At midday, Ezra stripped down to his underwear before collapsing into bed; he was so tired he felt feverish, his skin burning against the woven mattress. He'd picked his way through a sparse meal hours earlier, unable to eat much; there was a hard pit inside his stomach that wouldn't seem to go away.

He could feel the sun baking through the shelter; he could hear Thrawn not far off in the water, just beginning to pound stakes into the riverbed. His skin was so hot that he couldn't even rest a hand over his eyes to block out the light.

I'll never fall asleep like this, Ezra thought, so tired that just thinking about it almost made him cry.

Eight hours later, he woke up.

The sun was still bright, but much cooler now, the temperature closer to what he'd expect from spring in Lothal. Still groggy, with a mouth that felt like hot sand, Ezra sat up in bed and reached for his shirt with his eyes half-closed. He pulled it over his head, shrugged on his jacket, tugged on his pants and boots.

The sound of Thrawn building the funnel had completely disappeared — probably hours ago, Ezra thought, but he'd been too out of it to notice until now. He made his way out of the shelter, massaging a crick out of his neck, and glanced around the campsite.

He could see a few small, wooden rectangles poking above the surface of the river — the stakes Thrawn had secured against the river bed. And when he stretched out with the Force, he could feel three fish swimming in the corral at the end of the funnel.

It wasn't difficult to find Thrawn, either — he was sitting on a log by the fire with his head down and a long, thin stick in his hands, tracing some sort of pattern into a flattened patch of ashes at his feet. When Ezra started walking toward him, Thrawn casually shifted and swept his bare foot over the ashes, eradicating every trace of whatever he'd been drawing or writing in a move that looked completely accidental. He continued idly dragging the stick over the ground as if nothing had happened; by the time Ezra was close enough to see, the pattern in the ashes vaguely resembled a starmap of the Mid Rim, with popular shipping routes arcing from planet to planet.

"Planning a supply run," Thrawn muttered, resting his chin on his hand. It took Ezra a second to realize this was a joke — and when he did realize it, he was so thrown off balance by the idea of Thrawn making a joke that he didn't even attempt to laugh.

"What were you drawing before?" he asked instead. Thrawn leaned forward to toss the stick into the grass nearby, then busied himself rolling his sleeves up to his elbows.

"Have you rested sufficiently for a training session?" he asked Ezra.

"I asked you first," said Ezra.

"Ah," said Thrawn dryly. "Youngling rules."

It was way too soon after waking up for Ezra to deal with this. "It's more like the basic rules of polite conversation," he said, walking away from Thrawn to raid their store of drinking water. After a solid minute of chugging all the delicious, life-giving water in his canteen, he wiped his mouth and saw Thrawn staring at him, one eyebrow raised.

"You appear sufficiently rested to me," he said. "Shall we begin?"

Ezra considered holding his ground out of sheer stubbornness, then decided he really didn't care what Thrawn was drawing. "Let me wake up first," he said dismissively. Thrawn didn't respond, simply watching Ezra as he turned around and surveyed the river. "You got the funnel finished," Ezra said, hoping this wasn't still a sensitive topic.

"Yes," Thrawn said.

"There's some fish in there, even," Ezra said, looking at Thrawn over his shoulder. He made a vaguely Force-y gesture with his hand and Thrawn's eyelids seemed to flicker slightly in response. "I can sense them."

"Ah," said Thrawn in the same flat tone as before. Clearly, Ezra reflected, the funnel was still a sensitive subject. He re-filled his canteen and took another long swig of water, tentatively reaching out to the Force and lingering over each of the fish in the corral. It was sort of like a warm-up exercise — like stretching his legs or doing some jumping-jacks in preparation for a long run. Without really noticing what he was doing, Ezra pumped his arms across his chest, limbering up his biceps the same way he did before lightsaber training.

"Are you stalling?" asked Thrawn politely. "Or does physical exercise somehow stimulate your use of the Force?"

Ezra dropped his arms, pretending he hadn't been stretching. He circled back to the fire reluctantly, taking his time. When he finally sat down on the opposite side of the fire, Thrawn simply stared at him, his expression unreadable, and said nothing.

