(A/N)- At last! The pivotal Force Therapy chapter! I stayed up late to finish this one I was just so feverishly excited about it, lol.
In true Tari fashion, the original draft got expanded and more and more bits just kept on getting added on and added on. (Cripes I have a problem.) But I think it pretty much covers all the themes and messages and character development that I wanted it to so I'm actually really happy.
This is gonna be super cathartic you guys, trust me.
Slight warning for flashbacks to torture and... negative self-talk and Ezra's guilt complex I guess. The chapter is a bit heavy.
Disclaimer: Nada zip and zilch my friend.
Face Your Fears
"Master." Ezra bowed his head respectfully, dipping his chin. "Sorry it took me so long to come back."
Depa tilted her ear to the side, studying him. "Something has changed since the last time we spoke," she said in observation.
Concern tugged at the depths of her eyes.
"I sense... shame," she stated softly.
Ezra's brows flinched, his face squeezing with emotion. "I..." he stammered. He couldn't look up, couldn't bear to see Depa's eyes on him. He struggled against the hesitation lodged in his chest. Swallowing, he pushed ahead. "I used the Dark Side," he confessed quietly. "When I was fighting Maul."
His breath hitched.
"I was just so... afraid and... and hurt and... and I lashed out." His hands tightened on his thighs, curling quietly into fists. "I'm sorry," he said, mumbling, his head sinking even further.
If there was any judgement in Depa's expression, her voice didn't betray it, tranquil and neutral. "And why do you feel ashamed of that?" she asked him.
"Because I promised Kanan, promised myself, that I wouldn't." Ezra's sides shook, but he steadied his voice and continued. It felt... freeing... to say all this. "I told myself that... Maul wasn't going to change me, no matter what he did to me. And I failed."
"But did you pull yourself back?"
Ezra blinked, his head startling up. "What?"
Patiently, Depa started again. "When you realized you had tapped into the Dark Side, did you continue to use it, or did you stop?" she prompted.
"I... stopped," Ezra replied, confused.
"Why?"
"Because..." Now that he had to actually articulate it, the words were hard coming. Ezra thought a moment, going back over his thought process when he'd snapped out of the Dark Side. "Because that wasn't... wasn't what I wanted to do. No matter how much Maul was hurting me I didn't... want to be like him."
A smile softened the corners of Depa's mouth, proud and fond. "So you chose to reject the Darkness," she concluded.
Ezra's face fell a bit. "But I still lost myself to it," he argued.
Depa was shaking her head. "You are only lost if you choose to be, Ezra," she told him. "If you give up." Her hands slipped softly into the opposite sleeves of her robe as she folded her arms, assuming the pose and demeanor of a teacher. "The Light and Dark exist in all of us, young one. You must chose, every day, to resist the Dark, stand firm against it. You may stumble. You may fail. But you must keep striving forward," she said. She settled back, straightening a fraction. "That is what it means to be a Jedi."
The words resonated with something deep inside Ezra. The Force's warmth seemed to be closer around him, ringing with the truth of Depa's words.
...But doubt trickled back into his heart. His gaze drifted, shifting towards one of the far walls, the calligraphic ink art on the neutral panels.
"Something else troubles you?" Depa asked.
Ezra racked his brain for the words, trying to put his thoughts together coherently.
"The last... time we spoke..." Force, that felt eons ago. "I mentioned that... that something had happened to me."
She nodded sagely. "Your ordeal on the Chimaera."
"Yes," he confirmed, suppressing a shudder. He tried not to think about the cold tendrils of Maul inside his mind, holding him under his memories like he'd held him under the water, drowning him in them. He took a breath, continuing. "The reason that I used the Dark Side was because... because Maul forced himself in my head and... made me relive some of it."
His voice strained on the last few words, and Ezra's throat tightened, trying to keep control. The memories pressed on the sides of his head; his own voice screaming, the sludging trickle of the drugs in his system, the sharp crackling pop of the electricity all around him...
