"You're going to bed?" Thrawn asked, voice neutral, as they stepped into camp.
Ezra froze, one foot hovering above the ground in mid-step. His mind recalibrated quickly, taking in what he considered the most important data. It was past dark now, and he was exhausted, and he'd been up all day — shouldn't he be going to bed?
He turned to Thrawn, frowning a question at him, and Thrawn gave a shrug in response. His shoulders barely moved, like they were too heavy at the moment for Thrawn to really budge them. He looked as tired as Ezra felt, but cocked his head toward the river and said, almost apologetically, "We need to do laundry."
After the day they'd had and the memories he'd seen, Ezra didn't know whether this statement made him want to laugh or cry. He made a weak sound mixing both and wiped the grit out of his eyes with a grubby hand.
"Right," he said. "You're right. You, uh, you want to do that now?"
They'd agreed early on that laundry was one of the chores they'd work together on as much as possible, with Thrawn doing the actual scrubbing — a mortifying situation, in Ezra's opinion, and one he secretly tried to avoid as much as possible — while Ezra used the Force to extract drops of water from the cleaned clothes. Drying them like this wasn't exactly fast — not like the sonic dryers Ezra had used growing up — but it was still more efficient than hanging them from the trees or laying them out on slabs of rock beneath the sun.
"If you are too tired…" Thrawn started.
Ezra sighed. It couldn't be avoided, he supposed; he'd put it off once the day before, and now they'd spent all day in the only clean clothes either of them had left, hiking through the woods, scavenging the Chimaera's wreck, and burying any bodies they came across.
"It'll be worth it to stay up late just to get this stink out of my clothes," Ezra conceded reluctantly, plucking at the grimy hem of his shirt. He flashed a quick, guilty look at Thrawn, hoping too late that Thrawn would assume he meant the stink of sweat, not the smell of decay.
But there was no readable expression on Thrawn's face. He stepped past Ezra without a word and disappeared into his shelter, no doubt gathering his orderly crate of patchwork clothes. Ezra did the same — though his weren't quite so orderly, and it took him a while to gather everything off the floor and throw it together into the box. He knew from experience that Thrawn's clothes would be neatly folded and sorted according to type and material, even though none of them were clean.
When he emerged from his shelter, Thrawn was already waiting for him at the edge of camp, facing the river. He started walking silently when Ezra caught up to him, both of them dragging their feet a little more than they normally would. Ezra took the ysalimir with him; even basic chores like this could be considered training if he had the ysalimir close at hand.
They found a spot where the bank was low but not too damp; there was no moonlight shining through the thick canopy of trees, but Ezra knew by now that Thrawn didn't really need it to see. He stretched out in the soft, pale grass, with the ysalimir rack nestled against his side, and stared up at the leaves waving lightly in the wind.
He could smell the sharp, antiseptic scent of their homemade soap as Thrawn unwrapped it; he heard the soft sound of the bar rustling against wet fabric in the river. It was a soothing, familiar sound, and it was just warm enough tonight for Ezra to feel completely relaxed where he lay, letting the tension leak out of his muscles after so many long hours of work. Ezra knew he wouldn't be useful until Thrawn was done; it could take an hour, maybe even more, for him to reach that point.
He stroked the ysalimir's fur and didn't even notice that his eyes had closed and he was falling asleep.
He wakes groggily after the attack; the animal's body is still draped over him, and perhaps that's why he hasn't frozen to death in the snow. Its fur has kept him warm even as its body turns cold with death. He eases it off of him, straining to un-pin his chest; with one harsh shove, the body rolls onto his legs, pinning those instead, but it's relatively easy to pull his legs up and shake the animal free.
Looking down at his clothes — it hurts massively to incline his head — he sees wet blood and shimmering sheets of pus coating his chest. He watches his hand move automatically, without his permission, to touch the mess. He tries to order it to stop; it doesn't. His fingers edge right into the blood and pus.
He must have a concussion, he reflects. He sits up slowly, washes the gore off his hand in the nearby snow. When it's clean, he touches the back of his head and feels more blood there, matted into his hair.
He struggles to find his balance, but not his sense of direction. He knows the way back. The animal is large — almost as big as he is — and the walk back to civilization is long and cold, but once he pulls this in on the sled, he knows he won't have any issues with the children at school. Not the ones in his grade, anyway. They'll all be scared of him — and Father will be irritated that he sneaked off in the night or ventured across the icebergs on his own, but Mother will be pleased that he's brought home such a bountiful source of food.
