The shelter did not blow apart. The trees did not flatten themselves like they would under hurricane winds. The ground didn't shake; Ezra's hair didn't stand on end; the Force didn't lash out from him in a killing blow.

In fact, nothing happened at all. Everything he'd felt for the past fifty-eight days burned through his blood and set his nerves singing — and then it cooled.

Then it faded.

Then it washed away.

And just like before, he felt Thrawn's mind opening to him, the passageway between them free and clear. Eyes open, Ezra could see Thrawn sitting up and leaning toward him, wariness and curiosity mingling on his face. There was no pain in his face, and even more importantly, no pain inside his mind, where he could feasibly hide it from Ezra. He caught Ezra's gaze and his eyes widened by a fraction as he realized — Ezra could see him realizing it — that Ezra wasn't just looking at him, Ezra was watching him back, observing instead of drifting away.

You've never—

"You've never—"

—been able—

"—able to keep—"

—to keep your eyes—

"—eyes open before," Thrawn said. Ezra leaned back, overwhelmed for just a minute by the sensation of hearing Thrawn's thoughts moments before he heard them again as words. He shook his head, clearing it as best he could.

"Just think," he told Thrawn aloud, his own voice sounding odd to his ears. "Don't talk. I can hear you fine."

He felt a swirling of doubt and misgivings before Thrawn gave in. He had questions — tons of them. Ezra could hear them bubbling up, overlapping each other so thoroughly that they were indecipherable until Thrawn chose one to ask at a time. Ezra didn't give him the chance to do that.

Did you know about this planet before we crashed? he asked.

Thrawn's thoughts swirled, fracturing apart and coming back together again. Physically, his face was expressionless, his eyes locked on Ezra's.

I was searching for planets such as this, he said, but I was unaware of this one. I did not have the vector keyed into the Chimaera's navcomputer, nor did I lead the purrgils here, either deliberately or accidentally.

Ezra sighed through his nose, not breaking eye contact. Every word of it was true; there wasn't a hint of duplicity anywhere in Thrawn's mind. He pushed his conclusions toward Thrawn, vaguely hoping he could communicate that way, and felt a ripple through Thrawn's mind as he processed Ezra's acceptance and responded with muted — but definitely there — relief.

Did you intend to use the ysalimiri against me as a weapon? Ezra asked next.

Yes, said Thrawn. Initially.

For a long moment, they stared at each other, red eyes blazing into blue. It was difficult to stare at Thrawn for so long — the glow of his eyes made Ezra's water. There was nothing but confidence in Thrawn's mind, confidence and not an ounce of uncertainty or nervousness that he would be caught out in a lie.

But he was lying.

You don't intend to use them against me now? Ezra asked.

No, said Thrawn readily.

Lying again. Ezra pursed his lips, unsure how he knew it but certain all the same; across from him, Thrawn raised an eyebrow.

If you don't intend to use them against me, said Ezra, why have you kept them a secret all this time?

You did not trust me, said Thrawn. If you learned of the ysalimiri earlier on in my research, you would have assumed I meant to use them against you, or that I crashed the ship here deliberately.

And Thrawn genuinely hadn't done that, but still, he was lying. Ezra tried not to frown, working to keep his face as blank as Thrawn's while he parsed the issue out.

You keep saying I didn't trust you, Ezra said finally, working at the problem from a different angle. And that's true. I didn't. But I do now, right? Or at least, I trust you more than I did, a lot more.

Thrawn simply watched him, not responding either physically or mentally.

But do you trust me? Ezra asked.

Thrawn's answers had come quickly and easily up to this point; now, seemingly out of nowhere, his brain seemed to stall. The thoughts moved slowly, frozen by Ezra's words. Maybe he was trying to think of a deflection, Ezra figured, but with Ezra connected so thoroughly to his mind, he couldn't do it out in the open (so to speak) like he normally would. But even as Ezra thought this, Thrawn's mind spun into hyperdrive again, this time reverting into Cheunh — no, the coded version of Cheunh he'd made up as a child — no, some other language, something called Meese Caulf—

Stop, Ezra said, and with the Force he reached into Thrawn's mind and stopped it from spinning. The words stayed foreign, untranslated, but at least they didn't keep ciphering into still other languages and codes.

