They'd been weaving for hours under the hot sun — which, on this planet, seemed to hover directly above them for at least four hours instead of just around noon — and Ezra's fingers were starting to turn numb. He grabbed one of the leafy fronds he'd collected this morning, tried to weave it through the others, and felt it slip out of his thick-feeling, clumsy fingers instead.

Frustrated, Ezra sneaked a glance at Thrawn. He stood all the way across the clearing with his back to Ezra, facing the river while he wove. The other mat was piled at his feet, at least five meters longer than the one Ezra was working on, and even though there was a sheen of sweat on Thrawn's blue skin, he hadn't slowed down at all.

Ezra looked back at his own mat, the frond he'd dropped sticking straight up, completely out of place. He quieted his mind, reached out to the sounds of nature all around him — to the moisture gathered in the cells of the dying frond — and used the Force to manipulate it where he wanted it to go.

With that done, he was even more exhausted than before … and it wasn't like using the Force to weave a covering for their shelter was any great achievement, Ezra noted sourly. In all honesty — and he'd made this clear loudly, and more than once — he wasn't sure why they needed to make a new shelter, anyway. They'd weathered the deserted planet's winter just fine in their old one.

The old shelter, though, had been built to retain heat — that's what Thrawn said. And (again, according to Thrawn) the planet was only going to get hotter from here. Short winters, long summers — how he knew this, Ezra wasn't exactly sure, but he wasn't about to question it.

He tossed the unfinished weaving to the ground and was immediately dissatisfied by the undramatic whispering noise it made.

"I'm taking a break," he announced. He didn't expect Thrawn to respond, and Thrawn didn't. Still, the frustration boiling up inside Ezra practically compelled him to explain himself. "I can't get this kriffing thing to work," he said, kicking the mat away from him. "Even when I use the Force, it barely works."

Not looking back, his voice totally even and sounding only half-awake — like he'd been deep in thought for hours now and hadn't fully come back — Thrawn said, "It takes practice."

Ezra eyed the several meters of woven material he'd already completed. "You think?" he said. "Boy, I sure hope I can get some practice someday."

The sarcasm went unacknowledged.

"You used the Force to weave?" Thrawn said instead, still not looking away from his own weaving. His arms barely seemed to move as he worked, but as Ezra watched, more and more inches were added to the mat as if by magic.

"What about it?" Ezra asked. For a moment, Thrawn didn't respond. Ezra edged closer, circling the half-finished shelter and the organized rows of hand-made tools and carefully-measured wooden rods. He came to a stop a few meters away from Thrawn on the bank of the river, leaning against a tree. Thrawn's eyes swiveled over to him just briefly before returning to the mat in his hands; he was weaving so easily Ezra could only chalk it up to muscle memory.

A month and a half ago, he would have laughed at anyone who suggested Grand Admiral Thrawn could weave a mat based on muscle memory. Then again, a month and a half ago, he never could have predicted he'd be stranded on a deserted planet with Thrawn, either.

Without changing his speed, Thrawn came to the end of the mat — Karabast, Ezra thought, he was done already? — and knotted the ends. Instead of letting the mat fall in a heap at his feet like Ezra had done, he drew the length of it into his arms and walked it over to the shelter, laying it there in neat folds.

"Perhaps you could use the Force to complete tasks quickly," Thrawn said, "if you hadn't neglected your training for the past forty-six days."

Rage broiled up so quickly inside Ezra that for a moment he was completely insensate. His hands clenched into fists and he angled his chin down, forcing himself to take a few deep breaths before he said something that — how had Thrawn put it, their first week here when they couldn't stop picking fights? Before he said something unnecessarily provocative or of an inefficient and impedimentary nature.

That something came out anyway.

"You know," he said, hissing the words between his teeth, "I'm doing my best here, same as you. It's not like I'm bumming around doing nothing while you get the work done — I'm pulling my weight, okay? And not to be a nag about it, but it's kind of hard to train when your master is dead."

If Thrawn realized that it was kind of a dick move to bring up training when it was at least partially his fault that Kanan was dead, he didn't show it. He examined the mat Ezra had abandoned and, without further comment, set about finishing the work. His face was unreadable — in the silence, Ezra turned away, concentrating fully on his breathing. He'd been kind of quippy in his response, the way he always was — turning his anger into a joke, as much as he could bear to — but where this strategy typically helped him deal with Imperial officers in the past, it never got him very far with Thrawn. And now he was left with the swirling and very real, very not-quippy aftermath of his anger, impossible to let go.

