He's walking over a thick layer of snow, a flat grid-like structure attached to the bottoms of his shoes to keep him from sinking into the banks. When Ezra concentrates, he gets a sense of thin, flexible wood beneath his fingers; a half-memory, half-sensation of bending saplings into the shapes he needs in order to walk on snow. He skims over the ground, walking quickly, sinking only about an inch into the banks as he makes his way to the woods.
He wears only his thinnest layer of clothing, leaving his heavier furs behind. He knows the walk there and back (there? Ezra wonders. Where was there?) will be long and arduous, especially with the fresh snow, and the furs would have become soaked with sweat as he worked if he wore them (doing what? Ezra wonders), leaving him freezing cold and with nothing to change into.
The wind kicks up flurries of snow from the ground, throwing them into his face, each one hitting the exposed skin on his hands and face like a cold kiss. He feels — he feels — he feels something about it, some mutated off-shoot of either happy or sad or — wait, but that makes no sense. You can't really be happy and sad at the same time, can you? It has to be one or the other ... unless he's completely off-base. In which case maybe it's just—
"Concentrate," Thrawn called over his shoulder.
"Ughhhh," Ezra said, snapping out of the connection with a more dramatic sigh than the situation strictly called for. "Come on, man. I was this close."
Thrawn kept working, rolling an empty, dented barrel into the clearing. His hair hung over his forehead, more unruly than it had been just days before. The sun was reaching its apex overhead, but it wasn't nearly as hot out as it should have been — grey clouds hung low over the forest, threatening rain.
"This close to what, exactly?" Thrawn asked, stopping the barrel when it was well away from the trees and setting it upright. A simple water purification system was affixed to the mouth of the barrel, waiting for rainwater to fill it up.
"To actually sensing an emotion from you," Ezra said, throwing his hands up. "For once."
"Well, try again," said Thrawn. He didn't sound particularly interested in the training he'd so insisted on, Ezra noticed.
Still, Ezra supposed he had to be interested in some way, even if he was hiding it. Otherwise, he would have never suggested it to Ezra in the first place, and he certainly wouldn't allow it continue day after day. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and concentrated, slipping quickly and almost easily into the headspace he needed in order to get into Thrawn's brain.
This time the memory was different:
He sits cross-legged on a primitive, hand-made bed — an actual bed, not a woven mattress on the floor — with his back to the wall and an animal fur wrapped around his shoulders. A bowl of thick soup warms his hands, the scent of it simultaneously foreign to Ezra and intimately familiar. But he isn't eating; his head is cocked, and he listens to hailstones pinging off the roof of his hut.
The memory shifted:
In his hands is a gritty, skin-searing bar of soap; his first attempt at making soap led to mild chemical burns on his fingers, but that was a long time ago, and the burns are almost healed now. He scrubs at the dirt caked on his hands, the mud dried on his forearms, white soap foaming up to cover blue skin.
It still stings a little; he can't figure out how to make it any milder without negating its antiseptic qualities, no matter how much he experiments with it. A face swims before his eyes, a flash of incomprehensible features that just evade Ezra's sight; mother, he thinks, but somehow he can't be sure if the face he saw comes from his memory or from Thrawn's, if the woman's skin was blue or brown. The features are all too indistinct; they go by too fast.
He should have asked her more questions before she died, he thinks; she knew how to do this perfectly — a seamless blend of native fragrance and cleansing properties, without the risk of pain — and if he'd only asked, he wouldn't have a need for all this trial-and-error. She'd complained about his curiosity sometimes, seriously but never too stridently; perhaps it had affected him somewhat as a child, led him to stifle those questions he deemed unnecessary so he wouldn't be scolded for the ones that seemed essential at the time.
He scrubs harder, digging the soap into a shallow cut on his wrist. He relishes the sting the same way he relishes the ache of his muscles after a long, hard day. He wishes—
Everything changed again, the memory splintering apart before Ezra's eyes. For a moment he was disoriented, unable to make sense of the whirling sights and sounds coming at him from all sides. Then all of it assembled, every different thread of sensory input becoming clear like a puzzle fitting itself together.
Wildflowers invade the clearing, spilling out of the woods in pale shades of white and yellow. They dot the grass here and there, from deep in the trees all the way to the front door of the hut. He sits outside, the sun high and warm but the air cool enough to justify the furs he still wears, waiting for winter to truly end.
The yellow petals can be boiled to make a dye, he thinks. With enough different colors — and using the sun-dried animal skins as a canvas, he can make a painting. There are more wildflowers in the woods, he knows. Blue, purple — shades of orange and red and washed-out green. But he doesn't move; he stares at the flowers.
When — Ezra's mind stutters over the sudden barrage of foreign words popping into his mind — when someone, not him, first went to — to a place called Copero (was that right?), he'd called home about the flowers, describing them in the greatest detail he could, even bringing his camera outside with him so his little brother could see them, too. And damn anyone who sneered at him for it, he'd said. It was all well and good to cultivate a reputation, he said, but not at the cost of your own happiness. He was more than willing to out himself as a commoner by fawning over the flowers.