"You said a few days ago that you wanted me to learn mind-reading because we're allies now," Ezra said, meeting Thrawn's unsettling red eyes. He was glaring at Thrawn, already on the defensive, steeling himself for an argument of some type — though he could never predict just how Thrawn would react to anything he said. If anything, the past forty-eight days had taught him it was next to impossible to provoke Thrawn into anger ... but he had done it at least once, and recently, so he figured it was wise to be wary.

"Yes," said Thrawn evenly.

"Well, that sort of implies we're allies against something," Ezra said. "Right? Like we're fighting against somebody, not like we're just … you know, surviving. The way we have been."

Thrawn's eyebrow twitched, but he didn't say anything. He only inclined his head. In a flash, all of Ezra's doubts from the sleepless night before crowded into his mind, moving too quickly for him to organize them into a single coherent thought. He pushed them aside, took a deep breath, plowed on.

"The enemy we're fighting against, it's the Grysks, isn't it?" Ezra said, letting his breath out in a long sigh as he spoke. "Or at least, that's who you want to fight. That's who you think we're fighting. Right?"

"I do not believe we are fighting anyone," said Thrawn calmly. "But your assessment is partially correct."

Ezra waited for him to explain. When he didn't, Ezra made an impatient gesture with his hands.

"I believe I am fighting the Grysks," Thrawn clarified. "I believe you are a potential ally in that fight."

Or a potential weapon, Ezra thought. He kept this speculation to himself for now; Thrawn was watching him carefully, scrutinizing every minute twitch of Ezra's face.

"Only you're not fighting anybody here, are you?" Ezra asked, waving his hand at the forest around him. "So what are you gonna do? You think they're gonna come here so we can fight them? Why would they do that? Are they like, really into camping on primitive worlds nobody's ever heard of?"

"Nobody in the Empire has ever heard of," said Thrawn delicately.

Ezra blinked, then felt a surge of irritation swell in him; Embrace it, he heard Kanan's voice say in the back of his mind. Then let it go. He took a deep breath in through his nose and felt the flicker of anger dissipate, turning cool.

"You've heard of this planet before?" he asked, as calmly as he could. He was caught off-guard by the look of mild surprise on Thrawn's face.

"Not at all," said Thrawn. "However, it is entirely possible there are other civilized planets in this system; perhaps some are even capable of space travel. Certainly the trace levels of pollution in the atmosphere would suggest high rates of traffic at some point in the past. This planet likely has a name and history of which we are almost entirely unaware."

Almost? Ezra thought. He squinted at Thrawn from across the fire and just barely stopped himself from wrestling the answers from Thrawn's mind.

"Are you telling me you've seen signs of civilization here?" he asked, his voice low and (he thought) remarkably calm. Thrawn crossed his legs and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked disinterested and distracted, like his thoughts were elsewhere.

"Read my mind," he said, brushing dust off his trouser leg. "Perhaps you'll find out."

The sight of a planet in the distance nearly makes his heart stop, but as the Jedi's strange beasts draw the Chimaera down through the atmosphere, their pace is steady and controlled. He begins to relax tentatively, only realizing he's done so when the tentacles wrapped firmly around his chest seem looser, when his breath comes somewhat easier.

It's a long moment of respite. For forty-six minutes, their descent is controlled, almost sedate. The planet grows beneath them until suddenly it's all he can see, and he can make out frozen rivers and wide, snow-covered plains — former farmlands, he suspects at once — and long, thick swaths of barren trees. The Imperial failure at Lothal, he realizes, is without a doubt a setback, but not an inescapable one. The purrgils show every intention of setting the Chimaera down gently on the planet's surface, unscathed; their vector will remain in the ship's computers should they desire to return to the Empire, and if they do not, they have been given the perfect reason to join the growing coalition of Unknown Regions and Wild Space planets in opposition to the Grysks.