Depa sat quietly for a moment. Then, wordlessly, she rose from her seat and crossed the short distance over to him.
Kneeling down by his side, she opened her arms.
Her soft sleeves enveloped him, and Ezra melted into the embrace, his temple falling against her shoulder, feeling the pleasant scent of aging wood and smoky incense tickling his nose.
Her fingers carded softly through his hair. "I am truly sorry, Ezra," she told him.
He gave a shuddering breath. "'s'okay," he mumbled into her robes. A stray tear dripped from his eye, soaking into Depa's sleeve. "I'm... used to reliving stuff from it now." He reached up, wiping his face, pulling away and sitting up, his head shaking. "But I think there are some things I haven't... haven't dealt with about it yet and Maul was able to get inside that and... twist it until it gave him what he wanted," he explained.
Depa sat back, assuming her former meditative position. "So what do you want to do, Ezra?" she asked him, gently.
Ezra was quiet for a long moment, thinking.
The resolution crept up on him, moving like a quiet whisper up through his body, until it formed fully inside his head.
He knew what he needed to do.
He straightened, his shoulders squaring in determination.
"I won't let my trauma be used to make me fall," he told Depa. The fierce look in his eyes softened, faltering. His shoulders slouched again. "I... I need to... make peace with it somehow. I think," he said.
A soft rustle of fabric sounded as Depa got to her feet. Her arms folded inside her sleeves again. "Then, are you ready to face what happened to you?" she asked.
Ezra closed his eyes briefly, inhaled slowly through his nose. Gathering his courage.
He opened them, expression tranquil.
"Yes," he said.
Depa extended a hand to him. "Come," she urged.
Ezra reached up, taking her offered hand, letting her help him to his feet. They turned towards the door, their footsteps almost silent as they crossed the room. Depa led the way, Ezra trailing at her shoulder.
The light dimmed as they stepped through the doorway. The warm yellow glow faded into shadow, and Ezra blinked, squinting, peering through the dim haze. He couldn't see the hallway he remembered from before, but Depa seemed to know where she was headed, taking long, resolute steps into the darkness, so Ezra just followed, keeping close to her wake, rather determined not to lose her.
The shadows seemed to shift, vague shapes taking form around them. Dim light filtered in from somewhere up ahead. Ezra felt the air grow chillier, the warmth of the Jedi training dojo morphing into something else. Something clinical and stale.
He smelled the room emerging up ahead before anything else—smelled the metallic tang of electricity and a vague whiff of burning flesh.
Ezra's lungs tightened a little. His head started to pinch. A nervous question started to rise up his throat and then all of a sudden they had arrived. The walls around them were Imperial gray, a window set high up behind them, and he could see himself strapped to the interrogation table, hanging slack, his lungs giving great exertion.
Pryce stepped out of the shadows and gave a motion to her left.
Sparks popped to life all around the body of the Ezra on the table, and he threw his head back with a loud screech of pain.
Ezra gave a violent flinch, shying back. Now that he was here, he really didn't want to watch this, his heart beating wildly, throat closing. Echos and mirrors of what he was seeing with his eyes were starting to murmur in his ears.
Depa was suddenly next to him, her hand squeezing his shoulder tight.
"It's all right," she told him. "I'm right here."
Ezra involuntarily relaxed at the contact, the murmurs siphoning away until he couldn't hear them anymore. He looked again at the scene before him, steeling himself with a long breath.
The techs shut the electricity off, allowing the boy on the table a chance to sag again, panting heavily.
He looked... absolutely pitiful. Burns and cuts all over the exposed skin Ezra could see, clothes ragged and singed, and Ezra hated most how the illusionary him rolled his head, groggy from the drugs, eyes barely open, and when they did peek out, unfocused.
The Ezra on the table tugged weakly at the restraints on his wrists, slurring something in a thin whisper. The Ezra standing by and watching felt phantom twinges around his own limbs, the memory of metal digging into his skin, drawing blood, and clenched his hands tightly, trembling with anger.
