grabbing him by his good arm and dragging him across the floor into his cell.
He lay where he'd been dropped a long, silent hour, leaking quietly from tired, red eyes.
The cold lingered inside him, a dull presence clinging to his chest. The stillness dragged out, no sound breaking through the dull roaring he could hear in his own ears. Even the static in his head was quieter, for once. Ezra remained there on the floor, listening to his own heartbeat, locked in place by his own depression and despair.
The dampening barrier buzzed off.
Ezra barely had the energy to flinch, his only reaction to pinch his eyes closed for a second.
Maul stalked up next to him, looming, a medkit clutched in hand.
"Sit up," he ordered gruffly.
With reluctance, Ezra obeyed, slowly uncurling, his stiff arms and legs and his shoulder protesting every movement. His face stayed screwed tightly until he was upright, and then he let out a little gasp of pain.
Maul knelt down, metal legs folding underneath him, and began to tend to him.
He pushed the torn edges of Ezra's shirt aside in order to smear bacta salve on the cauterized wounds, then rubbed more of the stuff on the cut on Ezra's forehead. Ezra said nothing, keeping still with his head bowed as Maul worked.
He supposed he should feel lucky Maul was treating him at all, but he couldn't manage to dreg up much gratitude. A hollow, empty feeling remained in his heart instead.
Sticky bandages were haphazardly applied to his wounds, the Zabrak clearly out of practice at handling them, and then he set aside the roll and shifted around, leaning up, taking hold of Ezra's right bicep.
"Hold still," he said.
Ezra read the underlying caution:
This will hurt.
His mouth tightened as he braced himself. He squeezed his eyes closed.
Maul slowly put pressure on his shoulder, pushing it firmly until it popped back into place.
"Nghh!" Ezra cried, stiffening, turning his head and biting down on a knuckle. The pain was sharp and horribly intense for a moment before settling back down into its familiar ache. Ezra opened his mouth, dropping his hand and panting, feeling it reverberate through him. He blinked back tears furiously.
Maul sat back, regarding him with a cold, unreadable look.
Ezra couldn't look up at him, dropping his eyes, left hand slowly drifting up to clutch his shoulder.
Please just go, he begged inside his head. You've punished me enough.
But Maul lingered, watching the pained expressions on Ezra's face, the way his chest heaved, the haggard fatigue on his features. The silence stretched out, uncomfortable.
Finally, Maul spoke up.
"I would not have had to hurt you if you hadn't tried to run," he said quietly.
"You didn't have to hurt me at all!" Ezra burst out, his head whipping up to face him. The heat under his eyes increased and he rubbed at them with his wrist, smearing his cheeks, blotting it away. "Why..." he strained, "why did you do all that to me?" His voice wavered like a frightened child's, choked and trembling.
Maul narrowed his eyes, glaring. "You disobeyed and defied me and refused to open yourself to me. I did what was necessary," he said simply.
"I thought I was going to die!" Ezra cried. He shook his head hopelessly. "I thought... I thought you were going to kill me," he confessed, all but squeaking on the last words.
A tattooed hand drifted up to touch his shoulder, gently. "I would never have actually killed you, Ezra," Maul said, tone warm and reassuring. Fingers brushed the curling edges of the bandage on his forehead, smoothing them down. "I have invested too much into you to cast you aside so easily," Maul went on.
Ezra choked. "That doesn't make any of this better!" he cried. He deliberately pulled his head back, away from the soft contact, fixing Maul with a heated, angry look. "I wish you would cast me aside!" he yelled. "At least then I'd be free of you!"
"To do what?" Maul challenged, seething. He drew himself up, hovering over Ezra like an angry stormcloud, shoving into the boy's personal space. "Cower in fear at the sight of every Stormtrooper you encounter? Flinch away like a frightened animal from the sight of needles?" He fisted a hand in front of Ezra's nose, gesturing sharply. "You need to take the pain and strike back with it. That is how you channel real power," he barked.
Ezra curled a fraction tighter at the scolding, cowering under the harsh words.
Softening abruptly, Maul shifted around in his crouch, placing both hands on Ezra's shoulders now.
"Everything I've done—everything I have been doing from the beginning—is all just trying to make you understand that, Ezra," he said, a sliver of desperate frustration in his words and tone.
"Is that why you choked me and drowned me and forced yourself in my head to look at my memories?" Ezra asked flatly, gaze firmly down.
"Oh don't be so dramatic," Maul said witheringly, rolling his eyes. He dropped his hands off Ezra. "That was not even a fraction of the things my master did when I was training with him."
