Moreena laid on her back, hands folded behind her head. The lights were off in the cabin she shared with Ezra, the former having gone to sleep a few minutes earlier. Despite the darkness, her eyes had by that point adjusted to it.

She was staring up at the bunk above hers, upon which Ezra Bridger slept. The childhood friend that had once joked, deadpanned, and laughed his way through a difficult life now seemed to be a block of ice. Not that she expected him to be happy telling his story of the past two years to her, but part of her had been hoping his trademark half-grin or a bad pun to break the awkward and somber silence that had developed after he'd finished his explanation. He'd simply given her a pointed, almost regretful look before he climbed up to his bunk.

Moreena silently sighed, narrowing her eyes, as if they could see through the durasteel of Ezra's bunk. Reuniting with him was exciting for her in the beginning; no one in this cell knew much about her other than that she came from Lothal. Seeing such a familiar face should have been happy for the both of them, but Ezra never cracked a smile throughout the entire affair. If anything, Moreena thought she saw a brief flash of relief cross his face before he'd climbed up to his bunk.

She wasn't certain whether he'd fallen asleep or not, or if he was doing something akin to what she was doing. Still, though, the substance of his story was going to keep her up.

Firstly, he'd said that he was force-sensitive. Meaning he could touch the force.

Moreena had, of course, questioned this; to which Ezra simply extended his right hand, opened his palm, and flying in came the small self-defense blaster she kept in her right boot. Then he tossed it up into the air, Moreena bolted up to catch it before it fell, but soon found its downward movement had stopped. Ezra just sat there, looking at her. Moreena had blinked, felt embarrassment flood her, and sat down, staring at Ezra; what he'd done in that moment - with no apparent effort, too - amazed her. Needless to say, she believed that he could touch the force now.

Then came his story.

And that, out of everything he'd told her that night, every revelation, change, was completely horrifying to her. He'd said that a sith lord named Maul had, after a mission to the planet Malachor V, spent a month mentally attacking him every night until he broke in; and went on to claim that the sith had then gone further, eventually taking control of his body - somehow - and making it transport itself to him… until Ezra regained control. Moreena shook her head.

It hurt her brain to even imagine what Ezra had been through, let alone that that same sith lord was still out there and at large; it made her afraid. Tentatively, she'd asked if Maul could do that again, and with even more awkwardness if she was even talking to Ezra. He wasn't upset, to her relief (or at least didn't seem so), and replied with a firm no, explaining that he'd broken the force bond between him and Maul nearly a year and a half earlier, and that she had nothing to worry about. Moreena, on the inside, was slightly skeptical of that claim, but couldn't find the courage to voice her thoughts. She was willing to bet that that could have tested his patience, and she didn't know how fragile or strong Ezra was at the moment; it might have been two years ago, but if what he said was true, he was likely still hurt by Maul's actions.

Again, the girl shook her head.

The night had started, for her, with happiness and ended in somber contemplation. Ezra, she was sure, had changed, but to what confused her. His experience with Maul would be the logical explanation for his less than bubbly demeanor, but some part of Moreena - a small, insignificant part - said that something was off. Yet the story had been good enough for Kanan, so it should have been good enough for her.

But it wasn't.

She wasn't certain why, and couldn't ascertain what was wrong with Ezra's story, but it didn't sit it right with something inside her. Moreena sighed. Just go to sleep, she told herself, rolling over. You're not gonna find out anything when he's asleep.

Everything hurt. Just everything. Every fiber of Ezra's being screamed out, pain signals wracking his body and nerves, making the teen unsteady.

Maul sat a few dozen feet above him, leisurely leaned back against the ledge of the cliff face he'd had Ezra climbing. The teen almost despised this as much as he did Maul himself, the one forcing him to do it.

His arms ached from having to push him upward, rock after rock, in his attempts to reach Maul. His core was sore, too, along with his legs. His knuckles and wrists had splatters of dried crimson coating them from where Ezra cut himself on the sharper rocks. His hair was matted and darkened with sweat, tickling the back of his neck. He knew he smelled horrible, as even he could smell the stench wafting off him.

Ezra raised his head, squinting at the outline of Maul, breathing heavily. He glared at the zabrak, clenching his fists, allowing his anger to fuel him. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, allowing the dark side to flow through him, and within a few minutes his muscles' aching faded. Ezra raised his head, unclenched his fists, and found a rock he could use. He put a hand on it, and pushed himself up, then found another and pushed himself upward again, finding a ledge and rising to that, taking in a breath.

He repeated the process.

Fifteen minutes more climbing had him only half a dozen feet closer to Maul, palms coated with sweat. He looked up, wiping a some off his forehead with a wet hand; finding the added moisture to the limb disgusting, Ezra opted to shake his hands. A few drops went flying off the mountain, and the teen found another rock.

