Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Whatever happens next, happens to both of us.”

Grand Admiral Thrawn uttered the words as spectacular, colorful explosions lit up the sky outside the viewport of the Chimaera Star Destroyer. Ezra Bridger stared him down, their blasters trained directly on each other. Giant purrgil swarmed the fleet, and one passed closely by, blocking the sun and darkening the whole bridge as it gazed at Thrawn with one wizened blue eye that seemed to say, I know more than you do.

“That’s the idea,” Ezra replied. He’d seen this outcome in his meditations. A strong possibility but not certain, presented to him among countless other possibilities. But it was the one that made the most sense now, and became ever-clearer as his actions stacked upon each other and solidified his fate.

Thrawn’s eyes narrowed at him, right before the shattering of the transparisteel viewport broke his stare. And just like that, the tension between the two of them crumbled. Purrgil tentacles flailed about chaotically and the air filled with the cacophony of laser fire and shouting. Thrawn and his Stormtroopers shot at the intrusions, but most of the troopers were quickly knocked out or killed.

Thrawn dodged the swipe of one, shot at others, and then ran towards the exit. But Ezra still stood in his way, and immediately threw out a hand and shoved him back with the Force into the embrace of multiple purrgil tentacles.

“Ezra! Ezra, can you hear me? The purrgil, is it you?” Sabine’s voice rang out from Ezra’s wrist comm. He quickly tapped the answer button so he could respond.

“Yeah! Pretty good, huh?”

”Well, you could’ve told the rest of us.” She sounded exasperated, like always when Ezra pulled some sort of stunt. He could almost see her eye-roll.

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Ezra said, smiling a little. Keeping up the banter with his family in the face of chaos and terror was easy at this point.

Suddenly, the blast door behind him swooped open with an electronic whir, and Ezra spun around to shove a few incoming Stormtroopers back through the opening with the Force. He grasped the heavy blaster he’d stolen earlier in both his gloved hands and shot down the rest.

A quick, burning pain ripped through his left shoulder blade, causing him to stumble and cry out. Ezra whirled around to see that Thrawn had escaped his binds and was stepping towards him, arm extended out with blaster still in hand as he followed through with the shot. A quick fling of the Force with Ezra’s good arm knocked the small blaster pistol out of the Grand Admiral’s hand, and another shove knocked him back toward the viewport.

With his arm still extended, Ezra called upon the Force to encourage the purrgil to wrap their tentacles around Thrawn once more. A grimace pulled on the Imperial’s blue lips as his arms were snugly trapped against his sides this time.

The blast door whirred open again, a handful of Stormtroopers immediately advancing with blasters drawn. Ezra grit his teeth as he spun around again, shoving them back and closing the door with the Force. His injured arm hung painfully at his side while he suspended his good arm to keep the door shut. He turned his head back towards Thrawn, who was being lifted up off the floor by the tentacles.

Ezra heard the distant sound of metallic creaking and clanking as he sensed the larger of the purrgils latching on to the front of the Chimaera. He took a deep, grounding breath. This was it.

Hera’s voice frantically shouted at him from his comm. ”Ezra! Ezra, get out of there right now! That’s an order!”

Right arm still extended behind him, Ezra raised his left wrist closer to his face so she could hear him clearly. “Hera, I have to see this through to the end.”

Grimacing through the pain in his shoulder, he extended his injured arm towards the front of the ship. He called upon the Force more strongly, telling the purrgil that it was finally time. His arms were extended in opposite directions now, and he couldn’t help but remember that this was exactly how Kanan had been standing moments before he’d sacrificed himself. Like Master, like Padawan.

Ezra’s focus split into multiple tasks: holding the door closed behind him, funneling his will to the purrgil through the Force, and maintaining an air pressure bubble around himself and the rest of the bridge. It hurt. It hurt both physically and mentally. But he pushed through it. This had to be done.

Shards of transparisteel defied gravity throughout the room as Ezra held the bubble, and the bioluminescent arrows along the tentacles all around them began to oscillate in preparation for the jump to hyperspace.

”Ezra, please! Get out of there!” Sabine’s voice this time, tinny and desperate.

He paused, further collecting himself. “I can’t do that.”

As if to punctuate his statement, Ezra threw out another wave of his will through the Force towards the purrgil. The one holding on to Thrawn tightened its grip even further, the room now almost full of glowing tentacles. The Grand Admiral craned his neck against his restraints to look out the viewport. He actually seemed kind of frightened and uncertain for the first time that Ezra had ever seen.

“It’s up to all of you, now,” Ezra told his family, trying to project his calmness and resolution at the people he loved. He held firm, refusing to choke up. He would not cry. This was what he was meant to do.

Outside, the purrgil in the air in front of the Chimaera disappeared in their jump to hyperspace with a distant boom. Ezra’s heart pounded in anticipation. Reality started to bend, and the view of the clouds warped.

Ezra breathed.

“And remember: the Force will be with you. Always.”

He didn’t close his eyes against the blinding light as the purrgil pulled the ship and all its contents out of Lothal’s atmosphere with a deafening thunderclap.

Chapter Text

Ezra hadn’t expected to make it this far.

Really, he hadn’t. During his meditations, the Force hadn’t shown him anything further than the jump into hyperspace, and it certainly wasn’t showing him anything now. What was previously an open flow of possibilities and certainties was now a just a void.

He had fully expected the jump to kill everyone on the ship—himself included—and he’d accepted that fact. After all, holding the air pressure of the bridge together with the Force was not an easy feat, and he hadn’t even been certain that it would work. Don’t get him wrong; it’s not that he wanted to die. But it would have been an honorable sacrifice in exchange for the liberation of his people. His soul would have rested easy in the cosmic Force if that was how he was meant to meet his mortal end. Maybe he’d even see Kanan. He wasn’t sure if that was even how the Force worked.

Yes, he’d left that recording for Chopper to show the crew of the Ghost. But just like all the events leading up to the finale of the battle, Ezra living long enough for Sabine to find him was just a possibility among many others.

Hyperspace was comforting. Familiar. It usually meant he and his family had just escaped some sort of perilous dogfight or another. This time, however, something about the blue swirl outside the broken viewport felt… different. It was less like when a ship would make a jump, and more like when he’d followed the Loth-wolves through the cave. Through the planet.

Back then, Ezra didn’t know why traveling with the wolves simultaneously felt like soaring through hyperspace and also not. But since he’d been on his adventure at the grounds of the Lothal temple, he’d come to the understanding that the wolves weren’t just accessing the hyperspace dimension when they traveled. They were accessing the World Between Worlds—to some extent, at least.

The churning blue outside the broken viewport of the Chimaera felt a lot like that.

Ezra gazed at it. Unlike his experiences with the wolves, he wasn’t utterly losing himself in it. But the pull was there, like he could just reach out and grab at any instance in time and space without a care to what the repercussions might be.

Ezra clenched his eyes shut. If he didn’t stare, the hypnotizing patterns couldn’t draw him in.

He breathed a slow, deep inhale—and focused. Most of his power was being thrown into holding his little atmospheric pressure bubble in place around those still alive on the bridge. As far as he could sense, that was just himself and Thrawn, but there were definitely many other life signatures elsewhere. Not as many as there should be on a ship this size, but still plenty. Enough that he would have his work cut out for him when they reached their destination, wherever that was.

Something told him it wasn’t anywhere he would ever expect.

With the blast door held closed and most of the Grand Admiral’s body securely wrapped within strong tentacles, Ezra was able to settle in and catalogue the information he knew. It wasn’t exactly easy or comfortable to split his Force powers between multiple tasks like this—especially with the ache of the blaster wound in his shoulder—but he’d make do. The pain would be way worse if he wasn’t so immersed in the Force or riding high on adrenaline. Something to look forward to once they reached the next stage of… whatever was happening.