He allowed Kanan's face to materialize before him — knew he couldn't stop it if he wanted to, just like he couldn't stop the images that followed: Sabine and Hera and Zeb — and then he allowed it to dissolve away, taking his anger with him.

Leaving him cold, his eyes wet, more exhausted than before.

"The absence of a master," said Thrawn, as if he knew exactly when it was safest to speak, "does not necessitate the end of training. It only necessitates some adaptability and a creative spark."

Ezra sighed. He let his knees give out beneath him, sinking into the dead brown grass not far from Thrawn. The new growth was coming through in a sort of pale green color, much lighter than the grass on Lothal. He picked at it absently, turning Thrawn's words over in his head.

"I don't see what I could really do here," he said finally. "Except meditate. And I do that already."

Thrawn gave him a look but said nothing. Still, Ezra felt himself bristling, prepared to snap back if Thrawn even dared to bring up the fact that — so far as either of them could tell — the Grand Admiral spent more time in meditation each day than the Jedi did.

"I don't have a lightsaber, so I can't practice fighting," Ezra pointed out. "I don't have any sacred texts to study. You definitely don't know anything about the Force, so…"

Thrawn's shoulder twitched in what might have been a minute shrug.

"You could read my mind," he said.

At first, Ezra didn't fully register those words. He interpreted them metaphorically, classified it as a somewhat odd thing for Thrawn to say, and dismissed it. Then Thrawn glanced up, his red eyes burning into Ezra's, and suddenly Ezra realized he'd missed something.

"Read your mind?" he repeated.

"Make an attempt," said Thrawn evenly. He was still weaving, glancing down at his work occasionally as he waited for Ezra to get started. There was a length of leather cord knotted at the nape of his neck, a tarnished old pendant hanging from it — the Imperial officer version of dogtags, maybe, but Ezra didn't think so. His eyes caught on it for a moment, remembering how flummoxed he'd been the first time he saw it. It was the first time he'd seen any evidence that Thrawn was a real person, not just an emotionless Imperial drone. And now, weeks later, it was something he was completely used to and hardly noticed anymore, just another normal part of his life here.

"You mean literally?" Ezra asked, deciding to entertain the notion of mind-reading for at least a little while. "Or are you trying to be passive-aggressive here?"

"Passive-aggressive?" Thrawn said.

"Ugh. Nevermind."

Thrawn eyed Ezra, perhaps waiting for him to explain what he meant. When Ezra stayed silent, Thrawn turned back to his weaving and said, "I did not mean it literally."

Ezra noted this with some relief.

"I believe minds are not organized like a text to be literally read," Thrawn continued, "but I've been led to believe 'reading minds' is a common Basic idiom which means to telepathically observe another being's mind in order to achieve awareness of said being's thought process and emotional state. That is what I mean."

The relief dissipated.

"Jedi can't read minds," said Ezra with as much patience as he could muster (not a lot). "We can influence people sometimes, but it's not like we can tell what they're thinking or see their emotions or anything."

Thrawn glanced up at him, his gaze even and undisturbed. "Perhaps you, as an individual, cannot read minds," he said. "And perhaps your master, Kanan Jarrus, could not read minds, or felt it unwise to teach you at such a young age. I recall he was not fully trained himself. But it is an established Jedi technique, and I believe with some practice, you may be able to achieve it."

Ezra scoffed. "What the hell do you know about Jedi techniques?"

Turning his attention back to the woven mat, Thrawn only said, "Enough."

"Have you ever even met a Jedi?" Ezra asked. He heard the challenging note in his voice and thought, once again, unnecessarily provocative. "Besides me?" he added, making a deliberate effort to tone it down.

Thrawn inclined his head. He didn't glance up when Ezra let out an exasperated noise.

"Just nodding your head is definitely not enough of an answer right now," Ezra complained.

"I have met a Jedi," Thrawn said blandly.

"Oh, come on." Ezra couldn't tell if Thrawn was baiting him just for kicks or trying to teach him a lesson in patience or if he was just naturally this aggravating. He ran his hands over his face, trying to at least sound civil in case he was being tested. "Who did you meet?" he said. "And when?"

Thrawn abandoned the woven mat for a moment, placing his palms flat on the grass behind him and pulling himself a few feet away from Ezra, closer to a pile of cut fronds. "Are you interested in the training opportunity?" he asked, smoothing out the folds in the mat before going back to work.

"I'm interested in who you met and when," Ezra said, crossing his arms.

Again, Thrawn gave that little shrug. "I met Emperor Palpatine," he said. "He is a Force-user. I met Darth Vader, also a Force-user, and worked with him for some time."