"Yeah and he's an asshole too," Ezra bit. "My master this and my master that, I'm sick of it!" he said, his voice a sarcastic mimic before dropping back to normal. He glared up at Maul. "Just because he was awful to you doesn't mean you have to... be like him!"
That was the wrong thing to say, apparently, for Ezra found his neck suddenly gripped in a harsh vice, not tight enough to choke him, but threatening and uncomfortable. His eyes widened and he snapped his mouth closed quickly.
Maul's anger was a violent storm in the Force, searing behind his eyes, but he contained himself, choosing only to pull Ezra nose to nose with him.
"I am—" he snarled, "—nothing—" he emphasized forcefully, "—like him. Do you understand me? You do not ever compare us again."
He released Ezra, who reached up and rubbed at his neck quietly, but continued ranting, gesturing with sharp motions.
"Lord Sidious would have ground you into dust long before now. He would have killed you without a second thought, the moment you dared speak out against him."
Ezra had stopped paying attention at this point, trying to tune him out, but Maul didn't allow it, seizing his ear and a good handful of hair. Ezra flinched with a little gasp, staring up into Maul's severely serious expression.
"He would not have cared one. Bit. About you," the man hissed through his teeth, words venomous, eyes sizzling with anger.
He let go, and Ezra dropped his eyes again, hands curling around his arms self-protectively.
"The way you've been treating me I don't see a significant difference," he muttered at the floor. His breath shuddered as he exhaled, holding back a sob. "You said—" he started, and then his throat tightened on his words and he had to force them out. "You said you wanted to help me..." he strained out. Blurry lines appeared around the corners of his vision and he blinked hard to get rid of them. "But all you're doing is hurting me," he said, voice whimpering and cracking.
His next inhale was shaky, quivering, and his legs curled up towards his stomach. He felt a brush against his mind, Maul's presence, hovering there as though to reassure him, and his fingers clenched tighter around his arms, hating the mental touch and yet feeling almost soothed by it.
Maul's hand landed on his shoulder again, like burning acid, the same kind that filtered through his horribly gentle words. "You will understand, one day," he promised.
A sob escaped Ezra. "I don't want to," he said, his knees pressing into his chest, squashing against his arms. "I just want to go home." He was all but openly weeping now, the tears welling up in his eyes no matter how hard he tried to blink them away and he finally just had to press his hands over his face. "Please... just let me go home," he said between his fingers.
The hand on his shoulder pinched a fraction tighter, a stern warning, before it abruptly vanished. "Your home is with me now. The sooner you accept that, the less painful all of this will be," Maul told him, speaking quietly and without malice, for once. "Trust me, Ezra. You will come out of this stronger," he said.
Ezra felt him shift, gravel and ice scraping underfoot as he rose, heavy footfalls growing more and more distant, and he had to bite his lip to keep from asking Maul to stay, just so there would be someone, just so he wouldn't be alone.
The dampening barrier reactivated.
Ezra let himself break, gasping sobs leaving him, tears streaking down his face as he buried his eyes in his knees and cried.
-SWR-
Thrawn analyzed the data and reports from the most recent skirmish against the blockage, a welcome distraction from his endlessly circular pondering over the mystery that was Ezra Bridger, with pursed brow and pensive, intense eyes.
There was a vague, almost clear sense of relief in his head. Strategy, battle tactics—these he could understand. This was no great conundrum for his superior mind.
"The Preditioner sustained a bit of damage to her aftmost turbine," Pryce was telling him, "but nothing the repair crews can't have fixed within a rotation. And we destroyed two of their fighters."
His finger rubbed under his chin thoughtfully. "This is unusually... sloppy for the Alliance," he mused aloud.
"Perhaps they're getting desperate," Pryce suggested, leaning her hands on the holotable casually.
"What was this sortie even supposed to accomplish?" grumbled an officer on the other side.
"A survey, most likely, testing the extent of our forces and firepower," Thrawn determined. His eyes were caught on the simulation of the enemy's flightpaths through the blockade, extrapolated from sensor data and camera recordings from their TIE pilots. He watched the little green blips that represented the X-wings form up and make a run for the blockade, charging straight on, seemingly aiming for his command ship. "Though it seems they may have also had a secondary objective to attack the Chimaera," he noticed. "Curious though..." he said.
Pryce straightened, leaning in.
"What is?" she asked.