When Ezra reopened his eyes, he allowed himself to gaze into the whirling blue passage of space. It began to lull him, pull him in. This time, he let it.

Ezra immersed himself fully in the Force, in this strange aspect of it that was completely new to him. Time became inconsequential, unimportant, superficial. Until he began to hear a song. It was the same song that called to him often in the past, like when he’d first spotted Kanan from atop that building in Lothal’s Capital City or when he’d found the kyber crystal for his second lightsaber. Or the many times the Force had guided him in survival as a kid, before he even knew the Force was a thing. The song started out quietly at first this time, a small ringing at the back of his mind. He tuned it out for scrutiny later, like how he’d long since tuned out the constant beeping of alarms coming from various workstations throughout the room.

But then it quickly elevated in volume, a warning—a demand—that Ezra couldn’t ignore.

It was like being doused in ice water. He sucked in a quick, deep breath, adjusting his stance into something more guarded. His arms ached from holding them up for so long, palms still outstretched to the front of the ship and back towards the door into the bridge. He didn’t dare lower them, though. Didn’t dare release his hold. Not yet.

Thrawn’s red eyes snapped to his in question before Ezra quickly averted his gaze upward, to the open viewport. Something was about to happen. Ezra grit his teeth and held more tightly onto the pressure bubble as the swirling blue of hyperspace suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a dark planet with glowing swaths of purple. They’d come out of lightspeed so close to it that he could make out the peaks of mountains and the dips of valleys—and he could already sense its atmosphere pushing against his Force bubble.

Thrawn struggled within his restraints to look out the viewport, but was unsuccessful.

The Force nudged the Jedi, and he released his hold of it with a grunt. His whole body almost collapsed in relief. Cold air immediately rushed in from the outside, nearly taking his breath away. Atmosphere, not the vacuum of space. Ezra covered his face with his arms to protect himself from the sharp bits of transparisteel shards that whipped about the room. Without waiting to see what would become of Thrawn, he bolted for the door. It opened with a flick of his good wrist.

He faintly heard the angry call of “Bridger!” as he stumbled through the opening.

Ezra grit his teeth through the returned searing pain in his shoulder as he stepped over bodies in the darkened hallway. He had no idea how long the purrgil would hold onto the ship, so he had to move quickly. It was unlikely that the Star Destroyer still had functional thrusters.

He only made it around a handful of corners before everything around him jolted and shook, and then he felt the stomach-dropping sensation of falling.

Well, shit.

He’d hoped he would have had enough time to form some sort of plan or smuggle some supplies before the purrgil released the ship, but now he had to act on instinct. The durasteel creaked all around him as he sped up his pace, cradling his bad arm and subduing the pain into a dull ache with aid of the Force.

Alarms blared all around, and Ezra did his best to stick to dim hallways with no other people in them. He spotted Stormtroopers and Officers rushing down adjacent hallways, shouting at each other, and tried not to think about where Thrawn might be—if he was tracking Ezra.

That would honestly be dumb of Thrawn in Ezra’s opinion—since survival was more important in this situation—but Ezra tended to not understand a lot of the things that Thrawn did.

He felt a pull towards a certain direction, and sped up his jog to follow it around a corner. And suddenly, he was face to face with the chaos of Stormtroopers and Officers wrestling and fistfighting each other. They were clumsy, though, as the sway of the free-falling ship threw them off balance. Ezra ducked back behind the corner he’d just passed, wincing and hissing as the ship jolted and threw his bad shoulder into the bulkhead. But time was running out. So he peered around the corner to take stock of what he was working with.

One wall was lined with about a dozen escape pod doors, most of them closed in indication that they’d already been jettisoned. Only two pods were left, the flickering orange glow of the heat outside radiating through their viewports and open doors. Realizing that this might be his only chance and that it was either this or die with the ship, Ezra jumped out into the fray. He firmly gripped his bad arm in place with his good one as he ducked and dodged fists and laser fire. Unfortunately, the attention in the room shifted to him, an obvious outsider.

A sudden pain burst into the side of Ezra’s skull, and he cried out. The Officer who’d punched him sneered in satisfaction, before swiftly kicking him in the ribs before he could retaliate. Ezra stumbled to the floor, thankfully landing on his good side—albeit roughly.

“You will not be taking the place of any of my men in an escape pod, Rebel scum,” the Officer spat, looming over him.

Ezra’s head ached, his ear was ringing where he’d been hit, and his vision swam a little bit. He narrowed his eyes and forced them to focus at the face above him as he said, “Not like all of you are gonna escape, anyway.”

Anger flashed in the Officer’s eyes as he reared back his foot in preparation for another kick to Ezra’s ribs, but was cut off by a voice behind him.

“Stand down, Junior Lieutenant Dralam,” Thrawn barked as he stepped into the room. All of the Imperials stood at attention, wobbling slightly as the durasteel floor shook again. It would’ve been funny if the situation wasn’t so dire.

Ezra painfully rose to his feet while Dralam was distracted, leveraging his hands against his knees. He glared uneasily at Thrawn, unsure of his intentions.

“What, here to save me now, Thrawn?” Ezra taunted.

Thrawn scoffed. “Hardly. I simply believe the Junior Lieutenant would be wasting his energy on you. We both know you are the superior fighter, Bridger.”

Dralam began to spatter in protest, but ceased when Thrawn raised his hand to silence him.

Ezra rolled his eyes. It made him a little dizzy. “Thanks for the compliment,” he said drably. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, Bridger, that you would win. So, I will be stopping you myself and allowing my men to take the remaining escape pods.” Thrawn’s eyes literally glowed with mirth. It was kind of creepy.

Ezra would have crossed his arms in casual defiance if he could. He smirked instead. “You can try. You’ll lose to me too, though.”

“I doubt it, Bridger.”

And, without warning, Thrawn charged him. With a yelp, Ezra skipped away on his toes. At least he was no longer being shot at.

Hand-to-hand combat with Thrawn was more difficult than he’d expected. Especially when he only had use of one arm and didn’t have any weapons. He tried to dodge more than actually land any of his own blows, using his smaller stature to his advantage to hopefully tire the larger man out. But Thrawn was lithe, and with a tangle of a leg Ezra was knocked down onto the floor again—this time landing on his bad side. The pain knocked his breath right out of his lungs so forcefully that no sound came out of his throat. Above his head, the open door of an escape pod taunted him.

Before he could sit up, a boot was pressed firmly on the center of his chest. He ground his teeth and growled in pain and frustration as Thrawn towered over him.

The heel of the boot ground into Ezra’s sternum as Thrawn said, “We are running out of time. I will end this quickly so my men and I can escape.”

Ezra glared up at him. “Don’t count on it.”

He closed his eyes and sucked in a quick, deep breath through his nose—and with one last burst of the Force—threw Thrawn and the Imperials around him across the room. Some slammed against the bulkhead. With all the physical strength he could muster, Ezra jumped to his feet and threw himself through the door to the closest escape pod, almost tripping over himself in his haste. He slammed his fist against the switch to close the door without looking behind him. He quickly pressed the jettison button before anyone on the other side could reopen the door, and was promptly thrown against the seats as the pod roughly detached from its dock.

Alarms beeped as the pod spun erratically, tossing Ezra around on the floor. It made his dizziness worse. He cradled his throbbing head with his good hand as he rose to his knees to look at the simple control panel.

One of the four thrusters was damaged, causing the craft to lose stability. With a groan, Ezra gripped the safety handles in the wall as he braced himself with his knees on a seat and looked outside through the small viewport.

