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The boy lands softly on the parapet beside him and Kanan glances down, smiling slightly. “Why are we stopped here?”
The kid’s cloak whips slightly in the wind and Kanan sighs, running a hand through his hair as he stares around at the misty city.
“To wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what?”
“Relax, kid. You’ll see.” He gives a soft laugh, but it only seems to confuse Ezra more. Kanan sighs again, turning and straining against the dark to see anything further than a few meters along the wall; burning tin requires more energy than he feels like expending at the moment.
He sees Ezra tuck a strand of hair back. “You should try tying it up sometime, or cutting it, kid. Won’t get in your face as much. I can cut it for you if you want.”
He pulls a face, shaking his head wildly. “No, my f–master already told me to cut it, I just...haven’t.”
“Hmm. And he didn’t get mad at you?”
The kid’s been landing unevenly all night, and the way he shifts his weight now is just further confirmation of another beating. He sighs inwardly as Ezra looks down and away, unwilling—or unable?—to answer him outright.
“Hey, Kanan?”
He glances at the boy, watching as he sits on the parapet and pulls his knees up to hug them. Kanan follows suit, however he leaves his legs free to dangle over the edge.
“If– if the rebellion succeeds...what’s going to happen to people like us?”
He casts a glance at Ezra, the boy’s gaze kept carefully away from him.
“Well...I don’t think anything worse than what’s going on right now.” He smiles tightly into the night, tattered ends of his mistcloak fluttering beneath him. “Maybe we’ll be better off.”
“Zeb said they’d treat us like kings,” Ezra answers after a long moment of silence. Almost a full minute later, he adds in a quiet voice, “I don’t want to be a king.”
“You won’t, kid. I promise. Not if you don’t want to.” He makes to squeeze the kid’s knee as a gesture of comfort, only for Ezra to hiss in pain and shift slightly away from him. “Sorry, sorry….”
“No, it’s– it’s me, I should– I should be used to it by now. Should be burning pewter all the time, I just forgot….”
“That’s not healthy.”
Ezra buries his face further into his knees, voice muffled when he speaks. “I know.”
Kanan sighs. “If you don’t mind telling me, why don’t you want to be a king? Would think that’s what every skaa’d want.”
“Because—“ the rest of Ezra’s reply is muffled as he lowers his voice.
“Couldn’t hear you, kid.”
“Because I don’t want to become the Lord Ruler!” he repeats in a shout, breathing hard as he jerks his head up and stares at Kanan with wild eyes. “I don’t want to become like Lord Tarkin, or Lord Thrawn, or– or—“
“Like your dad,” Kanan says quietly. Ezra drops his head, all anger gone, only a small, frightened shell of a boy left.
Kanan only feels further justified in his hate for the kid’s father now.
“Yes,” Ezra murmurs brokenly, hood having fallen back in his outburst. The wind below them slows slightly, and Kanan risks moving a few inches closer. The kid doesn’t seem to react.
“Look, Ezra...I know you’ve lived with him your whole life. But Hera and I, we can find space, just like we found a spot for Zeb when—“
“No, no I– I can’t. He’ll just send a Steel Inquisitor after me.” His head pops up again, eyes wide as he shakes his head rapidly and stands. “He’ll tell the Lord Ruler, and– and they’ll find me, and they’ll torture me, and then they’ll kill me—“
“He wouldn’t risk it. You could tell the truth, and he could be executed, too.” Kanan stands, too, the bottom of his cloak moving without a sound in the slight breeze.
Ezra barks a laugh, running his hand through his hair. “You think they’d believe a halfbreed over a noble, especially someone from one of the Great Houses? Look, I appreciate the offer, seriously. But Hera and Zeb are only Mistings, and you’ve spent your whole life on the run. As far as anyone knows, Pryce’s got a Misting spy who’s a decent Coinshot, and he’d like to keep it that way. The more people who know I’m a Mistborn, the worse it is for both of us. And if you’ll excuse me, I have to actually go find some information before he decides I’m not worth it anymore.” Ezra pulls a vial off his belt, gulping the contents quickly before clipping it back on and glancing at Kanan. “I’ll see you...later.”
The kid flips a coin, hopping down from the wall after it as his cloak flutters in his wake. Soon he’s gone, the faint pinging of coins hitting the stone the only sign he’s still there.
Kanan rubs his temple, crossing the wall to look out over the land beyond it. If he had the ability, and the moral strength, he’d take their whole group over it some day, Ezra too. Where they could be free, free to actually...to actually live, to an extent at least. He’d been like that, for a long while, before finding Hera again after the Pits of Hathsin. But he can’t just leave the rest of the skaa here...he’s seen what it’s done to Ezra, and the kid’s got a better life than a whole lot of them.
House Pryce is falling out of favor with the Lord Ruler, or at least that’s the word on the street at the moment. And they’re blatantly using the kid to try and find more information, more anything that could give them an edge, keep them in the city for another century.
And either Ezra is too oblivious or too fearful to acknowledge the fact that each time they send him out, it becomes more dangerous for him. Already, Kanan has sensed at least two Inquisitors roaming the streets during their nighttime meetings over the past several weeks (not at once, thankfully); that had been his reasoning behind bringing Ezra all the way to the far edge of the city.
As long as they suspect Ezra’s genuinely a full-blooded noble, he’s fine, he’s all right, he’s safe (from the Steel Ministry at least). But Kanan has no such allegiances, and if Ezra’s really debating starting to burn pewter constantly like he had hinted at in their conversation earlier...they might find that suspicious. Especially if he does that while putting up a coppercloud at the same time he and Kanan are using coins. The fact that the kid looks nothing like his so-called “mother” and bears only the slightest of resemblances to his father won’t help if they ever find him, either.
They’ll get caught one of these days, he knows. It’s just a matter of time now.