The Jedi will not be a problem, Thrawn realizes; he will be the opposite of a problem. With enough time and training, he could become the coalition's greatest asset to date. Clearly, Bridger has not thought this through; perhaps he made this plan and implemented it without fully analyzing the possibilities, because it is clear from his words, his facial expressions, his unconscious gestures that he expected to die today, and is only now realizing he must live — and live with not just one enemy, but with 46,786 of them.

Using the minute amount of extra space given to him by the purrgils when he stopped fighting, Thrawn reaches up, wraps his fingers delicately around the tentacle encircling his chest. He leans forward, closer to the broken viewport, and notes that the shimmering barrier created by the Force has disappeared; perhaps careless of the Jedi, perhaps simply a symptom of exhaustion, perhaps a sign of surprising logic and rudimentary tactical sense. The barrier is not strictly needed now that they've entered the planet's atmosphere, and if Bridger is thinking of the coming fight — like Thrawn has been — he will look for any possible method to save his strength.

They can do this, Thrawn thinks, breathing easily. He and the crew versus Bridger if need be. And then, once they've had time to bring him around, it will be his crew, Bridger, and himself against the Grysks — this so-called defeat may prove to be an unprecedented strategic boon.

Then everything changes.

He notices the shift before Bridger does; the subtle tremble of the deck beneath his feet, the reflexive tensing of the beasts' tentacles around him, leaving him gasping for breath. He understands immediately, instinctively, and feels like his heart has been ripped from his chest, fear and dismay flickering through his mind even as he examines the situation for solutions: the purrgils have lost control.

There is no time to process this and make a tactical decision; there's nothing he can rely on but his instincts. He breaks free from the tentacles in a flurry of violence, a burst of sudden energy that takes the purrgils off-guard; they loosen their grip, letting him go perhaps mostly from surprise before responding in kind, their tentacles shooting out for him again. They've got his left arm and he has half-turned from the viewport when his feet leave the floor — the purrgils regain their grasp on him, the Jedi has his hand outstretched, teeth clenched in concentration — and Thrawn barks out, They've lost control — before the grip on his chest tightens, bruising his ribs, stealing his breath and strangling his voice all at once.

For a moment, time stands still. He is suspended off the floor, his fingers scrabbling for a better grip on the purrgil's cold, dry skin, his voice hoarse and choking. He feels the Chimaera tilting all around him, sees purrgils breaking free from the ship slowly, with a near-human lowing that sounds like a wail. He watches the forest speed by below them at the wrong angle, too fast — sees stone ruins overgrown with vines and trees — hears Bridger lose his balance, thrown into the crew pits and then slammed against the starboard wall.

The purrgil loses its grip on the ship, but not its grip on Thrawn. He lurches upward in its grasp, his skull crashing into the ceiling as he's pulled outside, leaving a slim cut across his hairline. His vision darkens dangerously, then comes back in a blur. By the time the purrgil eases away from the ship, breaking free to save itself from an imminent crash, Thrawn has one arm free again and he claws at the frame of the broken viewport, shards of durasteel sliding into his skin, nails ripped from his fingers as he scrabbles for traction. His arm wrenches; blood sears into his eyes, clings to his lashes as he blinks it away; he reaches for the ship and finds it just out of reach, and now he's not on the ship at all — he's clutched in the purrgil's grasp, floating free above the planet's surface.

The Jedi is still on the bridge, he thinks, heart leaping. It isn't too late to mitigate casualties. Bridger is an experienced pilot, a skilled pilot, a Force-sensitive — he has time, he can gain control, he can fly the Chimaera to safety — he can save the crew, he can land the ship without casualty, he can fly away and leave Thrawn here and avoid even the possibility of casualties if he wants to, he can—

The Chimaera angles downward, arrowing toward the white earth. The hangar doors slide open and then snap close again, gravity trapping a TIE Defender between two unforgiving slabs of durasteel, breaking off the wings as it tries to escape. From the broken viewport, Ezra Bridger emerges, blood streaked across his forehead, confusion and panic evident in his eyes. Why isn't he at the control station? Why is he clinging to the frame? From a distance, Thrawn can see every expression on the Jedi's face. Ezra sees the ground lurching up toward him and his gaze flickers up to the last fleeing purrgil, the one fifteen, maybe twenty meters above him in the air.