"Those are Sith," said Ezra, losing patience all at once and simultaneously thinking, Kriff, I should have known. "Sith are an entirely different religion, dude — that's like comparing the Yacombe with the Zealtos of Pusan. Sith are not Jedi."

"The implication being that only followers of certain religions can read minds, and that this ability is not inherent to anyone who can use the Force?" Thrawn queried.

"I don't know, dude," said Ezra, throwing a hand up in the air. "Maybe? You know, there's a Dark Side of the Force and a Light Side, and Jedi aren't supposed to use the Dark Side. Maybe mind-reading is a Dark Side technique — if it's even really a technique," he added quickly.

For a long moment, Thrawn didn't respond. He seemed to be mulling over the new information.

"Explain the Light Side and Dark Side," he said eventually.

"Explain the Dark Side, please," Ezra muttered.

Thrawn did not add 'please.' With a sigh, Ezra leaned back and tried to gather his thoughts. The sun beat down on him, baking its way right through his jacket and leaving him somewhere on the border between 'comfortably warm' and 'too hot.'

"So," he said, "the Force is like the life-giving energy in all things, right?"

He wasn't sure if this information was new to Thrawn or not, and Thrawn gave no indication either way.

"And life and death both feed into the Force," Ezra said. "Using the Light Side sort of means that you're using the Force to help people and foster peace, but using the Dark Side means you're doing the opposite. You're just feeding into all the bad stuff in the world, like death and war and …" He cast about for more examples. "I don't know, like famine. Sometimes Dark Side users seem more powerful because they tap into negative emotions to really amp up their abilities — like, if you're fighting and you really hate the person you're fighting, and you embrace that hatred instead of pushing through it, you're tapping into the Dark Side."

He hesitated, unsure if Thrawn was following him.

"In that case," said Thrawn evenly, "actions themselves are not inherently Dark or Light. It is the emotion one accesses which decides whether an act is Dark or Light."

"Er, no," said Ezra, eyebrows furrowing. "I don't think so. Some things are just bad, you know. You do know some things are bad, right? Like how Vader's always Force-choking people — if you ever use the Force to choke someone, that's pretty much automatically Dark Side stuff, right off the bat. Or like torture, that's just a blatant, 100% bad thing, no exceptions."

"Or like killing," said Thrawn, his eyes burning into Ezra's. Ezra's mouth suddenly ran dry.

"There are times when you have to kill," he said, looking away. Trying not to think of all the people (enemy soldiers, he told himself, but the thought rang hollow in his head) aboard the Chimaera.

"Few societies acknowledge any crime more morally repugnant than murder," said Thrawn. The tone of his voice indicated no particular emotion. His eyes were back on the mat.

"Yeah, but most make exceptions for times of war, though," said Ezra, striving to keep his voice light, like this was just a philosophical discussion. Like it meant nothing to either of them.

"Most," Thrawn agreed.

For a long moment, Thrawn worked in silence. Ezra leaned over and sifted through a pile of discarded cords, pulling a half-braided rope into his lap. He fiddled with it for a while, trying to get rid of the dark thoughts swarming his head.

"I have been Force-choked by a Jedi," said Thrawn eventually — and despite the still-heavy subject matter, Ezra felt his shoulders relax a little when he realized Thrawn was letting the issue go.

"Darth Vader isn't a Jedi," he said. "You can tell by the 'Darth.'"

"I have also been Force-choked by Darth Vader," Thrawn acknowledged, inclining his head. "But this was many years ago, a little before the Clone Wars. He was a Jedi; not a Sith."

Ezra didn't know what to say. He braided a few more inches of the rope; he could see a sharp decline in quality where Thrawn's braids ended and his own began, and he spent a few seconds trying to tighten his section up. Across from him, Thrawn exhaled audibly and sat back, leaning on his palms, mimicking Ezra's posture from earlier. He glared up at the sun, eyes narrowing in a muted flinch before he looked away.

"Perhaps it is morally wrong to read or influence another person's mind," Thrawn ceded, "but strategically, both abilities are valuable. You have used the Force to influence other people, yes?"

"Yes," said Ezra begrudgingly.

"I find this more questionable than simply observing another person's thoughts," said Thrawn. "Don't you?"

Ezra shook his head, refusing to answer.

"In one instance, you merely invade a person's privacy," said Thrawn, "but if killing becomes an acceptable act during war, surely the invasion of privacy becomes acceptable as well. In the other instance, you go so far as to deliberately twist a person's thoughts, forcing them to act against their will — in many cases and on most worlds, a criminal act of a degree only slightly more acceptable than murder. Consider the possibilities — I find influence far more dangerous than simple surveillance."