And now Ezra can't even properly look at the flowers himself. His head is aching, his vision blurred and vague. He reaches up to wipe an irritant out of his eyes — if indeed there is an irritant, if this isn't just the memory splintering again — and catches sight of the blue skin on his hand. Freezes. Remembers who he is.
The connection broke. Thrawn glanced up from where he was setting up a second barrel. They stared at each other for a moment, Ezra breathless and confused, Thrawn expressionless.
"Well?" Thrawn said eventually, brushing the dirt off his hands.
"There was nothing there," Ezra said, too quietly for Thrawn to hear. Thrawn frowned at him, but didn't come closer, preferring to examine the barrels for flaws instead. "There was nothing there," Ezra said again, louder this time, organizing his thoughts. "I mean, in the memory, I was — you were upset, I think. Maybe. But there weren't any emotions. It was just…"
He gestured helplessly at his eyes, unable to put the strange sensation into words. For a moment there, connected to Thrawn's mind like that, he'd been certain he was crying (or at the very least, his vision was blurry for some reason), but he hadn't felt a thing emotionally. Everything had been viciously numb.
Thrawn dismissed Ezra for a moment, working silently on the rain collection system. He adjusted the plastic covering on the second barrel, then straightened up and approached Ezra.
"What did you learn?" he asked.
For a moment, Ezra just stared at him, unable to comprehend the question. He was still overwhelmed by that last memory — two conflicting timelines overlapping with each other, echoes of one memory layered over the next, the flowers and the nebulous voice of a boy he'd never met, speaking in a language Ezra simultaneously didn't know and perfectly understood.
"What did you learn?" Thrawn asked again, more patiently than Ezra expected.
"Uh," said Ezra, struggling to get his thoughts in order. He looked back over each memory, assembling them into some sort of picture. It was difficult, but gradually it all started to come together. He talked slowly, giving his thoughts time to catch up with his mouth.
"Well, you're from a primitive planet," he said. "Probably somewhere out in the Outer Rim, maybe even Wild Space, because you grew up without spaceships or technology or anything like that, and there's no planets in the Core Worlds without technology. And…" He eyed Thrawn uncertainly, almost suspiciously. "...you haven't actually been in the military all that long," he said, "because you're not much younger in those memories than you are now."
He waited for Thrawn to confirm or deny this.
"Continue," Thrawn said.
Now both flustered and a little pissed off at the lack of answers, Ezra said, "Continue with what?"
"Extrapolate," said Thrawn evenly. "Use the information you've gathered to assess the subject's weaknesses and strengths."
"Well, weaknesses are pretty easy," Ezra shot off right away. "Wildflowers, for one."
Thrawn gazed back at him without emotion, completely unperturbed by what Ezra had hoped might be a good, petty jab at a weak spot. Eventually, with no reaction from Thrawn, Ezra turned away, exasperated and jittery. He threw his hands up in the air, then crossed his arms tightly over his chest, shaking his head.
He'd been so completely immersed in Thrawn's memories that for a long period, he hadn't really been himself. It was beyond unnerving … but, he told himself, it had to be even more unnerving for Thrawn. Right? It was his mind that was being invaded, his memories that Ezra was slipping into like they were a fresh set of clothes. You'd think that sort of invasion would ruffle his feathers at least a little, but for all intents and purposes, there he stood — completely unruffled.
"Okay," Ezra said in a sigh, turning back to Thrawn. "I'm over it."
A line appeared between Thrawn's eyebrows. "Over—?"
"Strengths: obviously, tons of survival skills," Ezra interrupted. "The hut you lived in and all the stuff in it — well, most of the stuff — looked handmade, or like you'd cobbled it together from spare parts. There's some chemical knowledge — you made your own soap, and I guess that means you have to know what stuff to mix together and what to avoid. Hunting and, uh, I guess sewing as well, because of the furs."
He furrowed his eyebrows, trying to remember everything he'd seen. "Craftsmanship and winter survival," he said finally. "Because of the snowshoes. I can't think of anything else."
"Weaknesses," Thrawn prompted.
Ezra pinched the bridge of his nose. "Well … you didn't have droids or datapads or anything like that," he said, "and there weren't any speeders or skimmers or any vehicles, actually, parked outside. So obviously, technology would be an issue, like I said before. If you grew up on a primitive planet, then you'd only be introduced to modern tech when you joined the Navy, and that wasn't until recently, like maybe ten years ago — so any enemy could exploit that lack of technical literacy … if they knew about it, I mean."
Thrawn surveyed him for a moment, his face giving nothing away.
"Reasonable assessments," he said finally. Somehow, despite the praise — could that really be called praise, though? — Ezra got the impression Thrawn didn't really approve.