All around him in the planet’s atmosphere, pieces of debris and other escape pods were falling towards the surface. Fire and smoke trailed behind them like meteors. The Chimaera was the biggest meteor of them all, leading the pack as the escape pods scattered outwards from the flame-encrusted hull. The huge ship was the first to crash, in a brilliant and deadly explosion.

Blackness shrouded the edges of Ezra’s vision as he strained to stay awake through the pain of his injuries and the exhaustion of his extended Force use. It threatened to take him over, to pull him under. But he had to try to steer his pod away from the wreckage, away from the other pods and the huge fireball of the Star Destroyer. Ezra breathed deeply through his nose and concentrated on his task, closing his eyes and holding his palms outwards as he nudged his trajectory.

Satisfied with the distance he felt between himself and the others in the Force, he dropped his hands and sighed as he sat heavily on the seat. Maybe he’d pass out before the pod hit the ground and he’d be spared that painful experience.

The Force granted his wish as his vision blacked out.

Ahsoka Tano startled awake, blinking rapidly at the dark ceiling. Everywhere here was dark, but she’d long since gotten used to it.

Something had changed in the Force—as if something had shifted out of place. It also felt like something was shifting into place, which was puzzling. How could those two things happen at once?

Ahsoka pushed herself into a seated position on her makeshift bed. It wasn’t really a bed, as much as it was a horizontal slab of smooth stone hidden within other large pieces of dark rubble. She’d levitated and moved them into her desired position not long after realizing she was stuck here. Not like there was anyone else here to create privacy from—other than maybe the ghosts of Sith and Jedi past.

A gentle “hoot” trilled from up above. Without having to look, she knew it was Morai.

“You felt that, too, I’m sure,” Ahsoka stated, bringing up a knee and casually resting an arm over it as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the palms of her hands.

Another “hoot”—this time closer as Morai swooped downwards to land gracefully to Ahsoka’s side.

Ahsoka stood, glancing around her makeshift shelter.

“I believe the time has come for us to find our way off of this planet.”

Chapter Text

Dust particles danced in a stream of pale sunlight in front of Ezra’s face as he slowly blinked awake, but pain quickly stole the attention of his senses.

With a groan, he rolled from his back to his good side, propping up on his elbow. The escape pod was tilted on its side, viewport facing towards the sky and door to the ground, underneath Ezra. His vision swam a bit, the disorienting angle of the interior of the pod not helping his headache-induced vertigo.

He sat up fully and patted himself down with his good hand. No new injuries, as far as he could tell. His head was killing him, his left shoulder blade still burned, and his ribs were sore—but those weren’t new. He slumped back against the durasteel with a sigh. Now what? He’d escaped, but he had no idea what planet this was. If the purrgil had followed his plea through the Force, this was somewhere far away from the fight of the Rebellion. Probably somewhere in Wild Space. That didn’t necessarily mean this planet was deserted or uninhabited, though. Maybe the Force brought him here for his next “greater purpose.”

The first step to discovering his next chapter was making the uncertain and possibly treacherous trek back to the Chimaera for medical supplies.

Ezra scooted to the side so he was no longer sitting on the closed door and pressed a button on the control panel. With a whoosh, the door opened. At least the pod still had electricity. The rocky ground greeted him from a few feet below, which meant the vessel was propped up on something instead of laying directly on the surface. Not enough space for someone like Zeb to crawl through, but Ezra would fit just fine. He popped through the opening, boots crunching on the gravel. Now came the fun part. Normally, this would be easy; but crawling with injuries to his ribs and shoulder would be painful.

Gritting his teeth, Ezra cast his pain into the Force and crawled. Within just several seconds he was back up on his feet in open air. He patted the wall of the pod. Still warm through his glove, which meant he hadn’t blacked out for that long. The world around him wavered a little with mild dizziness, so he leaned against a large boulder and observed his surroundings while he rested and waited for it to subside.

The air was thick with humidity and cold, but Ezra was grateful it was breathable. Across from him, charcoal gray rock formations held up the escape pod, a single stream of blue-white sunlight peeking through the canopy of the forest and illuminating the metal. The rocky clearing was on the incline of a hillside, surrounded by huge trees. Their meaty leaves were bigger than Ezra’s head and glowed with purple bioluminescence, casting their black bark and anything nearby in a faint glow. One of them was perched on top of the rock formation the escape pod was lodged against, towering. The whole area hummed so richly with the Force, and the scenery was beautiful in a very alien way. Sabine would surely find this place inspirational.

The reminder of Sabine made Ezra long for his family. Hera would remark on the planet’s beauty—but in the same breath warn him to stay vigilant because he never knew what kind of unknowns could spring on him at any moment in a place like this. Even though Zeb matched the purple color scheme of the planet, he’d still stick out of place because he was alien in a different way that Ezra couldn’t yet put his finger on. Chopper would complain about the rocky terrain not being fit for astromechs. Kanan would tell Ezra to look deep into the Force; to make a connection with the life surrounding him so it would no longer feel so foreign.

Ezra shoved the longing deep into his heart. Maybe he would meditate and try to make connections with the planet later. For now, he had to figure out where the Chimaera had crash landed.

He pushed away from his boulder and rubbed his bad shoulder through the layered fabric of his jacket. Yeah, he really needed to take care of that.

The top of the hill would be a good vantage point, as long as it didn’t take him too long to get there. He had no way of knowing how far that was. But if he stuck around here, he wasn’t moving forward with any sort of plan and was just asking for any remaining Imperials to discover him. And the more time passed, the more time he would be without aid for his injuries or rations for his stomach.

It was then that Ezra was hit with a sudden realization. Maybe the escape pods were equipped with first aid kits! He rushed back to the pod, crawling back under and standing up inside the open doorway so quickly that he barely had time to register the protests of his injuries. He drummed his fingers on the waist-high wall around the opening as he raked his gaze across the interior. It was pretty streamlined, with no obvious cabinetry of any kind to house any sort of supplies. Ezra’s heart sank. Well, it was worth the shot.

Just as he was about to duck back under, the thought occurred to him to check under the seats. They weren’t marked in any way, but sure enough, one of the hard cushions pulled apart when he tugged at it. Since everything was sideways, it opened like a cabinet door—and a small medkit tumbled out.

“Yes!” Ezra exclaimed to himself as he grabbed the kit, his voice faintly reverberating in the small durasteel space.

He hopped up to sit on the “floor,” feet dangling through the doorway as he pried open the small plasteel box. Inside were a few bacta patches, ointments, wraps, and a packet of several gel painkiller doses. Ezra grinned to himself. Maybe his situation wasn’t so helpless, after all.

He deliberated for a few seconds whether he should tend to his injuries where he currently sat, or if he should climb the hill first to put as much space between himself and the pod as quickly as possible—but ultimately decided to stay. Better to relieve the pain and treat the injuries before trudging into the unknown.

Ezra quickly unzipped his jacket and pulled it off. His undershirt was next, and the fabric stuck to the wound on his shoulder blade. He hissed in pain as he gingerly peeled that part off. It was a difficult spot to reach on himself, but he did his best to apply a bacta patch to the blaster shot. The cooling and numbing effects were immediate, and he sighed in relief. Next, he inspected the spot in his ribs where he’d been kicked. None of them were broken, thankfully. Just bruised. He slathered some bacta ointment over the area. Lastly, he popped open one of the painkiller cells and swallowed the gelatinous dose. That would hopefully numb his headache within the half hour.

His injuries taken care of, Ezra re-dressed and closed up the medkit. He’d definitely be taking it with him. It had a metal ring on one side and wasn’t too large, so he attached it to his belt.

He was about to make the move to leave, when his eye caught something unusual. Where the wrist chrono in his comm brace normally displayed the current date of the Galactic Standard Calendar, it now cycled between rapidly flitting through random dates and reading, “Recalibrating…”

That was odd. Never in any of Ezra’s travels had it ever freaked out like this. He’d worry about it later, though.