He hated seeing himself so helpless.
Depa had taken her hand off his shoulder by now, observing in silence as the image of Pryce conducted the interrogation, and the image of Ezra suffered for it.
"What do you see, Ezra?" she asked him.
Ezra's hands gripped tighter, the nails digging into his palms. "Something I deserved," he muttered bitterly.
"Why would you deserve this?" Depa questioned.
Ezra exhaled shakily, emotion welling up inside him. "It was my extraction plan. My idea." His voice began to waver as he spoke, as the screams of his past self rang like horrible bells in his ears. "Kanan thought it was too risky, said it would put me in too much danger, but I insisted." His gaze dropped, and he pressed the base of his palm hard against his right eye, trying to hold back the tears. "I thought I could get Kallus out all on my own. That I didn't need anyone else with me. I barely agreed to let Chopper and AP-5 come along."
His throat tightened too much for him to speak for a moment. He pinched his lips, his eyes squeezing closed, as he collected himself.
"And look what that got me," he strained, voice clogging. The vision of his interrogation blurred around his tears. "I took a stupid risk and everyone else had to come save me." Both hands pressed against his eyes now, blotting the tears away, smearing across his face. "It's... it's my fault. My fault I'm so messed up. So useless." His throat cracked on the words. "I brought this on myself."
There. He'd said it. Spoken aloud what he'd been avoiding admitting to all this time. Like a festering sore on his mind it had lingered, infecting him with doubt and negative thoughts, a poisonous voice in his head that berated and chided him, and something he'd never let himself verbalize completely until now.
It seemed to break everything apart for a moment, and Ezra had a few seconds of horrible clarity.
A firm grip grabbed at his left wrist. Ezra blinked up at Depa, startled, as she swiftly pulled his hand away from his face.
"No living being deserves to have trauma and violence thrust upon them," she told him fiercely, a stern expression on her face, her eyes steel. "Whatever mistakes you made, whatever arrogance you think you were being punished for, this is not your fault, Ezra." She pointed towards the phantom Pryce. "She did this. Not you."
Ezra's next breath shuddered through him, a strange sort of calm tingling in his head. His eyes slowly slanted back towards the image of himself on the table, his face pinched.
He knew that, on an abstract, intellectual level. Thrawn was the one who had ordered his torture, Pryce was the one who had carried it out.
"But I wouldn't have even been here if—" he started to argue.
Depa stopped him with a gentle squeeze around his wrist. "You came because you had someone to help," she said. "You are a Jedi, Ezra. It is your nature. We can never stand by while there are people in danger."
"But in the end I needed help," Ezra said miserably.
"And do you blame yourself for that?"
"Yes." He almost whispered the word. His eyes fixed on his mirror-self, watching the image writhe as he was electrocuted. "I should—" His throat tightened up again. "—should've been stronger..."
All he saw, looking at himself, at what was being done to him, was how broken he was. How weak.
Warmth rang through the air as Depa stepped up next to him. "That is not what I see," she said, as though she'd heard his thoughts. "I see a young man enduring through great pain, standing firm against a relentless evil." She turned a fond smile on him, pride shining on her face. "Like a true Knight of old."
The warmth intensified, melting into his chest, making his heart... stutter softly from emotion. It crept across his face, and he lowered his head.
"I was just... trying to protect everyone," he said quietly.
"And you did," she assured him.
Ezra found himself calming at that, taking in the words like a soothing balm on his mind. He glanced up again at the image before him, seeing now the frustration in the fake Pryce's face, the anger that tensed her shoulders after every round ended with her unable to force him to reveal anything.
His sense of clarity returned, but it was no longer cold around the edges.
Ezra gave a soft exhale.
That's right... He hadn't broken. They'd thrown everything they'd had at him and he'd told them nothing.
He had endured.
That wasn't the mark of someone weak.
A light feeling was starting to trickle into his heart. A strange sort of tranquility.
