Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Something was keeping Zeb awake. It was incredibly frustrating. He loved sleeping— loved it almost as much as punching bucketheads. And after a long day of his favorite activity, his second favorite activity was downright bliss.

But something was off, something that was making his mind hover just on the edge of sleep. So he grudgingly opened his eyes and mulled over what it could be.

The temperature of the room was fine. He had done all the tasks on the list Hera assigned him. He wasn’t hungry, wasn’t thirsty, and didn’t need to pee. Chopper hadn’t been near his bunk all day, so no pranks were at play here.

With a grunt, Zeb resigned himself to trying to fall asleep yet again. He carefully counted his breaths, listening to each inhale and exhale.

Then, as he attempted to block out his bunkmate’s breathing in order to better focus on his own, he heard it.

Ezra’s breathing wasn’t in its usual pattern. He hadn’t realized that Ezra even had a specific breathing pattern, nor that he had somehow memorized it. But now that Zeb was listening, he knew that something was off.

After a few more minutes of listening closely, he could make out a slight wheeze with each inhale. Karabast, was the kid getting sick?

Zeb wasn’t sure how to deal with that. Ezra had only been with them for two months, and he could be a little standoffish. The kid didn’t like members of the crew being too close to him, or touching him when he couldn’t see them, or questioning him about anything related to his personal life. It was understandable, since he’d lived on his own for so long, but it made certain things complicated. Medical care unfortunately fell into the category of “certain things.”

Zeb tuned his ear back to Ezra’s breathing. Was it paranoia, or did it sound worse now?

Feeling restless, Zeb got out of his bunk to look at Ezra. He wasn’t sure what he was searching for...maybe flushed cheeks? Sometimes humans got those with fevers, right?

When he peered over Ezra’s bunk, though, he could see that the kid wasn’t even sweating. He certainly looked uncomfortable, with his eyebrows pinched together and a grimace on his face, but he didn’t look sick. Didn’t smell sick either, Zeb realized.

His eyes trailed away from Ezra’s face to see one of his arms tucked around his stomach. Maybe something he’d eaten hadn’t settled well? Or maybe…

Suddenly a memory burst into the forefront of Zeb’s mind, and the pieces clicked together.

They had completed a mission that morning, stealing crates of Imperial ration bars. Pretty typical stuff. Things had gone awry (which was also pretty typical), and they were once again chased by several angry stormtroopers and a TIE fighter. There were several explosions, some caused by the imps and some caused by Sabine's detonators. Ezra had been thrown sideways by one of imperial ones; a blindingly green TIE fighter laser hit the ground next to him, and he had landed against a speeder. Zeb had barely processed it when it happened.

Now that he thought back on it, though, Ezra’s body had smacked against the metal of the speeder quite loudly. And he was pretty sure it had taken the kid longer than usual to get back up.

Zeb sighed. The kid wasn’t sick, he was hurt.

Still though, Zeb thought with a frown, what was he supposed to do? Obviously Ezra hadn’t wanted to draw attention to this injury, or he would’ve said something. And trying to force Ezra into something he didn’t want to do was tricky— he might just be a kid, but he could be stubborn as sithspit.

As much as Zeb wanted to crawl back into bed, though, this wasn't something he could ignore at this point. He needed to get Ezra checked out first, no matter how aggravating the process would be.

Zeb reached out to prod Ezra’s shoulder, but then thought better of it. He’d been punched in the face a few times trying to wake Ezra up that way, and while the punches didn’t really hurt, he didn’t need Ezra freaking out on him just yet.

Instead, he sat back down on his bunk and stomped his feet on the floor a few times. Then he yawned loudly, stood, and bumped the bottom of Ezra’s bunk with his fist. This method— being as loud as possible while moving in mundane ways— was the best Ezra-waking method Zeb had found. And, sure enough:

“Zeb, shut up,” Ezra groaned. Zeb smirked. Mission accomplished.

“Hey, stay awake,” Zeb said before Ezra could let himself drift off again. Ezra cracked his eyes open and propped himself up on his elbow. Zeb noticed him wince at the new position.

“What? Is something going on?”

“You tell me,” Zeb said. Ezra just looked confused, so Zeb figured he needed to ask directly.

“Did you get hurt on the mission?”

“I’m fine, Zeb,” Ezra said with a scowl.

“That wasn’t a no.”

“Go back to sleep.”

“So I’ll take that as a yes, then?”

“I said I’m fine!” Ezra said, raising his voice and sitting up further to emphasize his point. This backfired on him as the motion aggravated his injury, and he made an aborted motion to grab his ribs. That coupled with the heavy wince that crossed his face gave Zeb his answer.

“Did you bang up your ribs?” Zeb asked, trying to be patient.

“They’re fine. Leave me alone.”

Zeb was tempted to do just that. Ezra clearly did not want to be having this conversation, nor did he seem to want Zeb’s help. Zeb’s bed looked warm and inviting, and he really was tired.

But then again, the kid was breathing funny. Zeb wasn’t super familiar with human anatomy, but he knew that for any species, difficulty breathing was not a good sign. He couldn’t ignore it.

“Come on down, let’s go to the medbay.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, you are,” Zeb said, a little frustrated now. “Kid, there’s two options here. Option one is we go to the medbay, patch you up, and go back to sleep. No fuss, just bandages or painkillers or whatever you need.”

Ezra was glaring. Zeb continued.

“Option two is we both go to sleep right now, and in the morning either Kanan or Hera realize you’re injured. You know you can’t hide from them all day. And then Hera will go into full mother-hen mode, and we’ll both get scolded for not doing anything right now.”

“Can’t you just forget about it, Zeb?” Ezra asked, his voice pitching up to a whine. “I told you, I’m fine.”

“If you’re fine, then the medscanner will prove it,” Zeb argued. “And we’ll go back to bed.”

Ezra looked decidedly grumpy. Zeb would have laughed at his expression if this whole conversation wasn’t so frustrating.

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you?” Ezra finally said.

“Nope. Come on.”

Ezra huffed in annoyance and got out from under his blanket. His movements were stiff and slow, clearly being careful of his torso movements, and Zeb wondered to himself how he hadn’t noticed anything amiss earlier.

Ezra grunted and grabbed at his ribs again when he made the jump from the top bunk to the ground, and Zeb opened his mouth to ask him where it hurt. He stopped short of actually asking, though, figuring it would lead to another endless cycle of questions and non-answers. The med scanner would tell him what was actually wrong.

Zeb and Ezra left the room and entered the dimly lit hallway.