After crawling back out from under the pod, Ezra began his trek up the hillside. Carefully scaling rocks and massive tree roots, he kept to the straightest line possible so he’d be able to retrace his steps more easily.

About an hour passed before the top of the hill came into view. Or, at least, Ezra assumed it was the top. The canopy made it impossible to see beyond the trees. With a sigh, he began climbing one of them. He was now grateful he’d decided to treat his injuries before heading up here. The medicine had kicked in to eradicate his headache, and—other than a dull but manageable soreness in his two other injured spots—it felt just like normal to climb the tree.

Ezra’s eyes clenched shut at the sudden brightness of the sun as he broke the canopy, then squinted so he could acclimate. The blue-white light was duller than the suns he was used to on other planets, but was still bright—and a hue he was not used to. At least this system had only one sun.

That thought dredged up bittersweet memories, so he shoved them back down deep. Spending time longing for him again would do Ezra no favors.

When he opened his eyes fully, the purple forest stretched out in front of him as far as he could see, rolling in hills like a luminous ocean. In the distance, rocky peaks the same charcoal gray as the forest floor towered over the wilderness. They were so steep that nothing dared grow on their surfaces. At the base of one of the impressive mountains was a toxic black plume of smoke that roiled into the atmosphere with no sign of dissipating anytime soon. Ezra assumed that was the Chimaera. A handful of small, dispersing plumes of dust dotted the landscape, most of them distant—save for where he knew his own escape pod lay.

He hugged the tree trunk and tapped the bark with his gloved index finger. He had a long way to go, and a lot of potential Imperial enemies to encounter along the way. And he didn’t have any weapons of his own. The smart thing to do would be to distance himself even further from them all, but he also needed to find food. Scavenging for rations in the remains of the Chimaera was his best bet until he could figure out what he would do long-term. Hopefully he was the first one there. It’s not like he knew anything about wilderness survival, especially in a place as alien as this. The only kind of survival he knew was what he learned growing up as a street kid in a city.

During Ezra’s hike back down the hill towards his escape pod, the back of his neck pricked with the feeling of being watched. The presence kept its distance, just barely there, but ice cold tendrils danced and brushed at the edges of his mind—featherlight and phantom-like, so transparent he questioned if they were actually there at all. But he knew better.

By the time Ezra had reached his pod, the small sun was creeping towards the horizon and the cool, damp air was getting even colder. His jacket kept him warm enough in the cold of spaceships, but it wasn’t waterproof and the humidity was seeping through it. Ezra made several failed attempts at starting a campfire with dewy twigs, and decided he’d just huddle up inside the pod. One night here, and then he’d definitely have to ditch it. If he was able to see where the other pods had landed, his surviving enemies could see his. It was only a matter of time before they scouted out the area. He could only hope that they wouldn’t come looking too soon. No one could make it here that quickly on foot, anyway. Probably.

The durasteel was uncomfortably cold against Ezra’s back as he curled up in a corner, arms wrapped around himself and knees pulled up close. The only light that came through the small viewport was a weak, purple glow from the flora outside, and the metal interior of the pod resembled most ships. Familiar. Safe. He could almost pretend that he wasn’t on a strange planet.

Ezra ignored the beginnings of hunger forming in the pit of his stomach and closed his eyes.

The dark corridor stretched endlessly in front of him, filling his soul with an immense sense of unease. No matter how quickly he ran, he went nowhere. There were no light fixtures, but somehow he was able to see the stone around him as it taunted him into the abyss. He swiveled his gaze in the opposite direction, but was met with the same yawning nothingness. It reminded him of his meeting with the Emperor—before he cast himself so far away from his family that he couldn’t sense them anymore.

But that corridor had a beginning and an end, and he’d been able to escape it.

Against all logic, he began running again.

Boots pounded against stone, echoing against the walls and ceiling. His breath came out in pants as he desperately tried to reach the end of the eternal hallway.

“Ezra!”

His steps stuttered, but he pushed forward.

“Ezra!” The voice called louder.

“Hera?” He called back, clenching his fists as he repeatedly drove his soles into the stone.

“Ezra!” A deeper voice.

“Kanan?” He called, confused.

“It’s your fault!” Sabine’s voice accused him.

He broke into a sprint.

“You weren’t here!” Zeb’s voice.

“I did what I had to do!” Ezra cried.

A bright flash of light, and then he was stumbling down a pile of debris. Twisted metal cut into his arms, his legs, his sides. Then, he landed flat on his stomach on the dusty ground. Pain everywhere; the fresh cuts, shoulder blaster injury, head trauma, bruised ribs, lungs filled with smoke and dust.

“It was all for nothing,” Kanan said from above him.

Ezra jerked his head upwards to the source, squinting against the Lothalian sun. When his eyes adjusted, his mouth fell open in abject horror.

Before him stood Kanan, covered in burns so severe his hair was missing and his clothes were almost nonexistent as the fabric melded with his skin. Cradled in his arms was Hera’s disembodied head, the rest of her laying at Kanan’s feet as he tenderly caressed one of her cheeks with a bloodied thumb. Her blood stained the front of Kanan’s clothes and the ground around her body. Green eyes rolled over to look directly at Ezra.

“Look at what happened to us,” she said.

“You left us to the Empire, with… no Jedi on our side,” Sabine’s strained and garbled voice came from behind him.

Ezra gasped and twisted around, meeting Sabine’s distant, pained gaze from the floor a few feet away from him. Her abdomen was gashed through her armor, blood pooling on the ground below her. Behind her, the pile of debris he’d tumbled down was gone, and had been replaced with a pile of bodies. He recognized the clothing on most of them as Lothalian.

“Your sacrifice was for nothing,” Zeb now spat from beside Sabine, blood pouring from a gash in his throat. They both laid in a pool of their collective blood.

“No!” Ezra sobbed, tears flowing down his cheeks. In horror, he covered his mouth with shaking hands. “No! I sacrificed myself to save you. I saved you all by taking Thrawn away!”

“How would you know?” Hera accused sadly. “You’re so far away, now.”

Ezra didn’t turn to look at her. He glared at the floor between his knees and Sabine’s body.

“No, I would’ve sensed it if you were dead!”

“You’re too far away,” Kanan said.

Ezra whirled around to face his old Master again. “That’s not how the Force works. You should know that, Kanan.”

Kanan chuckled humorously. “And you think you know everything, now? Kid, there’s still so much more you have to learn.”

“You didn’t know enough,” Hera said. Ezra tried not to look at her, but failed. “And now we’re dead.”

“All of us,” his family said in unison.

“No!” Ezra cried.

“It was all for nothing!” They yelled.

“It was your fault!” They chanted.

Ezra screamed as he covered his ears and clenched his eyes shut.

“We’re all dead!”

And then the ground crumbled and he fell into unending darkness.

Ezra gasped for air as he jolted awake, a cold sweat breaking out across his face and neck. What was that? There was no way the things his family had said in his dream were true. He was right, wasn’t he? That he would be able to sense if they were killed?

He had faith that he would, anyway. It was true that he was too far away to directly sense their Force signatures, but he was sure he’d be able to sense if any of them died. He sure sensed it the moment Kanan had pushed Ezra, Hera, and Sabine away in their transport a split second before his Master was engulfed in the flames of the explosion.

Ezra leaned his head back against the cool metal and rubbed his eyes, willing his breathing to calm down. The nightmare left him groggy and not feeling well-rested at all, but he had to get up and get moving.

You should just let them find you, a masculine voice intruded.

“What?” Ezra said dumbly, caught off guard.

Yes, let them kill you, the voice hissed in his ears. It didn’t sound like anyone he knew. Darkness clouded around him, swirling around his head. He felt sleepy.