"The unwavering straightline attack pattern is reminiscent of Captain Syndulla's dive toward our Inderdictor at the Battle of Atollon, and earlier than that, a blockade run she performed on our forces at Ibaar," he explained, taking his hand away from his chin to gesture. He pointed towards the blip that represented the lead ship. "Yet, this is not Hera Syndulla's flying."
"I supposed that's anomalous?" Pryce guessed, keen interest showing on her face.
"Captain Syndulla has been heavily involved in nearly ninety percent of all Rebel activity in this area, especially fighter sorties and survey runs against the blockade." Thrawn clasped his hands behind him, looking thoughtful. "For her to sit out on this one is indeed... peculiar." His eyes traced the movements of the simulation again. "This was someone not accustomed to this type of mission, a relatively low-skilled pilot. He has none of Syndulla's finesse."
Though the grace and poise and expert handling of her craft had been somewhat shaky recently, if the reports from other nearby sectors were to be believed. He'd analyzed those clashes as well and yes, Hera Syndulla was present; he'd recognize her particular piloting style anywhere. So why had she suddenly, apparently, disappeared from the active stage?
He drifted off into thoughts and theories.
Perhaps her recent ill performance was indicative of some catastrophic personal event that was rattling her composure. But what could have shaken his opponent up that badly?
"The Lasat perhaps?" Pryce suggested, breaking into his thoughts.
Thrawn stirred. "Yes, I think you're right, Governor," he said. He mentally ran through the list of Hera's friends and allies, recalling to mind who had been actively recently. "And this attempted hack of our communications network last week, a decent though unsuccessful effort by a clearly practiced hand, the obvious work of Sabine Wren."
If Pryce was surprised by his abrupt tangent onto the other members of the Ghost crew, she didn't comment, her expression unchanging, though the other officer looked visibly confused now by the apparent change of subject.
"The C1 unit has of course stayed with his mistress," Thrawn mused, the gears in his head turning with some kind of prickling energy, as if he was on the verge of a revelation. "Though the Jedi hasn't been seen since the prison escape on Corensia..."
"Aren't he and the Twi'lek usually a matched set?" Pryce questioned snarkily, folding her arms.
Thrawn nodded. "Indeed. Which means—"
Suddenly he stopped, breath sucking through his teeth quietly. He leaned over the holotable controls, swiping away the battle simulation and feverishly shuffling through several of his collected reports.
"Grand Admiral?" Pryce called, a note of concern in her voice.
Thrawn couldn't hear her, his mind clicking pieces together. There was another party still unaccounted for.
The Jedi escaped Corensia uninjured, he recalled. So he is likely not the source of distress under Hera Syndulla's leave of absence. But if he also has not been active...
Of course.
It all fit together like a perfect puzzle inside his head.
Thrawn leaned back, an almost manic look in his eyes. He fixed Pryce with an intense gaze, a faintly triumphant smile tugging at his lips. She squinched her eyes, waiting to hear his deduction.
There was a vindictive undertone to his words as he spoke them.
"Something has happened to Ezra Bridger," he concluded.
(A/N)- Ominous foreshadowing is ominous! Anyway here are your chapter notes.
1. Exploring a little of Ezra's plot-important self-blame issues there. I hinted at them in "Splinters" a few times and earlier here in this fic too, and now they're just coming out in full. One of the things that I love about Ezra that's so heartbreaking is his sense of hyper-responsibility; he thinks every failure is a personal one and circulates, "It's all my fault." inside his head, definitely more intensely after Malachor and throughout Season Three, and he doesn't really get over it until after "Twin Suns". Which ah... doesn't exactly happen in this timeline. So he's going to have to work through that issue another way.
2. Some Zeb focus for y'all, seems he's eager to fight all the people who have ever hurt Ezra. Too bad they're all inaccessible for now. But I'm planning a nice little moment later.
3. I feel absolutely awful for writing Ezra's sections of this chapter. Gah. *scoops him up and wraps him in blankets* I am so sorry.
4. Maul be a bit touchy about comparisons to Sidious. Of course he thinks he's not that awful. In his mind the fact that he has some genuine affection and fondness for Ezra (twisted though it may be) and wouldn't kill him and won't abandon him means he's definitely a better master than Sidious.
Though let's be fair, the bar for being "better than Sidious" is extremely low.
5. Thrawn has made some revelations and they are going to complicate things. Oh no.
On the bright side, I can promise you guys that Ezra has hit his lowest point and it's going to be all uphill from here. You'll just have to stick with me and see.
See you next week readers!