He climbed a further six feet upward, feeling a small amount of confidence appear on the edges of his mind as he steadied himself on a ledge. Letting a breath enter and exit himself, Ezra made the mistake of looking down; he was at least twenty four feet above the ground, and while he thought he'd conquered his fear of heights long ago, the vertigo for this was different. The stakes were different. If he failed he not only risked death, but also Maul's disappointment. The zabrak had been seemingly losing his patience with Ezra over the past week, as the teen was seriously struggling with climbing this mountain. It infuriated Ezra, but he also knew that he couldn't lose his cool at this height without making a mistake and meeting the ground with his one and only irreplaceable carcass.

Ezra looked at Maul's silhouette, grinding his teeth. He swept away the aching in his muscles that had begun to return in his musings, clenching his fists. He looked around him and found that there weren't any rocks within reach. At that realisation Ezra blinked and looked back at Maul again; the zabrak's outline was now facing him, its head tilted to the side to show their bemusement. Ezra looked back, desperation clear in his eyes. But then the outline turned away to Dathomir's setting primary.

Panic beginning to rise, Ezra found that while there weren't any rocks within immediate reach, there was one within jumping distance; it was a foot above the teen and to his right.

Great.

Narrowing his eyes, Ezra turned in the direction of the rock, his only hope to rise further. Bending his knees and brushing aside his rebellious thoughts about the leap, Ezra cleared his mind. All he had to do was jump.

That was it.

Letting instinct guide him, Ezra jumped towards the rock, fingers of both hands wrapping around it at the last moment. Shaking, the teen pushed himself up, balancing on the rock with one foot. Aware of precariousness of his balance, Ezra found a rock to rest his other foot against and, to his surprise, a ledge in reach above it. Grinning inwardly, Ezra grasped the ledge's edge and hoisted his body upward. A minute later he'd finally gotten both feet comfortably on the ledge. Letting a breath in his mouth and out his nostrils, Ezra found another rock to use. He grasped it, and repeated the process again.

A half-hour later Ezra had finally reached Maul, a satisfied smirk across his face. The zabrak turned to face him, giving an approving nod.

"Well done, apprentice," he complimented, before turning back around. "Now mirror me." Maul, to Ezra's utter bewilderment, then jumped off the ledge that he'd perched himself atop, causing his smirk to falter. It was soon replaced with a look of abject shock, along with Ezra's jaw going slack. He simply stared at the spot where Maul had jumped, frozen. Only sixty seconds later, the teen heard a loud thump and blinked. He looked over the edge, squinting to find Maul. When he found nothing, he stepped back until he could lean against the mountain and, numb, sat down against it.

"Did you misunderstand me, apprentice?" Maul asked ringingly in Ezra's mind. The teen jumped, snapping out of his shock, taking a few moments to compose himself before replying.

"How am I supposed to protect myself?" he shot back incredulously, and he heard a mirthless chuckle from Maul echo in his head.

"How else?" the zabrak asked in a far too light tone. "Use the force, apprentice." Ezra opened his mouth to shoot back a retort, but Maul sensed his intent. The low, disappointed tone that dripped from his next words sent shivers down Ezra's spine.

"The force barrier we've been working on," the zabrak stated. "You will shield yourself by using a modified version of it. Use the force mid-fall to create a barrier between you and the ground. It will absorb the majority of the impact." Ezra blinked, had Maul repeat it again, and recited it in his mind. Use the force to create a barrier between himself and the ground. Mid-fall.

Easy.

Muttering a few choice words, Ezra approached the edge of the ledge once more. He looked down, only then realising the literal and figurative gravity of the situation. Sighing to himself, Ezra took the bit of anger at his newest task and tossed it into the furnace that was his inner darkness. He stood there for a few moments, clenched fists and gritted teeth showing his emotional state. Finally, after another minute and a self-motivating: 'Just kriffing do it.', Ezra threw himself off the ledge.

His composure immediately collapsed.

He was screaming, memories flashing before his eyes; meeting Kanan, his first birthday present from Sabine, Malachor. The last time he saw his parents flashed in his mind, unbidden, and he felt emotion well up inside him. Tears began to appear at the edges of his eyes, not just because of the memory, but also the ever-increasing speed of his descent. Wind was howling in his ears, and the world around him blurred into a mass of red. Ezra was flailing, attempting to grab onto a rock to stop himself, but finding that he'd drifted too far forward, and had nothing to grasp.