Oooh, yes, fall asleep so they will find you.

“I…” Ezra trailed off, struggling to keep his eyes open.

Yes, turn your soul over to the Force!

Ezra snapped himself out of the trance. The Dark was taken aback, but didn’t fully retreat. Now Ezra was aware enough to recognize that the voice sounded vaguely familiar. He just couldn’t pinpoint how exactly.

“Leave me alone!”

The Darkness pushed back against his mind with a vengeance so strong Ezra had to physically brace himself.

Let me in! It snarled.

“Wow, no!” Ezra exclaimed, slapping his folded knees with his palms and gripping them. “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re not gonna leave me alone, I’ll just shut the Force out completely!”

He closed his eyes against the Dark cloud that undulated around his mind, against all of the living Force around him. Brick by reinforced brick, he built the strongest wall he was capable of building. He didn’t stop until it closed over his head in an impenetrable fortress of metaphorical beskar-reinforced durasteel. A pair of glowing red eyes glared at him through the last remaining space, until they were shut out and he was completely encased.

When Ezra reopened his eyes, his mind was clear and the Darkness gone. He also couldn’t sense anything anymore—not even the tree he knew was directly above the pod—but he’d rather be numb than slogging through a Dark haze that so desperately wanted him to die for some reason. Even the residual feelings from the horrifying nightmare were fading. He’d reconnect when he felt safe to.

That strange occurrence taken care of, Ezra stretched out his muscles and glanced up at the viewport. Sunlight beamed in at an angle that suggested it was mid-morning. Time to get going.

He ensured the medkit was still attached to his belt and took another gel painkiller. Then he hit a button on the control panel. And… nothing happened. He pressed it again. Nothing. The button was supposed to open the door, but it was either somehow broken or the pod no longer had power. Neither option seemed possible considering it had just worked the night before. Nevertheless, he was trapped inside unless he figured another way out.

Feeling along the edges of the doorframe, his fingers caught on a lever. He pulled on it, and the door released and popped open a couple inches. He shoved it the rest of the way with his foot.

The gravel crunched under his feet as he hopped down and crawled out from under the escape pod for the last time. When he stood upright and turned back to look at his temporary shelter, it was completely wrapped in dark vines covered in pulsating purple veins.

“What the kriff?” Ezra gasped.

His gaze trailed along the vines to their source, where they connected to the tree that lived on the rock above the crashed pod. Its huge, glowing leaves pulsed in tandem with the veins on its vines.

Ezra decided to take that as his sign to desert the pod for good. Not like that wasn’t already his plan, anyway. Factoring in his observations from the day before, he began his trek in the direction of the Chimaera wreckage.

The hike was mostly downhill, with many boulders wrapped in craggy tree roots. The less rocky areas were covered in various types of bushes and other plants, and the trees kept up their soft and sustained bioluminescent glow. The one that had attached itself to the escape pod was weird and slightly terrifying, and Ezra was glad to get away from whatever was happening there.

He’d covered a good amount of land through the alien flora—a couple miles, he guessed—before he remembered the issue his wrist chrono was having. When he looked at it this time, it was no longer behaving erratically—but he had to double-take at the date.

It was saying that it was now three years later than when it was supposed to be.

“Wait, what?” Ezra uttered, eyebrows knitted together in confusion. He smacked the device with the side of his other hand. Of course, that was fruitless—the wrong date remained.

“Must’ve gotten messed up somehow,” he muttered.

Ezra continued along his path. He could always reconnect with the Force to seek some answers, but he wasn’t sure if he felt comfortable with that, yet. Anytime soon, anyway. He still wasn’t too keen on finding out if the Darkness from earlier was still around.

Ezra sighed as he rubbed his still-tender arm and diverted his steps to get around a particularly large boulder in his path. The medkit bounced against his thigh where his lightsaber hilt used to be. He wished he had the familiar weapon with him. But if he hadn’t left it with the Spectres, it would have certainly been taken from him by Thrawn as soon as he boarded the Star Destroyer. And those were not hands he wanted on his lightsaber.

After some deliberation, Ezra made the hesitant decision to reconnect to the Force—if only just partially. It probably wasn’t such a good idea to completely block off his senses if he didn’t have any sort of physical weapon on him. He stopped walking, and with a deep breath, brought down part of the mental wall.

Immediately, he sensed a projectile coming right at him and he ducked.

A vine crashed into a tree trunk, bark cracking and splintering where Ezra had been standing. He spun out of the way as it dashed at him again. Unfortunately, his ankle caught on a root, and he tumbled to the ground. The impact jolted his healing injuries, causing him to wince and cry out. Momentarily distracted, he didn’t have enough time to sense and then react properly to the next strike—and the vine wrapped tightly around his wrist.

The comm brace began to crack under the pressure, electrical sparks hot through the sleeve of his jacket. Ezra braced himself against the ground with his feet and struggled to loosen the vine’s grip with his other hand, but it clenched tighter. Its veins began to pulse with the same glowing purple light as the vines that had wrapped themselves around the escape pod.

He cried out as the vine shifted ever tighter. It felt like his bones were going to snap if this went on for much longer.

Ezra took a deep breath, and on the exhale he summoned the Force in a rapidly expanding bubble around his trapped wrist. The vine released, taking with it his cracked and broken comm brace.

He sat on the damp forest floor and rubbed his sore wrist as he watched the vine skitter away with its prize.

“You just wanted that?” He questioned, and then shrugged. “This place keeps getting weirder and weirder. Why-”

Cut off by a warning in the Force, Ezra rolled across the ground to dodge yet another threat. This time when he looked back, it wasn’t another vine that had attacked him. A primitive arrow was embedded in the ground where he’d been sitting before.

“What the…” He trailed off, catching movement in the shadows of the tree branches.

Just in time, he dodged another arrow aimed directly at his head before ducking away from a spear swinging through the air. The Force guided his movements as he evaded repeated attacks from the unknown enemy, but his body wore out quickly. His feet were knocked out from underneath him and he landed on his ass. Before he could make any move to get up off the ground, the point of the spear was jutted into the space right in front of his throat.

Ezra sucked in a breath, raised his hands in surrender, and looked up.

Spread out in a scattered semi-circle around him was a group of several beings, all of which were pointing various primitive weapons directly at him. They were generally humanoid in shape, but tall and lanky, and their heads were a smooth and exaggerated upside-down egg shape. Limited, strictly functional clothing covered deep blue-gray skin. Not one of them had a strand of hair—but single bioluminescent coifs sprouted from the tops of their heads, glowing the same purple as their large, almond-shaped eyes and the surrounding flora. They had no other facial features.

The alien in front—the one holding the spear at Ezra’s throat—made a slight gesture with their weapon as if demanding an explanation from him. But Ezra had no idea how these people communicated. They certainly didn’t speak like he did, since they didn’t have mouths.

So, Ezra did all he could really think to do—and reached out with the Force to bridge a mental connection.

Immediately, he was blasted with a bright, intense swirling of Light and Dark and everything in between. A melding of all the thoughts and feelings of the beings in front of him were passed around to each other and roiled around in his mind, too much for him to pluck a single idea out and make sense of. It quickly became too overwhelming to decipher or even bear, so Ezra withdrew with his head in his hands and a groan out his lips.

He took a peek through his fingers to see the sentient aliens sharing looks with each other. They obviously knew Ezra had just done something with the Force, and were probably telepathically discussing what to do with him, now. He’d hop back in to find out, if his taste of it hadn’t been so staggering.

“Listen, I’m not your enemy,” Ezra began, gesturing with a hand over his heart. “But there are people who crashed here the same time I did that could be.”

He was met with blank stares and a few tilted heads. Sighing, he facepalmed. Of course that wouldn’t work. What made him think they would understand his spoken Basic?