Ezra's mouth twisted. He jerked his shoulders up and down in a shrug. "Fine," he said. "So both are bad, then — or both are neutral, or whatever it is you're trying to say. It doesn't matter anyway."

Thrawn's head tilted to the side. "Why not?"

Exasperated, Ezra threw the half-braided rope to the ground. "Because it's not like I can read people's minds anyway," he said. "This is all just theoretical — it's pointless."

"So you do not wish to continue training," said Thrawn flatly.

"Training with who?" Ezra shot back. He raised his hands, gesturing at the forest around him. "If you've got a secret Jedi Master hanging out in a mountain fortress somewhere around here, please feel free to let me know. I would literally chop off my own legs if it meant I could talk to someone other than you for once."

Thrawn was almost entirely expressionless, but Ezra could tell he was biting the inside of his cheek. After a month and a half of coexisting with Thrawn — and only Thrawn, since there was no one else on this hellscape of a planet — this was the single, solitary sign of agitation Ezra had been able to identify, and it was so subtle he'd just noticed it recently.

"If you are able to influence minds," said Thrawn, "it stands to reason you are also able to read them, if you concentrate on the task at hand." He said this with a pointed glance first at the abandoned woven mat and then at the abandoned rope. "I believe you only need practice."

Ezra snorted, once again indicating the empty forest.

"You may practice on me," said Thrawn tonelessly, looking down at the mat in his hands.

Ezra let his hand drop. The half-amused, half-sarcastic expression dissolved from his face, leaving him looking lost.

"You?" he said.

Thrawn shrugged. He finished Ezra's abandoned mat, tying off the ends with tight, efficient knots. The pendant around his neck flashed in the sunlight, turning a pale silvery-blue. "If you find me an unsuitable subject, you can always practice on the wildlife," Thrawn said dryly.

Ezra wrinkled his nose, scarcely noticing the joke. "You wouldn't let me read your mind," he decided.

Thrawn huffed out a barely-audible breath. "Well, if you say so..."

"Why would you let me read your mind?" Ezra demanded, changing tack. "Don't you have, like, all sorts of Imperial secrets and battle plans you can't let me see? You won't even tell me what species you are."

"Perhaps you can figure it out by reading my mind," said Thrawn. He stood, bundling the woven canopy in his arms, and took a few steps toward the array of bare-bones buildings they'd spent the previous two days constructing. It felt like unending work to Ezra, and all of it seemed unnecessary when their winter shelter was still standing and in perfect working condition. Still, he hauled himself to his feet and followed Thrawn, helping him hang the canopy with minimal complaints.

He held the mats in place while Thrawn tied them down, both of them working in silence for a moment. But the whole conundrum of mind-reading wouldn't stop eating at Ezra; his eyebrows furrowed as he thought it over.

In a way, he figured Thrawn was right — if Jedi could influence people (and he knew they could, because he'd done it himself plenty of times), it stood to reason they could 'read' minds as well, to a certain extent. Whether or not it counted as a Dark Side activity would require further consideration, but it was true what Thrawn said: being able to read minds would be a fantastic strategic boon.

He held the mat in place while Thrawn leaned over him to tie it to one of the outside posts. With Thrawn leaning in like that, there was no way he could see Ezra's face — the perfect moment for Ezra to finally ask, "Why would you help me, though?"

Thrawn wound the rope around the post, then drew back with a line between his eyebrows, examining Ezra's loose braids. He picked them apart and re-did them, then leaned in again, maybe hiding his face deliberately just like Ezra was.

"You act as if we're enemies," he said lightly. "But we've been allies for forty-six days. I see no reason why that shouldn't continue."

Ezra frowned, pulling back as Thrawn finished the knots. The canopy clung tightly to the walls, breathable but waterproof — the perfect walls for a warm-weather shelter.

"What about when we leave here?" Ezra asked. Thrawn glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

"When we leave here," Thrawn said, "do you believe we'll return to opposing sides of the war?"

"Well, I'm definitely not joining the Empire," Ezra said. "You telling me you wanna join the Rebels?"

It was possible Thrawn smiled faintly at that, but he turned away before Ezra could be sure, retrieving the other woven mat from its spot near the river.

"Those aren't the only options," he said simply. "And if you don't trust my motivations, consider this." He turned in a circle, glancing around the clearing where they'd made their home, the canopy bundled under his right arm and his left arm held out in a sweeping gesture. Then he turned back to Ezra, his face unreadable.

"Other than general maintenance and basic survival tasks, I have nothing better to do," he said.