He lays on his side, opening and closing his fist.
The half-collapsed carcass of the Chimaera settles and groans around him, its struts twisted and crushed from its reentry. It had been surprisingly slow, the whale fall that carried them from the depths of space to this planet's shallow oceans.
He is hidden somewhere in its ribs in a vent. The space is small, the size of the Ghost's cockpit if a bit colder. He's slept in worse places. He's slept in better ones too, but better not to think about them now. There is just enough heat from the dying reactor seeps through walls and walls of steel to warm his bones, and his bones hurt from the crash. His body is in one piece. He isn't sure what he was expecting when the purgills dragged him through hyperspace to this unknown planet, but he can still open and close his fist.
Thrawn is looking for him. He can sense the admiral's fury and humiliation somewhere in the bowels of the Chimaera where Ezra had lost him a few hours ago. A few hours to sleep and gather himself, and he'll deal with that when the sun comes up. If the sun comes up on this planet.
Ezra rolls onto his side and draws his knees up to fit under the torn emergency blanket he scavenged from some officer's bunk. The portable lamp puddles just enough for him to curl up entirely inside its glow. For not the first time or the last, he wishes for his lightsaber. He closes his fist.
He will have to scavenge in the morning, see what useful things he can salvage from the ship's remains. He got a good view of the planet as the Chimaera fell. It is all bright blue ocean and sandbars and lagoons with not a city in sight, and from what he's seen of the ship's carcass, there is enough here in this colossal wreck to sustain him for years. Maybe even decades if he's willing to improvise, and he is good at improvising.
His chest aches deep behind his sternum, well under the bruises from the jump and the crash, and it will ache long after the bruises heal. He opens his fist.
He misses them.
His hiding place grows warmer, and he wonders which system is decaying now.
"Ezra."
He sits bolt upright, fists raised.
There is a woman sitting a few feet away. She is blue, not in the way Thrawn is blue, but in the way a hologram is blue-translucent and wavery at the edges. She's seated, wearing a long robe and wrappings around her hands and forearms. A gem rests on her forehead and another on the bridge of her nose, and when she smiles, the Force settles around Ezra's shoulders. The air is warmer now, but the hair on his arms stands on end. He can see the scorched metal behind her, but the depth in her eyes tells Ezra he might fall through her and back into hyperspace if she touches him.
She smiles so kindly it pushes up the corners of her eyes. "Hello, Ezra."
He clenches his fists and tucks his chin. "Who are you?"
"You don't recognize me."
"Should I?"
She ponders for a moment then shakes her head. "No, you wouldn't. My name is Depa."
Depa. Kanaan's master. He lowers his fists from his chin to his chest, watches her warily. He's seen this trick before. "You were a Jedi."
"That's right."
He lowers one fist, not quite ready to concede. "You died."
"Yes. The day you were born."
That sounds about right. He can't be sure, but the whisper in his gut that has kept him alive tells him that he's safe. Ezra pushes the last of the emergency blanket off and puts his back to the wall. She's not between him and the exit-a crack in the wall just wide enough for him to wriggle through in a hurry-and if it's going to be him and Thrawn here for the foreseeable future, the chance to talk to anybody else sounds nice. Even if she's dead. He rests his fists on his knees. "So you're my grand...teacher?"
She chuckles and rests a knuckle against her lip to hide it. "Grandmaster, technically. But Depa is fine."
It occurs to him that maybe he is dead, and this is some kind of Force afterlife, but that doesn't seem right. Thrawn is here, for one, and his parents aren't. More importantly, he can still open and close his fist and feel the Force running like water through his fingers. He eyes the ghost of his grandmaster. "Okay. But if you're dead, how are you here?"
"I am here because you are here."
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to."
That isn't the answer he wants. He tries again. "Why are you here?"
Another smile crosses Depa's lips, but it's sad, and her grief is like a rise in the air pressure that makes the ache in his sternum worse.
"Because you are alone," she says.
Ezra's breath catches on the ache, and it hurts because her grief is for him. The ship gives a hollow moan as it settles into the sand on this unknown planet, and the truth settles on his shoulders. He is in the middle of nowhere with an imperial who wants him dead. No crew, no master, no way home. Just him.
He doesn't realize he's crying until he catches himself on his hands, his palms pressed against the cold steel floor, gloves dotted with tears. This isn't how he wanted to meet his grandmaster, but he finally stops crying, she is still there with her hands in her lap.
Ezra wipes at his eyes. "Sorry, I-"
Depa leans across the space, closer than he thought she was, and she lays her hand over his. Her fingers pass through his, and it feels like static electricity where they overlap, but it's something. The ache in his chest subsides. Her gaze is solemn and intent, and she curls her hand as if to hold his. "He will be proud of you.
His breathing hitches again, threatens to undo him, but there is determination in her eyes that steadies him.
"Go to sleep, Ezra Bridger. You will need all your strength to find your way home."
"Am I ever going to get home?"
"Go to sleep. I will watch over you until you wake."
He wants to hug her, but he never really learned to embrace ghosts. She removes her hand from his and sits back in a meditative pose he's seen Kanaan do a hundred times. He switches off the lamp, lays down, draws the blanket over himself. The only light is the soft blue glow pooling around Depa, the only sound his deliberate breathing. Again the Chimaera groans, quieter this time, more at ease. It will be there in the morning to be picked through for tools and comforts and confrontations, but tonight his grandmaster is watching over him.
Ezra holds the edge of the blanket close to his chest and closes his fist.
Notes:
A whale fall happens when the body of a dead whale sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and a new ecosystem full of connections and life springs up out of death. In this case, the Chimaera's literal death and Ezra's figurative one.
Also loosely inspired by Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Making a Fist".