“This is stupid. I’m fine,” Ezra said. Zeb ignored him.

Soon enough, they reached the Ghost’s medbay, which consisted of a cot built into the wall and several cabinets of medical supplies. After turning on the light, Zeb opened a cabinet and rummaged around for the scanner. He grabbed it and turned to Ezra, who was standing away from the cot with his arms crossed.

“Come sit here and take off your shirt,” Zeb said, gesturing to the cot.

“No. Just do the thing so we can go back to bed.”

“This isn’t a high-tech scanner, it only works if the sensor has a direct pathway to the skin,” Zeb said. “So if you want to get this over with, you need to come here and take your shirt off.”

Ezra didn’t move.

“If you’re not comfortable doing this with me, I can get Kanan or Hera—“

“Fine.”

Still moving stiffly, Ezra slowly wiggled out of his loose sleep shirt. Zeb sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of the bruising across the kid’s side. When he sat down on the cot, gripping the shirt tightly in his hands, the lightbulb above shined right onto the injury, illuminating the blue, purple, and brown discoloration.

“Karabast, kid.”

“It’s fine. I’ve had worse.”

Zeb didn’t doubt that he had experienced worse— the skin of Ezra’s chest, arms, and back held a multitude of scars, ranging from tiny white flecks to worryingly large, rust-colored splotches and lines. For the time being, though, Zeb ignored Ezra’s second statement and remarked on the first.

“You’ve gotta stop using the word ‘fine.’ I’m not entirely sure you know what it means.”

Zeb pressed the “start” button on the scanner and pointed it at the worst of the bruising. The device emitted a blue beam that criss-crossed Ezra’s side several times in a grid pattern, and then it beeped.

Zeb looked at the results and grimaced.

“You fractured a couple ribs.”

“I figured. Can I go to back to sleep now?”

Zeb looked up at Ezra incredulously.

“Kid, you have fractured ribs. As in, your bones are not whole at the moment.”

Ezra just stared at him.

“That means we need to stabilize them,” Zeb continued, waving the scanner’s instructions in front of Ezra’s face in an attempt to garner a reaction. “And get you some pain meds, and then we can go back to sleep.”

“For Force’s sake, Zeb, I’m fine!“

“No, you’re not.”

Zeb reopened the cabinet and found some bandages. He skimmed over the bullet points displayed on the med scanner and then began to wrap Ezra’s ribs. Surprisingly, Ezra didn’t put up a fight. Zeb didn’t question it at first, just thankful for the small mercy of not having to field ridiculous questions and protests. But then he looked up at Ezra’s face and saw his clenched jaw and furrowed brow. Not able to watch that for long, Zeb looked back down to focus on wrapping the ribs properly, but then he began to notice the slight tremor in the kid’s chest with each inhale. Poor kid was in pain.

Finally, Zeb tied off the bandages and surveyed his work.

“How’s that feel?” Zeb asked.

“Huh?” Ezra said.

“The bandages. Are they too tight? Are they restricting your breathing? Or do they feel like they’re too loose and will slip out of place?”

Zeb had been known to wrap bandages too tightly in the past, so he made it a habit to check afterward with the person. Though, with how little Ezra had cooperated so far, Zeb doubted that Ezra would tell him even if the bandage wrap was choking him to death.

“It feels fine.”

Zeb didn’t bother to argue with Ezra’s assessment. He would choose his battles wisely, because the next thing he needed to do was convince the kid to take pain meds.

“Okay. How much—“ Zeb stopped mid-question and shook his head. He wanted to ask Ezra how much pain he was in, like he would when dosing pain meds for Sabine or Kanan or Hera. But this was Ezra, and that question would definitely not get an answer. Instead, Zeb just reached for the bottle of pain pills. After squinting at the tiny dosage instructions for human species, throwing a glance at Ezra to guess his weight, and squinting at the instructions again, he shook one pill out and handed it to Ezra.

“I don’t need a—“

“Kid, just take it,” Zeb said, handing over a bottle of water as well. “And then we can go back to bed.”

Ezra begrudgingly swallowed the pill with a sip of the water. Satisfied, Zeb put the pill bottle and med scanner back away and turned out the light. The pair began making their way back to their room.

“If you need something, or you start hurting too much, wake me up,” Zeb said as they walked. Ezra didn’t respond. “And we can let Kanan and Hera know in the morning.”

That got a response. Ezra whirled around to face Zeb.

“What— you said we didn’t have to tell anyone!”

“I never said that. And the only reason I implied it was because that was before I knew you had two fractured ribs.”

“So what? I’m fine—“

Zeb grunted in disbelief.

“—and I’ve gotten medical treatment or whatever and I even took the stupid painkiller!”

“Okay, but your ribs are still gonna be injured in the morning. So Kanan needs to know not to push you too hard in Jedi training, and Hera needs to know for mission planning.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“I mean, why does that matter? I’ve done training and missions with busted ribs before.”

Zeb was silent for a moment. He racked his brain, trying to think of a time in the months since Ezra had joined him that he’d hurt his ribs. His memory came up empty. As disbelief and frustration built up in Zeb’s mind, Ezra took his silence as acquiescence.

“So there’s no need to tell them. Thanks for your help, I guess, but I’m fine.”

With that, Ezra pressed the button to enter their room.

“Hang on a second,” Zeb said, following Ezra in and stopping him before he went to his bed. “You mean to tell me that you’ve broken your ribs on our missions before, and not done anything about it?”

Ezra turned to face him and frowned.

“Well I— well… yeah?”

“Kid,” Zeb said exhaustedly. He stared at him for a few seconds with no idea how to respond to that. Finally, he just decided: “I’m making a new rule.”

“Hera makes the rules,” Ezra interrupted.

“Hera will agree on this one. When you get hurt, you tell us.”

“Why?”

Zeb sighed heavily.

“Because…karabast, Ezra. 0200 is not the time for this kind of a conversation. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“But—“

“Nope,” Zeb said, sitting on his bunk and then swinging his legs onto it. “You need to rest. And I’m going to sleep.”

Zeb settled in under the blankets. Ezra looked as though he was going to protest again, but to Zeb’s relief, he didn’t argue any further and instead walked to the bunk. Then, Zeb found himself regretting getting into bed first as he listened to Ezra’s muffled noises of pain from trying to climb up to his top bunk. Zeb knew, unfortunately from experience, that raising your arms over your head was miserable with broken ribs. Just as he was about to stand back up to help, Ezra managed to hoist himself up there.

Despite how tired he had been before, Zeb suddenly found himself unable to close his eyes. He stared at the metal slats above his head, as if trying to see straight through them to the fourteen-year-old lying there.

