(A/N)- Set pre-series. Ezra is about 13. Done for Bad Things Happen Bingo, with the prompt "Dislocated Joint", so an obligatory heads-up for joint trauma.
And now proceeding...
Disclaimer: Hey can I at least bribe Disney to make more material about Ezra's childhood? Would that be an option? Maybe?
Disjointed
The pain shooting through him was so intense it made him almost nauseous.
Ezra grit his teeth as he strained up through the tangle of cable wires he'd fallen through, to the rooftops and the blue-gray sky behind. Voices from his Stormtrooper pursuit drifted over the edge of the adobe-toned wall.
"Where'd he go?"
"You said you had eyes on him!"
"I did! But then he just disappeared!"
Grimacing, his face screwing tightly, Ezra slowly curled his torso upright. His back and shoulder both protested harshly, and the boy gasped as his stomach turned over again, threatening bile at the base of his throat.
Kriff, it hurt.
His backpack had absorbed quite a bit of the blow, and its edges felt squished. There was a worrying metal tinkle from inside the pack as he moved; he hoped the speeder parts he'd lifted that had started the whole chase weren't damaged. One of the cables was still wrapped around his leg. Ezra tried to reach for it with his left arm, but the limb was strangely unresponsive, and pain flared through the joint.
Ezra hissed shortly, slightly panicked, glancing down at his left arm in confusion.
"Ohhhh not good," he groaned. "Not good, not good, not good..."
The troopers on the roof continued to argue.
"You think maybe he jumped down...?" one of them mused.
"Don't be ridiculous, kid would never survive a fall like that," the other dismissed with a scoff.
Clenching his jaw, Ezra reached down with his good hand and fumbled with the cable end until he'd disentangled himself, pressed that palm flat and pushed himself with difficulty up to his feet. His left arm hung a bit unnaturally, numb and tingling in his fingers.
"Nnngghhh..." he groaned, a fresh wash of pain moving through him.
Dizzy, he stumbled away from the alley, creeping through the back roads behind the houses, before the troopers decided to look over the roof and check for him.
-SWR-
He finally slumped against a wall blocks away, nursing his sore shoulder. Ezra's breath came in pained heaves, his arm and back aching with every motion. It was less sharp than before, but still alarming, and he didn't understand why his arm wouldn't work, what was wrong with it?!
Another attempt at raising it made him wince and pinch his lips. Very carefully, he felt along his bicep and forearm. Nothing felt broken...
Ezra moaned, thumping the side of his head into the wall in tired aggravation.
"Great, just... great," he muttered. He couldn't afford to be hurt like this, not with the seasonal winter storms due any day now. His food stores were too low, his last blanket was worn to tatters, and the tentatively-operational and often-finicky heating unit in his tower had been making that worrying clunking again.
Frustrated tears threatened under his eyes and Ezra blinked them back, furiously shaking his head. Couldn't stop to cry. Had to fix his arm.
He pushed off the wall and started walking. He didn't know where he was going. Not to a medcenter. Medcenters asked too many questions, wanted too much paperwork. The free clinic in Residential Block 3 had been shut down, closed by the Empire for failing to comply with operating standards.
He definitely knew he didn't have the medical supplies back at his tower.
His mind flicked frantically through his contacts. Smugglers, pickpockets, black market vendors... who was the least likely to screw him over if he asked any of them for help?
He glommed onto one of the least bad options and increased pace, darting quickly past bodies, market stalls, and vehicles.
"Excuse me. Excuse me," he apologized as he squeezed through narrow gaps in the crowd.
No one paid him any heed. Then again, no one ever did. Street orphans were everywhere, ubiquitous and beneath notice.
He stumbled into a hollow frequently used by vagrants and searched the curled up bundles huddled against various broken walls and debris piles. Spotting one slumped among a pile of scattered empty glass bottles, he darted up and frantically shook the man's shoulder.
"Salam! Wake up!" he called.
The bundle snorted and turned over, the grizzled human elder blinking up at him. "Whazzat?" he slurred. He smeared a hand across his face. "Bridger? Don' you know better than to wake me b'fore noon?" he grumbled.
"I... I took a bad fall," Ezra explained, already regretting this. The old drunkard stank of his favorite brand of strong alcohol, a nasty, chemical, motor-oil like scent that burned in Ezra's nose. "I did something to my arm, I don't..." He swallowed, trying to keep the waver out of his voice. "I don't know..."
The man rolled upright, sloughing his shoulders and setting aside a half-full bottle he'd been nursing in his hand. "A'right, lemme see," he huffed.
With some trepidation, Ezra held very still and let the man poke and prod at his shoulder for a minute. Clouded eyes squinted and then Salam sat back.
"Shoulder popped outta its socket," he concluded. "Easy fix." He braced hands on Ezra's arm. "Hold still," he instructed.
That was all the warning Ezra got before the man applied pressure to his shoulder and he felt a hard pop in his arm as bone was maneuvered back into place. Ezra almost doubled over, firming his mouth to hold in a pained yell.
Pain throbbed through his muscles but the odd out-of-place feeling was gone, at least. Ezra tentatively tested his arm, relieved when it responded more readily. It still hurt like hell, stiff and uncomfortable, but it didn't feel like it was hanging off him anymore.
Drawing in air slowly through his teeth, he shifted back. "Banthaspit..." he muttered, holding his shoulder gingerly.
Chuckles rose up from various occupants of the hollow. Salam himself grinned a bit as he sat back against the wall, picking up his drink again. "Gonna owe me big time for that one, kid," he said. "Four packs this time."
Ezra's attitude soured at the demand and he gave the man a glare, but reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a handful of dry ration packs. He counted out four into Salam's waiting hand.
There went lunch and dinner, he thought miserably.
The drunkard flashed a rotted-tooth smile and swept the packs into his ratted coat. "Sling that arm, if you can," he advised. "Gonna hurt like kark for a few days. Nothing your young healthy muscles can't heal from."
Ezra stood to his feet, brushing off his pants. "Noted," he acknowledged flatly.
He didn't stay another moment, hoisting his backpack a bit higher and striding off with as much bravado as he could, so the other vagrants couldn't see the tension in his neck or the hitch in the center of his back, the way his eyes blinked furiously.
He got back to one of the main streets and sighed, loosening up and sagging in place. Neverending. His troubles were neverending. Just when something went right for him, something else immediately went wrong.
"Story of my life," he muttered, kicking a small pebble as he readied himself to go back to work, back to the daily grind. His shoulder still ached, but he'd been hurt worse before and endured. He'd just have to deal with it.
He sighed one last time as he stepped into the street and joined the wandering crowd.
(A/N)- You can request a prompt/character over on Tumblr. See this post: h tt [#]p s: / / tari silmarwen . tu mb lr . c[#]o m / post / 673415204767465472 / im- doing- a-bad-things-happen- bingo- because (delete the spaces and the special characters in the brackets)