Depa turned her head down at him and he glanced up at her when he felt her gaze. Her face was calm, composed, not smiling, but still open and warm.
"You are not defined by what happened to you, Ezra Bridger," she told him.
Wordlessly, she directed him to look at the image ahead. He did so, feeling the vision grow starker, clearer, absorbing the space around him.
It must've been near the end of his interrogation, Ezra thought. The IT-O droid was floating back away from the mirror-him's face, a sharp scalpel in one of its instrument arms and a freshly bleeding cut across the boy's face.
The vision-Ezra wheezed thinly through struggling lungs, fighting against the beginning stages of allergic shock, a state Ezra knew now that he'd been deliberately kept in for the last few rounds of the Brisney-Favvin.
"C'ming for me..." he murmured under his breath.
Pryce pushed her way forward, eyes angry.
"There is no one coming for you, Bridger," she hissed. "The only way you leave this room is by telling me what I want to know." She got up in his face, practically snarling. "Where. Is. The. Rebel. Base?" she demanded, emphasizing the words slowly and pointedly so even his drugged-up mind could understand.
Ezra watched himself spit a mouthful of blood into her face.
Pryce screeched in fury, grabbing his chin, fingernails digging hard into his cheeks.
"Why you little—!" she shouted.
The vision-Ezra's eyes cracked open just a moment, deliriously, and Ezra felt the ring in the Force that told him his past self was reaching out to it, letting it fill him, before his eyes closed tight.
"Oh no you don't," Pryce growled, dropping his face and stepping back. "Another round," she barked at the techs in the corner.
They complied, prepping new syringes, switching the electricity on again. The electrodes charged up, their whine growing higher and sharper. Pryce stood back, watching with a glare.
Then, suddenly, she seemed to change her mind, motioning for them to stop.
"Wait," she called.
Looking confused, the techs shut off the electrodes, and the shrill whine pitched down again until it fell silent. Pryce had stepped forward again, lifting up Ezra's chin, turning his face from side to side as she examined him closely, eyes pinched.
A soft crackle from above preceded the calm voice of Thrawn piping in from the observation room.
"Is there a problem, Governor?" he asked.
Pryce peered at the boy on the table, expression neutral.
"He's unconscious," she announced. Her hand fumbled out towards the medical tray, grabbing up a small green canister in a silver dispenser. "Administering a stim shot."
Ezra straightened a bit. This was all new to him. He watched as Pryce brought the tip of the dispenser up against his mirror-self's neck.
A sharp hiss! and the green liquid inside the canister disappeared.
The room waited for several seconds. Then several more. Then almost a full minute.
"No effect, Governor," one of the techs said, staring down and studying the readouts on his panel.
"I can see that!" she snapped. She grabbed hold of one of the IT-O's arms and sharply pulled it down level with her, flicking on the diagnostic display and scrolling through it. "The IT-O doesn't even show any changes in his vitals. His heartrate and adrenaline levels should be rising..." she muttered under her breath.
"Perhaps another stim?" Thrawn queried.
It was the head technician who spoke up now, moving to Pryce's side and studying the IT-O readouts for himself. "I wouldn't advise that, Grand Admiral," he said. "With his blood pressure and vitals the way they are right now, any more stim could flatline his heart." He stepped back, shaking his head. "And I'm not sure we could revive him."
Ezra risked a glance up towards the observation window and caught a glimpse through the glass of Thrawn, his mouth pulled down in perturbed disquiet. The Chiss looked vaguely frustrated and Ezra let himself take a bit of petty satisfaction in that.
After a long, silent moment, Thrawn reached down to press the call button.
"Put away your tools. We will resume the process after one rotation."
A deflating seemed to resound throughout the room at that. Pryce huffed and pulled out a cloth, rubbing furiously at the stain where Ezra had spat on her. The technicians stirred from their posts with a shuffle, moving to shut things off. Ezra caught a snatch of one them muttering about, "Absolutely unprecedented, pausing a Brisney-Favvin." Even the IT-O returned to its station and powered down.