The being holding the spear to Ezra’s throat shared a look with another in their entourage, before gesturing with their weapon for Ezra to stand up. He quickly complied, dusting his hands off on the thighs of his pants. Another being stepped forward with thick twine in their hands. Ezra didn’t even wait for them to tell him what to do. He’d already been through this type of situation more than a few times. Raising his wrists in front of him without being prompted seemed to surprise the alien, but they didn’t hesitate as they bound him.

With half the group in front of him and the other half at his back, Ezra was led away in the opposite direction of the Chimaera wreckage.

Chapter Text

The rough rope dug into Ezra’s wrists at the skin between his gloves and sleeves as he was tugged along the path. Well, it wasn’t really a path as much as it was a procession of several aliens walking in single-file through the ambient purple woods and low bush. The ground wasn’t eroded in any way that suggested this was a common route. Perhaps they had only trekked in Ezra’s direction to investigate the crashed escape pod.

If that was true, they were probably going to check out all the other crash sites—if they hadn’t already.

He had so many questions, but no idea how to ask them of a species that only seemed to communicate telepathically.

It was hard to tell through the thick canopy of the trees, but Ezra guessed it was almost evening by the time the group arrived at their destination. He was immediately tied to a tree—the new rope knotted around his wrist bindings on one end and around the thick trunk on the other—with a short tether only allowing him the movement to either stand or sit a couple feet away. His lanky escorts left him alone there while they went off somewhere else.

They obviously didn’t see him as much of a threat, then.

Sighing, Ezra sat down on a large tree root and stretched out his legs straight in front of him. The ever-present dampness seeped through the seat of his pants a bit, but he paid it no mind. His feet were tired after the long hike and the dull ache of his injuries was also starting to return. He gazed down at the small medkit still attached to his belt, but out of the reach of the bound hands in his lap.

Around him, the villagers were occupied with one task or another. A few were mending weapons, while others moved supplies from place to place. Most, however, were meditating.

Many of the huge tree trunks in the area were hollowed out—presumably for shelter from the elements—and solo aliens sat serenely on the ground within many of the open dwellings, eyes closed. Some crossed their legs, others knelt. All of them rested with their palms flat on the earth to their sides. Other than the weirdness of the scenery in general, nothing remarkable was happening around the meditating beings.

Ezra’s stomach growled with a vengeance, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten anything since before the Ghost crew’s last mission on Lothal. He glanced around. Nothing in the village indicated that these people ate food, which made logical sense—considering they didn’t have mouths. But that would be problematic for Ezra, even if he could befriend them. He would just have to prove to them somehow that he really needed to visit the Chimaera wreckage.

Give yourself over to me. I’ll free you from your predicament.

Startled, Ezra’s eyes darted around, but no one was even looking at him.

“Oh, it’s you again,” he huffed. “Why would I?”

Because you have needs, and I can ensure those needs are met.

“Ehh… Don’t think so,” Ezra replied.

The voice chuckled mockingly. Do you know how you’re going to get out of this on your own?

Ezra glared at the tree trunk, having no face to direct his ire at. “The Force will guide me. Eventually.”

Will it?

“It’s guided me in the past. Why wouldn’t it now?”

Well, have you felt any “guidance” since your stunt with the purrgil?

“How do you know about that?” Ezra asked, indignant.

The Dark voice chuckled again. My boy, I’ve been with you longer than you think.

“Wait, what? Who are you?”

Hmm… The voice seemed to be in thought. I don’t believe that is important right now.

Frustrated, Ezra huffed. “If you’re not gonna give me any answers, you can leave me alone now.”

He shut the Dark out from his mind, but not before the waning voice laughed and taunted, You will give me control, eventually!

The voice was gone, but Ezra’s own thoughts remained. This… presence… had been with him since before he came here? Why hadn’t he felt it, then? It must have been keeping itself hidden, but for what purpose Ezra had no idea.

He looked around, taking in more of his surroundings. Some of the nearby aliens were observing him quizzically. He needed to figure out how to communicate with them. That would make getting out of his current predicament a bit easier. Even if he tried to explain verbally in the simplest way he knew how—like when he’d talked to Klik Klak on Geonosis—they wouldn’t understand a lick of it.

It stood to reason that the only hope he had was to try communicating with them in their way—despite how painful it had been.

Resigned, Ezra clasped his hands together and tentatively approached the roiling Force signature. It swirled just as intensely as before, the collective consciousness of dozens of sentient beings intermingling and interacting with each other within a large spiritual space. Each soul zipped around like a bright comet, occasionally dancing with another before moving on to the next. Ezra dipped only a tiny part of himself into the whirling mass—slowly and carefully this time—concentrating on grasping onto the one bright soul closest to him.

The being, alarmed, immediately tried to withdraw from Ezra’s alien presence. Ezra panicked. What would get them to understand that he wasn’t too different from them? That he wasn’t a threat? They obviously valued their community—or at least, being emotionally open with each other as a community. It was like a big family, in a way.

That was it! He knew what to show them.

Ezra thought of his biological parents. The imagery was a little hazy, coming from the memories of a much younger version of himself. His mother—tucking him into bed at night. His father—right there next to them, singing a Lothalian lullaby. Both of them—curling Ezra up in between them with their arms wrapped snugly around him, back before he knew about the cruelties of the universe.

He thought of his new family—found when he needed them most, but recently lost. Kanan and Hera—stand-in parents who came into his life when he needed direction as a teen, offering warm embraces when he learned the truth about his biological parents. Zeb and Sabine—the siblings he never had, roughhousing with him and sometimes joining in on his mischief.

Through the memories of both families, Ezra radiated the same feeling: love.

He severed the mental connection with the being, gasping with bound fists clasped against his heart. When he opened his eyes, he found and met the direct gaze of the being he’d connected with. Gray legs abruptly straightened from their meditative crossing, pushing the alien up onto their feet. And they abruptly walked away.

Ah, well, at least Ezra tried.

Wide windows stretched across the length of the control room and let in the golden glow of the cloud-diffused sunlight. Through these windows—in the sky—a large group of purrgil were attacking a Star Destroyer fleet. This—Ezra quickly realized—was the view his Ghost family had had while he was on the Chimaera, fighting to hold Thrawn at bay while sending his intentions to the purrgil through the Force.

The massive creatures grabbed hold of the Star Destroyers—the Chimaera included—and suddenly the perspective shifted from looking outside to looking inside, at the crew that had watched Ezra get whisked away.

Hera and Sabine shared a look as what was about to happen dawned on them. In turn, they pleaded through their comms, yelling at Ezra to get out. He knew how this ended, though. Their facial expressions told him the exact moment he was whisked off into hyperspace—even though he wasn’t seeing it for himself from this perspective—right after he assured them that the Force would always be with them. At first, just wide-eyed awe. Zeb, Hera, Sabine, and everyone else who had come along with Ryder for the infiltration… all of them stared out the window in shock and disbelief.

But not only could Ezra see the emotions on their faces as he spectated the moment, he could feel them. Everyone was visibly hiding their emotions well, but he could feel as the shock of the remaining Spectres turned to utter devastation. He felt it spreading deep in his heart, outwards into his gut—suppressed as Wolffe broke the silence and reminded them all of their mission.

Ezra jolted awake in his seat on the forest floor, his back against the rough bark of the tree, vision filled with the glowing canopy above. What was that? Well, he knew what it was. But was it just his guilty subconscious, or had Ezra truly spectated the past through the Force somehow? He wasn’t exactly new to the concept of accessing the past, but this was different than being in the World Between Worlds.

I could get you back to them, you know, the Dark voice returned, nonchalant.