How many injuries had Ezra hidden since he’d joined the Ghost crew? Zeb knew as well as any of them that missions got pretty rough sometimes. He'd seen Ezra get thrown around plenty during those missions, but not once had he thought to check on the kid afterward. He'd just assumed Ezra would say something about it, like the rest of them did. He knew that Ezra had seen the rest of them get medical treatment, for varying severities of injury, so why hadn't Ezra done that as well?

Zeb shut his eyes forcefully. As he had said to Ezra, 0200 was not the time for those sorts of questions.

Chapter Text

The sun was gradually peaking over the desert horizon, sending soft yellow light onto Chopper Base and the surrounding plains. Though Ezra could feel its gentle warmth on his back, he couldn’t see the beauty of the sunrise at the moment. The blindfold over his eyes prevented that, but he didn’t mind.

When he first began deflection training with Kanan, he didn’t wear a blindfold, but rather his stormtrooper helmet. That helmet was the bane of his existence back then. Trying to fight with the blinders up was new and disconcerting, and he much preferred the kind of lightsaber training in which he could actually see what he was doing. Now, though, he had grown to enjoy training with it on. Instead of a stressful experience, it was a calming one. He could close his eyes, center himself, and simply let the Force guide his movements.

Recently, he and Kanan had been more inclined to spar during their training sessions than to do deflection work, so Ezra most often did this sort of training with Zeb and Chopper.

This morning, like any other morning they didn’t have to rush off to a mission, the three of them were outside training. Ezra had his blindfold on and his lightsaber raised, and Zeb and Chopper were trying to hit him. The Rebellion had imposed some rations to conserve ammunition for real fights, so Zeb was only occasionally firing stun bolts. The rest of it was empty food cartons, some small rocks, and a random assortment of other small objects Chopper had collected from the base. Ezra and Zeb knew better than to ask the droid where exactly he’d found them and just pretended to not suspect that he was stealing some of them.

Ezra had fallen into his rhythm fairly quickly, and for the past few minutes, he had been methodically dodging and slicing up Zeb and Chopper’s projectiles. His movements were smooth, his footwork precise, his mind calm. The Force flowed around him, allowing him to sense Zeb circling him and the set of rocks Chopper was hurling at him, as well as the force signatures of the other Rebels waking up inside the base.

Suddenly, Ezra’s rhythm was interrupted.

A burst of light. A bump in the Force. For a split second, Ezra’s mind was filled with swirling, shimmering images— a cloudy sky, a tree with dark bark and red leaves, the noise of boots crunching on hard ground.

Then sharp pain jolted him back out of the vision, and he stumbled backward a few steps. His lip throbbed, and he lifted his hand up to it, belatedly realizing that he must have gotten hit by a carton.

“You alright, kid?” Zeb asked from somewhere to his left.

Ezra prodded at his lip and gums with his tongue. A coppery taste made him grimace. He pulled the blindfold off.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Zeb blinked uncertainly at Ezra.

“Uh…you sure? ‘Cause that’s the first time in eight months I’ve been able to hit you.”

“I did have a nice record going, huh?” Ezra said absently, touching the pads of his fingers to his face to feel the slight swelling. Zeb crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows, waiting. Chopper warbled some obscenities at Ezra.

Ezra, scowling at Chopper, explained:

“I had…well, I don’t know if it really counts as a vision. It was more of a flicker, it was really short.”

“Geez, kid,” Zeb said. “What is it with you getting visions while we’re doing lightsaber training?”

Ezra laughed a little at that, wincing when it tugged on his lip. Zeb began to walk over to Ezra.

“Last time, though, it made you better at deflecting, not worse. But I guess I’ll take this over you passing out.”

Ezra smirked, recalling that incident. Zeb, now standing in front of Ezra, reached for his head.

“Let’s see the damage,” he muttered, tilting Ezra’s face up so that his lip was in the light of the sun. Ezra allowed it, only feeling slightly annoyed at the coddling. After Zeb had discovered Ezra’s tendency to brush off injuries a few years back, he had taken to nagging him about any potential injuries. At first, it was incredibly irritating, and it caused more than a few heated arguments. Now, though, they had reached a sort of tacit understanding. If Ezra let Zeb or one of the other Spectres take a look at the wound and treat it, then they wouldn’t make a fuss over it. Ezra still didn’t fully understand what the original fuss was about, since his injuries rarely affected his work, but he appreciated that they cared about little things like that. It reminded him a little bit of his parents, when they would worry over his skinned knees or bruised elbows.

This was a really small injury though, so he hopefully Zeb would drop it and they could just continue with training. The pulsing pain in his lip and the corner of his cheek was annoying, but not debilitating. And the wound itself, though still sluggishly bleeding by the taste of it, would probably close in a few minutes. Ezra reached up to wipe some of the blood off, and Zeb dropped his hand from Ezra’s chin, which he had been using to angle the injury toward the sunlight.

“Should probably put a cold pack on that,” Zeb finally diagnosed.

Ezra shrugged, running his tongue along the tiny wound once more. When Ezra didn’t move, Zeb spoke again.

“By that I mean, we’re going inside and getting a cold pack.”

“Seriously, Zeb? I don’t need—“

“Nope,” Zeb interrupted, cutting off Ezra’s protests. “Come on. If you’re lucky, Hera won’t be around to pester you. But she’ll definitely go full mother-hen on you if you don’t treat it and she sees your face swollen up later.”

Ezra huffed out a sigh, thinking to himself that Zeb was the one going full mother-hen. He grudgingly followed after Zeb.

“What’d you see?” Zeb asked after several seconds of walking.

“Huh?”

“In your vision.”

“Oh. Uh, I’m not sure. Like I said, it was really short, without anything coherent this time.”

“But you saw something,” Zeb pressed. “Otherwise your face would look slightly less ugly right now.”

Ezra knocked his shoulder bodily into Zeb’s torso for that last comment. Zeb laughed, a sound that Ezra used to think was maniacal but now understood to be good-natured, and pushed back with his arm. Ezra grabbed the outstretched arm, and Zeb pretended to struggle against it. They play-wrestled for a few seconds until Zeb pulled his arm back.

“Ey, seriously, what’d you see? Not all of us have mind reading abilities.”

Rolling his eyes with a smirk, Ezra tried to recall the snatches of landscapes from his vision.

“Trees, clouds,” he said as the images came to him. “The leaves were red. I think there was a ship, maybe?”

“And none of that means anything to you?”