Tears were now pouring out of his eyes and running down his face, and he could just barely hear his own screams. Another memory flashed before his eyes; he recalled the pure, consuming pain after he destroyed the sith holocron. He remembered the cold that surrounded him after the pain subsided, and how his throat begun to contact. The fear, the shock.

Ezra's mind was panicking, searching the very deepest of his experiences now, dredging up the pain and loneliness of his first night alone and first week without food. He'd adapted to that suffering; he had become numb to it, as well as his qualms about theft. He'd survived Lothal by pushing his own boundaries, by accepting the situation he was in and not giving up. By pushing the darkness away and doing something. He wasn't doing anything to help himself survive his fall, he realized.

Nothing.

Was this how he was going to die?

By being unable to overcome his fear? His emotions?

Ezra's screams stopped as he shut his mouth. For a moment, the teen heard the wind howling in his ears. He was surprised they hadn't popped yet. The ground was far closer than Ezra thought it should have been. Shutting his eyes, the teen resisted the urge to wipe th of the tears they still contained. Ezra remembered what Maul had said to him:

"Use the force mid-fall to create a barrier between you and the ground. It will absorb the majority of the impact." Ezra recited the zabrak's instructions once more after that, hearing Maul's low, disappointed tone in his mind.

Ezra hugged himself, gritting his teeth as he took the force barrier he used to block telekinetic attacks and morphed it. Soon he had cocooned himself in a blue bubble that extended half a foot out from his body. The bubble itself contrasted starkly with Dathomir's blood-red sky, and Maul smiled with satisfaction when he saw it. Ezra fell silent as he steeped himself in the force, gorged himself on it. He let his exasperation with what he was doing lead to anger, which he fed to himself, further continuing the cycle. He pulled upon every negative memory he could recall, allowing his frustration at the universe for giving him those experiences to make the flame he had awakened to become an inferno that his body contained.

Ezra was jerked back into reality when he heard a loud thump and the sound of sharp sound of snapping bone. The teen blinked, turning over to see Maul crouched beside him. He felt exhaustion flood him, as the adrenaline faded and his effort became clear to him. Ezra sucked in a breath and coughed, feeling pressure against his left lung. He had broken a rib, he realized. Maul, in a rare act of kindness, extended his hand to Ezra, and the teen attempted to lift his right arm, only to groan as pain shot through his shoulder. the zabrak, realizing that Ezra had likely dislocated his arm, grabbed the limb firmly, making Ezra jump. He felt a searing, sharp pain in his left side and moaned.

The zabrak spent the next thirty seconds hearing Ezra's sounds of pain before he was rewarded with a pop! and Ezra's head fell back as he sighed, and then jumped again, which led to another moan. Maul then frowned, put a hand underneath Ezra's back, hooked his other arm beneath the teen's knees, and lifted him up. Ezra leaned back, finding that breathing incredibly shallowly was the only way he could minimize the pain. But that wasn't it: with his adrenaline having faded, Ezra felt a very strong, and unfamiliar urge to vomit. The teen lay silent for a few more moments, attempting to regulate his breathing whilst also suppressing his need to throw up. This conflict, however, lasted only a minute or so before Ezra gave in. he was able to, though, direct his throw up to the ground away from Maul - and himself - which made the zabrak smile a bit in amusement.

After Ezra was done, he looked up at Maul, a yellow-brown ring around his lips, which were slightly swollen. Maul met the teen's battered gaze for a moment.

"That is enough for today, apprentice."

Ezra blinked, groaning softly as he felt consciousness returning to him. He rubbed his bleary eyes and blinked a few times, stretching out with the force.

Moreena was below him, fast asleep. Hera was in the same room as Kanan, the twi'lek's signature right next to the Jedi's. Ezra felt a small smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth, one of satisfaction at his suspicions of the pair's coupling being confirmed. He pushed it down though, frowning as he sensed Zeb still in his bed, but Sabine up and in the common room of the Ghost. Frown turning into a full scowl, Ezra slid soundlessly off his bunk, using the force to collect his cloak and lightsaber.

He slid the cloak over his shoulders, but kept the hood lowered, despite what his inner antisocial wanted. He clipped his lightsaber to his belt and squared his shoulders, approaching the common room and steeling himself. His boots smacked against the floor once. Twice. Thrice. Ezra found the silence unnerving.

On Dathomir, despite the planet's appearance, there was a vibrant ecosystem of fauna and flora, and there had always been something buzzing or clicking. While it was unnerving at first, Ezra soon reaised the cause for said sounds were no more dangerous to him than the dirt of Tarkin town. It soon became simple background noise, helping ground him in the present. In the Ghost, though, there was nothing like that, and as such some part of Ezra half-expect something to jump out at him from around each corner.