No, Thrawn thinks, his grip on the purrgil tightening. No —

But Ezra doesn't attempt to land the ship. He jumps.

The purrgil lets go of him the moment it slams into the ground, seconds before he slams into the ground himself. He ducks his head and covers it with his arms, taking the impact at a roll. Snow stabs at the exposed skin on his hands and face; the impact jars his bones, smashes his brain against his skull, clashes his teeth as he skids across the scrim of snow and ice away from the purrgil.

When the ship crashes — maybe before he hits the ground, maybe after — it seems to shatter every bone in his body without even touching him. He blacks out, wakes up moments later on his side with his back against a gnarled and splintered tree, meters away from where he first struck the ground. The cold seeps up into him through his right side, numbing and stinging all at once, his hands locking up in the snow. They're raw, bleeding from his desperate scrabble for purchase on the bridge, from scraping along in the snow as he struck ground. A dull roar fills his ears; he sees everything through a greying haze until he blinks — blinks several times — and finally takes in everything before him.

The purrgil which carried him to safety shakes itself off, lurching from one heaving flank to the other in a struggle for balance. A tree crashes down not far from Thrawn, forcing him to half-roll, half-crawl away to avoid being crushed. He staggers to his feet in the same movement, taking in the shattered clearing in the woods, not processing much of what he sees.

The Jedi is the first thing Thrawn notices. He lies not far away, his body limp, his eyes closed, chest moving up and down in the even breaths of an unconscious man. Purrgils circle overhead, their mouths opening, a deep rumble in Thrawn's veins telling him without a doubt that they are calling to each other, even though he can't hear it. What he does hear — what reaches him through the roaring deafness in his ears — is something muted but intimately familiar, something he's heard at least once a month, every month, during drills for the past six years.

It's the standard hull breach alarm installed on every Imperial vessel.

And a twisted metal heap in the center of it all, unrecognizable as his ship, is burning.

He takes a step forward, legs numb, and feels his ankle give way with an unnatural, grinding roll. He catches himself with his palms flat deep in the snow and stumbles to his feet again, ignoring the pain as it shoots up through his leg and into his spine. This time, when he steps forward, he doesn't fall. He grits his teeth until he stops feeling the pain at all.

He walks, then runs, then finds what balance he can and sprints unsteadily to the Chimaera, snow spraying out all around him, and all he can hear is the dull roar of blood in his ears and the hull breach alarm and the shuddering noise of his own breathing.

He leaps over debris and catapults himself to the nearest part of the Chimaera, running so fast he can't stop himself in time. He can feel himself frowning, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and the expression doesn't break even as he slams into the durasteel hull. The starboard side of the ship lies crumpled and half-buried in a deep rift in the earth, with the bridge three hundred meters off the ground. Small explosions rock the ship from the far side, making the plates beneath his hands jump and settle in something almost like a pattern. He launches himself up the heated surface of the ship, scrabbling for hand-holds on the exterior before he slams to one knee at the collapsed mouth of the bridge, his palm landing flat on the searing durasteel. Where an open window gave way to the bridge of his ship just moments before, there is now only a solid wall.

His hands run frantically over every crack in the crumpled surface, fingers digging in anywhere they can, searching for purchase. Breath coming fast and ragged, he pushes to his feet again, starting to run before he's even fully standing. It's useless here; he has to find another access point. He slides down to the other side of the bridge, intense heat lashing off the Chimaera's hull, flames shooting out to lick at his skin.

He finds the starboard side of the Chimaera utterly crushed, completely caved in (father's face blackened and destroyed, mother's bloating out from the string around her neck) and he recognizes immediately that anyone trapped on this side of the ship is not likely to have survived impact. He turns on his heel as soon as he sees this, wasting no time — on the other side, on the port side, the damage is less severe, there may yet be functional hatches he can work his way into, might be weak spots in the structure he can hack at — could hack at, could maybe even break right through if his blaster hadn't been wrested out of his hand by the Force.