"What's with the whole Copero thing?" he asked, jumping to the defensive without thinking about it, before Thrawn could tell him why he was wrong. "Is that a planet or a star system — or an organization, or what?"
Thrawn glanced over at the water barrels, seemingly ignoring Ezra. "Let's consider your conclusions for a moment," he said. "First hypothesis: I was raised on a primitive planet. What evidence supports this?"
Ezra almost pushed the issue, but this new question was just strange enough to give him pause. A line appeared between his eyebrows as he tried to figure out what Thrawn was getting at. "I told you already," he said.
"Tell me again."
Frowning, Ezra said, "How about the complete lack of vehicles, for one? The lack of technology of any kind. The handmade clothes, hut, bowls and spoons, soap, furniture …"
This time, Thrawn's eyes drifted away in the direction of their shelter, a faint smile touching his lips. Ezra narrowed his eyes at the sight of it.
"What?" he demanded.
The smile disappeared. Thrawn regarded him with a sober expression on his face. "Our current shelter and the items in it are all hand-made or, as you previously mentioned, cobbled together from scrap," he said. "There is no sign of any type of vehicle, neither land nor space, in the vicinity. Our clothing is admittedly mass-produced, but even this does not necessarily translate to an advanced society, especially since we have already incorporated several animal-skin or fur items into our wardrobes. Do our current circumstances indicate we were both raised on primitive planets?"
Ezra was already impatiently gesturing for Thrawn to get on with it before he was even halfway through. "Okay, okay," he said. "So that wasn't your home planet? That's what you're saying?"
"You must know it was not," Thrawn chided, hands clasped behind his back. "If only instinctively. You already commented on my response to the sight of wildflowers."
Karabast. Ezra clapped a hand to his forehead, so thoroughly exasperated with himself that he didn't know what to say. That memory within a memory — the one about some guy who went to some place called Copero — had been all about the fact that Thrawn had grown up somewhere without flowers, hadn't it? So obviously his homeworld couldn't be the same primitive place where he'd lived in a hut and watched the flowers come in.
"So what was that place, then?" Ezra asked, feeling a headache coming on.
Thrawn's shoulders twitched in an almost unnoticeable shrug. "You'll figure it out in time," he said dryly. "Don't be discouraged, Commander Bridger. Today's memories were deliberately layered to deceive you."
Layered? Ezra thought.
"And just what the hell does that mean?" he asked.
Thrawn glanced up at the grey clouds overhead. "We should—"
"What do you mean, layered?" Ezra demanded. "You're telling me you can control what I see when I connect to your mind?"
Thrawn favored him with the blankest look Ezra had seen so far today.
"You are a novice," he said with another minute shrug; Ezra wondered if Thrawn's weird red eyes could see the spike of anger those words produced in him. "And as I've mentioned previously, I've had some experience with Jedi. Today's memories were from a time when I spoke very little Basic and thought primarily in my native language; for you, I simply translated them into Basic and arranged them at the forefront of my mind."
"You laid a trap for me so I couldn't get to your real memories!" said Ezra, aghast.
"No," said Thrawn, his eyes flickering narrower for half a second. "I presented you with real memories of an insubstantial nature to distract you from more revealing but equally real memories. Your progress is not unimpressive, Commander. In fact, in one instance you broke through the memory I had prepared for you, extracting a similar one from the same period."
The wildflower memory — but that hadn't been deliberate on Ezra's end. In fact, he suspected it had more to do with Thrawn than with any of his own efforts. He'd been no better than a passive observer, letting the unfamiliar sights and sounds overwhelm him, floating aimlessly from one scene to the next; if Thrawn's innocuous memory of wildflowers had somehow overlapped with a more personal one, it was probably nothing more sinister or deliberate than the natural way one thought tends to spark another. Ezra couldn't even claim credit for that.
And that memory, the one he'd allegedly broken through — had it really been genuine? Entirely genuine? He was certain there had been blurry vision in the memory — maybe even tears — but if so, they'd been completely disconnected from any type of emotion, like they'd welled up out of nowhere, caused by nothing. Could it be a fake? One memory spliced with another — a scene of Thrawn sitting on the grass, observing the wildflowers, seamlessly melded with another memory of wind or smoke bringing water to his eyes?
Ezra scowled down at his feet, unable to make heads or tails of it. His frustration threatened to bubble over, kept in check only by the enormous sobriety of the entire situation — the shipwreck of the ISD Chimaera and the bombing of Lothal, the deaths of all those crewmembers, the forty-eight days he'd spent stranded with one of the people he hated most in the world now relegated to his only companion.
Thrawn seemed to sense everything boiling up inside of Ezra, though he didn't acknowledge it; he backed away physically as well as emotionally, turning the conversation to lighter ground.
"We should return to the shelter," he said, glancing once more at the sky. "It's going to storm."