So now he knew what it looked like when Thrawn was intentionally lying. It looked like a whirlwind, like a completely indecipherable storm of thoughts. But earlier, when he'd said he didn't intend to use the ysalimiri as a weapon against Ezra, his mind had been placid and calm.

So maybe he didn't even know he was lying. Ezra processed this without changing his expression, though he could tell right away Thrawn knew he'd caught onto something. Thrawn's eyes flicked away from Ezra, glancing at something deeper in the shelter — and if their minds weren't connected, Ezra would have never known what it was, not with Thrawn's lack of pupils. But with Thrawn's thoughts threaded so neatly through his own, he knew immediately that Thrawn was searching — instinctively, unconsciously — for the oth'ola endzali Ezra had stuffed in the scrap box.

And just like that, it all clicked into place for Ezra. He'd felt the same emotion from Thrawn before, buried deep in that pale blue nexus of his brain. Now it was so pervasive that it emanated from every individual thread of Thrawn's mind, rolling off of him in waves.

Fear.

And not fear of the Grysks this time; not some nebulous fear of failure, of a life of uselessness stranded here in the wilderness with no way to help as billions of people died. Not the residual childhood fear of watching Chiss attack Chiss in the narrow caverns of his home.

This was fear of the Jedi as a whole — fear of the Force and what it could do to him, fear for a little girl who'd been abused by an enlisted man, fear of the same girl slamming an entire ship of innocent Chiss into an asteroid field; of a crazed Jedi choking him through a video feed, leaving him helpless as the man beside him leaned forward and took advantage of his plight to press the button, to launch missiles at a flight full of civilians; of the Emperor's mind ripping through his own, driving him to his knees, holding him absolutely still without even the chance to fight back; of invisible hands pushing him away from the control board as his ship and all the men and women aboard it plummeted to the earth.

Fear of Ezra.

It hit Ezra like a sucker punch, everything becoming clear all at once. No, Thrawn didn't intend to use the ysalimiri against him — that much was true, at least on the surface. But in the back of his mind, there would always be contingency plans, always a part of him that banked on backup strategies. There were probably at least three methods he'd devised to defeat Ezra, to kill him if necessary, and those ysalimiri served as the world's best insurance against a Force-user, Dark Side or not.

But more importantly than this, Thrawn didn't want to use the ysalimiri. He'd seen Ezra as his ally not just since the crash of the Chimaera, but possibly since he'd first learned of Force-users on Lothal. Maybe he'd been more of an asset than an ally then, but the end result was the same. Picking through the web of thoughts and memories in Thrawn's mind, Ezra could see now just how long Thrawn had been searching for a way to cultivate an alliance, a way to secretly make contact with the Rebels — with Ezra and Kanan in particular, with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Maul, with a blond-haired farmboy Ezra had never even seen before — without the Emperor or Darth Vader finding out.

It was a thin rope to walk, Ezra thought. A thin rope balanced over a fifty-kilometer fall. The network of Force-users Thrawn once hoped to unite had never come to pass — perhaps for the best, if Thrawn's thoughts were anything to go by — but at least one alliance had been successfully achieved.

And now they were stranded together. Allies, yes. But powerless ones.

Ezra looked into Thrawn's eyes and saw his own determination staring back at him, knew that Thrawn had heard his thoughts as surely as Ezra had read his.

"Powerless, until now," Thrawn corrected him.

Ezra's anger and guilt and grief, thrumming at a low pulse deep within him, faded away. He looked out toward the forest, to the baby ysalimir nestled under a bush there, safe from the rain.

He turned back to Thrawn with a smile.