(A/N)- Oh look who's putting Ezra through Imperial torture again. Couldn't be me.
Set between Rebels and Ahsoka and (probably) compliant with the latter, Whumptober prompt used was No. 18 "I tend to deflect when I'm feeling threatened": Blindfold/Tortured For Information/"Hit them harder."
Enjoy friends!
General warning for blood and a depiction of torture, you know the drill.
Disclaimer: Just gimme the characters gimme them I can fiiiiiiiix iiiiiiiit. /Ahsoka show salt
Muddled Senses
Ezra's head was swimming, full of cotton. His chin dipped and he caught himself, pulling his head back up as much as he could.
A slight swish through the air signaled to him the incoming blow and he clenched up to brace.
BAM!
An armored fist slammed into his side, bruising already-damaged ribs. Sharp pain knifed straight through him and Ezra grunted harshly, feeling the blood in his mouth sloshing.
When he opened his mouth to pant, it dribbled out, running down his chin. Ezra blinked hard behind the thick length of cloth tied over his eyes, trying to get his bearings, shake the pain off.
"How does the device activate, Bridger?" came the interrogator's voice again, flat and unamused.
Ezra's chest heaved slowly and he drooped again, exhausted. He tried to pin down where the officer was, but the drugs running through his system made his Force Sense... fuzzy. Watery, slippery impressions brushed past his head.
He didn't answer the question.
With silent suddenness, another blow cracked across his face, striking him right next to the left eye. Ezra cried out weakly as his head was snapped aside, fresh pain blossoming to join the pounding headache he was already struggling with.
"Nghl..." he groaned, slumping back against the flat metal slab of the interrogation table.
Had that been the first or the second Stormtrooper that had hit him this time? Or had cranky number three finally decided to get in on the action?
The knot of the blindfold pulled at his hair as Ezra tried to raise his head. It was day two of this. Power on the Chimaera was still temperamental and had been rationed away from the prison decks for weeks, leaving the electrical probes to either side of the table dry and silent. The interrogation officer in charge had chosen to employ brute force instead, inviting any crewmember with a bone to pick in to come beat Ezra to a pulp. (There wasn't a shortage, unfortunately.) The sensory deprivation was a deliberate part of it, he thought. Meant to put him on edge of when and how the next hit was going to come. Not usually a problem for someone Force Sensitive, capable of looking without his eyes.
So of course they had first experimented with different combinations of sedatives and truth serums to find just the right concoction of drugs—enough to take the edge off his abilities, muddy them, without making him completely incoherent.
Ezra swallowed and felt a copper tang burn down his throat.
It was proving horribly effective.
"How does it turn on?" the interrogator pressed again.
Delirious with exhaustion, Ezra heard himself muttering out, "I don't... I don't know..."
It was a half-truth. The archaic device, a relic of a race called the Zeffo, apparently, was similar enough to a holocron that Ezra could guess its purpose. There must have been some expression, some hint on his face that he'd given away, that had told Thrawn that he knew more than he was letting on about what the device was and what it was for.
Thrawn had eyed him with intense suspicion and ordered him down here mere hours after the discovery.
Something struck his shins. Pain lanced up through his legs. Ezra grimaced, but pressed his mouth closed, hanging loose in the restraints that held him against the torture slab.
Just give up... he begged. Just end this... I'm not gonna tell you anything...
"Stubborn little brat, ain't he?" came a comment from somewhere to the right. That was cranky trooper number three; Ezra had managed to glimpse him before the blindfold was yanked over his eyes for the day.
Ezra wanted to make a smartass quip but he didn't trust his jaw not to twinge if he moved it.
Through his muddled hearing Ezra picked up a bevy of new sounds: a hiss, tapping, shuffling armor.
"Has there been any progress?" asked a sonorous, placid voice that Ezra immediately identified as Thrawn's.
His stomach fell, fear settling into his gut. His mouth seemed suddenly very dry, despite his bleeding gums. He strained for impressions off the Grand Admiral, even through the thick haze that clouded his senses.
He'd always been a little tense around Thrawn, despite the man's reassurances he wouldn't be harmed as long as he cooperated, but it was still distressing how quickly their uneasy alliance had fallen apart the moment Thrawn had perceived him to be an obstacle rather than an asset.
He could feel the red eyes on him, studying him intently, and squirmed a little, uncomfortably.
"The boy has not revealed anything yet," the Imperial interrogator reported, clinically.
"Won't even scream today," grumbled one of the troopers.
Ezra strained his senses, brows pinching behind the blindfold, for any kind of vague sense of Thrawn's reaction.
His attempts slid off walls and undefined shapes, murky in his mind. Something felt like it was bearing down on him, some kind of heavy malice, but he couldn't define it, couldn't put words to it.
He wanted to whine in frustration.
Drowsy, he almost slipped deeper into incoherent haze, his mind still scratching out for comprehension, and then Thrawn spoke again, eerily calm.
"We uncovered these in our continued excavation of the secondary hanger," he told... someone in the room, probably the interrogation officer. Ezra felt pinpricks blossom on his arms as Thrawn continued, "I recommend you make use of them. Use any force you deem necessary."
"Of course, Grand Admiral," came the assurance.
Tapping sounds again, fading out. Ezra pressed back against the table, nervous, tensing up with anxiety. His head twitched this way and that, trying to guess what Thrawn could possibly have given his tormentors and where the next strike would come from. The darkness pressed in on his eyes, telling him nothing, giving him no warnings or clues.
"You heard the Grand Admiral," the interrogator said, vindictive twinges in his tone. "Hit him harder."
That was all Ezra got to brace himself before a searing electrical pain jabbed firmly into his ribcage. Ezra felt a sharp piercing poke and then his nerves were alight with hot fire, burning through his whole chest, contracting and constricting and squeezing.
The pikes from off the Royal Guard, he recognized dully, in the midst of his winding pain.
He cried out, voice shrill and panicked, and the electricity was taken away, leaving him gasping, heaving for breath.
Kriff... he thought. His body was no longer drowsy, nerves alight with the tingling aftereffects. He felt horribly awake and aware, and dread grew in his chest as he realized what was going to have to endure.
"Give me one," trooper three grunted, and Ezra heard a faint shunt! as something was passed to him.
He swallowed hard, tensing his body and preparing for the worst.
A thunderous blow crashed into his collar; Ezra seized up, his back arching, head knocking back against the table as he squeezed eyes closed behind the blindfold and screamed.
(A/N)- Hello yes, Thrawn is a bastard and needs to hurt Ezra more. :)
Hoping for people to write tons more angst and hurt/comfort fics covering Ezra and Thrawn's Fun Stranded Times On Peridea. Here's my first contribution lol.