“Nope. I mean, I’ll check with Kanan, but I don’t think it means anything. He said most visions don’t have much meaning.”

They reached the base and entered, the doors whooshing behind them. Ezra continued,

“Well, no, I take that back. It’s more that the meaning is too hidden to try to decipher accurately. Especially for one like this, where I barely saw anything.”

“So, what, you just wait to find out if it was anything important?”

“Pretty much.”

“Huh. Well, tell me when you find out, eh?”

“Sure, Zeb.”

~~ one year later ~~

Ezra’s shoulder was aching harshly from the blaster wound, and he was physically exhausted from the battle he had just left, not to mention emotionally drained from the decision he had just made. Having to deal with a furious Thrawn hadn't helped, either. He'd managed to shove the Grand Admiral into one of the holding cells of the ship, though Ezra imagined it would only be a matter of time before he escaped. It was only a temporary fix so that Ezra could breathe for a few minutes.

Ezra estimated they had been traveling for about two hours when he felt the purrgil drop out of hyperspace. Despite his pain and weariness, his curiosity pulled his tired legs forward to the viewport.

The first thing he saw was hundreds of purrgil. The number was far greater than the group he had summoned to Lothal. This must be some sort of purrgil gathering place.

The second thing he saw, as he squinted between purrgil tentacles to see the surface of whatever planet they had arrived at, was red-leafed trees with dark bark. He smiled to himself.

"I found it, Zeb,” he said quietly as he admired the familiar forest below him. The red and brown seemed to continue to miles in any direction, and the giant gray tentacles waving in between his view and the forest gave the trees a shimmering quality. It was beautiful.

And then, all too soon, the purrgil were moving up and away from the planet again, and Ezra saw the tentacles flashing blue. His stomach dropped a little… he was hoping they would stay in one place for a little longer, so that the Ghost crew might have a chance of finding him quickly. He had known this was a risk, though, and so he closed his eyes and trusted in the force once again. He let it flow around him, and as he relaxed into the feeling, he found his center. Though he wished he could go back to that morning on Chopper base training with Zeb and Chopper, he trusted that he would see them again.

He’d tell Zeb later.

Chapter Text

“What’s this?”

“Nutrient powder,” Zeb said through gritted teeth. Ezra had been asking questions for what seemed like hours. They were trying to unpack the supplies they had just picked up on their last mission, but Ezra was doing a lot more talking than helping.

"What's this?"

"Sonic canister."

“And what’s this?”

“Data pad.”

“It doesn’t look like the other ones we have, though. Why?”

“Older model.”

“How much older?”

“How should I know?” Zeb replied, letting his frustration slip into his voice and hoping Ezra took the hint.

But Zeb had no such luck. Ezra set the data pad down, and picked up the next object.

“What’s—?”

“Kid, either help unpack, or get out,” Zeb practically growled, longing for some quiet.

“I am helping,” Ezra said with a cheeky grin, pointedly putting a ration pack on a shelf. “See? Look how helpful I’m being.”

Zeb grunted in annoyance. They had finally finished this crate, in double the amount of time it would have taken Zeb to do it himself. So much for the kid 'helping.' Zeb grabbed the next crate from the hovercraft behind them.

“But seriously, what’s the model of that—?”

“Will you shut up,” Zeb said through clenched teeth, swinging the crate around to the table they were using and raising his voice to a yell, “for FIVE KRIFFING SECONDS?”

With that, Zeb slammed the crate down on the table, not realizing that Ezra’s hand had been resting on the edge.

Ezra opened his mouth wide in a silent gasp, and with his free hand, scrabbled at the corner of the crate that was trapping his pinky and ring fingers. Zeb was confused for a split second, but the instant the kid let out a whimper of pain, he realized what had happened and hurried to lift the crate back up. Ezra immediately pulled the hand to his chest and held it there with his other hand.

“Kid—“ Zeb started, anger fizzling out as he watched Ezra duck his head to hide the pain. Zeb reached out to look at the damage done to the kid’s fingers, but Ezra flinched bodily and pressed his hand even tighter to his chest. He looked up at Zeb.

Zeb had seen a variety of emotions in Ezra’s lightning-blue eyes over the past few weeks— seen them flash in frustration, spark with joy, and darken with sadness. But until now, he hadn’t yet seen them filled with such raw fear. All at once, the tiny morsels of remaining anger Zeb was feeling were swept away and replaced with guilt. Karabast, he hadn’t meant to smash the kid’s fingers, but Ezra evidently didn’t know that right now.

“Are you… is it…erm, how bad…” Zeb stammered. Each time Zeb spoke, Ezra seemed to inch away further and his breathing seemed to quicken a little bit more. He was still clutching protectively at his hand, which meant Zeb was left to imagine what shades of purple his fingers might be turning.

“I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to,” Zeb finally said. Ezra didn’t respond, but rather just stared at Zeb with wide, distrustful eyes. Zeb took a tentative step forward, and Ezra immediately mirrored it with a step backward, and they both froze again.

“Hey, Zeb,” Sabine’s voice called from behind him. “Hera wants to know if you finished unloading the crates…um. Am I interrupting something?”

Sabine had walked in on Ezra and Zeb’s uncomfortable stare-off.

“No,” Ezra said, dropping his hand to his side and holding it there stiffly. “I was just bothering Zeb.”

“Kid—“ Zeb said.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Ezra said in the same dull, monotone voice. He brushed past Zeb and Sabine into the hallway. Sabine glanced back at Ezra’s retreating form.

“What was that all about?” she asked. Zeb sighed heavily as he lifted the lid off of the crate that had landed on Ezra’s fingers. He began digging through its contents.

“I think I freaked him out.”

“Well, I saw that much. But how?” Sabine asked, moving to help pull the ration packs out of the crate. “I mean, what did you do?”

“Well, I… I was getting frustrated, and I, uh, may have slammed something down, and it may have hit his fingers.”

“When you say ‘something’—“

Zeb nodded at the crate between them. It was jam-packed full of ration packs and hefty bacta containers. Sabine winced.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Think I scared him.”

“You think? He’s known us for, like, two weeks, Zeb. How could he know that was an accident?” Sabine paused. “Wait, it was an accident, right?”

“Course it was!” Zeb grumbled. “He’s an annoying little brat, but I wasn’t trying to break his fingers.”

“You broke them?”

“I don’t know! He wouldn’t let me see them. Like I said, I freaked him out.”

“If you did actually break them, Hera’s gonna make you scrub the ‘freshers for a week.”

“I’ll be lucky if it’s only a week,” Zeb replied grimly. They finished unpacking the crate, so he moved it to the side.