Sound seemed to fade as the interrogation concluded, the images growing duller once again.
Ezra exhaled softly.
It had been just a bit... satisfying, seeing his tormentors give up in aggravation.
"Thank you, for showing me this," he said, turning. "I think I needed—"
He stopped. Depa was no longer next to him. He looked for her in the graying fog but she was nowhere to be seen.
"Master?" he called. There was nothing around him now except a vague mist. "Master Bilaba?"
Even the interrogation room was gone now. He was alone.
The sharp ignition of a lightsaber made the breath catch in his throat.
Ezra turned slowly around, seeing the glow of a red blade piercing through the shadows, silhouetting a dark shape that seemed to loom out from a long tunnel towards him.
"Nauseating," a voice withered.
Ezra gasped, startling back, his body tensing as Maul's voice rang through the space between them, fear beating a frantic rhythm in his veins.
The shape seemed to tilt its head, and Ezra could pick out Maul's horns, backlit by an eerie crimson glow. "Do you believe you are healed now?" Maul asked, mockingly. "That some pretty words from a long-dead Jedi can undo months of weakness?"
Ezra took another terrified step back as the shape moved towards him. Then he forced himself to stop and hold his ground.
It's not real, he told himself. This is just like back at the Jedi temple on Lothal. It's not real and it can't hurt you. Not if you're not afraid.
He swallowed down the lump in his throat.
I'm not afraid.
The shadow stalked slowly in his direction, confident steps silently pounding on the floor.
"Face it, this changes nothing," Maul was saying, only now his voice sounded wrong, younger and more casual, with an Outer Rim drawl.
His voice, Ezra realized in horror.
"You're still broken, Ez." The shadows seemed to peel back from the shape's face and Ezra was startled to come eye-to-eye with a dark-haired boy his age, wearing his face, dressed in loose-fitting black clothes, wild hair pulled back in a topknot, skin tattooed with vivid black patterns.
Like Maul's.
Vindictive yellow Sith eyes fixed on him, and the boy gave a mean smirk.
"This won't fix you."
Ezra stiffened, giving a soft hiss through his teeth.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
The thing that looked like him but wasn't him tilted its head, like it though the question was cute. "I'm you," it said matter-of-factly. The Not-Ezra cracked another cruel smirk at him. "If you ever decided to wise up and realize how pathetic you are."
Ezra narrowed his eyes, his shoulders squaring up. "No," he said, gripping his fists. "You're a me who gave up. Who gave in."
"Because that's the only way you're getting out of this, Ez," the Not-Ezra told him. It spun its lightsaber casually, and Ezra's teeth gnashed inside his head at the sight of the red blade coming out of his saber hilt, the wounded scream of his kyber crystal crying out in betrayal at him. The Not-Ezra brandished the saber at the end of its flourish. "You know you can't win against him."
"Maybe not," Ezra admitted, hand straying towards his own saber. "And maybe I'll never feel completely whole again. But that doesn't matter." He gripped the hilt with determination, unhooking it, but not igniting it, not yet. "I won't stay stuck here."
"Then embrace the darkness," the Not-Ezra urged. "Break your chains. Take revenge against everyone who ever hurt you."
Ezra shook his head. "No." More firmly, almost growling, he added, "Never. I know what lies at the end of that path." Maul himself was a prime example, nothing but misery and desperate grasping out at any sense of power or control he could. All his grand talk about the freedom of the Dark Side was just to mask how pitifully empty he was, how thoroughly the Dark Side had twisted him until he could never be normal again. That wouldn't be him. Ezra's fingers brushed against the ignition switch of his saber. "And I'm never walking down it again," he determined.
He wasn't going to perpetuate this horrible cycle. He wouldn't turn around and hurt people, just because he'd been hurt.
"You don't know the power you're giving up." There was an odd trace of desperation in the vision's voice now. "You don't know how much stronger he can make you."