He scrabbles along the port side with his palms flat on the burning metal, searching for an opening, for any way in. Behind him, the Jedi still lies on the forest floor, asleep.

The Jedi.

He pushes himself back from the Chimaera in a frantic, graceless stumble, turns at once and races over the mess of shattered durasteel and falling trees. He staggers and falls once, his hands coming down on the outstretched tentacle of a purrgil crushed beneath the ship; heart cracking in his chest, hands tingling with blood and heat, he pushes himself back up again. It feels like he flies over the uneven banks of snow before coming back down at Bridger's side.

Taking his pulse. Checking the depth and severity of the cut on his forehead — not serious. Prying his eyelids open, slapping him urgently, repeatedly on the cheek.

The eyes come into focus; the Jedi lifts his head, looking not at Thrawn but past him at the sky, the purrgils circling overhead like vultures.

The ship, Thrawn says urgently, his hands curling into fists, grasping Ezra's collar tight. The Jedi looks at him, dazed and concussed, not comprehending. Desperately, Thrawn pulls him up into a sitting position, tangling his fingers in the Jedi's hair, forcing him to keep his head up and look.

The ship is burning, Thrawn says. They're trapped inside.

Still, the Jedi only stares. If Thrawn shakes him, he knows, it will only make the concussion worse — the Jedi will turn pale, perhaps lose consciousness again, perhaps suffer permanent damage. He can't afford the time it will take to revive him, can't risk the potential consequences. Better to be careful with him, to make him understand rather than attempt to shake the confusion away.

Using his grip on the Jedi's hair, he turns his head, forces Bridger to look him in the eyes. He sees horror, confusion there. Disbelief.

With his free hand, Thrawn covers the wound on the Jedi's forehead, stems the meager blood flow with his palm. His thumb presses over Ezra's left eye, glued shut by drying blood, and wipes the obstruction away — clears his vision so he can see where he is. What he's done.

They're burning, he says, voice low. The ship's entrances have all collapsed. There are obstacles everywhere and I can't lift them alone.

The eyes looking back at him are wide and blank, the lashes flaked with dried blood.

Help them, Thrawn says, his jaw clenched, his hands shaking. Use the Force.

He needs Ezra to understand. He needs him to wake up, to help, to lift the obstacles out of the way the same way he barricaded the bridge to keep the oxygen from leaking out, the same way he snatched Thrawn's blaster out of his hand and pushed him into the purrgil's grasp. He needs him to understand and help now, before it's too late.

But Ezra's gaze shifts toward the Chimaera and the set of his face turns tired and slack, his eyes hooded, his consciousness already fading away.

They're dead, he says simply, emotionlessly. There's no one there.

The days last longer here. It is still light out when he leaves their makeshift shelter the next day; the Jedi has opened his eyes and tried to speak a handful of times since the crash, but has never really regained lucidity. He burns with a fever, his eyes glazed on the few occasions he opens them, but he does not appear to have any infected wounds.

In any case, it is safe to leave him alone for now. Thrawn walks the woods silently, moving over thin layers of snow. His uniform — stained by blood, smoke, and dried earth from when the heat of impact-triggered explosives inside the Chimaera turned the cold earth around it into mud — offers him little protection from the cold, but he scarcely feels it. The closer he gets to the wreck, the hotter his blood becomes, the more it stings beneath his skin.

In the clearing, the fire is out and the purrgils — all of them except the one crushed beneath his ship — are gone. Thrawn stands frozen on the edge of the forest for a moment, his feet glued to the ground, his lips a thin line.

Everyone inside his ship is dead, killed on impact or in the resulting burst of flames, the explosions which rocked the ship from stern to bow. He knows this much from Commander Bridger — or rather, Bridger knows it, and he expects Thrawn to believe him. Intellectually, perhaps, Thrawn does; he has seen the Jedi ability to sense life a handful of times before, knows that it's possible Bridger is correct just as it's possible he's wrong. He knows, too, that in all his years of service he's never seen anyone survive a crash like that, or live through the explosions after.