“You can let Hera know this is done,” he said, turning around to leave. “I’m gonna go talk to Ezra again, see if I can sort it out.”

“Zeb, wait. Maybe hold off on that for a little while.”

Zeb turned back around to frown at Sabine.

“He probably needs some space,” she explained. “He did seem…freaked out, like you said. Give him time to calm down before you try to talk to him again.”

Zeb nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

“What, like that’s a surprise?” Sabine said, smirking. She then left the room to report back to Hera.

A few hours later, Zeb figured enough time had passed for Ezra to sort his thoughts out. He trudged over to their shared room, preparing an apology in his head. When he entered, though, he found the room empty. He peered over the rumple of blankets on the top bunk just to be sure, but there was no Ezra to be found.

An uneasy feeling sunk into the pit of Zeb’s stomach. He hurried to check the kitchen, the tiny laser turret room that Ezra seemed to like, and the cockpit. No Ezra. He went back to check their room. Still no Ezra.

Just as Zeb was beginning to worry over how he was supposed to explain to Kanan and Hera that he’d made Ezra run away, one last idea popped into his head. He glanced up at the vent in the ceiling and noticed its Ezra-sized opening. He sighed heavily.

He took the cover down from the vent, grabbed the rims of the opening with his fingers, and pulled himself up until he could see inside. Sure enough, right where the vent curved around some pipes, Zeb could see two brown-shoed feet.

“Ezra?” he called, and then winced at the volume of his voice. The words echoed up and down the ventilation shaft, and the loud reverberations were accompanied by a loud thud coming from Ezra’s direction. Zeb heard a muttered “kriff” followed by a word Zeb didn’t understand. Maybe something Lothali?

Then, Ezra Bridger’s face appeared around the pipes, with one hand rubbing at the top of his head.

“Zeb?” he asked, scooting around the corner.

“No, this is someone else’s head,” Zeb deadpanned. Ezra looked away and hugged his knees loosely against his chest, and Zeb figured that sarcasm probably wasn’t the best choice to start this conversation.

“Listen, I…” Zeb started, but then he had to pause. He was trying to pull himself up into the ventilation shaft, but he quickly discovered he could only get one shoulder through the opening. This vent was definitely not built for Lasats. Nevertheless, he attempted to find a semi-comfortable position, and so after a fair amount of shifting, he ended up with one arm in the vent and the other hanging down out of it.

“Listen, kid, I really didn’t mean to do that,” he said. He grunted and wriggled around a bit more until he settled into a slightly different awkward position. “I mean,” he continued. “Yeah, I was mad, but I wouldn’t do that on purpose.”

Ezra was still pointedly staring at his knees. Zeb huffed out a breath and cast his gaze down as well.

“I’m sorry I hit your fingers, and I’m sorry I scared you.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Ezra said, speaking so low that Zeb barely caught the words.

“Yeah, I do,” Zeb said bluntly.

“No, you don’t,” Ezra argued.

“Kid, I smashed your fingers. Hard. So I owe you an apology.”

“It’s not even your fault. I was bugging you.”

Zeb furrowed his eyebrows.

“Yeah, you were being annoying, but that doesn’t mean I had a right to hurt you. I shouldn’t’a been so careless with the crate. That’s my fault, not yours.”

“Just stop!” Ezra suddenly yelled. "Stop it!"

“Stop what?” Zeb asked, taken aback.

“Why are you even—you’re being so—urgh!” Ezra gestured wildly with his good hand. “Stop doing it!”

“You’re gonna have to explain what ‘it’ is, kid.”

“Everyone’s just being so…so… nice,” Ezra said, spitting the last word out as if it tasted sour in his mouth. “And so I start thinking you actually are nice, but then something like this—“ Ezra held up with swollen fingers. “—happens, and it hurts, but at least it makes sense again. But then you go and apologize and I don’t know what to even do with that! How am I supposed to know which part’s real? I don’t get… how do I even…it doesn’t make any sense! So just stop it!”

Zeb blinked a few times at Ezra.

“Kid, I… karabast. I don’t even know where to start,” Zeb said. He shifted his awkward position in the vent once again. “Okay. First off, you don’t deserve to get your fingers crushed. No matter how much you bug someone.”

Zeb paused to gather his thoughts.

“Second, everyone on this team cares about you.”

Ezra looked up at him with a variety of emotions warring on his face.

“Now, we aren’t perfect,” Zeb continued. “So we’re going to mess up sometimes. Today I messed up and hurt your hand. Sometimes Kanan’s gonna mess up and get frustrated with you during training. Sometimes Hera’s gonna mess up and yell at somebody for forgetting to do a chore. But, and here’s the third thing, that doesn’t mean you deserve to have someone make you feel like crap. It just means we messed up. And that’s why we apologize, because it was wrong.”

Zeb paused there, and studied Ezra for a long moment. He was looking down again, and he had his good hand fisted in his dark blue hair.

“Does that make sense?” Zeb asked. Ezra shifted a little and looked over at Zeb.

“No, it... well, yeah, but, I don’t know,” Ezra looked down again and began picking at a stray orange thread on pant leg. “Like I get what you said, but… I don’t understand. I mean, I had to deserve some of it, right?”

Zeb opened his mouth, but then he saw the far-off, pained look in Ezra’s eyes. The realization washed over him that Ezra wasn’t talking about Zeb smashing his fingers, nor was he referring to any occurrences on the Ghost. He was talking about before he met them.

“You didn’t, kid,” Zeb said gruffly. “Stuff happens, and it sucks, but that doesn’t mean you deserve it.”

Ezra shook his head.

“How am I supposed to believe that? I want to, I just… I don’t…”

“You don’t trust me.”

Ezra shook his head.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“You know what? That’s okay.”

Ezra frowned at Zeb.

“What, is that too ‘nice’ again?” Zeb asked. Ezra shrugged.

“Well, get used to it, kid. I mean what I said— I don’t expect you to trust me yet. I did nearly take your fingers off today, so I can’t really blame you.”

Ezra smiled weakly at that.

“Speaking of which,” Zeb said. “We should probably look at the damage, and at least get some ice on them. You ready to come down?”

Ezra hesitated for a few long seconds but then nodded. He began to crawl his way toward the opening, not using his left hand in the process, which Zeb realized with a pang of guilt.

As Ezra made his way across the vent, Zeb began to wiggle himself out of his position wedged into the opening. Or rather, he tried to.

“Are you stuck?” Ezra asked.

“Hang on,” Zeb said. He twisted his body this way and that, trying to swing his legs around to get momentum.