Ezra inhaled sharply, but didn’t verbally respond. He grounded himself by focusing on what little of the starry sky he could see through the glowing canopy.

Let me take over, and you’ll be able to see your family again, without having to wait for someone to find you. That is what you want, isn’t it?

Ezra found his voice. “I… I want…” He shook himself, then accused, “What do you know about family?”

Oh… The voice sounded wistful, mournful. More than you know.

Ezra didn’t have time to further the conversation happening in his head, however, because the crunching of footsteps floated to his ears from the other side of the tree. Craning his neck, Ezra saw that a pair of bare-footed villagers was heading right towards him. He straightened his back in anticipation.

One of the beings began untying the rope from around the tree trunk while the other motioned for Ezra to stand. His wrists remained bound as he was led away.

The three of them didn’t walk very far before the path—an actual path this time—opened up to a clearing in the forest. It seemed to be some sort of central hub, as rudimentary paths just like the one they’d emerged from branched off in all directions from the area. A group of the bioluminescent villagers was sitting in a circle so large their backs almost touched the innermost trees. Ezra guessed that this may be the whole village, comprised of dozens of people. In hindsight, no one had been around anymore when he’d first woken up from his Force-riddled nap.

His two escorts gently tugged him by his elbows, continuing their walk to the center of the circle. There, he was motioned to sit. Apprehensive, he complied and kneeled on the moist natural mulch of the ground.

In Ezra’s direct line of sight sat an alien that looked mostly the same as the rest, but whose glowing eyes and coif were yellow instead of purple. A wooden staff lay across their lap. Ezra guessed that they were the leader of the village.

The two villagers who had led Ezra here joined the rest of the circle, and all at once he was bombarded with the consciousnesses of the whole group pressing in on his mind. It was even more intense than the first time—searing white hot through his mental barriers. He doubled over and grabbed at his head in pain, groaning and gasping. It felt like his skull wanted to crack open.

Pushing through the onslaught, Ezra shakily raised one gloved finger at the leader of the group and grit out, “One… at a time!”

They seemed to understand, as the pressure released significantly after that. In its place: the honest and open presence of just one being. Ezra pushed himself back upright—still on his knees—and met the solid yellow eyes directly ahead of him. This—he immediately understood—was the consciousness that remained.

Ezra rested his palms on the tops of his thighs, closed his eyes, and opened his mind.

What happened next could only really be described as a type of conversation—but instead of being communicated through words, it was through imagery. Through his mind’s eye, Ezra saw many burning, smoky meteors plummeting from the night sky. The biggest of all was what he recognized as the Chimaera, surrounded by several escape pods and many bits of shrapnel from its own hull. Feelings—not his own—of fear and alarm swept through him, then concluded with a singular feeling of inquisitiveness.

If Ezra was interpreting the vision correctly, he was being asked what happened. So, he showed them.

He overtook the space in their connection with his last moments above Lothal, showing the scuffle with the Imperials on the bridge of the ship—pointing his blaster at Thrawn, getting shot at by Stormtroopers, getting shot at by Thrawn. His feeling of connection with the living Force and with the purrgil flowed through the vision he was conveying, and the feeling of resolution as they were all finally carried off into hyperspace by the creatures.

Ezra took the vision back further, showing bits and pieces of his fight against the Empire, anything that he thought conveyed that he was not allies with the rest of the people who were on those vessels that fell from the sky.

A feeling of understanding rippled through Ezra’s connection with the village leader. All visions ceased, leaving both their consciousnesses floating in a void. The other being prodded at him, a request to keep an open line of communication with them. Ezra acquiesced.

He didn’t really want to, but maybe staying connected with one being most of the time would help him build up the ability to more readily communicate with the rest of the species—with more than one at once. He did have a knack for connection, after all. Maybe it wouldn’t even take that long to get used to.

Ezra had barely completed that thought, when suddenly his mental walls were being breached. The village leader’s consciousness reached into his mind, rooting through his catalogue of memories, sifting through the different knowledge centers of his brain. Then, they seemed to find what they were looking for, and retreated.

Ezra opened his eyes. Ahead of him, the village leader stared.

“Ah, there we are,” a voice resounded both inside and outside of Ezra’s head, he wasn’t really sure.

“Was that… you?” Ezra asked hesitantly, pointing a finger at the yellow-eyed alien.

“Yes,” they replied. “I’ve copied your language from the communication center of your brain.”

Ezra glanced around warily at the group of villagers. His gaze was met with subtle nods of acknowledgement from each of them.

Chapter Text

Consciousness hit him like a commercial cargo freighter, greeting him with piercing pain behind his eyes and in his shin. Thrawn reached a hand up to his head to rub his temple. He cracked one eye open to look at his fingers as he brought the hand back down—red liquid covered their tips. Blood, he reminded himself. His head was lightly bleeding.

With a groan, Thrawn forced himself to sit up. At least his arms were usable and pain-free. He opened his eyes to begin taking stock of his situation, and was taken aback to find that the escape pod he’d boarded with a handful of his subordinates was… no longer an escape pod. Scattered around him in the gravel and broken twigs were pieces of the vessel—scrap metal of varying sizes and shapes in such mangled condition that their initial structure was not apparent. His awareness expanded to take in the small fires that had ignited the local foliage, the acrid smell fervid in his nose. Pieces of the pod were strewn every which way in the small clearing.

Nearby, the familiar white and black of Stormtrooper armor caught Thrawn’s eye. He made a move to get up, but sharp pain in his leg promptly knocked him back down on his rear. It wasn’t twisted at any wrong angle, but he felt around gingerly with his fingers and deduced that the tibia was most likely fractured. He’d need to find a way to brace it. However, figuring out what had come of his party took priority.

Thrawn inhaled deeply, then exhaled heavily through his nose as he shifted his body around. He grit his teeth against the pain in his leg as he dragged himself across the rocky forest floor towards the white-armored body.

It took about five minutes to get there, and he immediately shoved two fingers against the trooper’s neck to check for a pulse. Nothing. One out of five down.

Thrawn sat up and cast his gaze around the clearing. Four other motionless bodies were scattered about, not too far away from this first one. His suspicions were that none of them had survived, but he’d check just to be certain. Painstakingly, he dragged himself across the ground to each one. He checked each of their pulses, and was met with nothing each time. By the time he got to the fifth one, he wasn’t very optimistic—especially since this officer had a large piece of shrapnel piercing through his torso. However, he checked anyway. The pulse was weak, but present.

Refusing to move the officer’s body for fear of making things worse, Thrawn did his best to visually assess the damage. Blood was pooled on the ground around him, and looked to be steadily growing in size. Too much had been lost to be able to save the man now, especially with no access to a medical facility with blood transfusions anytime soon.

So, Thrawn would do the humane thing.

With a sigh, he withdrew his blaster pistol from his hip holster. He flicked the safety off and pressed the muzzle to the officer’s temple. Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger. It was the merciful thing to do—there was no saving this man, and there was no reason to leave him to suffer until he eventually died naturally.

Thrawn holstered his pistol and cast his gaze about once more. So, he was the only person to survive the escape pod’s crash. This would not be the first time he was left to fend for himself in the wilderness of some unknown planet. On this occasion, however, he had the contents of an Imperial escape pod at his disposal—shattered as it was.

Since he knew everything there was to know about Imperial ships inside and out—including their escape pods—Thrawn knew there should be a medkit somewhere among the mess around him. It was only a matter of finding it.

After about an hour of agonizingly dragging himself around again, he came across a promising bit of scrap metal. Thrawn felt a sense of triumph upon nearing it, as he recognized it as an intact bench seat. His fingers fumbled a bit as he tried to get it open, but relief washed over him as his hands closed around the medkit.