He thinks of himself, not much older than Bridger, recovering from near-strangulation at a Jedi's hands just in time to watch explosives tear into a ship full of almost fifty thousand civilians. He thinks of Thrass watching him leave with Ar'alani, neither of them really saying goodbye. His body goes numb, the oth'ola endzali cold against his chest.

With difficulty, he forces himself to move.

The lever he built yesterday in-between building the shelter and tending to Bridger's wounds is crude but functional, and sits not far from the wreckage, outside the scope of flames that have now died away — in a sense, they're both lucky the purrgils consumed as much fuel as they did. If they hadn't, the Chimaera would be burning still.

Thrawn lifts the lever with a grimace, baring his teeth in both pain and effort — his ribs are still tender, his muscles still screaming from the impact of his body against the ground and his long, sleepless night and day afterward.

He half-carries, half-drags the lever across the wet ground, his boots squelching in the mud. Snow falls into his hair, melts on the exposed skin of his hands. On the tilted upper side of the Star Destroyer, the rudimentary beginnings of an opening await him, a remnant of his work last night when the fire began to die. The hangar doors in the center of the ship are damaged, crumpled by the blast, but he's managed to pry them apart, and today he sets to work immediately, widening the opening until he can squeeze through and bring the lever with him.

He slides a few inches down through the hangar at an angle, everything around him tilted to the side — it's too cramped to move freely. Unrecognizable debris fills the hangar, creating a mass of melted walls everywhere Thrawn looks. What look like unsecured equipment and crashed fighters lie everywhere, barely discernible from the rubble, forming a mess that can practically be called untraversable. The landing barge is strewn with smoke-stained pieces which might belong to AT-ATs; flight deck control has been pulverized by the weight of a TIE boarding craft crushing it.

The armored compartments of the TIE bombers show significant fire damage, but are still sealed; the bombs must have been set off in the crash. Thrawn uses the lever to dislodge whatever he can, hurling it back to the narrow entrance through which he came, but he makes it only three meters into the hangar before he is forced to abandon the lever entirely. He leaves it where it is, arms shaking from effort already as he hauls himself over debris and slides through tight spaces on his back. He feels sharp edges catching at his skin, ripping his uniform as he crawls through the rubble.

The wreckage of a TIE fighter blocks his path, barely identifiable from fire damage. The solar array support frame has crumpled, its energy collectors twisted into an impenetrable wall. Thrawn crawls out of the tunnel of debris behind him and finds himself pressed tight against the support frame, his arm pinned to a dull collection coil, his left leg trapped in a crack between the cockpit access hatch and the arm of the fighter. Simultaneously, the same leg supports all his weight, leaving him momentarily trapped, unable to move.

He eyes the coils and the heat exchange matrix not far from his eyes, notes their location coolly; they might be salvageable — though he doubts it, knows that even his repair skills aren't that good, especially without a lab to work from — but if they are, they could be useful in heating the winter shelter or in building a spacecraft of sorts from scratch. But there is nothing he can do to collect them right now; he looks back the way he came, examining every detail of the debris, every collapsed wing and disconnected, fire-damaged engine. He has to crane his neck at an uncomfortable angle to avoid a sharp edge of metal scrap jutting toward his head; in doing so, he feels his shoulder seize up in protest, a crippling pain electrifying his nerves for a moment, forcing him to hold still.

Until it fades, he lets his gaze wander, looking for signs of life. The pain becomes a blessing in disguise soon enough; it has just started to ease when his eyes track over a broken radiator panel wing and land on something flesh-toned, something that wasn't manufactured in a lab.

A human hand sticking out beneath the wreckage.

His heart stops, then leaps, beating painfully in his chest. The injured crewmember lies not far from Thrawn, all distinguishing features lost in the debris, crushed beneath a thousand pounds of crumpled durasteel. Only the hand remains visible, the fingers limp, the skin bruised deep purple from trauma.

It takes Thrawn a moment to speak; his breath doesn't come in the way it should, leaving him winded even though he's standing still.

Don't struggle, he forces himself to say, and he's glad to hear the crisp, calm quality of his own voice. It betrays no anxiety, no dread. I see you. I'm coming for you.