“Oh, you are totally stuck,” Ezra said, giggling. He had reached Zeb and was now sitting cross-legged to enjoy the show.

“No, I’m not stuck, I just—need to—get my—shoulder—“ Zeb grunted, twisting some more.

“You sure?” Ezra asked, grinning, when Zeb had been struggling for several long seconds. “Do I need to comm Chopper to come help?”

“Do not comm anyone,” Zeb growled. “I got in here just fine, so I’ll get out—woah!”

Evidently Zeb had contorted his upper body in just the right way, and he fell out of the vent. Luckily, he caught himself before he face-planted on the ground.

“You good?” Ezra asked, peeking his head down through the opening.

“Fine,” Zeb said, brushing himself off. “You’re the one with the broken fingers, if I remember correctly.”

“They aren’t broken,” Ezra said as he easily dropped down from the vent.

“You sure? I basically flattened them with that crate.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. The bones aren’t shifting.”

At Zeb’s skeptical look, he added, “I know what broken fingers feel like.”

Zeb winced, not wanting to think too deeply about that particular revelation. Instead, he looked down at Ezra’s fingers, and he could see that Ezra was probably right. They were definitely bruising, but they weren’t misshapen or massively swollen. Zeb had been fearing much worse.

“Oh, and that data pad,” Zeb said as they made their way toward the kitchen for an ice pack. “It's a Q6 model. Pre-Empire, and it was actually Separatist-produced, which is why it looks so weird.”

Ezra looked up at Zeb, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Don’t ask me any more questions about it though, ‘cause that’s as much as I found on the Holonet. A lot of Separatist technology manuals have gotten buried by the Empire.”

“Thanks, Zeb,” Ezra said quietly. “Really…thanks.”

“No problem, kid.”

Chapter Text

Ezra grabbed his pillow by the corner, flung it over his shoulder for momentum, and hurled it across the room. It made an unfairly quiet thump against the wall and slid down to the floor.

The corner of the pyramidal holocron dug uncomfortably into his thigh, the sensation only barely relieved by the fabric of his pocket.

Everything felt wrong. The tears he was holding back felt like they were intruders in his brain. The anger building in his chest felt stupid, childish. He felt like seven years old again, mad at the whole kriffing galaxy. As if the galaxy was supposed to be fair.

He wanted to scream. To sob. To pass out. To throw up. To claw his brain out. To disappear into thin air and not have to deal with this anymore.

But despite his agitation, he had no energy left in him to act on it. His limbs had become immeasurably heavy in the past few seconds, and he couldn’t even make himself sit down.

And so he stood in front of his bunk, fists curled but not clenched, eyes glistening but no tear falling, mind screaming but no noise escaping from his mouth.

It was all wrong.

How had it all gone so wrong?

Selfishly, he wanted Hera and Kanan. But Kanan was hurt, hurt because of Ezra’s own foolishness. Hera was with him, caring for him. Trying to heal the wounds Ezra had caused.

Ezra wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there before the door behind him opened. He vaguely wondered who it was, but he had no mental resources left to make the decision to turn around and look.

“Hey, kid.” Zeb said.

“Hey,” he said, and even the word leaving his mouth felt out of place. It left him feeling even emptier. He slowly turned around and sat down.

“You, uh…you doin’ alright?”

Nothing would ever be alright again.

“Yeah,” he said. He could feel Zeb’s gaze on him but couldn’t bear to look up. He didn’t want to see the disappointment, the shame. He couldn’t take it.

“I brought you some food.”

“Not hungry.”

“You should eat something, though.”

Zeb set a tray down next to Ezra. Ezra shook his head.

“C’mon, kid, have at least a few bites. Kanan said you didn’t eat anything on the flight back, either.”

Ezra didn’t want to think about the flight back. He didn’t want to think about any of it. But Zeb’s words had spurred the thoughts into action anyway, and Ezra’s mind was filled with the shocking coldness of Vader’s presence, and the blinding light of the temple exploding, and Ahsoka’s force signature disappearing like a fire snuffed out, and Kanan’s cries of pain, and the horribly burnt skin around his eyes.

In that moment, the smell of the nerfloaf Zeb had brought him wafted up to his nose, and Ezra’s stomach rolled.

“Woah!” Zeb exclaimed as Ezra shot to his feet, gagging. He ran out of the room to the ‘fresher, palm clamped against his mouth. He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet and expelled the little food he had left in his stomach. When he began to dry heave, he felt a hand land on his back, and he flinched away from it.

“Hey, easy, now,” Zeb said. Ezra sat back on his butt, folded his arms over his knees, and pressed his forehead to his forearms. He could feel his shirtsleeves getting wet and scrubbed angrily at his eyes. He hadn’t even noticed himself starting to cry.

“It’s okay, Ezra,” Zeb said quietly. He heard the large Lasat sit down on the tiled floor.

“No, it’s not,” Ezra argued. The words were muffled by his arms, but he didn’t care. “It’s all my fault.”

“That’s not true.”

“How can you say that?” Ezra yelled, jerking his head up. “I did this. It was my stupid vision of Master Yoda, and my stupid choice to trust Maul, and now… and now…”

“And now Ahsoka’s dead,” Zeb said quietly. The knife sitting in Ezra’s heart twisted, and he choked on a sob and pressed his hands against his forehead.

“And Kanan’s hurt,” Zeb continued. The knife twisted again. Ezra let out a pained noise and moved his hands up to pull at his hair.

“But listen, it’s not your fault.”

Zeb paused for a few seconds, reaching over and resting his hand on Ezra’s back. Ezra couldn’t bring himself to shrug it away.

“I know a little something about survivor’s guilt, kid. But you’ve gotta realize, you didn’t hurt anybody. Those inquisitors, or Sith, or… I don’t know, whatever kind of messed-up evil you fought on Malachor, are at fault. You were just there. You couldn’t do anything.”

Ezra felt his chest constrict, knowing Zeb was right. Down there on Malachor, he couldn’t do anything. Not one kriffing thing. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? All this Jedi training, yet here he was, completely powerless. Weak. Just as helpless as he was at seven years old.

“Sometimes, you just… you just can’t save everyone. And I’m sorry you had to experience that,” Zeb said. Ezra could hear the pain in Zeb’s voice, and more than he ever had before, he understood a little bit of what Zeb must have felt after Lasan. This awful, useless feeling of knowing exactly how insignificant you were against the might of the Empire.

Ezra touched the burn on the palm of his hand from where Vader’s lightsaber had effortlessly sliced his lightsaber right out of his grasp. He would never be able to stand up against something like that. He would never be able to protect Kanan against something like that. Or any of his friends.