It only had small splints—for body parts like fingers and wrists—nothing big enough for his leg. But Thrawn already knew this would be the case. He quickly patched up what scrapes he had with bacta patches, including the small gash on the side of his head that he first cleaned with sanitary wipes. A piece of nearby metal worked nicely as a makeshift mirror. He then took a painkiller gel before scrutinizing his surroundings for the perfect branch to use as a splint. Not too far away, a branch that was close enough in size to be sufficient caught his eye.

After tearing fabric from a nearby officer’s uniform and using it to firmly wrap his leg against his makeshift splint, he undertook his next task: looking for a branch that would work well as a cane or crutch of some sort. With his leg securely wrapped and the painkiller taking effect, crawling around became much easier. At the edge of the crash site, Thrawn found a large, dead branch. He took out his small pocket knife, settled on the ground with his back against a tree trunk, and began working on whittling it to his liking.

He then let his mind wander. This was a task he could take his time completing.

After a couple of days of slow work, Thrawn had a rudimentary base camp not that far away from the escape pod wreckage. He wanted to get away from the bodies and burnt forest, but didn’t want to be too far away and miss any search parties that came across it.

So far, however, no one had come.

Thrawn sat back under his makeshift shelter to check on his splint while he thought, his normally blue hands a violet hue under the glow of the peculiar trees. Perhaps the rest of the escape pods had crashed in the same way his had—all their passengers killed like his own party was. It wouldn’t surprise him. Everyone else on the Chimaera was human. And humans were significantly more fragile than his own species—the Chiss.

His sharp hearing caught the crunch of footsteps nearby—a small group of quadrupeds, from what he could tell. They came closer, and then passed him by in the shadows. The small group of creatures would have been hidden in the darkness from the human eye, but Thrawn’s infrared vision was able to capture the movement and general shape of them—distinctly canine.

Speaking of creatures and escape pods, he wondered what had become of Ezra Bridger, if he’d survived his own escape pod’s crash. Since the boy was human, Thrawn would normally assume he had been killed—but he was no stranger to the feats the Jedi were able to overcome.

The small medkit clicked closed and Ezra reattached it to his belt, before shrugging his orange jacket back on. He’d just finished reapplying bacta to the blaster wound in his shoulder and tending to his other injuries. Everything seemed to be healing up just fine—though he wasn’t a medic by any stretch of the imagination. He just knew he wasn’t in as much pain as he was a couple days ago. The bacta and the painkillers were doing their jobs, but he’d run out soon. The kit didn’t seem to be meant for more than initial first aid.

That was one of the reasons why he and a small group of his new villager friends were getting ready to hike out today. In addition to needing to find food rations, the only hope Ezra had at getting more medical supplies was to sift through the wreckage of the Chimaera.

Mukhi—the name Ezra had given the leader of the village when he’d been told none of them had names—had assured him that they had their own medicinal practices, and that they could treat him if he wanted. But Ezra wasn’t too keen on having them work on him when their anatomy was obviously so different. They didn’t even eat, for crying out loud! Once they’d cleared their communication barrier, Ezra was able to tell them that he needed food. After some back and forth, he found out that these beings obtained their nutrients via absorption through their skin. Since he obviously couldn’t do that himself, he’d told them about his original plan to scavenge. They’d agreed to let him go, but only if he took a few of their own people with him.

They either cared about him enough to provide protection, or didn’t trust him. Or both.

As he stood up from his seat on the stump, a small and unfamiliar presence tugged on the edge of his subconscious. He turned in the direction of the pull, until he was facing the nearby tree-line. Peering out from the shadows was a pair of glowing blue eyes. When Ezra made eye contact, a creature stepped just outside of the shadows and sat, tilting its head curiously. It reminded Ezra of a loth-wolf—but a lot smaller, and with more angular features and bigger ears in relation to its head. Bigger than a loth-cat, it was the size of an animal a person might take as a pet. Fox-like, he remembered. A type of animal they didn’t have on Lothal, but he’d read about existing on other various planets in the galaxy. Its black fur shimmered with many glowing pinpricks the same light blue as its eyes, like the fiber optic toys Ezra’s parents would let him play with as a young kid.

In short, it was beautiful and intriguing.

Ezra carefully stepped closer—but not too close—and slowly lowered himself into a meditative kneel on the leafy ground in front of the fox. Closing his eyes, he extended a hand towards the creature and reached out with the Force.

A general sense of curiosity mixed with a little bit of fear and apprehension met his mind. Carefully, Ezra coaxed its mind closer, softly mingling his own senses of security and friendliness with it. The fox bumped its mind into Ezra’s in happy greeting, and at the same time he felt something softly bump the palm of his hand. Surprised, he gasped softly and opened his eyes. The fox had walked up to him, and had nudged the top of its head into his palm.

He smiled and gently started rubbing the animal’s head and ears. “Hi there, you have any friends?”

The fox turned its head to look back into the woods, and when Ezra followed its gaze he was surprised to see several pairs of glowing blue eyes peeking through the shadows. He hadn’t felt them at all. Maybe they were able to mask their presence.

“I guess that’s a yes.”

A sudden thump from behind brought him back to the present. One of the villagers—the Atama, as he’d begun to refer to them as—had just set a heavy pack down on the ground. It seemed like they were about ready to go. When Ezra turned back to the fox, it was already gone.

He pushed himself up to his feet, and suddenly felt woozy. Blackness crept into the edges of his vision and threatened to take it over completely. But he fought it, pushed through it. Then it cleared, and he blamed it on the fact that he hadn’t eaten in a couple of days. If it wasn’t for the Force helping to sustain him for longer, he’d be worse. Stabilized, Ezra strode over to the small group of Atama villagers that had started loading their packs onto their backs.

Hopefully soon, he’d feel a lot better.

It took several hours of hiking through the woods, but Ezra finally spotted a few scattered bits of mangled metal. It seemed really soon to be coming up on the Chimaera, as their plans included camping overnight on their way there. Maybe his judgements had been wrong. But he quickly came to a conclusion as they neared the crash site: this wasn’t the wreckage of a Star Destroyer. It was an escape pod.

Ezra led the way through the center of the debris. It was like the pod had exploded—bits and pieces of warped durasteel and shattered transparisteel littered a sizable area of the clearing. Bark on nearby trees was charred, but any fires that had been burning had been snuffed out by the humidity of the climate.

Behind him, his companions gripped their weapons tighter. Not for the first time, Ezra wished he had some sort of weapon of his own. They crept around pieces of shrapnel and walked past a dead Imperial officer, whose jacket had been torn apart. Oddly, the pieces were missing and nowhere to be seen. Ezra didn’t have much time to think more on that as the smell of early decay hit him and he had to cover his nose with his undershirt.

The Atama were lucky they couldn’t smell.

Ezra led them past the body of a Stormtrooper, and then they were at the other end of the wreckage. He looked to the sky to check their direction. If they were to continue straight, they would eventually run into the Chimaera. Good.

Suddenly, he felt the sense of alarm coming from his companions and instinctually reached for his lightsaber at his left hip. Before he could register the emptiness, Ezra was rounding a tree and his vision was filled with Thrawn. The man was sitting on a fallen log next to a small campfire, his back to the newcomers. He either hadn’t noticed their approach, or was just waiting.

Only a split second passed before Ezra’s thoughts were flooded with the Dark presence that had been following him around, and his vision went black around the edges again. He tried to fight it—to push it away like he had before—but it was unrelenting and more oppressive than any of the times before.

This is the man who made you leave your family! The Dark voice shouted in Ezra’s mind. Seeing him makes you angry, does it not?

Before he could suppress his feelings, the detest swelled in his chest.

Good! Now, let me take care of him!

Ezra tried to protest—tried to stamp out his sadness, his anger, his resentment—but it was futile. The blackness swallowed up his vision completely.