Using his pinned arm as leverage, Thrawn climbs up and out of the narrow trap he's found himself in, then forces himself through a slim space between a disconnected docking ring and what looks to be a damaged droid hold. Jagged metal slices at his palm, leaving a searing cut from the base of his little finger to the opposite edge of his wrist. He lands without much room to breathe, propped up on trembling arms mere centimeters from the trapped crewmember, dripping blood on the unstable wreckage beneath him.

I'm here, he says, more than a little breathless now. He takes the hand, warm and limp, in his injured one, closing his fingers over the discolored fingers of a crewmember he can't identify. The opening in the durasteel is just wide enough for Thrawn to slide his right hand inside — he squirms down closer to the crewmember, his head tucked painfully against his shoulder so he can reach farther inside. He can't breathe, not in this position, so he sucks in one deep breath and holds it as he feels his way to the crewmember's sleeve and clenches his fingers around it reflexively, holding on tight. When he pulls, the crewmember's arm doesn't budge.

He moves back, recognizing a type of resistance he can't fight from this angle, and feels blindly over the durasteel instead. He learns by touch the extent of damage to the structure, the harsh angles bearing down on his crewmember's body. Blood from the wound on his palm smears against the crewmember's bruised knuckles, and he shifts his stance to reach deeper into the crevice, but he doesn't let go.

He finds the crewmember's sleeve again, notes the stiff, dry quality of the cloth — bloodstains — feels the bones shifting unnaturally beneath the crewmember's skin. It feels as though the arm is filled with beads or broken glass, so intense is the damage. The arm will have to be amputated, Thrawn knows, but if he can just locate some bacta — and even if he can't, amputation is a survivable operation—

But then his fingers close on an open wound, the exposed muscle soft and wet. There is no body trapped beneath the durasteel; there's only this arm, ripped off at the elbow; only this hand clutched tightly in his own, kept warm by the lingering heat of last night's explosions.

For a long moment, he stays there, his forehead resting against the durasteel, the unknown crewmember's bruised hand clasped in his own.

He doesn't let go.

By the time Bridger's fever breaks, there is a pile of debris both large and small lying at the foot of the Chimaera's wreck in a direct downward slide from the hangar doors. Anything Thrawn can lift, anything he can force through the propped-open doors — the shattered remnants of spacecraft, destroyed circuits and panels from maintenance droids and ships — it all lies in a heap now, forming an unstable, haphazard staircase to the hangar doors.

He finds one solar panel with an uneven black layer of gunk plastered to the side; it sticks to Thrawn's fingers when he touches it. He sees human hair embedded in it, slivers of bone, and realizes this is the melted muscle, blood, and gristle of a human being. Of one of his subordinates, one of his colleagues.

He finds a partial human jaw severed from the rest of the head, red-stained teeth attached loosely to the bone; from the auburn tint of hair on the jaw, from the pale skin, he suspects this is Stormtrooper Commander Durand. The rest of the remains he finds are largely unidentifiable; in the entire hangar, he finds only one body intact, and it takes him hours to extricate it from the wreckage and lay it in the snow a hundred meters away, in the unscarred part of the forest.

He lays down next to it, exhaustion pulling him onto his back in the snow. The cold numbs and soothes him, sinking deep into his skin. Above him, white flakes swirl in a gentle wind. Beside him, the ruined face of Hangar Technician Kydo is exposed to the winter sun.

The skull is crushed, the head intact but deformed. The uniform has been burnt, but Thrawn knows who it is without question; he doesn't need a code cylinder to identify any member of his crew. He sits up with a sigh, snow and sweat both dampening his hair, and leans over Kydo's body.

He tilts Kydo's head to the north without thinking about it, his fingers gentle on the ruined jaw, then grimaces in chagrin — but he doesn't tilt the head back down. He leaves it where it is, facing the stars.

Facing the part of the forest where he saw the ruins.

The part where the purrgils lost control.

Slowly, heart thudding in his ears, Thrawn turns and faces north, too.