“So what are we even supposed to do?” Ezra asked in a choked voice, continuing to rub his thumb against the burn.

Zeb sighed.

“What can we do? We keep fighting. We get up again.”

Ezra shook his head.

“How? It just seems so…hopeless.”

“It does right now, yeah. We lost, and we lost hard. But that doesn’t mean we’re gonna lose every time. All we can do is be prepared for the next fight. It’s only hopeless if we let it be.”

Ezra frowned, turning the words over in his mind. How was he supposed to prepare for next time, if he was so woefully unprepared for Malachor after nearly two years of Jedi training? Despite what Zeb said, it sure did seem hopeless.

“Do you feel like you’re gonna be sick anymore?” Zeb asked after they had sat for a few more minutes. Ezra mutely shook his head.

“Alright, come on then.”

Zeb stood and then helped Ezra up. Ezra complied numbly. His mind was reeling, trying to coalesce his need to protect his family with his own helplessness. Even now, he couldn’t even get his feet to start moving without a nudge from Zeb. What kind of Jedi was he?

He let himself be guided back to their room, where Zeb coaxed him into eating a few bites of the nerfloaf.

“Why don’t you get some rest, eh?”

Ezra knew that sleep wouldn’t be coming for a long while, but he nodded anyway.

“Whenever you’re ready to talk about it…I’m here, Ezra.”

Ezra nodded again, even though a part of his mind was whispering to him that there was nothing more to talk about. Ahsoka was dead. Kanan was hurt. Ezra was helpless.

Zeb put the pillow Ezra had thrown across the room back on his bunk, wrapped Ezra in a quick, strong hug, and then left with the half-eaten plate of nerfloaf.

The room suddenly felt cold and empty. The voice in his head seemed to get louder in Zeb’s absence, reminding him of his stupidity and his utter uselessness. Ezra sat down and loosely crossed his arms over his stomach, trying to restore to his body the warmth of Zeb’s hug. But did he even deserve such comfort if he couldn’t keep Zeb and the rest of them safe?

Ezra needed a way to protect his family. He needed this to never, ever happen again. But he clearly had no control over the matter.

Or…did he?

The holocron weighed heavily in his pocket.

Chapter Text

Zeb dragged his feet as he approached his and Ezra’s shared room. He should get some sleep, like Hera had told them to. They all needed to be well-rested and alert for the rescue mission—especially since it was going to be the most insane and impossible mission Zeb had ever been on.

But the nerves wouldn’t let up. Worry after worry beat against his mind with a rushing tempo. What if the Empire noticed the TIE flying into the hangar was painted bright orange? What if they decided to shoot it down without warning? What if the star destroyer was such a maze that they ran themselves right into stormtroopers? What if the Inquisitor himself was guarding Kanan?

What if Kanan was…?

Zeb’s stomach dropped. He didn’t want to think about what kind of shape Kanan was in after days in an Imperial cell. Especially if Hera was right and he didn’t have any information to give. What were they doing to him as punishment? What instruments of torture were they using to draw out the nonexistent intel? How much of his friend would be left to rescue?

Zeb pressed the button next to the door. He highly doubted he would be able to fall asleep, so he resigned himself to six hours of tossing and turning.

The door slid open, and Zeb trudged into the room, glancing up at Ezra’s bunk. All he could see the back of Ezra’s head. Zeb considered saying something, maybe something encouraging, but decided against it. Not only did he not know what to say, but he also didn’t want to wake Ezra up on the small chance he had already fallen asleep. Although Zeb had a feeling Ezra was just as restless as Zeb currently felt, he wouldn’t begrudge the young Jedi’s attempts at drifting off.

Zeb settled into his own bunk, sighing heavily and trying the block out the incessant worries in his mind and the occasional squeaking of the metal of the bunk above him. The Lasan guard had taught him various techniques to be able to fall asleep quickly, but he knew none would work right now. His mind kept drifting to the TIE fighter, to the unknown hallways of the star destroyer, to Hera’s words about Mustafar.

The place where Jedi go to die. With the Empire’s vendetta against the Jedi, that was the whole galaxy, wasn’t it? So what made Mustafar so horrible that it had such a reputation? What were they doing to Kanan? Was he already—

The sharp squeaking noise of Ezra’s bunk penetrated his spiraling thoughts. The barely tamped-down panic remained even as his thoughts scattered. No, he would not be sleeping during this night cycle.

The bunk squeaked again, and Zeb frowned.

Usually, when Ezra rolled over, the bunk always made the same prolonged creak as he got himself situated. When Ezra sat up to crawl off the bunk, there was a lower creak from the bunk accompanied by more shifting of blankets. The repeated squeaks he was hearing now were different. They were shorter, and more sudden. And Zeb hadn’t been hearing the shifting of Ezra’s limbs before and after each squeak. What was Ezra doing?

Squeak!

Zeb stood up and peered over the top of the bunk. Ezra was still facing away from him, and he was curled in on himself, blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders, with his knees pulled to his chest tightly enough that it looked uncomfortable even for someone as nimble as Ezra.

Then, Ezra flinched. It was a quick thing, as if he had just twitched, but with his entire body. It was a large enough movement to cause the metal of the bunk to squeak. Zeb frowned, confused.

Ezra flinched again. Squeak. This certainly wasn’t normal.

“Kid?” Zeb tried.

Ezra turned around. Zeb’s stomach clenched and he sucked in a sharp breath. Zeb didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t tears coating the kid’s bright blue eyes.

“What’s going on?” Zeb asked, stepping closer.

“They…they’re hurting him,” Ezra said, squeezing his eyes shut as his body jerked again.

It wasn’t new information to Zeb. He knew the Empire was going to be torturing Kanan. But, no, something else was wrong. There was something else that was giving Ezra that awful, tormented look in his eyes.

It only took Zeb a few seconds longer to realize that Ezra must be feeling something through the Force. Something that Zeb couldn’t. Ezra flinched again and whimpered, and Zeb’s eyes widened with the understanding that not only was someone hurting Kanan, but somehow Ezra was feeling it, light-years away.

“Ezra, how is this…what’s happening?”

Zeb scrambled up the ladder, not caring that he didn’t exactly fit between the top bunk and the ceiling, and pulled the blanket off of Ezra. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but there was no blood, no gaping wounds. Just Ezra, curled into himself, clearly in pain from something.