"I know how much he hurt me," Ezra countered. "How much he's hurt you."
The Not-Ezra's face flashed with a sudden uncertain vulnerability. "I..." it stammered, then shook its head. "Ev-everything he did was for my own good. He made me better."
Ezra snorted. "Yeah. Sure." More seriously, igniting his saber at last, he fixed his eyes on his mirror-self and said determinedly, "You're wrong. The path I choose might be harder—a lot harder—and slower, and not as easy. But it's the one I have to take. I won't fall to the Dark Side."
The Not-Ezra gnashed its teeth, lunging with a furious swing of its red blade.
Ezra blocked handily, exchanging several blows—two, three, four, dodge—before locking blades with his mirror-self.
The face before him twisted, teeth baring in anger. But Ezra felt only pity for him.
"You aren't real," he said, the sparks popping off their lightsabers, illuminating his face. "And you never will be."
He broke the lock with a swift twist of his saber.
"I will never become like you," he declared.
He thrust forward with his lightsaber, burying it hilt deep in his other self's chest.
The Not-Ezra glanced down at the burning blade with an odd look of... acceptance. Several long, apprehensive seconds passed. Then, raising its face, it melted with an expression of relief, the edges curling away into mist, fading away into nothing.
The mist seemed to clear all around him, revealing a cavern lined with blue-white crystals. Pale light filtered in somewhere from above, and the soft hum of kyber murmured around him.
Ezra sighed in relief, straightening up.
"Excellent work, padawan."
Ezra almost tripped as he turned around. Someone new was standing there, a man in Jedi robes with hands clasped proudly behind him. No hair crowned his head, and though his face was lined it was not old. Intense eyes spoke of a deep wisdom, and he held himself with quiet dignity and authority.
"Who are you?" Ezra asked, truly confused now.
A smile seemed to tug at the corner of the man's mouth. "A friend," he said simply. "Now," he went on, turning and taking a few steps off to the side. "I understand you're having trouble escaping from a locked room."
Ezra grimaced, reaching up and scratching behind his head. "Yeah, um... that... that pretty much sums it up." Curious, he dropped his hand, peering towards the man's back. "Can you help me?"
"I cannot," the man said. "Like Master Bilaba I can only advise you."
"Great, so." A few notes of snark crept into Ezra's voice, thin frustration showing on his face. "What is your advice?"
The man turned back over his shoulder and fixed him with a look.
Ezra quickly corrected his tone. "Master," he said. Somehow that seemed like the correct form of address.
The man turned forward again, neutrally observing a large protruding spine of crystal. "Under your own strength it could not be done," he said. "But your ally is the Force, and the Force is always with you."
Ezra smothered down a sigh. "I tried that. It didn't work."
"You're focusing too much on the barrier itself," the man told him. "What about the surrounding walls?"
That gave Ezra pause a moment, if only for how incredulous a suggestion it was. His face slowly scrunching skeptically Ezra asked, "So... use the Force to... bore through solid rock?" He shook his head. "That's impossible. I'll pull the whole roof down on top of me."
"Our problems often seem impossible and daunting at first glance." One hand reached out and placed itself on the protruding piece of crystal, palm smoothing across its surface almost reverently. The man looked aside at him, a sad, somber concern in his dark eyes. "I know the task ahead of you seems inescapably big," he said.
Ezra had the sense that he wasn't just talking about escaping from his cell, but about everything. Confronting Maul. Coming to grips with what had happened to him on the Chimaera. Managing it somehow. Healing from it. Getting out of this whole mess.
His shoulders slouched a bit, his eyes dropping. "Yeah..." he agreed, admitting it with quiet defeat.
"So break it down." Ezra glanced back up as the man took on an authoritative, teaching stance. His hand moved down the length of the crystal spire, fingers brushing close to the surface, searching for something. "Separate it out into smaller steps," he was instructing. "Start at the beginning, with the easiest, most manageable thing you think you can do. And do it." His hand curled underneath the crystal, finding a hairline crack. "Then do the next thing. And the next. And then—"
His fingers pressed against the surface of the crystal and with a tinny burst it cracked, splintering into tiny fragments that trickled onto the floor like shards of glass.