With the animal's body secured on the sled, he ties the harness straps across his chest, leans his full weight forward, and sets off across the ice and snow toward home. Mother will make him wash his own clothes for this, and probably everyone else's as well — his cousins, the elders — but it's worth it. The pus and blood—
—has interesting qualities, Thrawn notes, dipping his fingers in the greenish blood and holding it to his nose. He feels a slight acidic crawl where it touches his skin; it may be effective as an ingredient in pesticide. When he lowers his hand, Admiral Ar'alani is staring at him with a curl of her lip that indicates disgust.
What the hell are you doing? she asks him.
He unfolds his handkerchief and wipes the blood off his fingers, then examines the cloth for damage. The blood is acidic, he says, but not by nature. It smells of citrus.
She steps closer to the body; her eyes shift from one jagged wound to the next. So they were fed on citrus? she asks, her gaze shifting to the other murdered slaves. What does that matter?
It would matter a great deal, he says delicately. Few planets in this area grow citrus; we could perhaps track the Grysks' recent path based on the particular foods chosen for the slaves' diet.
Ar'alani's eyes light up.
But if they were simply fed on citrus, I wouldn't be able to smell it from their blood, Thrawn says, tapping his nose. I do not believe they were fed on citrus at all. You're familiar with ilia poisoning? It has a persuasive effect on victims; it's sometimes used in interrogations or brainwashing efforts in other militaries.
She looks at him. Her lips are set; her eyebrows are drawn low.
Ilia has a citric odor, Thrawn tells her. It is occasionally noticed in autopsy by scent alone.
So they were poisoned? Ar'alani asks. Then why did the Grysks use slugshooters on them at all?
It is not a fatal poison, Thrawn asks. Not in this species, that is. Perhaps it made them more docile; this would explain the lack of a struggle.
He indicated one or two areas across the room where, in similar scenes, they had seen signs of struggle. There were none here. Except where the slugshooters had damaged items, everything in the room was intact and upright. It appeared the slaves had allowed themselves to be corralled and shot without a fight.
So this is how they brainwash people, Ar'alani said, voice grim.
He has his doubts; he shifts his eyes to her but does not voice them. When she meets his gaze, she misreads his expression entirely.
Does it work on Chiss? she asks.
He hesitates, considers putting his real concerns into words. Instead, he answers her question. Yes. It works. It has been used before; on Rentor, it was a common drug.
She doesn't ask him whether it was the kind of drug people used willingly. She digests this, looks away, avoids his eyes.
Quietly, not wanting to upset her, he says, We need allies, Ziara. We need—
—Thrawn!
He's surprised to hear her call his name. He's prepared for exile already; he wears his uniform still, stripped of its insignia, but his hair is long (in case he's picked up sooner than expected in the Empire) and unruly. He doesn't want Ar'alani to see it; it's too late. She's hurrying toward him from down the hall.
Admiral, he says; his tone is neutral but he feels himself tensing. Something in her posture warns him, sets his adrenaline running, makes him uncomfortable. There is open emotion on her face — anger and distress. As she approaches, his hands are clasped behind his back and he shifts them awkwardly, clasping the strap of his shoulder bag instead. He doesn't know whether to prepare himself for a slap or an embrace.
Perhaps this is why she succeeds in slapping him.
Hard.
His head snaps to the side, his cheek stinging, blood rushing to the surface with a surge of heat that he's always disliked. He can tell from Ar'alani's posture that she isn't going to hit him again; he lifts his chin again and meets her eyes.
I suspect that will bruise, Ar'alani tells him archly.
Thrawn tries not to smile. Well, it's something to remember you by, he says.
Exile, she spits, not hearing him. Then his words register, her eyes narrow and her right arm twitches, the shoulder jerking up just one centimeter; she's resisting the urge to slap him again, he realizes, and quickly kills the smile on his lips.
Exile, he says.
A certain coldness grips his chest, like a scrim of ice freezing around his ribs. He tries not to show it. In Ar'alani's face, he sees the same coldness reflected back at him, but with an edge of anger that Thrawn simply doesn't feel.
I won't be gone forever, he promises her. You know this.
We need you here, Ar'alani says. Her voice is raw. We need you here, Thrawn, not playing at wilderness survival somewhere in human territory. We need you —
—He finds a spider crawling over his fingers when he wakes. It's small, its legs spindly, its body shaped differently from the cave spiders he saw as a child. He stands so smoothly, letting the animal hide blankets fall to the bed beneath him, that the spider doesn't seem to notice it's been moved. It skitters over his knuckles and has just made it to his wrist and he opens the window and tilts his arm outside, into the cool autumn air.
The spider reacts amiably, shifting its path to the stone walls of his hut without complaint. Outside, long stalks sway in the wind, each of them topped with a substance like cotton. He watches them, but his eyes are unfocused; he counts the time it takes for a stalk to sway from one end of its parabola to the other without thinking about it, just out of instinct.
