Ezra grimaced heavily, ignoring the sweat on his brow.
"You need to focus - imagine a box," Kanan said. Ezra snorted his head in exasperation.
"A box? Oh yeah, 'cause that's gonna stop Maul." he muttered to himself. Ezra felt the aforementioned enter his mind, sending a shiver down his spine.
"He just entered, didn't he?" Kanan said pointedly. It wasn't a question but more of a statement. Kanan had gained the grim ability to sense when the zabrak entered his apprentice's mind, stopping everything when he did - which was almost always. Ezra rose, stopping when Kanan placed a hand on his shoulder. The youth glanced back at his master, forcing the frown of irritation off his features.
"We'll continue with this later; for now, use what you learned," Ezra nodded, the sarcastic remark that would've come years prior not bothering to show itself. Ezra lightly shook the hand off his shoulder, shooting Kanan a small, apologetic glance before exiting the quarters he now shared with his master. Kanan had done what he could, which considering the situation wasn't much. Maul was, overall, a pain in Ezra's lothalian neck; his remarks were always pointed and irritating, inflaming some dormant nerve that Ezra thought he'd conquered. His incident only days prior seemed to motivate the zabrak even further, as he entered and exited his mind more freely, and Ezra was certain the shivers it gave him pleased the former sith. Ezra heard a chuckle from Maul's end.
"Do you think I enjoy doing this, apprentice?" Ezra narrowed his eyes, choosing to ignore Maul for the moment. Another laugh from Maul came when he sensed that thought.
"You can't ignore me, apprentice. I'm inside your mind - you cannot avoid me." Ezra, again, chose to remain silent, as if that would stop the zabrak's remarks.
"Silence?" Ezra heard another sinister, evil laugh from Maul. "that will not stop me, apprentice." Ezra continued to walk down the corridors of the Ghost, immensely thankful that he'd encountered nobody - especially Sabine - as of yet. For that he was grateful, because the mandalorian had developed the habit of seeking him out over the past few days. Ezra would've assumed that having his mind under another's thumb would've discouraged her.
As with most things with Sabine, he was wrong.
Now she seemed to want to watch him constantly, and talk to him in his sparse Maul-free moments. When she did talk to him ( or more accurately when he allowed her to talk to him), it would be about anything; their last mission; the state of the rebellion; the last meal he'd eaten - anything trivial, basically.
Normally, Ezra would've encouraged, even sought this type of thing out; yet the situation at the moment was anything but normal.
"Yes, this is far from normal, isn't it?" Ezra blinked, then lightly dug his nails into his palms. Of course Maul would cut in like that: it was his mission to make Ezra's life a living hell.
"Not to make it hell, apprentice - merely to make you mine." Ezra snorted, his tongue speaking before his mind could stop it.
"So you're going for the crazed girlfriend route, then?" Silence met the teen, and Ezra mentally slapped himself. Another emotional slip. Great, he thought to himself. A few more seconds ticked past, but those seconds could have been days as far as Ezra was concerned. Finally, or perhaps out of boredom, Maul responded.
"Clever point," Maul mentally responded, the hint of admiration in his tone, "Yet wit serves only to provoke your enemies. You'd be wise to learn that, apprentice." This time Ezra didn't rise to the bait, knowing he'd lose the argument that would follow if he did. On the other end of Ezra and Maul's bond, the latter gave a small hmph of approval.
"It seems you have learnt that lesson already, then."
On the other end of the Ghost, master felt his apprentice's conversation with the former sith. He didn't intervene, surprised how well Ezra was handling the metaphorical sparring match.
The two traded words, Ezra scoring a particularly pointed remark of the snarkiness that Kanan had come to expect. He half-smiled when he heard it, causing Zeb to shoot him a quizzical look. After fifteen minutes, Kanan had felt no pain, meaning that Maul had likely done nothing in response to his apprentice's trademark wit. His smile grew slightly wider, though this time he forced the edges of his mouth into a contemplative frown, to respect the grimness of the situation.
It was several minutes later that Hera walked into the common room, her footsteps drawing the attention of a journal-toting Sabine, who looked over the collection of flimsi. The pencil in her hand drooped slightly.
"Hera, is something wrong?" The twi'lek in question shook her head, then gestured to Kanan.
"No. Nothing's wrong Sabine." she said, and before the mandalorian could question further, Hera continued. "Kanan, I need you in the cockpit." Sabine looked between the two, then lowered her gaze back to the notebook in her hands. Kanan rose, ignoring the small cries of his vertebrae as they were forced back into work. He followed Hera to the cockpit, in which she slid into the pilot's seat and leaned back slightly. Kanan, reached his seat with minimal effort, though he was more careful than he would have been. Hera gave him a pointed look, and spoke.
"Kanan, what are we gonna do about Ezra?" An internal sigh passed and Kanan directed his visor to the pilot in front of him.
"What do you mean?" he asked carefully, wary of the potential response. Hera swiftly glared at him in exasperation. She'd gotten scarily good at that.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about - are we gonna take him?" Kanan bit his lower lip lightly in thought. In his mind, he had two options: take Ezra, and risk Maul attacking him, or wait. Ezra probably wouldn't gain much if he waited, and he'd probably try to come along anyway. Kanan reached out to his apprentice, who responded with a mental:
"Is something wrong?" Master took note of the tone in this, then responded to his student.
"No, nothing's wrong Ezra. Meet me in my quarters in fifteen minutes." Affirmative waves came from Ezra, and he quickly closed off the bond. At that moment, Kanan realised Hera was shooting him a gaze of annoyance and immense irritation. Now was not the time to test the twi'lek's patience.
"Yes. We're taking him."
AN: Uh...hi? I'm sorry for the wait; procrastination and lack of creativity on my part made this one particularly difficult. :( so much for a schedule, eh? I'll do my best to get back on track next week. I still hope this does job does an adequate job of setting up the climax. Any reviews/follows/favs will be duly noted.