But nothing did, and Ezra found his walk to the common room to be uneventful. He stopped for a moment to steel himself before the last corner to the common room. His scowl was replaced with a neutral expression that showed as little as Ezra could manage, and he turned the corner.

The sound of the common room door opening drew Sabine's attention; her eyes found Ezra, face pale and angular, and wandered to the scar that ran from his right eye to his jaw, taking on a slightly melancholic look. The mandalorian wondered if it still hurt, or if Ezra was at all perturbed by it. But, Sabine concluded as she finished pouring her cup of caf and Ezra stepped past the threshold, his face wouldn't tell her anything. It was completely flat: unreadable. This, of course, simultaneously caught the attention and annoyed Sabine; to her, it seemed she'd be stuck with the same stoic, emotionless person Kanan had been since Ezra's disappearance.

Taking a sip of her cup, and jumping slightly at the heat of the caf inside, Saine leaned back against the countertop the pot of caf rested on.

"How'd you sleep?" she asked, attempting to appear nonchalant. Then, a moment later, she mentally scolded herself as the memories of what had happened the last time Ezra slept on the Ghost came back to her.

"Decent," came Ezra dully. Sabine took another sip of her caf, raising a brow. 'Decent.' in such a neutral, noncommittal tone could easily mean Ezra was hiding something. Perhaps he'd been attacked in his sleep again, or had suffered a nightmare that he wasn't sharing... or that he was indeed telling the truth and she was just paranoid. The mandalorian internally mused for a moment as to what drew Ezra, Kanan and Ahsoka to Malachor in the first place; after Ezra had disappeared, Kanan had explained at length what had happened down there, but gave the caveat that they weren't to mention it around Ezra if he ever resurfaced. Now he had, and now Sabine had to hold in her emotions about the whole affair as the greatest victim of the whole mission stood before her. That wasn't to mention what she thought of how he looked now.

"That's good," Sabine said, then cringed inside at the sheer cheesiness of the line. She set her caf down behind her.

"Did you dream about anything?" she asked. At that, Sabien swore that for a second Ezra's eyes showed reverie. But it was so fleeting she questioned if her eyes weren't simply playing trick on her as she tried to comprehend the person she was talking to.

"Yes," said Ezra carefully. "I dreamed I jumped off a mountain." Sabine blinked, shaking her head in confoundment.

"What?" she spluttered, staring at Ezra as if he'd turned gamorrean and turned green. Ezra's lips nearly curved into an amused smile, but at the last second reverted back to the flat line they'd been before.

"Did you survive?" asked Sabine, eyeing Ezra with incredulity and bemusement. Ezra shrugged.

"Don't know. The dream ended when I hit the ground." replied Ezra casually, mirroring and Sabine and leaning against the wall opposite her. The mandalorian processed his reply, her thoughts cut through by Ezra speaking again.

"What about you?" asked the teen, raising a brow. He meant for it to be slightly jesting, and hoped it appeared so. Sabine, after frowning for a moment as she struggled to recall the blurry details of her own dream, shook her head, dyed hair swaying slightly as she did so.

"I don't remember. I think it might've been about Lothal though," Sabine said, finding that the only thing she could recall with accuracy was an image of Lothal. Ezra's brow lowered, and he shrugged, relieving the tension that had developed between them.

"Got anymore in there?" he asked, pointing to the pot of caf. Sabine nodded, and Ezra walked over to the counter, grabbing the pot but summoning the cup he needed with the force. Sabine gave a small smirk.

"You trying to impress me?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. Ezra poured himself a cup of caf, shaking his head.

"Nope," he said, "Though I could ask if you're trying to do the same thing to Wedge." Ezra finished his sentence with a small, mirthful smirk as Sabine's face flushed.

"Shut up." she snapped. Ezra chuckled softly, glad his memory had served him well, then took a sip of his caf. He gave no visible reaction to the liquid other than a frown. He walked over and sat down on the crescent-shaped bench that the common room had. Sabine picked up her own cup of caf, sliding onto the bench across from Ezra.

"Up for a game?" asked the mandalorian, gesturing to the hologram table that separated them. Ezra was silent for a moment, then nodded slowly.

"Okay," he said, and Sabine shot a grin Ezra's way.

"What's with the hesitation? Are you scared I'll beat you?" she said with exaggerated smugness, to which Ezra had to resist the urge to snap an indignant comeback.

"Nope." he said again, and activated the machine with the force before Sabine could do so on her own. She scowled with a mix of amusement and annoyance.

"Show off," she muttered.

Well. Hello there. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, because writing the banter between Ezra and Sabine was fun. Of course, it's all an act on Ezra's part, but that act was fun. And that's it. Any and all reviews/follows/favorites will be duly noted. - Raging Celiac