Thrass would love it here, he thinks. The idleness, the beauty. It would remind of Copero, of everything he wished Copero would be after leaving the stark arctic landscape of Rentor. He'd adore it for a week, maybe two, and then he'd have to go back to the Syndicature or else he'd die of boredom.
Thrawn can relate. Outside his window, abandoned in the dying grass, is a little pile of figures and puzzles he's whittled out of wood. He glances down at them in chagrin, remembering the last time he made one — sitting on his bed cross-legged while it hailed, a pan between his knees to catch the carvings — and then leaned over when he was done, pushing the window open and tossing the figurine out to decay in the wind and rain.
There's no reason to make them. They serve no purpose; he could waste his time in better ways, theoretically — but he can't deny that it would still be wasted. There were no trees on Rentor, other than the stunted shrubs that grew in the Great Family gardens; there was no wood, either, except for that specifically shipped to Rentor from other planets. There wasn't enough of it to waste with creative pursuits.
He shouldn't be tossing them to the ground outside his window, he realizes, or letting them drop from his hand as he walks through the woods. With a sigh, he leans out through the frame, stretches his arms as far as he can to collect them. These carvings are art; they could be discovered someday after he leaves here, used against him.
That night, he builds a fire and tosses his carvings into the flames. As it burns, he takes out his blade and a dead, dry twig, and starts to scrape the bark from its length in order to whittle a flower. This will go in the fire, too, when it's done. Until then, he works assiduously, mindlessly. The blade slips, leaves a small abrasion—
—It's abrasive work, slow work that scrapes the skin off his knuckles one layer at a time, but it's necessary as well. It slows his mind almost like the oth'ola endzali does, but without the laser-focus that seems vital to him so often during the day. He learned as a child that he can only sleep if he ends the day like this — either collapsing into bed after battle or by soothing himself to sleep with an hour or more of mindless, automatic work.
It can be an hour of exercise; it can be an hour of cleaning; or it can be like this, an hour of menial chores with the night air cooling his skin and the river water turning his fingers numb. After sixty minutes he pauses, not quite done with the laundry, and tucks his hands beneath his shirt, against the warm skin of his abdomen, and waits for his sense of feeling to return.
He picks through the Jedi's clothes next, all of them ripe with the sharp scent of human sweat. He was overwhelmed the first time he stepped into a human training ground; he ducked out with his hands covering his nose before Vanto could stop him. It's hard to explain why they train indoors instead of outdoors, when their scent so thoroughly grinds into the materials around them.
Still, it doesn't take long to clean. He scrubs the dirt and grass stains out of Ezra's clothes; the skin on his knuckles is raw but not broken enough to bleed. It seems like his hands haven't fully healed from the crash of the Chimaera— he hasn't given them the chance. He can't stay still.
When he finishes the last of Ezra's garments, he drapes it atop the others — over the edge of the crates, so they don't drag in the grass — and turns. The Jedi is sprawled out on his back, chin tilted up, mouth gaping open. His chest moves evenly but shallowly in sleep. Beneath the tangled fringe of his hair, his eyes are closed.
Gently, Thrawn reaches out and shakes him. "Ezra—"
"—Ezra?"
Ezra woke with a start, knocking Thrawn's hand off him as he sat up. "What?"
Thrawn's eyes slid away from him, toward the sodden clothes draped on the crates nearby. "It's your turn."
Ezra's brain stuttered. He looked at the clothes, not comprehending. "My turn?"
"To dry them," said Thrawn patiently.
"But I washed them," said Ezra. He could hear the confusion in his voice; he could see it in Thrawn's face, too. Then, all at once, the pieces fit together, and Ezra realized that he'd been sleeping, that it was Thrawn who'd washed the clothes, that Ezra only thought he had because he'd been in Thrawn's mind at the time, by accident.
He leaned forward, scrubbing at his hands with a sigh as he processed it all. "Sorry," he said. "It's the mind-reading thing. I got confused."
Thrawn said nothing; through the Force, Ezra sensed an unnatural stillness that made him raise his head.
"What?" he asked, studying Thrawn. Thrawn shifted, uncrossing his legs, planting his palms firmly on the grass.
"I didn't feel you in my mind," he said. It sounded like he was making an effort to sound neutral.
"Oh," said Ezra. He felt like he was standing on uneven ground; Thrawn's tone was impossible to read. Was he angry, after everything they'd done today, that Ezra had read his mind by accident? Or was he glad the process was so natural for him now? Upset with himself because he couldn't sense Ezra's presence at the time?
Then suddenly Thrawn's eyes shifted down past Ezra, to something in the grass behind him. He turned, reaching out by instinct, and then saw what Thrawn was looking at.
The ysalimir.
The ysalimir sitting right next to Ezra.
The ysalimir that should have been blocking his ability to read Thrawn's mind entirely.