“I thought…I thought I could…help,” Ezra said, his voice wavering and cracking. “I don’t know. All day I’ve been sensing him, sensing something wrong, and so I-agh…” Ezra grimaced and wrapped his arms around his stomach. “I thought I would try to meditate and, and open up our bond. I thought maybe I could communicate with him or something. But whatever I opened, I can sense him so much stronger now, and I can’t…I don’t…they won’t stop electrocuting him.”

Ezra’s shoulders tensed, and he flinched yet again at the invisible attack.

“Oh, kid…” Zeb laid his hand heavily on Ezra’s shoulder. “Is there a way to, I dunno, pull yourself back out?”

Ezra sniffled and rubbed his wrist under his nose.

“Probably, but…but what if he feels me too?” Ezra choked out. “I don’t wanna leave him. Not like this.”

Zeb squeezed Ezra’s shoulder and bowed his head. This was…this was all kinds of messed up. Ezra shouldn’t be feeling this. It shouldn’t even be possible. But it was, and it made Zeb feel sick to his stomach. All day, Zeb had just been pushing through the clouds of worry over Kanan, trying to do away with the vague knowledge that the Empire was hurting Kanan. It had been miserable, but this was so much worse. Now, he was able to see with his own eyes the proof that Kanan was being tortured, right now, in this moment. He could feel Ezra’s body quake each and every time someone, somewhere, was hurting Kanan.

“The Inquisitor’s there,” Ezra continued. “I keep seeing his face. What if…what if he kills him? Before we can get there?”

“Don’t even think about that,” Zeb said gruffly. “We’re gonna get him back. Besides, as horrible as it is, they won’t kill him until he gives them the information they want. And since he doesn’t have any to give them, he’ll stay alive.”

Ezra’s only response was to flinch and hiss through his teeth, as another invisible jolt ran through him. His gaze was pointed at the blankets Zeb had tossed to the side, but it didn’t look focused. He looked haunted, as though he was staring into a far-away place. For all Zeb knew, he might actually be.

Not knowing what else to do, Zeb pulled Ezra into his lap and held him tightly. He felt each flinch and spasm of Ezra’s body against his chest. They sat there for hours, waiting for it to end. Every now and again, Zeb would prod a little bit to try to understand what Ezra was doing, feeling, seeing. Each time, though, he was only left either more concerned or more confused by Ezra’s answers.

The concerning conversations would be when Ezra tried to describe the physical things he could feel. Painful pressure on his wrists. The stinging, reverberating pain that came after each shock. His feet going numb. Each of Ezra’s responses, forced through gritted teeth and punctuated by inter-galactic electric shock reverberations, gave Zeb a much clearer picture than he ever wanted of Kanan’s situation.

The confusing conversations would be when Ezra’s descriptions trailed off into the non-physical.

“Someone keeps telling us to run. A…a woman.”

“Someone else is there?”

“I don’t know if she’s real. She keeps disappearing. But her voice is… everywhere.”

To be honest, these conversations were perhaps more concerning than the ones about the bodily torture. Zeb didn’t know if the voices meant Ezra was going crazy, or Kanan was, or if it was a Force-thing. Or all of the above.

At some point, Ezra’s already shaky breathing had deteriorated even further. He sounded like he was on the verge of hyperventilating now, and Zeb could feel the kid’s sweat soaking through the blankets he had pulled back around them. Zeb steeled himself. Enough was enough.

“Ezra,” Zeb said. “You need to pull yourself out.”

“C-c-can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” Truth be told, Zeb didn’t know that. He wasn’t a Jedi. But he was getting really worried about what this was doing to Ezra.

“No!” Ezra practically growled. “I’m not going to leave him!”

“You won’t be leaving him. We’re on our way to rescue him, remember? And you need to be ready when we go in.”

“I won’t leave him alone. I won’t.”

“You have to.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can!”

No sooner had Zeb raised his voice than Ezra cried out in pain, and multiple spasms rocked his body. Zeb waited for them to stop, holding Ezra’s stiff shoulders tight against his chest. It seemed to go on forever, with Ezra whimpering and cringing and clutching at the fur on Zeb’s forearm.

Finally, it let up, and Ezra let out a choked sob and relaxed his body marginally.

“Ezra, let go,” Zeb said quietly but firmly. “Now.”

Ezra’s keening breaths filled the room for several long seconds.

“I can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because what if this is it?” Ezra’s voice dropped down to a whisper. “What if, five shocks from now, it’s too much for his body, and this is the last time I’ll feel Kanan?”

Zeb, who had been ready to make a sharp retort, to demand once again that Ezra sever the connection, felt the air disappear from his lungs. He didn’t have anything to say to that. So, he hugged Ezra tighter and said nothing at all.

Ezra flinched again, and the bunk squeaked, and Zeb didn’t let go. Nor did he let go the next time, nor the next time. They fell back into the horrible rhythm of waiting for Kanan’s next shock again and again and again.

Until Ezra suddenly went limp in Zeb’s arms.

Zeb’s eyes widened in panic.

“Ezra?”

Zeb didn’t know whether to be more relieved or terrified. The tension had completely left Ezra’s body. Which meant Ezra seemed to not be feeling the shocks anymore, but what did that mean for Kanan? Did he just feel Kanan die?

“They stopped the electricity,” Ezra whispered tonelessly. He sounded utterly exhausted.

“And Kanan?”

“He’s there. He’s still there.”

Zeb’s shoulders sagged. Kanan was okay. Ezra wasn’t being tortured telekinetically anymore. They had a temporary reprieve.

“We’re gonna find him, kid. We’re…” Zeb looked down at Ezra’s face. His eyes were shut, his face slack. His breathing was more even than it had been in hours. He had fallen asleep.

Zeb should get down to his bunk, and go to sleep, too. Maybe he’d just stay up here for a couple seconds, though, to make sure Ezra was okay…

The next thing Zeb knew, the lights of the room were gradually being raised. He jerked his head up and opened his eyes, not even remembering ever closing them. Something shifted in his arms, and he looked down to see he was still holding Ezra against his chest. Ezra was waking up, too, hence the shifting.

Zeb relinquished Ezra and glanced at the chrono.

“It’s time. We’re almost to Mustafar,” Zeb said. He looked over at Ezra as he made his way down the ladder. “Is Kanan—“

“He’s still there. I can feel him,” Ezra said, smiling tightly. Now standing up straight, he looked much stronger than he had a few hours ago, when he had been in the throes of force-transmitted electricity. He looked ready. Nervous, but ready.

Zeb supposed that was all he could hope for right now, especially since he was equally as nervous. It would be difficult, but they would get Kanan back. They had to.