"Everything else will follow."
"Woah!" Ezra gasped, his eyes wide with awe. He stared up, amazed, at the Jedi Master. "How did you...?"
The man leaned down and picked through the pieces, held up a small blue sliver, displaying it to Ezra in his fingers. "I found a weak spot. A hairline flaw in the composition. A shatterpoint," he explained, walking calmly over. "If properly attuned, you can see these points, and put pressure on them through the Force."
Brown fingers reached down and took his wrist, holding his hand palm up and placing the sliver gently in Ezra's hand.
"One small action," the Jedi Master was saying, a fond smile playing on his face, "to take down a much bigger obstacle."
Ezra looked reverently at the man for a few moments. His eyes dropped to the sliver in his palm.
Sobering, he closed his fingers around it.
"I should go," he muttered.
"You should," agreed the Jedi Master with a nod. "Your ordeal is not yet over." He straightened. "But first..."
He stepped back, his posture authoritative and commanding once more.
"Kneel," he said.
Confused, Ezra obeyed, sliding down to his knees, hands drifting to rest on his thighs.
The man unhooked a lightsaber from his belt—chrome and black with golden accents, a polished, beautiful hilt—and ignited it at his side, revealing a shockingly purple blade.
"A long journey and many trials are still ahead of you, padawan," he said. "But this test, you have passed."
Ezra felt a pounding of anticipation move through him. His pulse prickled with a strange excitement.
The man brought his saber up, gently motioning as if to tap it to each of Ezra's shoulders in turn.
"By the right of the Council, by the will of the Force..." he recited.
He drew the saber away with pride.
"Rise, Ezra Bridger."
(A/N)- Woot woot, here are your chapter notes!
1. I was writing the beginning portion of the chapter and I had the sudden thought, "You know what? The Force Therapy session needs a hug. At least one." And my gosh you guys it felt so good to write it.
2. Ezra finally confronts his memories and the self-blame he's been carrying around since "Splinters". This whole sequence I have pretty much considered one of the most pivotal chapters, ever since I decided to rework the original Maul-kidnaps-Ezra idea into the Mirrorverse. I knew at some point in order to have Ezra move forward through his ordeal with Maul, I was going to need to make him confront his past trauma. I want to firmly emphasize though that this is not some magical Force cure, and you'll still see Ezra dealing with the aftereffects of both the Chimaera and his kidnapping here in upcoming chapters and beyond.
But he is now in a bit of a better place, mentally. :)
3. Yeah the whole Evil!Ezra self-confrontation thing was one of the added bits. Hey, if your sacred Jedi temple isn't throwing creepy illusions of your worst fears at you what is it even good for? Lol. Evil!Ezra is basically the physical representation of a host of little story threads and themes I had colliding in this scene—Ezra's temptations against the Dark Side, silencing the self-critical voices in your head, not turning your trauma against others like a weapon, stopping the cycle of abuse, etc. It just felt very Star Wars to have it as a confrontation/duel against an illusionary opponent.
4. SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE BY MACE WINDU WHAT UP.
No but seriously, who better to teach Ezra Shatterpoint (and dispense metaphorically appropriate therapy advice) than its most well-known wielder? Also I really cannot even begin to explain just how much I think the metaphor just works re. the actual therapeutic advice (break the problem down into doable parts) and the Force technique, it's honestly amazing how well all of this came together. Also I wanted Grandpa Mace feels dammit.
5. (Yes okay, the Shatterpoint technique is technically a lot more complicated than just "find weak point, break entire thing" but baby steps people. Ezra can learn all the weird multiple timeline conjunction stuff later.)
6. I really just wanted this chapter to be full of good and nice things for Ezra okay. He deserves this.
Looking forward to getting back to the action next week with you readers! I hope you all enjoyed.